In accordance with the plan agreed upon between Lee and Jackson, the force left in the enemy’s front proceeded to engage their attention, and desultory fighting continued throughout the day.  General Lee meanwhile awaited the sound of Jackson’s guns west of Chancellorsville, and must have experienced great anxiety at this trying moment, although, with his accustomed self-control, he displayed little or none.  We shall now leave this comparatively interesting portion of the field, and invite the attention of the reader to the movements of General Jackson, who was about to strike his last great blow, and lose his own life in the moment of victory.

Jackson set out at early dawn, having under him three divisions, commanded by Rhodes and Trimble, in all about twenty-one thousand men, and directed his march over the Old Mine road toward “The Furnace,” about a mile or so from and in front of the enemy’s main line.  Stuart moved with his cavalry on the flank of the column, with the view of masking it from observation; and it reached and passed “The Furnace,” where a regiment with artillery was left to guard the road leading thence to Chancellorsville, and repel any attack which might be made upon the rear of the column.  Just as the rear-guard passed on, the anticipated attack took place, and the regiment thus left, the Twenty-third Georgia, was suddenly surrounded and the whole force captured.  The Confederate artillery, however, opened promptly upon the assailing force, drove it back toward Chancellorsville, and Jackson proceeded on his march without further interruption.  He had thus been seen, but it seems that the whole movement was regarded by General Hooker as a retreat of the Confederates southward, a bend in the road at this point toward the south leading to that supposition.

“We know the enemy is flying,” General Hooker wrote, on the afternoon of this day, to General Sedgwick, “trying to save his trains; two of Sickles’s divisions are among them.”

Soon after leaving “The Furnace,” however, Jackson, following the same wood-road, turned westward, and, marching rapidly between the walls of thicket, struck into the Brock road, which runs in a direction nearly northwest toward Germanna and Ely’s Fords.  This would enable him to reach, without discovery, the Orange Plank-road, or Old Turnpike, west of Chancellorsville, as the woods through which the narrow highway ran completely barred him from observation.  Unless Federal spies were lurking in the covert, or their scouting-parties of cavalry came in sight of the column, it would move as secure from discovery as though it were a hundred miles distant from the enemy; and against the latter danger of cavalry-scouts, Stuart’s presence with his horsemen provided.  The movement was thus made without alarming the enemy, and the head of Jackson’s column reached the Orange Plank-road, near which point General Fitz Lee invited Jackson to ride up to a slight elevation, from which the defences of the enemy were visible.  Jackson did so, and a glance showed him that he was not yet sufficiently upon the enemy’s flank.  He accordingly turned to an aide and said, pointing to the Orange Plank-road:  “Tell my column to cross that road.”