Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/387

Rh on your part of the line?" Longstreet replied, "As bad as can be;" Hill, "My division is cut to pieces;" Hood declared with great emotion, that he had "no division left." Colonel Lee asserted that all of these officers advised that the army should cross the Potomac before daylight, and that Lee, after a profound pause, said: "Gentlemen, we will not cross the Potomac to-night. You will go to your respective commands, strengthen your lines, send two officers from each brigade toward the ford to collect your stragglers and bring them up. Many others have come up. I have had the proper steps taken to collect all the men who are in the rear. If McClellan wants to fight in the morning, I will give him battle again."

Some 5,000 Confederate stragglers joined their commands during the night of the 17th, and the morning of the 18th dawned upon the lines of contending forces, drawn up face to face, at short range, and ready for an anticipated renewal of the mighty struggle; but both stood on the defensive, and not a gun was fired during the livelong day. Lee was not only willing, but eager to renew the battle, in which he was earnestly seconded by Jackson, who suggested that if fifty heavy guns were sent to the Nicodemus ridge, beyond his left, they could silence the Federal batteries on the Poffenberger ridge and open the way for falling on the Federal right. Col. S. D. Lee accompanied Jackson, at General Lee's suggestion, to reconnoiter the chances for success in such an attempt. The chief of artillery pronounced the undertaking not only impracticable, but extremely hazardous, and, to the great disappointment of both Lee and Jackson, the movement was abandoned.

Learning, during the afternoon of the 18th, that large reinforcements were advancing to McClellan, from both the north and the east, Lee determined to cross into Virginia; and that night, in good order, and leaving nothing behind him but his dead and the wounded who could not be moved, he crossed his army through the Potomac. At the same time Stuart crossed his cavalry through the river, at a ford on Lee's left, went up it to Williamsport and recrossed, and threatened McClellan's right and rear, thus engaging his attention while Lee took his long trains and his army back into Virginia. On the morning of the 19th, when it was discovered that Lee