The first men in line were in to their knees and stuck fast before they
could stop the lines surging on in the dark. They collide with the
bogged ones and fall over them. The ranks behind stumble in on top of
the fallen before word can be passed to halt.
The night reeks with oaths. The patient heavens reverberate with them.
The mud-soaked soldiers damned with equal unction all things visible and
invisible on the earth, under it and above it. They cursed the United
States of America and they damned the Confederate States with equal
emphasis and wished them both at the bottom of the lowest depths of the
deepest pit of perdition.
As one fellow blew the mud from his mouth and nose he bawled:
"I wish Sherman and Hood were both in hell this minute!"
"Yes, and fightin' it out to suit themselves!" his comrade answered.
On through the black night the long blue lines crept under lowering
skies toward their foe, the stern face of William Tecumseh Sherman
grimly set on his desperate purpose.
CHAPTER XXXIX
VICTORY
Betty had found the President at the War Telegraph office in the old
Army and Navy building. He was seated at the desk by the window where in
1862 he had written his first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation on
pieces of pasteboard.
"You have heard nothing yet from General Sherman?" she asked
pathetically.
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