William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

Hancock continued his unavailing efforts to drive Hill till eight o'clock, when night shutting down on the darkling woods ended the struggle. The combatants lay on their arms, mutually exhausted after the fierce wrestle; and many corpses lay in the tangled brakes and bushes, evidences of the bloody work done that day.

The action of the 5th of May was not so much a battle as the fierce grapple of two mighty wrestlers suddenly meeting. But it had determined that there should be a battle, and it had drawn the relative positions of the combatants. The moving Union columns, almost surprised in flagrante delicto, had succeeded in making a junction; and if it had been Lee's purpose to interpose between them, he was foiled in this. The antagonist armies and their commanders were in the highest mettle, both were filled with aggressive ardor, and the proof of this was that each determined to attack on the morrow. Yet each felt that in the encounter there would be need of all his strength, and whatever corps of each had not yet come up were urgently ordered forward. On the Union side all had already arrived, saving the Ninth Corps under General Burnside, who had been instructed to hold position on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad for twenty-four hours after the army had crossed the Rapidan. This corps was at once summoned to the front, and early on the morning of the 6th, after a rapid and arduous march, it reached the field and took position in the interval between Warren's corps on the turnpike and Hancock's on the plankroad. The Union line of battle, as formed by dawn of the 6th, was therefore in the order of Sedgwick on the right next Warren, and Burnside and Hancock on the left. It ran north and south, faced westward, and was in extent about five miles.

On the side of the Confederates, Longstreet's corps, which at the opening of the campaign had to march up from Gordonsville (distant forty miles), had not been up to participate in the action of the 5th; but that night it bivouacked not far off, and its presence early in the impending battle was