Arriving in the very jaws of the
fort the sharpshooters and marksmen of that regiment poured such a
deadly fire into the loopholes of the fort that they actually silenced
it with their rifles. These men with the sternness of iron and the
skill acquired by long and careful training, impressed their
characteristics on the minds of all their beholders. Of the four
hundred men who went on the field that morning very few were recruits,
and many had passed over ten years in the service. When they "took the
battle formation and advanced to the stone fort more like veterans
than troops who had never been under fire," as their commander
reports, they gave to the world a striking exhibition of the effect of
military training. In each breast a spirit of bravery had been
developed and their skill in the use of their arms did not for a
moment forsake them. They advanced against volleys from the fort and
rifle pits in front, and a galling fire from blockhouses, the church
tower and the village on their left. Before a less severe fire than
this, on that very day, a regiment of white volunteers had succumbed
and was lying utterly demoralized by the roadside; before this same
fire the Second Massachusetts Volunteers were forced to retire--in the
face of it the Twenty-fifth advanced steadily to its goal.
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