George H. Gordon, From Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain

[131] by the fugitives, fatiguing. Jackson, forcing his men along the valley pike all night, pushed on through Strasburg,¹ and did not rest until far enough towards Charlottesville to be secured against a rapid pursuit.

As narrated, I proceeded on the morning of the 25th to unite my forces with the advance under Banks. Everywhere there were signs of a hasty retreat. To hinder pursuit, bridges, whether over pike or railroad, had been destroyed by the fugitives. We found dead and wounded in houses along the road; and in a miserable hut there lay a poor fellow, a wounded ecbel, hit so lard by a shell that his arm had been fractured, his right leg badly lacerated in twelve places, and his left badly torn. Before deserting him, a surgeon had amputated the arm; but the leg having received no attention, mortification had set in. All that we could do was done to make him as comfortable as possible, before death should close the scene.

Though the reality of this retreat was bad enough, the Northern papers indulged in flights of fancy that if possible put to shame even a Rebel pen. No one ever saw the “nine wagon-loads of the enemy's dead upon the road,” nor did they exist, although our papers so reported. A German aid to General Shields performed marvels of gallantry,so he said; three Rebel horsemen, if not six, being in turn killed by sword and pistol by his single hand. A bullethole through his cap he showed me in proof of his escape in this deadly encounter. A satirical sketch represented this ferocious German in the act of running his sword through two Rebel cavalrymen, while a third in rear, with jaws agape at such wonders, received the point in his mouth. The tables of our laughter were turned when this sketch appeared in “Harper's Weekly,” solemnly representing a swordsman transfixing two men only: the sword