Free Mr Lincoln's Army by Bruce Catton

white canvas leggings, broad red sash at the
waist, short blue jacket, tasseled red caps; it appears that they were the
soldiers who had taunted Gibbon's boys the day before. They hung on now long
enough to let the regulars get the guns away, and then they retired—what was
left of them, anyway. In their brief fight they had lost 124 men killed and
223 wounded out of 490 present—the highest percentage of loss, in killed,
suffered by any Federal regiment in one battle during the entire war. As they
pulled out they could see Sykes's regular battalions, north of the pike,
wheeling out of line and into column under a merciless fire as only the
regulars could do. Whatever else might happen, Porter's men had lived up to the
boast they had made to the Black Hat Brigade: they had shown any and all straw-feet
how to fight.
    Pope
and McDowell saw the danger now and worked frantically to get protection over
on the left. Some of Sigel's men were sent there, and they took with them a
battery of mountain howitzers-funny little guns that were carried into action on
the backs of mules, to be taken down and assembled on diminutive gun carriages
when it was time to fight. Some of Hooker's boys saw these howitzers for the
first time that day as Sigel's Germans took them forward into action, and they
jeered loudly and asked what in the world sort of battery that was. "The
shackass battery, by Gott—get out mit der way or we blow your hets off!"
cried the Germans.
    Ricketts sent a couple of brigades over from
the far right, and they took possession of a little swale beside the Germans
and slugged it out with Hood's Texans. In one of these brigades was the 12th
Massachusetts, a kid-glove regiment commanded by Colonel Fletcher Webster, son
of the great Daniel. This outfit had left Boston a year earlier amid impressive
ceremonies, carrying an elaborate flag of white silk presented by "the
ladies of Boston," the silk being edged in blue and gold and bearing the
coat of arms of Massachusetts on one side and on the other a quotation from the
famous orator—"Not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star
obscured."
    In
addition to a fancy flag and the admiration of the ladies of Boston, the 12th
Massachusetts had brought a song to war—a fine, swinging song with a deep roll
of tramping feet and ruffled drums in it, a song to which a woman later gave
tremendous words, so that it lives on as the nation's greatest battle hymn,
with something in it that goes straight down to the deepest emotions of the
country's heart. During its training-camp days the 12th had been stationed at
Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor, where the 2nd U.S. Infantry was also stationed;
and the regulars had picked up a snappy tune—a camp-meeting revival hymn,
written in Charleston, South Carolina, around 1850, entitled "Say Brothers
Will We Meet You Over on the Other Shore?" What a battalion of U.S.
regulars was doing knowing a gospel hymn is beyond imagination, but they did
know it, and because it was a fine song to march to they had fitted new words
to it: "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave . . . and we go
marching on." The 12th liked the song and learned to sing it, and they
had a fine band to provide the accompaniment. There was a big review on Boston
Common on a bright summer afternoon, with Edward Everett delivering an oration,
and a feminine committee presenting the silk flag, and an open-air dinner on
the Beacon Street mall afterward. When the dinner had been eaten the regiment
paraded back to Fort Warren, going down State Street singing the John Brown
song with the band at the head of the column, and the war was all youth and
music and bright flags and heroism.
    A
few days later they marched through Boston to take the train for Washington,
and again they sang the song. When they got to New York they had a big parade
up Broadway, and thousands of people lined the sidewalks and leaned out of the
windows and heard the John Brown song for the first