BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL R. S. FOSTER, AND STAFF.

In its slow pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of the Potomac, early in November, came up with that army at Rappahannock Station, where the Orange and Alexandria Railroad crosses the Rapidan River. General Lee showed an intention to get into winter quarters here, for the ground was elaborately fortified on both sides of the river, and his men were known to be building huts. General Meade made his dispositions for a serious attack at this point. Lee had a strong force intrenched with artillery on the north side of the river to prevent any crossing, and works extended thence for a considerable distance in each direction, while the main body of his army was on the south side of the river and also intrenched. General Meade placed the Fifth and Sixth Corps under the command of General Sedgwick, fronting Rappahannock Station. General French was placed in command of the First, Second, and Third Corps, and ordered to move to Kelly's Ford, four miles below Rappahannock Station, cross the river, carry the heights on the south side, and then move toward the enemy's rear at Rappahannock to assist General Sedgwick's column in its front attack. General Buford's cavalry was to cross the Rappahannock above these positions, and General Kilpatrick's below. Sedgwick's column arrived within a mile and a half of the river at noon, on the 7th of November, and threw out skirmishers to examine the enemy's works. At the same hour, French's column arrived at Kelly's Ford. General French promptly opened the battle with his artillery, sent a brigade across the river which captured many prisoners in the rifle trenches, and an hour later crossed the division and began the laying of pontoon bridges, so that his entire command crossed before night. General Lee, believing that the demonstration at Rappahannock Station was a feint and that at Kelly's Ford the real movement, heavily reinforced his troops at the Ford. Those on the north side of the river at Rappahannock Station were also reinforced. Sedgwick's plan of attack was to have the Fifth Corps get possession of the river bank on the left, and the Sixth Corps on the right, and plant his batteries on high ground, from which he could compel evacuation of the works. This movement was made, and the batteries opened their fire, but the Confederates did not leave the works. In the edge of evening it was determined to make an assault in heavy force. The artillery kept up a rapid fire, until the assaulting column, led by Gen. David A. Russell, had moved forward and approached near to the works. This movement appears to have been a surprise to the Confederates, and it was carried out so systematically and rapidly that the storming party, led by the Fifth Wisconsin and the Sixth Maine Regiments, carried the works in a few minutes. The Forty-ninth and One Hundred and Nineteenth Pennsylvania were close after them, and the Fifth Maine and One Hundred and Twenty-first New York at the same time carried the rifle-pits on the right, while the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth New York and the Twentieth Maine, which had been on picket duty, promptly joined in the assault. This gallant affair was a complete success, and General Wright remarked at the time that it was the first instance during the war in which an important intrenched position had been carried at the first assault. The National loss in killed and wounded was three hundred and seventy-one men. The Confederate loss, killed, wounded, and missing, was nearly seventeen hundred, including thirteen hundred captured. The captures also included seven battle-flags, twelve hundred stands of small arms, and four guns. When the Confederate commander learned of the disaster, he burned his pontoon bridge, and in the night fled back to Mount Roan, from which position the next day he withdrew to his old camps south of the Rapidan. A heavy fog on the 8th prevented the National commander from pursuing in time to effect anything.

When the Army of Northern Virginia retired from the action at Rappahannock Station to the south side of the Rapidan, it took up an intrenched position stretching nearly twenty miles along the river, from Barnett's Ford above the railroad crossing to Morton's Ford below. The cavalry were thrown out to watch the fords above and below this position. Lee then constructed a new intrenched line, nearly at right angles with the main line, to protect his right flank. As soon as the railroad was repaired, General Meade began another advance, and after considering Lee's new position, determined to attack him by crossing at the lower fords and moving against his right flank. He planned to move three columns simultaneously, concentrating two of them at Robertson's tavern, and then advance rapidly westward by the turnpike and the plank road to strike Lee's right and overcome it before it could be reinforced from the more distant wing. The orders were issued for the movement to begin on the 24th of November, but a heavy rainstorm delayed it two days. Everything was carefully explained to the corps commanders, and all possible pains were taken to make the different parts of the great machine move harmoniously. The Third and Sixth Corps were to cross at Jacob's Ford and move to Robertson's Tavern, through wood roads which were not known except through inquiry. The ground to be moved over was a part of the so-called Wilderness, which was made famous when Grant began his overland campaign the next spring. The Second Corps, crossing at Germanna Ford, was also to move to Robertson's Tavern. The First and Fifth Corps were to cross at Culpeper Mine Ford, and move to the plank road at Parker's Store, advancing thence to New Hope Church, where a road comes in from Robertson's Tavern. Gregg's cavalry division was to cross at Ely's Ford, covering the left flank, while the other division, under Custer, was to guard the fords above, facing the main line of the enemy. Merritt's cavalry was to protect the trains. Every experienced soldier knows how difficult it is to bring about simultaneous and concentric movements of large bodies of troops separated by any considerable distance, and moving by different routes. Any one of many contingencies may stop the progress of any column or send it astray, and very few such plans have ever succeeded. This one of General Meade's was devised with the utmost care, and every possible provision against miscarriage seemed to have been made. Yet at the very outset, on the morning of the 26th, there was a delay of two hours in crossing the river, because the Third Corps was not up in time, and then there was a further serious loss of time because the bridges for Jacob's Ford and Germanna Ford were found to be a little too short, lacking only one pontoon each. The river banks here on the south side are more than one hundred feet high, and very steep, so that it was only with great labor that the wagons and the guns could be taken up. The artillery of two corps had to be taken to another ford than that by which the infantry of this corps crossed. It happened, therefore, that when the day was spent the heads of the column, instead of being at Robertson's Tavern, were only about three miles from the river, while the tavern is six or seven miles from the river by the road. These fords had all been watched by Confederate cavalry, and the movements of the Army of the Potomac were by this time well known at the Confederate headquarters. They had been inferred still earlier when the Confederate signal men saw the troops and trains moving in the morning. One thing, however, General Lee did not know—whether it was Meade's intention to attack his army where it was, or to move eastward toward Richmond and draw it out of its intrenchments. In the night of the 26th Lee drew his army out of its lines and put it in motion ready to act in accordance with either of these movements of Meade, as the event might determine.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL
JOHN S. WILLIAMS, C. S. A.

Thus affairs were in a state likely to produce exactly such a conflict in the Wilderness as actually was produced when Grant crossed the Rapidan in the spring of 1864, but there was this difference, that it was Meade's intention to turn westward and attack Lee where he was, while it was Grant's intention to move eastward, get out of the Wilderness if possible, plant himself across Lee's communications, and compel him to leave his intrenchments. In the afternoon of the 27th, the leading division of the Fifth Corps, commanded by Gen. Alexander Hays, came into collision with the leading division of Early's Confederate corps, and drove back his skirmishers on the turnpike, while Webb's division to the right, with Rodes's Confederate division in its front, promptly deployed, and drove back his skirmishers toward Raccoon Ford. The National troops in deploying possessed themselves of a strong position, and the Confederate commanders were not willing to attack until reinforced, but their reinforcements were delayed near Bartlett's Mills by being fired upon by the Third Corps pickets, and the expectation of an attack at that point. General French, commanding the Third Corps, appears to have blundered as to the road he was to take, and at the forks took the right hand instead of the left, which not only threw his corps nearer the enemy, but prevented him from appearing where he was expected at Robertson's Tavern at the same hour when the Second Corps arrived there. He then blundered still further by halting and sending word that he was waiting for the Fifth Corps, when in fact the Fifth was waiting for him. By the time that orders had passed back and forth explaining his error, the enemy had begun to throw out a large infantry force upon his right flank. The plan of action was then necessarily so far changed, as that General French was ordered to attack the enemy in his front at once, which he did, the divisions engaged being those of Carr, Prince, and Birney. The heaviest fighting fell upon Carr's division, and there were charges and countercharges, the lines swaying back and forth several times. General Meade, unwilling to bring on a general engagement until he could get his army together, had been holding the First and Fifth Corps in their positions waiting for French's corps to join them, and there was a little fighting in front of the Fifth when the enemy came close to its lines. General Lee was quite as reluctant to attack in force as was General Meade, and that night he drew back his army within its intrenchments. A hard storm the next day delayed all movements, and when, toward evening, Meade advanced to the eastern bank of Mine Run, he found that the Confederate intrenchments on the western bank were altogether too strong to justify an assault. Sending the Fifth Corps, in the night of the 28th, to threaten the Confederate right flank in the morning, and turn it if possible, Meade directed his other corps commanders to search for possible weak points in the enemy's lines. One was found on the extreme Confederate left and another near the centre, while the First and Fifth Corps commanders reported that there was no weak spot whatever in their front. A simultaneous assault on these points was arranged for the morning of the 30th, to be covered, as usual, by a heavy artillery fire. The guns opened promptly at the designated hour, and were as promptly replied to by the Confederate artillery; but before the assault began, General Warren sent word to General Meade that he found the enemy had so strengthened the works on their right, as to make an assault there hopeless. General Meade, therefore, gave orders to suspend the attacks that were already begun at the other points, and here the campaign virtually ended. There was no other possible movement, except to march around the right of the Confederate position, and for this it would have been necessary first to bring over the trains which had been left on the north side of the river. Further, the weather was very severe; some of the pickets had been frozen to death, and the roads were rapidly becoming impassable. General Meade, therefore, withdrew his army to the north side of the Rapidan in the night of December 1st. In this unfortunate and altogether unsatisfactory affair, Meade lost about a thousand men, most of them in the Third Corps; the Confederate losses were reported at about six hundred.

Early in the morning of January 3d, a strong Confederate cavalry force made a dash upon Moorefield, W. Va., and after a contest of several hours with the garrison, was driven off. The Confederates, however, carried away sixty-five prisoners and some arms and horses.

In April a Confederate force of five hundred men descended the Kanawha on flat-boats and attacked Point Pleasant, which was garrisoned by fifty men under Captain Carter of the Thirteenth Virginia (National) Regiment. A fight of four hours ensued, the garrison successfully defending themselves in the court-house, and refusing to surrender even when the Confederates threatened to burn the town. After the assailants had lost about seventy men, and inflicted a loss on the garrison of nearly a dozen, they withdrew, and their retreat was hastened by some well-directed shots from a Government transport in the river.