“Ride back to General Archer,” he said, “and tell him that the division of Early and the Stonewall Brigade are coming at once.”
He turned his horse as if he would go with the relief, but in a moment he checked himself, put his field glasses back to his eyes, and continued to watch heavy masses of the enemy who were coming up in another quarter.
Harry did not see what happened when Early and Taliaferro, who now led the Stonewall Brigade, fell upon the Pennsylvanians, but the Invincibles were in the charge and St. Clair told him about it afterward. The Union men had penetrated so far that they were entangled in the forest and thickets, and nobody had come up to support them. They were much scattered, and as their officers were seeking to gather them together the men in gray fell upon them in overpowering force and drove them back in broken fragments. Wild with triumph, the Southern riflemen rushed after them and also hurled back other riflemen that were coming up to their support. But on the plain they encountered the matchless Northern artillery. A battery of sixteen heavy guns met their advancing line with a storm of canister, before which they were compelled to retreat, leaving many dead and wounded behind.
Yet the entire Union attack on Jackson had been driven back, the Northern troops suffering terrible losses. The watchers on the Phillips porch on the other side of the river saw the repulse, and again their hearts sank like lead.
The watchers turned their field glasses anew to the Southern center and left, where the battle raged with undiminished ferocity. Marye’s Hill was a formidable position and along its slope ran a heavy stone wall. Behind it the Southern sharpshooters were packed in thousands, and every battery was well placed.
Hancock, following Burnside’s orders, led the attack upon the ensanguined slopes. Forty thousand men, almost the flower of the Union army, charged again and again up those awful slopes, and again and again they were hurled back. The top of the hill was a leaping mass of flame and the stone wall was always crested with living fire. No troops ever showed greater courage as they returned after every repulse to the hopeless charge.
At last they could go forward no longer. They had not made the slightest impression upon Marye’s Hill and the slopes were strewn with many thousands of their dead and wounded, including officers of all ranks, from generals down. The Union army was now divided into two portions, each in the face of an insuperable task.
But Burnside, burning with chagrin, was unwilling to draw off his army. The reserve troops, left on the other side of the river, were sent across, and Fighting Joe Hooker was ordered to lead them to a new attack. Hooker, talking with Hancock, saw that it merely meant another slaughter, and sent such word to his commander-in-chief. But Burnside would not be moved from his purpose. The attack must be made, and Hooker-whose courage no one could question-still trying to prevent it, crossed the river himself, went to Burnside and remonstrated.
Men who were present have told vivid stories of that scene at the Phillips House. Hooker, his face covered with dust and sweat, galloping up, leaping from his horse, and rushing to Burnside; the commander-in-chief striding up and down, looking toward Marye’s Hill, enveloped in smoke, and repeating to himself, as if he were scarcely conscious of what he was saying: “That height must be taken! That height must be taken! We must take it!”
He turned to Hooker with the same words, “That height must be taken to-day,” repeating it over and over again, changing the words perhaps, but not the sense. The gallant but unfortunate man had not wanted to be commander-in-chief, foreseeing his own inadequacy, and now in his agony at seeing so many of his men fall in vain he was scarcely responsible.
Hooker, his heart full of despair, but resolved to obey, galloped back and prepared for the last desperate charge up Marye’s Hill. The advancing mists in the east were showing that the short winter day would soon draw to a close. He planted his batteries and opened a heavy fire, intending to batter down the stone wall. But the wall, supported by an earthwork, did not give, and Longstreet’s riflemen lay behind it waiting.