The Southern batteries followed and tore great holes in their ranks. They closed them with low quick sullen orders sweeping on. They reached the edge of the woods and poured into its friendly shelter. And then above the tops of oak and pine and beech and ash and tangled undergrowth came the soul-piercing roar of two great armies, fearless, daring, scorning death, fighting hand to hand, man to man, for what they believed to be right. The people in church turned anxious faces toward the sound. Its roar rang above the sob of organ and the chant of choir. Bayonet clashed on bayonet, as regiment after regiment were locked in close mortal combat. Hour after hour the stubborn unyielding hosts held fast on both sides. The storm weakened and slowly died away. Only the intermittent crack of a rifle here and there broke the stillness. There was no shout of victory, no sweep of cheering hosts--only silence. The Confederate General in command for the day had lost faith in his battle plan and withdrew his army from the field. The men in blue could move in and camp on the ground they had held the day before if they wished. But there was something more important to do now than maneuver for position in history. The dead and the dying and wounded crying for water were everywhere--down every sunlit aisle of the forest they lay in heaps. In the open fields they lay faces up, the scorching Southern sun of June beating piteously down in their eyes--the blue and the grey side by side in death as they fought hand to hand in life. The trenches were opened and they piled the bodies in one on top of the other, where they had fallen. They turned their faces downward, these stalwart, brave American boys that the grave-diggers might not throw the wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. O, aching hearts in far-away homes, at least you were not there to see! Both armies paused now to gird their loins for the crucial test. General Lee was in the saddle gathering every available man into his ranks for his opening assault on McClellan's host. Jackson was in the Shenandoah Valley holding three armies at bay, defeating them in detail and paralyzing the efficiency of McDowell's forty thousand men at Fredericksburg, by the daring uncertainty of his movements. The first act of Lee was characteristic of his genius. Wishing to know the exact position of McClellan's forces, and with the further purpose of striking terror into his antagonist's mind for the safety of his lines of communication, he conceived the daring feat of sending a picked body of cavalry under the gallant J. E. B. Stuart completely around the Northern army of one hundred and five thousand men. On June the 12th, Stuart with twelve hundred troopers, fighting, singing, dare-devil riders to a man, slipped from Lee's lines and started toward Fredericksburg. The first night he bivouacked in the solemn pines of Hanover. At the first streak of dawn the men swung into their saddles in silence.