Sedgwick, "We know that the enemy is fleeing, trying to save his
trains." But even as he dispatched this message Jackson was behind
at the Union right and his men were forming in line of battle under
cover of a heavy curtain of woods.

Meanwhile, some of the division commanders at the threatened
position had become disquieted by the reports that a large body
of Confederates was marching somewhere, though just where no one
seemed to know. Two of them accordingly faced their men toward
the rear in readiness for an attack from that direction. But the
assurances which reached them from headquarters that the enemy
was in full flight discouraged precautions of this kind, and when
Jackson crept up a neighboring hill to examine the Union position,
he found most of the troops had their backs turned to the point of
danger. In fact, the camp, as a whole presented a most inviting
spectacle, for the soldiers were scattered about it, playing
cards or preparing their evening meal, with their arms stacked in
the rear, little dreaming that one of their most dreaded foes was
watching them from a hilltop, behind which crouched thousands of his
men. Every detail of the scene was impressed on Jackson's memory
when he quietly slipped back into the woods, and for the next two
hours he busied himself posting his troops to the best advantage.

It was six o'clock when the order to attack was given and most of
the Union soldiers were still at their suppers when deer, foxes,
rabbits and other animals, alarmed by a mass of men advancing through
the forest, began to tear through the camp as though fleeing from
a prairie fire. But before the startled soldiers could ask an
explanation of this strange stampede, the answer came in the form
of a scattering musketry fire and the fearsome yells of 26,000