Nevertheless, despite the formidable nature of the Federal preparations, orders were immediately issued for attack.  General Lee, who was indisposed, had instructed Longstreet to reconnoitre the enemy’s left, and to report whether attack was feasible.  Jackson was opposed to a frontal attack, preferring to turn the enemy’s right.  Longstreet, however, was of a different opinion.  “The spacious open,” he says, “along Jackson’s front appeared to offer a field for play of a hundred or more guns...I thought it probable that Porter’s batteries, under the cross-fire of the Confederates’ guns posted on his left and front, could be thrown into disorder, and thus make way for the combined assaults of the infantry.  I so reported, and General Lee ordered disposition accordingly, sending the pioneer corps to cut a road for the right batteries."* (* From Manassas to Appomattox page 143.)

4 P.M.

It was not till four o’clock that the line of battle was formed.  Jackson was on the left, with Whiting to the left of the Quaker road, and D.H.  Hill to the right; Ewell’s and Jackson’s own divisions were in reserve.  Nearly half a mile beyond Jackson’s right came two of Huger’s brigades, Armistead and Wright, and to Huger’s left rear was Magruder.  Holmes, still on the river road, was to assail the enemy’s left.  Longstreet and A.P.  Hill were in reserve behind Magruder, on the Long Bridge road.

The deployment of the leading divisions was not effected without loss, for the Federal artillery swept all the roads and poured a heavy fire into the woods; but at length D.H.  Hill’s infantry came into line along the edge of the timber.

The intervening time had been employed in bringing the artillery to the front; and now were seen the tremendous difficulties which confronted the attack.  The swamps and thickets through which the batteries had to force their way were grievous impediments to rapid or orderly movement, and when they at last emerged from the cover, and unlimbered for action, the concentrated fire of the Federal guns overpowered them from the outset.  In front of Huger four batteries were disabled in quick succession, the enemy concentrating fifty or sixty guns on each of them in turn; four or five others which Jackson had ordered to take post on the left of his line, although, with two exceptions, they managed to hold their ground, were powerless to subdue the hostile fire.  “The obstacles,” says Lee in his report, “presented by the woods and swamp made it impracticable to bring up a sufficient amount of artillery to oppose successfully the extraordinary force of that arm employed by the enemy, while the field itself afforded us few positions favourable for its use and none for its proper concentration.”

According to Longstreet, when the inability of the batteries to prepare the way for the infantry was demonstrated by their defeat, Lee abandoned the original plan of attack.  “He proposed to me to move “round to the left with my own and A.P.  Hill’s division, and turn the Federal right.”  I issued my orders accordingly for the two divisions to go around and turn the Federal right, when in some way unknown to me the battle was drawn on."* (* Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 403.)