He did not know how the fresh Southern troops from the Valley of Virginia had hurled themselves so fiercely on the Union flank.
But he did know that his army had been defeated and was retreating on the capital.
Cannon still thundered to right and left, and now and then showers of bursting shell sprayed over the heads of the tired and gloomy soldiers.
Dick, thoughtful and scholarly, was in the depths of a bitterness and despair reached by few of those around him.

The Union, the Republic, had appealed to him as the most glorious of experiments.

He could not bear to see it broken up for any cause whatever.

It had been founded with too much blood and suffering and labor to be dissolved in a day on a Virginia battlefield.
But the army that had almost grasped victory was retreating, and the camp followers, the spectators who had come out to see an easy triumph, and some of the raw recruits were running.

A youth near Dick cried that the rebels fifty thousand strong with a hundred guns were hot upon their heels.