Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 1

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[370] Mill before Richmond, where 25,000 men only held in check the whole of McClellan's army, while he himself crossed the river and defeated Porter and all the supports that McClellan dared send him. This time Lee took the smaller force himself.

Stonewall Jackson continued his march until he ordered a temporary halt. At this halt Fitzhugh Lee, who from a wooded knoll had discovered my flank, returned to Jackson and asked him to go and see. The two generals then rode to the wooded knoll. Jackson took a good look at our right flank and then, without a word, went back and marched his command still farther, at least half a mile beyond the “Old Turnpike.” The lines of battle were there formed about 4 P. M. The divisions were in line 100 yards apart. Should they preserve the order of arrangement indicated, Jackson's flank would be beyond our General Devens's waiting line of battle-beyond his right battery and Von Gilsa's supporting brigade. Still, with ten minutes notice or fifteen minutes hard fighting, Devens could have held or extended his line.

It was already six o'clock. Hearing the sound of a skirmish toward Devens's position, I mounted with my staff and rode toward a high ridge not far from my reserve batteries. With a little more than 8,000 men at hand and with no other troops now nearer than Chancellorsville, I heard the first murmuring of a coming storm — a little quick firing on the picket line, the wild rushing of frightened game into our very camps, and almost sooner than it can be told the bursting of thousands of Confederates through the almost impenetrable thickets'of the wilderness and then the wilder, noisier conflict which ensued. It was a terrible gale! the rush, the rattle, the quick lightning from a hundred