At last the
grey lines melted and the men in blue swept triumphantly through the
village and on its edge suddenly ran into a line of men clad in their
own blue uniform.
They paused in wonder. How had their own men gotten in such a position?
They were not left long in doubt. The blue line suddenly blazed with
long red waves of flame squarely in their faces. It was Hill's division
of Jackson's corps from Harper's Ferry. The ragged men had dressed
themselves in good blue suits from the captured Federal storehouse. The
shock threw the Union men into confusion and a desperate charge of the
strange blue Confederates drove them back through the village, and night
fell with its streets still held by Lee's army.
For fourteen hours five hundred pieces of artillery and more than one
hundred thousand muskets had thundered and hissed their cries of death.
On the hills and valleys lay more than twenty thousand men killed and
wounded.
Lee's little army of thirty-seven thousand had been cut to pieces,
having lost fourteen thousand. He had but twenty-three thousand left.
McClellan had lost twelve thousand, but had seventy-five thousand left.
And yet so desperate had been the deadly courage with which the grey
tattered army had fought that McClellan lay on his arms for three days.
The day's work had been a drawn battle, but the President's heart was
broken as he watched in anguish the withdrawal of Lee's army in safety
across the river.
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