LITMIR.BIZ

      Brig. Gen. BRADLEY T. JOHNSON.

      When the news of the death of this Christian gentleman and glorious soldier became known to the army, a universal wail went up, and strong men wept like children, for truly they had lost one they dearly loved. Never more was his clarion voice to be heard as he led his fierce legions in the headlong charge. Never more the piercing gray eye to sparkle as he dashed with lightning speed through the ranks of the foemen, dealing death blows at every stride, avenging his people’s wrongs and the death of a basely-murdered brother.

      The First Maryland had many of its noblest spirits to mourn for, and among them the gallant Captain N. S. Robertson, Lieutenant Nicholas Snowden, and privates Beatty, Schleigh, Harris, and others whose names I do not remember. The loss of the enemy was very severe. Their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Kane, with several of his officers and many of the men were wounded and prisoners in our hands, and, to use Kane’s own words, “hardly a dozen of the command escaped.”

      Sadly, as the dusk of evening came on, we gathered together our dead, and the wounded of both sides who could bear removal, and mournfully retraced our steps, and near midnight lay down to rest beside our cold, inanimate companions.

      As we lay there we could not but think how many of us would in a few hours be with them, sleeping our last sleep; and the next morning, as we listened to the reveille, we thought it might be our last, for our dead comrades had heard it but yesterday. Such is the uncertainty of a soldier’s life.

      In a little churchyard attached to Union Church, near Cross Keys, we dug the one grave that was to contain all that was left of them, and in their uniforms, wrapt in their blankets, we lay them down to rest. Theirs was the burial they would have most wished—a soldier’s burial.