“A general officer, mounted upon a superb bay horse and followed by a single courier, rode up through our guns.  Looking neither to the right nor the left, he rode straight to the front, halted, and seemed gazing intently on the enemy’s line of battle.  The outfit before me, from top to toe, cap, coat, top-boots, horse and furniture, were all of the new order of things.  But there was something about the man that did not look so new after all.  He appeared to be an old-time friend of all the turmoil around him.  As he had done us the honour to make an afternoon call on the artillery, I thought it becoming in someone to say something on the occasion.  No one did, however, so, although a somewhat bashful and weak-kneed youngster, I plucked up courage enough to venture to remark that those big guns over the river had been knocking us about pretty considerably during the day.  He quickly turned his head, and I knew in an instant who it was before me.  The clear-cut, chiselled features; the thin, compressed and determined lips; the calm, steadfast eye; the countenance to command respect, and in time of war to give the soldier that confidence he so much craves from a superior officer, were all there.  He turned his head quickly, and looking me all over, rode up the line and away as quickly and silently as he came, his little courier hard upon his heels; and this was my first sight of Stonewall Jackson.”

From his own lines Jackson passed along the front, drawing the fire of the Federal skirmishers, who were creeping forward, and proceeded to the centre of the position, where, on the eminence which has since borne the name of Lee’s Hill, the Commander-in-Chief, surrounded by his generals, was giving his last instructions.  It was past nine o’clock.  The sun, shining out with almost September warmth, was drawing up the mist which hid the opposing armies; and as the dense white folds dissolved and rolled sway, the Confederates saw the broad plain beneath them dark with more than 80,000 foes.  Of these the left wing, commanded by Franklin, and composed of 55,000 men and 116 guns, were moving against the Second Corps; 30,000, under Sumner, were forming for attack on Longstreet, and from the heights of Stafford, where the reserves were posted in dense masses, a great storm of shot and shell burst upon the Confederate lines.  “For once,” says Dabney, “war unmasked its terrible proportions with a distinctness hitherto unknown in the forest-clad landscapes of America, and the plain of Fredericksburg presented a panorama that was dreadful in its grandeur.”  It was then that Longstreet, to whose sturdy heart the approach of battle seemed always welcome, said to Jackson, “General, do not all those multitudes of Federals frighten you?” “We shall very soon see whether I shall not frighten them;” and with this grim reply the commander of the Second Corps rode back to meet Franklin’s onset.

9 A.M.