The want, however, of accurate information gave him no uneasiness.  The most careful arrangements had been made to note and report every movement of the enemy the next day.

No less than three captive balloons, in charge of skilled observers, looked down upon the Confederate earthworks.* (* Balloons, which had been first used in the Peninsular campaign, were not much dreaded by the Confederates.  “The experience of twenty months’ warfare has taught them how little formidable such engines of war are.”  Special Correspondent of the Times at Fredericksburg, January 1, 1863.) Signal stations and observatories had been established on each commanding height; a line of field telegraph had been laid from Falmouth to United States Ford, and the chief of the staff, General Butterfield, remained at the former village in communication with General Sedgwick.  If the weather were clear, and the telegraph did not fail, it seemed impossible that either wing of the Federal army could fail to be fully and instantly informed of the situation of the other, or that a single Confederate battalion could change position without both Hooker and Sedgwick being at once advised.

Moreover, the Federal Commander-in-Chief was so certain that Lee would retreat that his deficiency in cavalry troubled him not at all.  He had determined to carry out his original design.

May 1.

The next morning—­May 1—­the right wing was to move by the plank road and uncover Banks’ Ford, thus still further shortening the line of communication between the two wings; and as the chief of the staff impressed on Sedgwick, it was “expected to be on the heights west of Fredericksburg at noon or shortly after, or, if opposed strongly, at night.”  Sedgwick, meanwhile, was “to observe the enemy’s movements with the utmost vigilance; should he expose a weak point, to attack him in full force and destroy him; should he show any symptom of falling back, to pursue him with the utmost vigour."* (* O.R. volume 25 page 306.)

But Hooker was to find that mere mechanical precautions are not an infallible remedy for a dangerous situation.  The Confederates had not only learned long since the importance of concealment, and the advantage of night marches, but in the early morning of May 1 the river mists rendered both balloons and observatories useless.  Long before the sun broke through the fog, both McLaws and Jackson had joined Anderson at Tabernacle Church, and a strong line of battle had been established at the junction of the two roads, the pike and the plank, which led east from Chancellorsville.  The position was favourable, running along a low ridge, partially covered with timber, and with open fields in front.  Beyond those fields, a few hundred paces distant, rose the outskirts of a great forest, stretching far away over a gently undulating country.  This forest, twenty miles in length from east to west, and fifteen in breadth from north to south, has given to the region