Unfortunately there was not time to load or aim, for the rebels were close at hand, and their triumphant yells were heard as they took possession of the works which Buschbeck had so gallantly defended.

This advantageous position, which was on an eminence overlooking Chancellorsville and the Plank Road, and which was really the key of the battle-field, was about to be lost.

There was but one way to delay Jackson, some force must be sacrificed, and Pleasonton ordered Major Peter Keenan, commanding the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry, to charge the ten thousand men in front with his four hundred.

Keenan saw in a moment that if he threw his little force into that seething mass of infantry, horses and men would go down on all sides, and few would be left to tell the tale.

A sad smile lit up his noble countenance as he said, _"General, I will do it."_ Thus, at thirty-four years of age, he laid down his life, literally impaled on the bayonets of the enemy, saving the army from capture and his country from the unutterable degradation of slave-holding rule in the Northern States.