our right and near the river great columns of men were moving, marching and counter-marching.  These were in front of A.P.  Hill, of Jackson’s Corps.  In front of us and in the town all was still and quiet as a city of the dead.  The great siege guns from beyond the river on Stafford Heights opened the battle by a dozen or more shells screaming through the tree tops and falling in Jackson’s camp.  From every fort soon afterwards a white puff of smoke could be seen, then a vivid flash and a deafening report, telling us that the enemy was ready and waiting.  From the many field batteries between Jackson and the river the smoke curled up around the tree tops, and shell went crashing through the timbers.  Our batteries along the front of Longstreet’s Corps opened their long-ranged guns on the redoubts beyond the river, and our two siege guns on Lee’s Hill, just brought up from Richmond, paid special attention to the columns moving to the assault of A.P.  Hill.  For one hour the earth and air seemed to tremble and shake beneath the shock of three hundred guns, and the bursting of thousands of shells overhead, before and behind us, looked like bursting stars on a frolic.  The activity suddenly ceases in front of Hill, and the enemy’s infantry lines move to the front.  First the skirmishers meet, and their regular firing tells the two armies that they are near together.  Then the skirmish fire gives way to the deep, sullen roar of the line of battle.  From our position, some three hundred yards in rear and to the right of Mayree’s Hill, we could see the Union columns moving down the river, our batteries raking them with shot and shell.  In crossing an old unfinished railroad cut the two siege guns played upon the flank with fearful effect.  Huddling down behind the walls of the cut to avoid the fire in front, the batteries from Mayree’s and in the fields to the right enfiladed the position, the men rushing hither and thither and falling in heaps from the deadly fire in front and flank.  Jackson has been engaged in a heavy battle for nearly an hour, when suddenly in our front tens of thousands of “blue coats” seemed to spring up out of the earth and make for our lines.  Near one-half of the army had concealed themselves in the city and along the river banks, close to the water’s edge.  The foliage of the trees and the declivity of the ground having hidden them thus far from view.  From out of the streets and from behind walls and houses men poured, as if by some magical process or super-human agency, and formed lines of battle behind a little rise in the ground, near the canal.  But in a few moments they emerged from their second place of protection and bore down upon the stone wall, behind which stood Cobb’s Georgians and a Regiment of North Carolinians.  When midway between the canal and stone fence, they met an obstruction—­a plank fence—­but this did not delay them long.  It was soon dashed to the ground and out of their way, but their men were falling at every