By every modem tradition of warfare the force on
the hilltop, at sif^t of the approaching enemy, should
have halted and thrown up some sort of defenses, or at
the least should have awaited the foe's approach.
Instead the leading Yankee regiments, moving in
serai-open formation, started down the hill at the dou-
ble, strai^t at the climbing foes.
And other regiments and yet others appearing over
the summit joined in the charge. The crest and the
upper slope of the hill were alive with running men.
And five yards in advance of the foremost line leaped



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168 " DAD "

and ran and jelled and drummed a deliriously excited
small boy.
When a man, toiling laboriously up a steep hill, col-
lides with a man running down the same hill, which is
the more apt to he bowled over by the impact?

The runner is reenforced by his own great impetus,
the climber handicapped by his own fatigue and the
sloping of the ground behind.
And what is true of two men is true of two hundred
or of two thousand or of any larger number of men.
The Federal line crashed down upon the slow-moving
Confederates, smashed their ranks and tore through
them with scarce a halt. The Confederates, reeling
from the collision, were sent in every direction, with
no earthly chance to reform or to battle against the
resistless onrush.
The trap, so well planned and so badly sprung, was
no longer a trap. For the proposed victims had torn
their way out of it ere its proposed iron jaws could
close relentlessly upon them.
