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have been had all of Jackson's troops been upon the field, and had his orders been strictly observed.
The casualties of the Confederates are not known, their returns consolidating all separate actions together.
Much undeserved obloquy was heaped upon the 11th corps for their enforced retreat.
No troops could have acted differently.
All of their fighting was of one brigade at a time against six.
With the capture of the Buschbeck position, the fighting of the day practically ceased.
The Confederate troops were at the limit of exhaustion and disorganization.
Daylight was fading fast, and commands badly intermingled.
The pursuit was kept up, however, for some distance, although the enemy was no longer in sight.
A few hundred yards beyond the Buschbeck position, the Plank road entered a large body of forest, closing on both sides of the road for nearly a mile before the open Chancellorsville plateau is reached.
At the entrance of the wood a single Federal gun, with a small escort, was formed as a rearguard, and followed the retreat to Chancellorsville without seeing any pursuers.
A notable case of acoustic shadows occurred during this action.
Sickles, some two and a half miles away, heard nothing of the attack upon Howard until word was brought him, which he at first refused to believe.
At 6.30 P. M., Hooker sat on the veranda of the Chancellorsville house in entire confidence that Lee was retreating to Gordonsville and that Sickles was ‘among his trains.’
Faint sounds of distant cannonading were at first supposed to come from Sickles.
Presently, an aid looking down the road with his glass suddenly shouted, ‘My God!
here they come.’
All sprang to their horses and, riding down the road, met, in a half-mile, the fugitive rabble of Howard's corps, and learned that Jackson, with half of Lee's army, had routed the Federal flank.
Had there been some hours of daylight, Hooker's position would have been critical.
For Lee and Jackson were now less than two miles apart, and between them were of infantry less than two divisions; Geary's of the 12th corps in front of Lee, and two brigades of Berry's of the 3d, near the path of Jackson.
But darkness puts an embargo upon offensive operations in a
1907.
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