The first position had been captured, but there was no pause in the attack.  As Jackson, following the artillery, rode past Talley’s Farm, and gazed across the clearing to the east, he saw a sight which raised high his hopes of a decisive victory.  Already, in the green cornfields, the spoils of battle lay thick around him.  Squads of prisoners were being hurried to the rear.  Abandoned guns, and waggons overturned, the wounded horses still struggling in the traces, were surrounded by the dead and dying of Howard’s brigades.  Knapsacks, piled in regular order, arms, blankets, accoutrements, lay in profusion near the breastworks; and beyond, under a rolling cloud of smoke and dust, the bare fields, sloping down to the brook, were covered with fugitives.  Still further eastward, along the plank road, speeding in wild confusion towards Chancellorsville, was a dense mass of men and waggons; cattle, maddened with fright, were rushing to and fro, and on the ridge beyond the little church, pushing their way through the terror-stricken throng like ships through a heavy sea, or breaking into fragments before the pressure, the irregular lines of a few small regiments were moving hastily to the front.  At more than one point on the edge of the distant woods guns were coming into action; the hill near Talley’s Farm was covered with projectiles; men were falling, and the Confederate first line was already in some confusion.

Galloping up the turnpike, and urging the artillery forward with voice and gesture, Jackson passed through the ranks of his eager infantry; and then Rodes’s division, rushing down the wooded slopes, burst from the covert, and, driving their flying foes before them, advanced against the trenches on the opposite ridge.  Here and there the rush of the first line was checked by the bold resistance of the German regiments.  On the right, especially, progress was slow, for Colquitt’s brigade, drawn off by the pressure of Federal outposts in the woods to the south, had lost touch with the remainder of the division; Ramseur’s brigade in rear had been compelled to follow suit, and on this flank the Federals were most effectively supported by their artillery.  But Iverson, O’Neal, and Doles, hardly halting to reform as they Left the woods, and followed closely by the second line, swept rapidly across the fields, dashed back the regiments which sought to check them, and under a hot fire of grape and canister pressed resolutely forward.

The rifle-pits on the ridge were occupied by the last brigade of Howard’s Army Corps.  A battery was in rear, three more were on the left, near Dowdall’s Tavern, and many of the fugitives from Talley’s Farm had rallied behind the breastwork.  But a few guns and four or five thousand rifles, although the ground to the front was clear and open, were powerless to arrest the rush of Jackson’s veterans.  The long lines of colours, tossing redly above the swiftly moving ranks, never for a moment faltered;