Page:War and its Heroes.djvu/61

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THE WAR AND ITS HEROES. 63 and others as possessed of a very extraordinary genius for artillery; and when any movement of unusual importance was designed, Pelham was assigned to the artillery to be employed. His career was a brief one, but how glorious! How crowded with great events that are history now. Let us glance at it : When our forces fell back from Manassas in 1801, his batteries had their part in covering the movement, and guarding the fords of the Rappahannock. During the campaign of the Peninsula, his Blakely was as a sentinel on post next tho enemy; and at the battle of Williamsburg his courage and skill transformed raw militia into veterans. Tn the seven days' battles around Richmond he won fade- less laurels. With one Napoleon, he engaged three heavy batteries, and fought them with a pertinacity and unfaltering nerve which made the calm face of (Jeneral .lack son L r low ; and the pressure of that heroic hand, warm and eloquent of unspoken admiration Soon afterwards, at the "White House," he engaged a gunboat, and driving it away, after a brief but hot encounter, proved how fanciful were the terrors of these "monsters," as they were then called. After that work in the Peninsula, the young man was famous. His L'reatest achievements were to come, however; and he hastened to record them on the enduring tablets of history. Prom the moment when his artillery advanced from the Rappahannock, to the time when it returned thither, to the day of Fredericksburg, the path of the young leader was deluded with the bltod of battle. At Mauassaa ho rushed his guns into the very columns of the enemy almost : fighting their sharpshooters with canister, amid a hurricane of balls. At Shaipsburg be had command sf nearly all the artillery on our left, and d ir e c ted it with the hand of the matter. When the arm y orossed hack into Virginia he * : pardstown, and guarded the f rd with an obstinate valor, which spoke in the regular and nn sensing ref er b eration of hie •mouthed N ■ they roared on, hour after hoar, driving bw k th*' uy. Of tho 'lay- whir' 1 that excitiog period, many persons will long hold tho memory U was io an h wu • a/hither tl war bore him I forth in all its In the old hall on I mnded !•■ s*ho reminded him - bin own in far Alabama; there, D the trampi , ,tnn, in that b< in- try I I to pa-s some of hit kin-: n — with meat, his courtesy, his hieh br< ill almost — blushing like a girl ftl times — and • with all aroun I I thai regal 1 nun an<l women which ■ the pre**: rossessor. In the beautiful Autumn forests; by the -t ream with :»ll oakt> of the lawn, he thus w . r a time — an • Alabama, but lo?ed, admired and cbemhed by warm hearts in alia. When