midnight
Here , cooped up and hampered at every turn , they fought through all those long months of the dark autumn and winter of 1864 . They were no longer men , but machines loading and firing the musket and the cannon . Burrowing in their holes , and subterranean covered-ways , they crouched in the darkness , rose at the sound of coming battle , manned the breastworks , or trained the cannon -- day after day , week after week , month after month , they were there in the trenches at their grim work ; and some fiat of Destiny seemed to have chained them there to battle forever ! At midnight , as at noon , they were at their posts . In the darkness , dusky figures could be seen swinging the sponge-staff , swabbing the cannon , driving home the charge . In the starlight , the moonlight , or the gloom lit by the red glare , those figures , resembling phantoms , were seen marshalled behind the breastworks to repel the coming assault . Silence had fled from the trenches -- the crash of musketry and the bellow of artillery had replaced it .