"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"R. E. Lee,
General."
It was quick, bloody work next day for the Southerner to turn and spring on Sedgwick with the ferocity of a tiger, crush and hurl his battered and bleeding corps back on the river.
Under cover of a storm General Couch, in command of Hooker's army, retreated across the Rappahannock. The blue and grey picket lines that night were so close to each other the men could talk freely. The Southern boys were chaffing the Northerners over their oft repeated defeats. Through the darkness a Yankee voice drawled:
"Ah, Johnnie, shut up—you make us tired! You're not so much as you think you are. Swap Generals with us and we'll come over and lick hell out of you!"
A silence fell over the boasting ones and then the listening Yankee heard a low voice chuckle to his comrade:
"I'm damned if they wouldn't, too!"
When the grey dawn broke through the storm they began to bury the dead and care for the wounded. The awful struggle had ended at last.
The Northern army had lost seventeen thousand men, the Southerners thirteen thousand.