No harm, however, had been done.  A.P.  Hill did not attack till half an hour later.  But when he advanced there came no response from the left.  A battery of D.H.  Hill’s division was brought into action, but was soon silenced, and beyond this insignificant demonstration the Army of the Valley made no endeavour to join the battle.  The brigades were halted by the roadside.  Away to the right, above the intervening forest, rolled the roar of battle, the crash of shells and the din of musketry, but no orders were given for the advance.

Nor had Jackson’s arrival produced the slightest consternation in the Federal ranks.  Although from his position at Cold Harbour he seriously threatened their line of retreat to the White House, they had neither denuded their left nor brought up their reserves.  Where he was now established he was actually nearer White House than any portion of Porter’s army corps, and yet that general apparently accepted the situation with equanimity.

Lee had anticipated that Jackson’s approach would cause the enemy to prolong their front in order to cover their line of retreat to the White House, and so weaken that part of the position which was to be attacked by Longstreet; and Jackson had been ordered* to draw up his troops so as to meet such a contingency. (* This order was verbal; no record of it is to be found, and Jackson never mentioned, either at the time or afterwards, what its purport was.  His surviving staff officers, however, are unanimous in declaring that he must have received direct instructions from General Lee.  “Is it possible,” writes Dr. McGuire, “that Jackson, who knew nothing of the country, and little of the exact situation of affairs, would have taken the responsibility of stopping at Old Cold Harbour for an hour or more, unless he had had the authority of General Lee to do so?  I saw him that morning talking to General Lee.  General Lee was sitting on a log, and Jackson standing up.  General Lee was evidently giving him instructions for the day.”  In his report (O.R. volume 11 part 1 page 492) Lee says:  “The arrival of Jackson on our left was momentarily expected; it was supposed that his approach would cause the enemy’s extension in that direction.”) “Hoping,” he says in his report, “that Generals A.P.  Hill and Longstreet would soon drive the Federals towards me, I directed General D.H.  Hill to move his division to the left of the wood, so as to leave between him and the wood on the right an open space, across which I hoped that the enemy would be driven.”  But Lee was deceived.  The Federal line of retreat ran not to the White House, but over Grapevine Bridge.  McClellan had for some time foreseen that he might be compelled to abandon the York River Railway, and directly he suspected that Jackson was marching to Richmond had begun to transfer his line of operations from the York to the James, and his base of supply from the White House to Harrison’s Landing.