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[284] was omitted to secure this indispensable requisite in the task he had undertaken. Hooker's attention was to be engaged and the movement masked by energetic demonstrations of front attack to be made by Lee. Then, as the woods were thick and nearly impenetrable, Jackson hoped that, by taking a road some distance to the south of Chancellorsville, he would be able to pass unobserved; yet he took care, in addition, to throw out Fitz-Lee's brigade of cavalry on the right of his column to screen his perilous flank march across the whole of Hooker's front. Diverging westward from the Fredericksburg plankroad, Jackson pursued his march by a forest-path a couple of miles south of, and parallel with, the Orange plankroad, on which the Union force was planted; and, after passing the point known as the ‘Furnace,’ struck somewhat south by west into the Brock road, and thence northward to seize the Orange plankroad and turn Hooker's right flank.

This movement, skilfully masked as it was, was not made with such secrecy but that those who held the front of the Union line saw that something was going on. And more especially, in passing over a hill near the ‘Furnace,’ the column plainly disclosed itself to General Sickles, who held a position within sight of that point. Now, it happened that the road along which Jackson's column was filing there bends somewhat southward, so that, though the movement was discovered, it was misinterpreted as a retreat towards Richmond on the part of Lee; or, if the idea suggested itself that it might be a movement to turn the right, it was still judged, on the whole, to be a retreat. With the view of determining this, but yet more under the conviction that Lee was withdrawing, Sickles was sent out with two divisions to reconnoitre and attack him.1 At about three o'clock in the afternoon, he advanced

1 General Hooker, in his evidence on the battle of Chancellorsville, insinuates that he was all the time aware of the true character of Jackson's move, and that he made adequate preparations to meet a flank attack; but he, at the time, gave a very different view to General Sedgwick, to whom he wrote, on Saturday afternoon, as follows: ‘We know the enemy is flying, trying to save his trains; two of Sickles' divisions are among them.’

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