more oppressive than the stunning roar of battle, Lee, still mounted, stood on the highroad to the Potomac, and as general after general rode in wearily from the front, he asked quietly of each, “How is it on your part of the line?” Each told the same tale:  their men were worn out; the enemy’s numbers were overwhelming; there was nothing left but to retreat across the Potomac before daylight.  Even Jackson had no other counsel to offer.  His report was not the less impressive for his quiet and respectful tone.  He had had to contend, he said, against the heaviest odds he had ever met.  Many of his divisional and brigade commanders were dead or wounded, and his loss had been severe.  Hood, who came next, was quite unmanned.  He exclaimed that he had no men left.  “Great God!” cried Lee, with an excitement he had not yet displayed, “where is the splendid division you had this morning?” “They are lying on the field, where you sent them,” was the reply, “for few have straggled.  My division has been almost wiped out.”

After all had given their opinion, there was an appalling silence, which seemed to last for several minutes, and then General Lee, rising erect in his stirrups, said, “Gentlemen, we will not cross the Potomac to-night.  You will go to your respective commands, strengthen your lines; send two officers from each brigade towards the ford to collect your stragglers and get them up.  Many have come in.  I have had the proper steps taken to collect all the men who are in the rear.  If McClellan wants to fight in the morning, I will give him battle again.  Go!” Without a word of remonstrance the group broke up, leaving their great commander alone with his responsibility, and, says an eyewitness, “if I read their faces aright, there was not one but considered that General Lee was taking a fearful risk."* (* Communicated by General Stephen P. Lee, who was present at the conference.) So the soldiers’ sleep was undisturbed.  Through the September night they lay beside their arms, and from the dark spaces beyond came the groans of the wounded and the nameless odours of the battle-field.  Not often has the night looked down upon a scene more terrible.  The moon, rising above the mountains, revealed the long lines of men and guns, stretching far across hill and valley, waiting for the dawn to shoot each other down, and between the armies their dead lay in such numbers as civilised war has seldom seen.  So fearful had been the carnage, and comprised within such narrow limits, that a Federal patrol, it is related, passing into the corn-field, where the fighting had been fiercest, believed that they had surprised a whole Confederate brigade.  There, in the shadow of the woods, lay the skirmishers, their muskets beside them, and there, in regular ranks, lay the line of battle, sleeping, as it seemed, the profound sleep of utter exhaustion.  But the first man that was touched was cold and lifeless, and the next, and the next; it was the bivouac of the dead.