It was about eleven o'clock when Ransom set out to go to the front with Vance's brigade. The distance to be passed over was about five and a half miles. Riding ahead, Ransom himself arrived on the field about half-past one in the afternoon. At this time, by Lee's orders, Landram had pushed forward the 19th Kentucky, deployed as skirmishers, and supporting it strongly with the rest of Emerson's brigade, had driven Green's troopers across the open ground, over the hill, and well into the woods beyond, and had taken position on the crest. Here he was joined by Nims, who brought his guns into battery across the road. On the left of Nims were placed two of Rottaken's howitzers, detached from the 6th Missouri cavalry. On the right and left of the horse artillery Emerson formed, and Vance, as soon as he came up, took position on Emerson's right, but as Banks undertook to hasten the movement through the direct action of his own staff-officers, it resulted that the regiments of the two brigades were sandwiched. Lucas, dismounted, extended the line of battle to the right. With him were a section of Rawles's battery and another of Rottaken's. To cover the flanks in the forest Dudley deployed as skirmishers the 8th New Hampshire on the right, and on the left the 3d and the 31st Massachusetts, supported by the 2d Illinois. Robinson was with the cavalry train, which was rather closely following the march of its division, in order to clear the head of the infantry without starving the cavalry. Neither side could move forward without bringing on a battle. But Lee, instead of being able and ready to disengage his cavalry advance-guard and to fall back to a chosen field, was now anchored to the ground where he found himself, not alone by the concentration of the main body of the cavalry at the very front, but also and even more firmly by the presence of the infantry with its artillery and their employment, naturally enough, to form the centre of his main line. The clearing, the largest yet seen by the Union Army since entering the interminable wilderness of pines, was barely half a mile in width; across the road it stretched for about three quarters of a mile, and down the middle it was divided by a ravine.