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[259] been united with the Army of the Potomac, was assigned the duty of guarding the line of the river and the communications of the army. Preparations for crossing were pushed on during the 20th, positions for artillery were selected, the guns were brought up, the pontons were within reach a short distance back from the river, and it was determined to make the passage on the following morning.

But during the night a terrible storm came on, and then each man felt that the move was ended. It was a wild Walpurgis night, such as Goethe paints in the Faust. Yet there was brave work done during its hours, for the guns were hauled painfully up the heights and placed in their positions, and the pontons were drawn down nearer to the river. But it was already seen to be a hopeless task; for the clayey roads and fields, under the influence of the rain, had become bad beyond all former experience, and by daylight, when the boats should all have been on the banks ready to slide down into the water, but fifteen had been gotten up—not enough for one bridge, and five were wanted. Moreover, the night operations had not escaped the notice of the wary enemy, and by morning Lee had massed his army to meet the menaced crossing.

In this state of facts, when all the conditions on which it was expected to make a successful passage had been baulked, it would have been judicious in General Burnside to have promptly abandoned an operation that was now hopeless. But it was a characteristic of that general's mind (a characteristic that might be good or bad according to the direction it took), never to turn back when he had once put his hand to the plough; and it had already more than once been seen that the more hopeless the enterprise the greater his pertinacity. The night's rain had made deplorable havoc with the roads;1 but herculean efforts

1 The nature of the upper geologic deposits of this region affords unequalled elements for bad roads, for it is a soil out of which, when it rains, the bottom drops, and yet which is so tenacious that extrication from its clutch is next to impossible.

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Manassas Lee (1)
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