Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/340

316 of supplies and retreat. Lee's order of the 19th directed Longstreet to cross the Rapidan at Raccoon ford with the right wing of the army, and move toward Culpeper Court House, while Jackson, with the left wing, was to cross at Somerville ford and move in the same direction, keeping on Longstreet's left. Anderson's division and S. D. Lee's battalion of artillery were to follow Jackson, while Stuart, crossing at Morton's ford, was to reach the Rappahannock, by way of Stevensburg, destroy the railroad bridge, cut Pope's communications, and operate on Longstreet's right. The men were to carry three days' rations in their haversacks, and the movement was to begin at dawn of the 20th. Jackson desired to attack earlier; but Longstreet was not prepared. The concentrated army was ready to move on the 19th, but Fitz Lee's brigade of Stuart's cavalry, the leading one in the march from Richmond, had gone too far to the right, in the direction of Fredericksburg, and was a day late in joining the army, thus causing another delay.

Pope, on the 19th, ordered a cavalry reconnoissance across the Rapidan, which captured one of Stuart's staff with Lee's order of march on his person. This was quickly furnished to Pope, who hastened to evacuate Culpeper and put the Rappahannock between himself and the now famous Confederate general-in-chief; and Lee had the mortification of seeing from the summit of Clark's mountain, the southeastern of "the little mountains of Orange," Pope's army in full retreat, across the plains of Culpeper, on the very day that he would have fallen upon it had his strategic orders been promptly and energetically obeyed by his first lieutenant.

Lee's 50,000 men followed his marching orders at dawn of the 20th; but not against Culpeper Court House, for Pope had evacuated that the day before. Longstreet, preceded by Fitz Lee's cavalry, marched to Kelly's ford of the Rappahannock, while Jackson marched by way of Stevensburg and Brandy station toward Rappahannock bridge, bivouacking for the night near Stevensburg. Stuart, with Robertson's cavalry brigade, had a spirited contest that day with Bayard's cavalry, near Brandy station. Forced from that point. Bayard took position between Brandy and Rappahannock bridge, still guarding the Federal rear, from which Stuart again routed him and drove him across the Rappahannock, under