Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

One of the marked features of the battle was that when we lay down in our blankets on the night of the 12th we could see nothing, but could plainly hear Burnside's immense force getting into position, and when we rose on the morning of the 13th a dense fog overhung the entire flat in our front, shutting out all vision. Once or twice we did see men, our own skirmishers, moving about, as the blind man in the Scriptures saw when partially healed-“Men as trees walking.” I remember that when a Federal cavalry officer lost his bearings in the fog and came too near our lines we heard every command and every movement, till suddenly two or three of the horsemen loomed up in the mist in dim outline, magnified to the size of haystacks. A moment more and they ran into the Texas brigade at the foot of the hill in our front, and a volley emptied many a saddle, their gallant leader's among them.

A little later a light breeze sprang up. There was a swaying movement of the thick vapor and then, all at once, it rolled up like the stage curtain of a theatre, and there, spread out in the wide plain beneath, was the most magnificent martial spectacle that can be imagined — a splendidlyequipped army of at least one hundred thousand men, in battle array. General Burnside testified that he had that number on our side of the river. For a moment we forgot the terrible business ahead of us in the majesty and glory of the sight.

We were stationed on what was afterwards known as “Lee's Hill,” an elevation centrally located between the right and left flanks of our line, and jutting out at quite a commanding height into and above the plain. For these reasons General Lee made it, for the most part, his field headquarters during the fight. Portions of the city and of Marye's Heights were not visible, at least not thoroughly so; but every other part of the field was, clear away down, or nearly down, to Hamilton's Crossing. From it we witnessed the break in our lines on the right, where the Federals came in over a piece of marshy ground, supposed to be impassable, between Lane's) North Carolina and Archer's Tennessee brigade. The entire attack, from its inception to its unexpected