Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/376

348 in the vicinity of the Miller house, making what is known as the "West woods." The triangular space between the converging Hagerstown and Smoketown roads was first occupied by grass fields and then by a 30-acre field of standing corn that for yards reached across from one road to the other, but skirted on the east by the narrow East woods, while farther on, patches of forest bounded the cornfield and extended beyond to the Poffenberger land, thus concealing the commanding position beyond that land taken by the Federal troops.

By 5 o'clock of the afternoon of September 16th, Jackson had faced his men northward, some 700 yards beyond the Dunker church, and across the northern edge of the big cornfield, covering both the Hagerstown and the Smoketown roads. Hood and Law held the right, the latter advanced into the East woods, the two having 1,700 men in line. The "Stonewall" division, under J. R. Jones, with 1,600 men, extended this line across the Hagerstown road and into the northern end of the West woods, toward the commanding ridge occupied by Stuart with his artillery and covering the road leading to a ford of the Potomac on his left. Lawton and Trimble were resting in the woods at the Dunker church.

Just at sunset of this lovely September day, the golden autumn of the famous Appalachian valley. Hooker advanced southward, along the watershed ridge between the Antietam and the Potomac, and pushing forward a battery, opened on Jackson's left. Poague silenced this in about twenty minutes and it retired. About the same time his skirmishers advanced on Law, in the East woods, but were soon driven back to its northern edge. Then the two armies lay on their arms, within speaking distance of each other, through the long autumn night, during which Lawton and Trimble took the place of Hood and Law, whose men had had no cooked rations, except a half ration of beef, for three days, subsisting in the meantime on green com gathered from the fields.

McClellan proposed to join issue with Lee by striking the latter's left with the 40,000 men in the three corps of Hooker, Mansfield and Sumner, which were already in position for attack on the morning of September 17th. If these should be successful, he intended that Burnside should cross at the bridge now known by his name, and with his 13,000 men fall on Lee's right, under the