Of all the utterances proceeding from the human voice, the cry which the rebels deliver on going into action is certainly the most indescribable and one of the longest to be remembered among the reminiscences of campaigning. Who that listened to it can ever forget the appalling yell which the rebels uttered in the charge on Hancock’s brigade at Williamsburgh, afterward during the onslaught on Davidson’s command at Golden Farms, later still when Hooker was temporarily driven back at Antietam, and on that memorable afternoon when, as the conflict waxed hottest, a rebel division sallying out from the woody crest below Fredericksburgh attempted to capture Howe’s batteries. 

Imagine a concatenation of equine, canine, bovine, porcine and gallinacous utterances, with an Indian war whoop thrown in, and you have only an approximate conception of this howl, yelp and battle-cry. 

How or where it originated we are at a loss to conceive. Perhaps General Lee, or the author, whoever he may be, sometime at the commencement of the war, stumbled upon and forthwith proceeded to profit by suggestion of Jeremy Golber’s wherein, after descanting upon the effects of martial music in battle, he conjectured whether some kind of anti-music could not be invented which should have quite the contrary effect, adding “’Tis possible the roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech owls, together with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded, might go a great way in this invention.”