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If attention is given to the previous description of the ground on which the two armies were operating, it must be seen that an attempt to pass over the wide plain intervening between our line and the enemy's position below the town, while exposed to the fire of 150 heavy guns on the Stafford Heights, and the numerous field pieces securely masked in the River road, would inevitably have resulted in disaster, unless the enemy's forces had become so paralyzed as to be incapable of an effort at defence.
Burnside's army was composed of about 150,000 men in the grand divisions under Sumner, Franklin, and Hooker, respectively.
In none of the assaults on our lines were the whole of these grand divisions engaged, but when columns of attack were sent forward, there were always very heavy reserves for the attacking columns to fall back upon in case of repulse; Sumner's and Franklin's grand divisions had been mainly engaged and Hooker's scarcely at all. General Lee's army was not half as large as Burnside's and if he had at any time made an attempt to advance, any force that he could have massed for that purpose without abandoning his line of defence entirely would in all likelihood have still encountered a superior force of infantry behind a strong line of defence, in addition to the artillery.
As I have stated, General Jackson made the attempt to advance on the right late in the day on the 13th, but he was compelled to desist, very fortunately, before any disaster happened.
Above the town, the same canal, at the foot of the range of hills, which had furnished an insurmountable obstacle to any attack by the enemy on our extreme left, likewise furnished the same obstacle to an advance on our part.
The only other quarter from which the advance could have been made was from the hills immediately in rear of the town upon the enemy in the town, and there the difficulties were greater even than below.
Any attacking columns from that quarter must either have moved down the rugged face of the
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