go forward and drive back the enemy, cowered in the railroad cut and were captured, nearly entire, without resistance. Never in the history of the Second Corps had such an exhibition of incapacity and cowardice been given.

But the battle of Reams's Station was not yet over. With the Confederates holding the entire face of our intrenchments and ready to sweep, in greatly superior numbers, adown both returns, it would seem that naught but further disaster and final complete rout could ensue. The enemy had, however, still to reckon with a few indomitable spirits. Generals Hancock and Miles, Colonels Lynch and Broady, with a score or two of staff officers and regimental commanders whose courage rose with the emergency, threw themselves across the path of the exultant Confederates. The flags of the corps and the division commander were advanced into their very faces; Dauchey's cannoneers with their rammers, portions of the Sixty-first and Tenth New York and perhaps half a dozen other organizations, with some of the braver individual soldiers from among those who had been driven out of the angle, joined Hancock and Miles in the effort to retake the captured guns and works. Not more than three hundred men made up the little party which rushed upon the enemy, standing disordered among Dauchey's captured pieces. Step by step they drove the Confederates back, till the last one of Dauchey's

guns, across the trail of which Lieutenant Brower lay dead, had been retaken and those who had held it sought refuge in the railroad cut. So daring and desperate had been the unexpected onset made by this small band of Union officers and soldiers that the Confederate advance was not only checked, but stopped; and never during the brief remaining hour of the day was there a serious effort made to follow up the advantage gained in the first charge. Three of Dauchey's guns were actually hauled off by our men; the fourth, which had been detached and sent farther down the intrenchments to fire up the Halifax road, being too much within the range of the enemy's musketry to be withdrawn.

The situation was this: The enemy occupied the whole face of the intrenchments and the railroad cut, which, as stated, was parallel thereto. Their rifles also commanded the inside of our intrenchments some distance down each return. Murphy's brigade, of Gibbon's division, along the left return, had fallen precipitately back when Brown's and Sleeper's batteries were taken. Our line was now drawn across the ground inclosed by the works, parallel to the face of the intrenchments and to the railroad, and distant from the latter two or three hundred yards. Gregg's cavalry still held its place firmly in our left rear, having thrown off all attacks, while upon the new front Werner's New Jersey battery, the only one which could be brought into action

-Dauchey's recaptured guns being without ammunition-replied with undaunted courage to the fire of all the Confederate batteries, now concentrated upon it from three sides. In front were eight brigades of infantry, flushed with victory, and on the left a greatly superior force of cavalry. Yet Hancock was most reluctant to relinquish to the enemy the final possession of any part of the field; and Miles, though his division was reduced to a skeleton, was hot to recommence fighting. He had already got some of his men over the breastworks on the right, where they were joined by the brigade of cavalry which we spoke of as covering our right rear. Gregg, too, promised to join from his side in a general advance to retake the captured works. But when the question was put to Gibbon, that officer was compelled to admit that he could not hope to bring his troops up. Rugg's brigade had largely gone into the enemy's hands; Murphy's regiments had been badly disorganized by the enfilading and reverse fires to which they had so long been subjected and by their own hasty retreat when the Confederates broke through along the railroad. Even the gallant Smyth had to say that his brigade could not be relied upon for an aggressive moveThere was nothing left for Hancock, there

ment.

*

*Colonel, afterward General, Thomas A. Smyth, killed at Farmville, April 7, 1865, the last general officer on the Union side who fell in the war.

fore, but to submit to the hard fate which had befallen his command. The blow to him had been an awful one. "It is not surprising," writes Morgan, "that General Hancock was deeply stirred by the situation, for it was the first time he had felt the bitterness of defeat during the war. He had seen his troops fail in their attempts to carry the intrenched positions of the enemy, but he had never before had the mortification of seeing them driven and his lines and guns taken, as on this occasion; and never before had he seen his men fail to respond to the utmost when he called upon them personally for a supreme effort; nor had he ever before ridden toward the enemy followed by a beggarly array of a few hundred stragglers who had been gathered together and pushed toward the enemy. He could no longer conceal from himself that his once mighty corps retained but the shadow of its former strength and vigor. Riding up to one of his staff, in Werner's battery, covered with dust and begrimed with powder and smoke, he placed his hand upon the staff officer's shoulder and said: 'Colonel, I do not care to die, but I pray God I may never leave this field!' The agony of that day never passed away from the proud soldier. "Were I dead," said Nelson, "want of frigates' would be found written on my heart." So one who was gifted to discern the real forces which in us make for life or for death, looking down on the cold and pallid form of Han

cock as he lay at rest beneath the drooping flag of his country on Governor's Island, in February, 1886, would have seen Reams's Station written on brow and brain and heart as palpable as, to the common eye, were the scars of Gettysburg.

Night was now coming on, and Hancock sent back to halt the re-enforcements approaching the field, which, had they been sent by the Halifax road, they would easily have reached before the main. assault fell. He had no fear of further attack from the enemy, who seemed content to let him alone. It was more than two hours since the Confederates had gained their signal success, yet so stubborn up to the very moment of panic had been the resistance offered by our troops, so savage had been the onslaught of the small column which retook and carried off Dauchey's guns, that they showed no disposition to renew hostilities. After dark Hancock drew off his broken battalions. At the same moment the enemy began their march back to the Petersburg lines, carrying with them nine guns, seven colors, and seventeen hundred prisoners. Of Hancock's staff, Captain Edward B. Brownson, commissary of musters, a most gallant, devoted, and accomplished officer, had been killed; the assistant adjutant general, Colonel Walker, had been captured.

The Second Corps returned to the Union lines, which it had left for the ill-fated expedition to Reams's Station, reduced in numbers and sad at