To the Confederates, who had been searching for an opportunity during the greater part of the day, and were about to march through the approaching darkness to find it, this was an agreeable surprise. Relieved of that irksome toil, and ready for work, they jumped at the presence, to welcome in countercharge the enemy’s coming. A fierce struggle of thirty minutes gave them advantage which they followed through the dark to the base of the high ground held by bayonets and batteries innumerable as compared with their limited ranks. Their task accomplished, they were halted at nine o’clock to await the morrow. One cannon, a number of flags, and a few prisoners were taken.
Generals Wilcox and Hood were ordered to carefully examine the position of the enemy and report of the feasibility of attack at daylight. They came to corps head-quarters a little before twelve o’clock, and made separate reports, both against attack, with minute items of their conclusions. Hood was ordered to have the carriage of the captured gun cut up and left, and both were ordered to withdraw their commands to their first positions.
Meanwhile, General Pope had sent orders to General Porter, dated 4.30 P.M., to attack upon my right flank, but the order was not received until it was too late for battle, and the force was not strong enough, and a fight at that hour might have been more unfortunate than the fights by detail on their right. If it had been sent to General McDowell before he left, the two corps, if he could have been induced to go in, might have given serious trouble. The field on their left was favorable for tactics, but on Porter’s front it was rough, and R. H. Anderson’s division was in striking distance of their left, if that effort had been made.
Anderson marched in the dark as far as Hood’s front before reporting for position, and was ordered back to Gainesville.
The 4.30 order was issued under the impression that my troops, or the greater part of them, were still at Thoroughfare Gap, and General Pope said, in his official report,—
“I believe, in fact I am positive, that at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 29th, General Porter had in his front no considerable body of the enemy. I believed then, as I am very sure now, that it was easily practicable for him to have turned the right flank of Jackson and to have fallen upon his rear; that if he had done so, we should have gained a decisive victory over the army under Jackson before he could have been joined by any of the forces of Longstreet.”[51]
After night, Porter’s column marched by its right to follow the route of McDowell.
The morning of the 30th broke fair, and for the Federal commander bright with anticipations for the day. He wired the Washington authorities of success, that “the enemy was retreating to the mountains,” and told of his preparations for pursuit. It seems that he took my reconnoissance for a fight, and my withdrawal for retreat, also interpreting reports from the right as very favorable. He reported,—
“General Hooker estimated the loss of the enemy as at least two to one, and General Kearny as at least three to one.”
He construed the operations of the night of the 29th and the reports of the morning of the 30th as indications of retreat of the Confederates. Prisoners captured during the night, paroled and returning to him, so reported on the morning of the 30th, and his general officers had impressions of the Confederate left that confirmed the other accounts, and convinced him that we were in retreat.