THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
than two months the boaster was to repent of every word of it. In July, Pope, having three army corps, Sigel's, McDowell's, and Banks's, at his disposal, was aiming at Gordonsville and Stanton, and thus at the railroad forming the important artery of communication between Richmond, the Confederate Capital, and the West, and pushed some of his forces, under Banks, forward to Culpepper. But Stonewall Jackson, with 25,000 men, advanced against Banks, who had only a greatly inferior force on the ground, and met him near Cedar Mountain. Sigel was ordered to hurry to the support of Banks. We broke camp at Sperryville on the afternoon of August 8th, and marched all night. The night was hot, but the next day much hotter. After having rested a little while at Hazel River, we continued, in the morning, our march to Culpepper, where we arrived at 2 p. m. It was my first experience of a march with the thermometer up high in the nineties. It must have been well above eighty at the moment when the sun rose—like a huge, angry, red-hot ball. By nine o'clock his rays blazed down with inexorable fierceness. There was not a cloud in the sky, and no breath of air stirring. The dust raised up by the marching column hardly rose above the heads of the men, and enveloped them like a dense, dark, immovable fog bank, within which a black, almost indistinguishable mass struggled onward. As we expected to meet the enemy, I had instructed the commanding officers of brigades and of regiments to keep the marching column well closed up, and to prevent straggling as much as possible. No doubt, they did their best. But as the sun rose higher and the heat grew fiercer, discipline gave way. The men, burdened with their knapsacks and blankets, their guns, and their cartridge belts heavy with ammunition, their faces fairly streaming with sweat, their mouths and nostrils filled with an earthy slime, their breasts panting with almost convul-
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