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Updated: June 14, 2025
While Hopalong's eyes left the scrambled color-insult and tried to banish the horrible after-image, his mind groped for the rules of etiquette governing free fist fights in gospel tents, and while he hesitated as to whether he should dent the classic profile of the color-bearer or just twist his nose as a sign of displeasure, the voice of the evangelist arose to a roar and thundered out.
He had scarcely commenced to run when he felt a heavy blow about the middle of his back. His thought was, "Can that color-bearer have repeated his blow, or am I struck by a ball, which has deadened the sense of feeling?" There being no flow of blood, however, he concluded he was not much hurt. After a run of forty yards he came to the dry bed of a stream between two hills.
The mantle of night fell upon the scene. I do not know which side whipped, but I know that I helped bring off those four Napoleon guns that night though we were mighty easy about it. They were given to Turner's Battery of our brigade and had the name of our Lieutenant-Colonel Patterson and our color-bearer, Mitchell, both of whom were killed, inscribed on two of the pieces.
"Come back! Come back!" was shouted from below. Captain Allen stood alone for a minute and then we went back to the foot of the slope and waited until our battery stopped firing. Then we all went forward again, and the Sixteenth infantry colors passed up to the works and were planted there. The color-bearer was shot, but Corporal Van Horn took the flag and carried it forward.
Those of our soldiers who had been killed by Russian balls showed on their corpses deep and broad wounds, for the Russian balls were much larger than ours. We saw a color-bearer, wrapped in his banner as a winding-sheet, who seemed to give signs of life, but he expired in the shock of being raised.
They are, then, each synonymous with the phrase, a fête day, and the scalp-bearer is looked upon with the same jealous eye which greets the color-bearer of an army after having been engaged in some great battle which has proved successful to his standard. An Indian will not remove, as a general thing, a scalp which contains grey hairs. This he considers to be a business fit only for women.
The Seventy-seventh receives the fire nobly, and, although far ahead of all the other regiments, stands its ground and returns the fire with spirit, although it is but death to remain thus in the advance. The brave color-bearer, Joseph Murer, falls, shot through the head; but the colors scarcely touch the ground when they are seized and again flaunted in the face of the enemy.
But at the preacher's words all the blood of my fighting ancestry took fire. There was a Baronet with Cromwell's Ironsides, the regiment that was never defeated in battle. There was a Baronet color-bearer at Bunker Hill and later at Saratoga, and it was a Baronet who waited till the last boat crossed the Delaware when Washington led his forces to safety.
Their officers kept their men from firing, however, but meanwhile a single-handed contest had begun behind me, for on looking back I heard a Confederate soldier demanding my battle-flag from the color-bearer, thinking, no doubt, that we were coming in as prisoners.
The color-bearer of a Rebel regiment stepped in front of his own line, and waved his flag as a challenge to the color-bearer that faced him. Several of our soldiers wished to meet the challenge, but their officers forbade it. Again the Rebel stepped forward, and planted his flag-staff in the ground.
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