I rode with him along it to the westward, and finding that the enemy was still holding an elevated position further to our right, on the north side of Tumbling Run, I directed this also to be occupied.  Wright soon carried the point, which gave us an unobstructed view of the enemy’s works and offered good ground for our artillery.  It also enabled me to move the whole of the Sixth Corps to the front till its line was within about seven hundred yards of the enemy’s works; the Nineteenth Corps, on the morning of the 22d, covering the ground vacated by the Sixth by moving to the front and extending to the right, but still keeping its reserves on the railroad.

In the darkness of the night of the gist, Crook was brought across Cedar Creek and hidden in a clump of timber behind Hupp’s Hill till daylight of the 22d, when, under cover of the intervening woods and ravines, he was marched beyond the right of the Sixth Corps and again concealed not far from the Back road.  After Crook had got into this last position, Ricketts’s division was pushed out until it confronted the left of the enemy’s infantry, the rest of the Sixth Corps extending from Ricketts’s left to the Manassas Gap railroad, while the Nineteenth Corps filled in the space between the left of the Sixth and the North Fork of the Shenandoah.

When Ricketts moved out on this new line, in conjunction with Averell’s cavalry on his right, the enemy surmising, from information secured from his signal-station, no doubt, that my attack was to be made from Ricketts’s front, prepared for it there, but no such intention ever existed.  Ricketts was pushed forward only that he might readily join Crook’s turning-column as it swung into the enemy’s rear.  To ensure success, all that I needed now was enough daylight to complete my arrangements, the secrecy of movement imposed by the situation consuming many valuable hours.

While Ricketts was occupying the enemy’s attention, Crook, again moving unobserved into the dense timber on the eastern face of Little North Mountain, conducted his command south in two parallel columns until he gained the rear of the enemy’s works, when, marching his divisions by the left flank, he led them in an easterly direction down the mountain-side.  As he emerged from the timber near the base of the mountain, the Confederates discovered him, of course, and opened with their batteries, but it was too late—­they having few troops at hand to confront the turning-column.  Loudly cheering, Crook’s men quickly crossed the broken stretch in rear of the enemy’s left, producing confusion and consternation at every step.