A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car

A Ride With A Mad Horse In A
Freight-Car, by

W. H. H. Murray This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give
it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car 1898
Author: W. H. H. Murray
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23168]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDE
WITH A MAD HORSE ***

Produced by David Widger

A RIDE WITH A MAD HORSE IN A FREIGHT-CAR
By W. H. H. Murray
Copyright, 1898, by William Henry Harrison Murray

It was at the battle of Malvern Hill--a battle where the carnage was
more frightful, as it seems to me, than in any this side of the
Alleghanies during the whole war--that my story must begin. I was then
serving as Major in the --th Massachusetts Regiment--the old --th, as
we used to call it--and a bloody time the boys had of it too. About 2 p.
m. we had been sent out to skirmish along the edge of the wood in
which, as our generals suspected, the Rebs lay massing for a charge
across the slope, upon the crest of which our army was posted. We had
barely entered the underbrush when we met the heavy formations of
Magruder in the very act of charging. Of course, our thin line of
skirmishers was no impediment to those onrushing masses. They were
on us and over us before we could get out of the way. I do not think
that half of those running, screaming masses of men ever knew that
they had passed over the remnants of as plucky a regiment as ever came
out of the old Bay State. But many of the boys had good reason to
remember that afternoon at the base of Malvern Hill, and I among the
number; for when the last line of Rebs had passed over me, I was left
among the bushes with the breath nearly trampled out of me and an
ugly bayonet-gash through my thigh; and mighty little consolation was
it for me at that moment to see the fellow who ran me through lying
stark dead at my side, with a bullet-hole in his head, his shock of coarse
black hair matted with blood, and his stony eyes looking into mine.
Well, I bandaged up my limb the best I might, and started to crawl
away, for our batteries had opened, and the grape and canister that
came hurtling down the slope passed but a few feet over my head. It
was slow and painful work, as you can imagine, but at last, by dint of
perseverance, I had dragged myself away to the left of the direct range
of the batteries, and, creeping to the verge of the wood, looked off over
the green slope. I understood by the crash and roar of the guns, the yells
and cheers of the men, and that hoarse murmur which those who have
been in battle know, but which I can not describe in words, that there
was hot work going on out there; but never have I seen, no, not in that
three days' desperate mêlée at the Wilderness, nor at that terrific repulse
we had at Cold Harbor, such absolute slaughter as I saw that afternoon
on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were
massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in
hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension

to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to
reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men
to charge that hill; and so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen
to reason that day, and so he sent regiment after regiment, and brigade
after brigade, and division after division, to certain death. Talk about
Grant's disregard of human life, his efforts at Cold Harbor--and I ought
to know, for I got a Minie in my shoulder that day--was hopeful and
easy work to what Lee laid on Hill's and Ma-gruder's divisions at
Malvern. It was at the close of the second charge, when the yelling
mass reeled back from before the blaze of those sixty guns and thirty
thousand rifles, even as they began to break and fly backward toward
the woods, that I saw from the spot where I lay a riderless horse break
out of the confused and flying mass, and, with mane and tail erect and
spreading nostril, come dashing obliquely down