“The laughing ripple shoreward flew,
To kiss the shining pebbles
Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue
Defiance to the Rebels.
And yet once more the bugles sang
Above the stormy riot
No shout upon the evening rang
There reigned a holy quiet.”
Longstreet assigned his aide, Lt. Col. Moxley Sorrel, to the task of leading four fresh brigades along the railroad bed for a surprise attack. As an aside, many men on both sides feared crossing wooden plank bridges in the event a plank shot up and hit them in the abdomen splintering and causing bleeding along with infection. Infection in the field usually meant eventual death. Sorrel and the senior brigade commander, Brig. Gen. William Mahone, struck at eleven o’clock. Hancock wrote later that the flanking attack rolled up his line “like a
