Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/410

376 one-third of the force that had advanced to it still defended it. What, I asked myself, must not inevitably happen if the almost unharmed and relatively fresh enemy should come upon us by a night or early morning attack? Was Robert E. Lee, with his record of vigorous, daring leadership, likely to let escape him such an opportunity to profit by our incompetent generalship, inflicting a greater disaster than any yet upon the North by forcing the surrender or destruction of forty thousand Unionists? I knew that Hooker, Couch, and Butterfield, and the division commanders likewise, shuddered at the dreadful plight of their commands; and it was, therefore, in the deepest anxiety for the fate of the army that I returned at about six o'clock to the north bank, in order to receive the reports of my assistants at Burnside's headquarters. One was to watch the operations of the Left, another those of the Centre Grand Division, and the third to collect lists of casualties. All three disappointed me grievously. The first turned up only at seven, and had but a very meagre and otherwise unsatisfactory account of the events on the Left. The second did not appear till after nine, and handed in an entirely worthless account of the doings of the Centre. This obliged me to work till nearly midnight in gathering fuller information myself from the general staff officers who came to the general headquarters in the course of the evening.

It seems proper to let an account of what happened on our left come immediately after my story of the experiences of the right. The following summary description is derived not only from my own observations and the statements of others at the time, but from other authentic sources, including the evidence given before the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War and the published Official Records.

The position occupied by our left on the eve of the battle, to restate it briefly, was as follows: The line of Smith's corps, forming the right, extended in the plain about a mile from and almost parallel to the river, across Deep Run