with a crash and explosion that shook the ground like the trembling of the earth around a volcano.  The whole face of the bluff front was veiled by the white smoke of the one hundred belching cannon, the flashing of the guns forming a perfect rain of fire around the sides of the hill.  It was too far to fire and too dense and tangled to charge with any degree of progress or order, so, in broken and disconnected ranks, Kershaw had to advance and endure this storm of shot and shell, that by the time he reached the line of the enemy’s infantry, his ranks were too much broken to offer a very formidable front.  From the enemy’s fortified position their deadly fire caused our already thinned ranks to melt like snow before the sun’s warm rays.  The result was a complete repulse along the whole line.  But McClellan was only too glad to be allowed a breathing spell from his seven days of continual defeat, and availed himself of the opportunity of this respite to pull off his army under the protecting wings of his ironclad fleet.

The Confederates had won a glorious victory during the first six days.  The enemy had been driven from the Chickahominy to the James, his army defeated and demoralized beyond months of recuperation.  Lee and his followers should be satisfied.  But had none of his orders miscarried, and all of his Lieutenants fulfilled what he had expected of them, yet greater results might have been accomplished—­not too much to say McClellan’s Army would have been entirely destroyed or captured, for had he been kept away from the natural defenses of Malvern Hill and forced to fight in the open field, his destruction would have followed beyond the cavil of a doubt.  The Southern soldiers were as eager and as fresh on the last day as on the first, but a land army has a superstitious dread of one sheltered by gunboats and ironclads.

All the troops engaged in the Seven Days’ Battle did extremely well, and won imperishable fame by their deeds of valor and prowess.  Their commanders in the field were matchless, and showed military talents of high order, the courage of their troops invincible, and to particularize would be unjust.  But truth will say, in after years, when impartial hands will record the events, and give blame where blame belongs, and justice where justice is due, that in this great Seven Days’ Conflict, where so much heroism was displayed on both sides, individually and collectively, that to A.P.  Hill and the brave men under him belongs the honor of first scotching at Gaines’ Mill the great serpent that was surrounding the Capital with bristling bayonets, and were in at the breaking of its back at Frazier’s Farm.

It was due to the daring and intrepidity of Hill’s Light Division at Gaines’ Mill, more than to any other, that made it possible for the stirring events and unprecedented results that followed.

Among the greater Generals, Lee was simply matchless and superb; Jackson, a mystic meteor or firey comet; Longstreet and the two Hills, the “Wild Huns” of the South, masterful in tactics, cyclones in battle.  Huger, Magruder, and Holmes were rather slow, but the courage and endurance of their troops made up for the shortcomings of their commanders.