Nor had the enemy been idle during this time; about midnight it was observed by the advanced pickets of the Third and Twelfth corps, that large masses of the rebels were being moved in front of the Union line, with a view to get a position on the right, and flank it.
At the earliest dawn of morning on Saturday, 2nd of May, the enemy executed a manœuvre to lead the Union generals to the belief that they were evacuating, and deceived some of the corps commanders; but General Hooker, perceiving that the movement of their wagon trains was nothing more than a blind, directed General Sickles to plant a battery at a point commanding the moving train, and shell it. This being done, the train was thrown into complete disorder, and obliged to move back. To obtain the road over which the wagon trains had been moving, General Sickles ordered General Birney to advance his troops and take possession of a hill opposite the road. This was done after much difficulty. Captain Seely’s battery, of the Fourth United States artillery was charged up the hill in such haste as did not leave it even time to procure a supply of ammunition. It, however, worked brilliantly, till obliged to retire to replenish its caissons. A charge upon the rebel rifle-pits was now ordered, which resulted in the stoppage of their musketry firing, and gave about a hundred of their occupants into the hands of General Birney. With much skirmishing, and now and then severe shelling, the advance was continued till Birney’s division occupied the extreme brow of the hill. The rebels had been driven back over a mile, and the Federals held a most commanding position. After sending to headquarters many times for reinforcements, General Sickles at last obtained permission to advance General Whipple’s division to the aid of General Birney.
Later, the Eleventh corps was directed to advance, and join its flank to Birney’s right; the Twelfth was to the left; and a general advance was ordered. The skirmishers of both armies immediately became engaged; the rebels gradually falling back. The soldiers of the Union charged boldly upon the rebels, and the engagement immediately became general.
The enemy held their ground obstinately, fighting with most determined bravery; as usual, owing to the skillful generalship of the rebel generals, the enemy were in greater force than the Unionists wherever they met, although the number of Lee’s army was greatly inferior to that of Hooker. Borne down with heat and fatigue, the national troops began to show evidences of faltering. To carry the heights in their present condition was impossible, and General Williams ordered the retreat of his division. But the most painful part of the defeat was yet to come.
The Eleventh corps, which had been ordered to the right of Birney, had moved forward to the position assigned them on his flank. One brigade succeeded in getting up the hill, and reported by its commander to Generals Sickles and Birney. The rest of the corps met the enemy under command of General Stonewall Jackson, when about two-thirds of the distance up. Here they had a short engagement, in which it does not appear they had even so large a force to contend against as that which Williams, with his single division, had fought so bravely. Headed by their commander the gallant Howard, the German corps charged boldly up to the rebel lines. Here they were met, as the rebels often met their foe, with shouts of defiance and derision, a determined front, and a heavy fire of musketry. The German regiments returned the fire for a short time with spirit, manifesting a disposition to fight valiantly. But at the time when all encouragement to the men was needed that could be given, some officers of the division fell back to the rear, leaving their men to fight alone. At the same time General Devens, commanding the First division, was unhorsed and badly wounded in the foot by a musket ball. Thus losing at a critical moment the inspiriting influence of the immediate presence of their commanders, the men began to falter, then to fall back, and finally broke in a complete route. General Howard boldly threw himself into the breach and attempted to rally the shattered columns; but his efforts were perfectly futile. The men were panic-stricken, and no power on earth could rally them in the face of the enemy.
Information of the catastrophe was promptly communicated to General Sickles, who thus had a moment given him to prepare for the shock he instantly apprehended his column would suffer. The high land of the little farm that formed the base of his operations was parked full of artillery and cavalry, nearly all the artillery of the Third corps, together with Pleasanton’s cavalry, being crowded into that little fifty-acre inclosure. But Sickles was not to be thrown off his guard by a trifle, and anything short of a complete defeat seemed to be considered by him in the light of a trifle. With the coolness and skillfulness of a veteran of a hundred campaigns he set to work making his dispositions. He had not a single regiment within his reach to support his artillery; Whipple was falling back, and must meet the approaching stampede with his own force in retreat; Birney was far out in the advance, in imminent danger of being completely surrounded and annihilated; the rebel forces were pressing hard upon the flying Germans, who could only escape by rushing across his lines, with every prospect of communicating the panic to them. It was a critical moment indeed, and one that might well stagger even the bravest-hearted. But it did not stagger the citizen soldier. Calling to the members of his staff, he sent them all off, one after the other, lest any one should fail of getting through, to warn Birney of his danger and order him to fall back. Then, turning to General Pleasanton, he directed him to take charge of the artillery, and train it upon all the woods encircling the field, and support it with his cavalry, to hold the rebels in check should they come on him, and himself dashed off to meet Whipple, then just emerging from the woods in the bottom land. He had scarcely turned his horse about when the men of Howard’s corps came flying over the field in crowds, meeting the head of Whipple’s column, and stampeding through its lines, running as only men do run when convinced that sure destruction is awaiting them. At the same moment large masses of the rebel infantry came dashing through the woods on the north and west close up to the field, and opened a tremendous fire of musketry into the confused mass of men and animals. To add to the confusion and terror of the occasion, night was rapidly approaching, and darkness was already beginning to obscure the scene.
That which followed cannot be justly portrayed by the poor aid of words. On one hand was a solid column of infantry retreating at double quick from the face of the enemy, who were already crowding their rear; on the other was a dense mass of beings who had lost their reasoning faculties, and were flying from a thousand fancied dangers as well as from the real danger that crowded so close upon them, aggravating the fearfulness of their situation by the very precipitancy with which they were seeking to escape from it. On the hill were ten thousand of the enemy, pouring their murderous volleys in upon the National troops, yelling and hooting, to increase the alarm and confusion; hundreds of cavalry horses left riderless at the first discharge from the rebels, were dashing frantically about in all directions; a score of batteries of artillery were thrown into disorder, some properly manned, seeking to gain positions for effective duty, and others flying from the field; battery wagons, ambulances, horses, men, cannon, caissons, all jumbled and tumbled together in an apparently inextricable mass, and that murderous fire still pouring in upon them. To add to the terror of the occasion there was but one means of escape from the field, and that through a little narrow neck or ravine washed out by Scott’s Creek. Toward this the confused mass plunged headlong. For a moment it seemed as if no power could avert the frightful calamity that threatened the entire army. That neck passed, and this panic-stricken, disordered body of men and animals permitted to pass down through the other corps of the army, destruction was sure. But in the midst of that wildest alarm there was a cool head. That calamity was averted by the determined self-possession of Major-General Daniel E. Sickles.
The disastrous flight of the Eleventh corps may here be concluded. They did not all fly across Sickles’s line. They dispersed and ran in all directions, regardless of the order of their going. They seemed possessed with an instinctive idea of the shortest and most direct line from the point whence they started to the United States Ford, and the majority of them did not stop until they had reached it.
General Birney first learned of the shameful stampede of the German corps by the flight of their troops across his lines; and seeing that retreat was inevitable he prepared for it, but found that the rebels had gained possession of the road by which he had advanced. He was, therefore, obliged to make a road out, which he did by moving quietly down into the ravine. This movement was successfully accomplished with no further trouble than a slight skirmish with the rebels in the ravine; after which General Birney moved his column out in perfect order. General Whipple, with much difficulty, saved his command, which was attacked in rear by the rebels, and broken in upon on the flank by the demoralized men of the Eleventh. He brought off his troops, however, in comparatively good order, and bivouacked for the night with Birney and Pleasanton on a little farm in the woods. Thus ended the battle of the second day.