a platoon's strength around the colors, to continue for a
brief space the struggle behind the Buschbeck line, while the rest fled
down the road, or through the woods away from the deadly fire. This
regiment lost its entire color-guard, and nearly one-half of its
complement killed or wounded.

There is much discrepancy as to the time during which the Eleventh Corps
made resistance to Jackson's advance. All reliable authorities put
the time of the attack as six P.M. When the last gun was fired at the
Buschbeck rifle-pits, it was dusk, at that season about quarter past
seven. It seems reasonably settled, therefore, that the corps retarded
the Confederate advance over about a mile of ground for exceeding
an hour. How much more can be expected of ten thousand raw troops
telescoped by twenty-five thousand veterans?

Rodes, now quite mixed with Colston's line, still pressed on, and
between Hooker's headquarters and his elated foe there was scarce an
organized regiment. Hooker's fatal inability to grasp the situation,
and his ordering an advance of all troops on Howard's left as far as the
Second Corps, had made him almost defenceless. The troops which should
have been available to stem this adverse tide were blindly groping in
the woods, two miles in front,--in pursuit of Jackson.

One cannot but wonder just where Sickles expected to find Jackson. There
can be little doubt that he did think he was about to strike Jackson's
flank. His testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War
constantly refers to this belief; and he says that he "was about to open
his attack in full force," was holding Pleasonton's cavalry in hand,
desiring to lead the attack with his infantry, when the news of the
disaster to the Eleventh Corps was brought to him; and that every thing
seemed to indicate the most brilliant success from thus throwing himself
upon Jackson's flank and rear. He refers to McLaws being in his front,
but this is an error. McLaws was on Lee's right flank, three miles away.
It was with Archer of Jackson's corps, and with Posey and Wright of
Anderson's division, that he had to do.

The reports are by no means clear as to the details of these movements.
Birney states in his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of
the War, that he found that he and Barlow "had got into the midst of the
rebel army, the supports on the left not having come up." He therefore
formed his command into a huge square, with the artillery