Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/424

 418 Southern Historical Society Papers.

passed down the picket lines. " Bully for Barksdale ! bully for Hays! bully for the Washington Artillery! bully for Old Bob!" was shouted from a hundred throats. "Old Bob's head is level," cried one; " old Bob will show Hooker that he still holds his trump card!" " Yes, old Bob has given the Yankees hell at Chancellors ville, and is coming to give them hell again at Fredericksburg," cried still another.

I lost no time in reporting to General Hays, and found General Barksdale with him at Marye's Hill. I informed him of the situation at Hazel Run, and my instructions to pickets, which were approved^ and I was instructed to carry them out. Generals Hays and Barks- dale seemed to doubt whether General Early intended to hold Marye's Hill, and left to have an interview with him at Hamilton station, and to receive his orders. I returned to the city to superintend the picket line at Hazel Run, where there was a desultory firing kept up from both sides. Sedgwick seemed to hesitate, and advanced with great caution and circumspection. Whether it was from observing the innumerable bivouac fires Barksdale had kindled on Lee's Hill to sig- nalize his arrival and magnify his numbers — whether it was the con- fused and startling stories borne to him from Chancellorsville by Hooker's wires concerning the fiery charges of Stonewall Jackson — Slocum's routed column, and Howard's flying Dutchmen — or whether it was the stench of Lee's "slaughter pens" at Marye's Hill that an- noyed his nostrils and weakened his stomach, the Rebels could only " reckon " — leaving the Yankees to " guess."

About midnight I went to Barksdale' s bivuoac, on Lee's Hill, to learn the result of his consultation with General Early. I found him wrapped in his war-blanket, lying at the foot of a tree. "Are you asleep, General ? " " No, sir; who could sleep with a million of armed Yankees all around him ?" he answered gruffly. He then informed me that it was dctcr?nincd by General Early to hold Marye^ s Hill at all hazards ; but that his brigade and a portion of the Washington Artillery had to do //—that General Early was confident that the ad- vance from Deep Run towards Fredericksburg was a feint — that the real attack would be at Hamilton station, and that Hays's brigade had been ordered back to that place. Barksdale then instructed me, when the Twenty-first regiment was forced to retire from the city, to occupy the trenches from Marye's Hill across the plank road to- wards Taylor's Hill. The Eighteenth regiment, under Colonel Griffin, was ordered to occupy the road behind the stone wall at the foot of Marye's Hill; the Seventeenth and Thirteenth regiments from the