woods to Mr. Wolford's iron furnace, turning south-west, then north-west, making a zigzag march to reach the old Wilderness Tavern, two miles west of General Hooker's right wing. General Stuart posted his cavalry along the roads and paths to screen the movement; but the Union pickets heard the tramping of feet and the rumbling of wheels.

"A column of the enemy is moving westward," was the message sent from General Birney at nine o'clock.

He was at Hazel Grove, and could see the troops, cannon, wagons, and ambulances streaming along the road.

What was the meaning of it? General Hooker saw what it might be -a movement of Jackson to gain his right flank. He sent this despatch to Howard and Slocum: "The disposition you have made of your corps has been with a view to a front attack by the enemy. If he should throw

himself upon your flank, he [Hooker] wishes you to examine the ground and determine upon the position you will take in that event. The right of your line does not appear strong enough. No artificial defences worth naming have been thrown up. We have good reason to suppose that the enemy is moving to our right. Please advance your pickets for purposes of observation as far as may be safe, in order to obtain timely information of their approach."

General Howard saw the Confederates, and sent this despatch at halfpast ten: "From General Devens's headquarters we can observe a column of infantry moving westward on the road about one and a half miles south of this. I am taking measures to resist an attack from the west."

General Sickles beheld the Confederate column-men, cannon, wagons,

and ambulances-winding along the road, and ordered Captain Clark's battery to open fire. The shells made a commotion among the Confederates, who soon abandoned the road, taking a wood path instead.

General Hooker, to make the right wing secure, ordered General Sickles to send a brigade to strengthen the Eleventh Corps, and General Graham, with a battery, moved up the turnpike. General Howard was confident that the Eleventh Corps was strong enough to resist any attack which might be made upon it, and General Graham marched back again.

This was the position of the two armies at noon, May 2d.

General Jackson's corps of Confederates was travelling south-west, whereupon the Union officers came to the conclusion that they were retreating. General Sickles obtained permission from General Hooker to advance and fall upon them. It was past noon when he started with Whipple's and Birney's divisions. He came to a swamp, and was obliged to halt while the engineers cut down trees to corduroy a road across it. It was three o'clock when he reached the road along which Jackson had marched. Colonel Berdan's regiment of sharp-shooters in advance came upon the Twenty-third Georgia, of Jackson's command, and captured a portion of the regiment.

Some of the prisoners said that Jackson was moving towards Gordonsville, which was true, but he was not going very far in that direction; but General Sickles sent word to Hooker that they were on their way to Gordonsville, which was twenty miles distant. We do not know whether General Hooker believed the report or not, but he sent this despatch to Sedgwick:

"We know that the enemy is flying-trying to save his trains. Two of Sickles's divisions are among them."

General Hooker ordered General Howard to send out a brigade to support Sickles; and General Barlow, who was in reserve in the field north of Dowdall's Tavern, just where he ought to be, and where he ought to have remained, moved south over a road leading to the iron furnace. The soldiers left their knapsacks behind, little thinking that they would not see them again for several months, and that they would recover some of them on the field of Wauhatchie, at the base of Lookout Mount ain, in Tennessee.

General Williams's division, of the Twelfth Corps, went out to join Sickles, with Livingston's and Randolph's batteries. Three regiments of cavalry also marched in that direction in all, fifteen thousand menremoved from the defensive line which Hooker had chosen, and sent to

strike the rear of a column which was supposed to be retreating to Gordonsville.

At the hour of four the Eleventh Corps, with Barlow's brigade, one of the most efficient of the corps, taken from it, stood alone, with no supports near at hand. General Howard's headquarters were at Dowdall's Tavern. In the field south of the tavern a few rods was Bushbeck's brigade. West of Dowdall's half a mile is the house of Mr. Tally, where General Steinwehr, commanding one of Howard's divisions, had his headquarters. At Mr. Tally's house the line turned a right angle to the north through a tangled thicket to Mr. Hawkins's farm. On the north side of the turnpike, a short distance from Dowdall's, is the Wilderness Church, a plain building, with no tower or spire. General Schurz's division was around and beyond it. On the farm of Mr. Hatch, north-west of the church, was General Devens's division, Von Gilsa's brigade holding the extreme right of the line. With Barlow gone, General Howard had about nine thousand five hundred men-three-fourths of a mile from their nearest supports.

The soldiers of the Eleventh Corps could see clouds of dust in the west. Captain Von Fitsch, sent out with a company to reconnoitre, saw a body of Confederates. The pickets reported that a Confederate column was moving north-west along the flank of the Eleventh Corps; they could hear the rumbling of cannon wheels. General Howard listened to the stories of the pickets, but made no change in the position of his troops. He says, in his account of the battle, "I did not think that General Lee would be likely to move around our right, because our force was much larger than his. He had already been compelled to divide his army, in order to hold Sedgwick back. He could not afford to divide it again; for should he attempt to do that, Hooker would attack his separate bodies and conquer them in detail; so I reasoned, and so did others."

Had the Union commanders reflected upon Stonewall Jackson's tactics, they would have seen that it was not his way to retreat, but that it was his way to gain the rear and flank of his opponent, as in his movement upon McClellan on the Peninsula, upon Pope at Manassas.

Mr. Tally, who owned the house where General Howard had his headquarters, and who knew every acre of ground, all the roads and paths, rode by the side of Fitz-Hugh Lee in advance of the Confederate cavalry. Mr. Tally took him to the top of a rounded hill. The scene below him is thus described by General Fitz-Hugh Lee: "What a sight presented itself to me! Below, but a few hundred yards distant, ran the Federal line of battle. I was in rear of Howard's right. There was a line of defence, with

abatis in front and a long line of stacked arms in rear. Two cannon were visible in the part of the line seen, the soldiers were in groups in the rear, laughing, chatting, smoking, engaged here and there probably in games of cards and other amusements. In rear of them were other parties slaughtering cattle."

General Fitz-Hugh Lee and Mr. Tally came down from the hill and found General Jackson.

"Come with me, and I will show you the advantage of attacking by the turnpike instead of by the plank road," said Fitz-Hugh Lee.

General Jackson had made his plan to march up the plank road and fall upon Howard with his troops facing north-west, which would have brought him squarely against Howard's breast works. He rode with Lee to the base of the hill, dismounted, and gained the top. He gazed upon the scene with keen delight. Every feature revealed his ecstatic enjoyment as he noted the positions of the divisions of the Eleventh Corps.() He was a very religious man, and his soldiers often heard him offering prayer. Fitz-Hugh Lee and Mr. Tally heard his low utterances. He saw just where he could strike a blow which would crush Howard's line as one might crush a bandbox.

He rejoined his troops, went on to the turnpike north-west, then turned due east and deployed his divisions in the fields by the Wilderness Tavern, leaving Paxton's brigade and the cavalry at the plank road.

Stealthily the Confederate skirmishers approached the spot where Howard's videttes were stationed on the turnpike-three of them-one of whom was captured, one shot, while the third, with bullets whistling past him, made his way like a deer towards the Union lines.

"The woods are full of rebels," he shouted. Others had told the same story, and nothing was done to verify its truth or falsity. The belief that Jackson was retreating towards Gordonsville had been accepted, and it was taken for granted that his cavalry was guarding his rear.

Jackson formed his lines with Rodes's division in front, Iverson's and Rodes's old brigades north of the road, Dole's and Colquitt's south of it. Six hundred feet in rear came Colston's division.

A. P. Hill's division brought up the rear-not in line of battle, but in column in the road.

The woods were very thick, the trees small, standing so closely that the troops found it difficult to make their way. All the cannon, except two pieces of Stuart's artillery, were left behind.

It was just six o'clock, the sun an hour above the western horizon. The young leaves were on the trees, the air fragrant with the perfume of

opening spring flowers. The forest was alive with game, and the Confederates saw rabbits and squirrels running in advance of them as they marched on.

Twenty-six thousand men were moving as noiselessly as the tides of the sea to overwhelm the less than ten thousand troops of the Eleventh Corps, who were eating supper, playing cards, or lying listlessly on the ground, their heads upon their knapsacks, their cartridge-boxes unslung, their arms stacked, and who had no suspicion of the whirlwind that was advancing to sweep them away.

Suddenly the Union pickets saw rabbits and squirrels leaping past them and scampering towards the Union position. A moment later they heard a confused hum, the tramping of feet, the rustling of the last year's leaves, and beheld a line of men in gray swiftly advancing. They fired their guns and fled, the Confederates rapidly following. Howard's men heard the guns, and beheld the rabbits and squirrels bounding over their breastworks. In came the pickets, shouting that the Confederates were upon them. They heard a rustling like the rising of the wind, like the surge of an advancing wave.

The One Hundred and Fifty-third Pennsylvania and the Sixty-eighth New York were on the extreme right of Howard's line-new regiments recruited from the German population of those States who had seen no service, never had heard the sound of a minie-bullet whistling past them, and who knew nothing of discipline. They were in groups, with their guns stacked. Upon them the blow was to fall. They heard a wild. yell as startling as the warwhoop of a tribe of Indians in battle; then came a roll of musketry and a humming like that of bees in the air around them. A shell exploded among them. All this in one minute. We might as well expect a house built of laths to withstand a whirlwind as to count upon such undisciplined soldiers to seize their guns, form in line, and confront Stonewall Jackson's veterans under such circumstances. A few grasped their guns and fired, but most of the soldiers of those two regiments ran like deer across the fields of Mr. Hawkins, some of them never stopping till they reached Ely's Ford, where a German threw himself panting upon the ground, exclaiming "Mine Gott, vat a times!" Baggage-wagons, ambulances, ammunition trains, together with a herd of oxen, all the camp-followers, and frightened soldiers went tearing down the plank road and streaming across the fields in rout and panic.

"I could see," says General Howard, "numbers of our men-not the few stragglers that always fly like chaff at the first breeze, but scores of