FIRST ACTIONS OF Y/OUNDED SOLDIERS. 169 



Possibly his five mortal hurts were received simultaneously, hut 

 probably he carried two or three of them while persisting in his 

 fight. 



The Georgia major had been selected or had volunteered to 

 lead a forlorn hope upon which the salvation of an enterprise de- 

 pended, and he was called upon to pass eighty rods under cross- 

 fire of cannon and muskets. That feat he essayed, conspicuously 

 mounted upon a white horse. 



The attack in which the Massachusetts sergeant engaged was 

 the third day of fierce and progressive onslaughts, and was di- 

 rected against the last but one of Lee's interior lines around 

 Petersburg. The stubbornness of the Confederate resistance had 

 aroused the spirits of the assailants to the supremest pitch. 



General A. S. Johnston at Shiloh was engaged in a campaign 

 for the recovery of territory valuable to the Confederacy ; he had 

 been transferred from the East to supersede other generals ; his 

 fame was at stake ; he had engaged upon one of the most daring 

 and delicate enterprises known in warfare, a surprise of his enemy, 

 to end in a wholesale slaughter or capture of the routed hosts on 

 the banks of a bridgeless river. The movement carried well up 

 to a point ; there, a Union division showed what Johnston pro- 

 nounced stubbornness ; his men hesitated, and he went personally 

 with one brigade in a charge ; the charge succeeded, and he drew 

 back to bring up another brigade, when a musket-ball severed an 

 artery in his leg. He made no sign, but kept on giving orders and 

 watching events until spectators saw that he was pale. He was 

 asked if he was wounded, and, as if acknowledging it to himself 

 for the first time, said : " Yes ! And I fear seriously." He was 

 then on the point of death from haemorrhage. 



Under normal conditions the symptoms in each of the cases in 

 this recapitulation, except that of the headless man, should have 

 been trembling, tottering, pallor, faintness, nausea, with expres- 

 sion of anxiety and distress, the whole frame being instinctively 

 sympathetic with the injured part. But the several nerve-cen- 

 ters were not in a condition to perform normal functions. The 

 mental excitement acting in the nature of a stimulant upon the 

 center of the brain, monopolized the capacity for keen sensation, 

 and centers that should have registered the hurt suspended their 

 functions. So there was no concentrated shock, as ordinarily hap- 

 pens. The shock was distributed and showed itself, when finally 

 potent, in an instantaneous collapse. This is the theory generally 

 accepted by science the theory of a law that two nerve-centers 

 can not be excited at one and the same time. Is there not 

 confirmation of it in the complicated case of the wounded pris- 

 oner reported by Captain Caldwell ? The man doubtless suffered 

 laceration in the arm and the cutting of an internal artery, by 



