Hurried orders are despatched to Geary to withdraw his attack, and re-occupy his breastworks.  This he straightway accomplishes.  Similar orders are carried to Williams.  But, before the latter can retrace his steps, Jackson’s columns have reached the right of his late position.  Anderson also advances against him; so that Williams is obliged to move cautiously by his left, and change front when he arrives where his line had lately joined Geary’s and, being unable to take up his old post, he goes into position, and prolongs Berry, south of the pike.  It is long after dark before he ascertains his bearings, and succeeds in massing his division where it is needed.

Anxious as Jackson is to press on,—­“Give me one hour more of daylight, and I will have United-States Ford!” cries he,—­he finds that he must re-establish order in his scattered forces before he can launch this night attack upon our newly formed but stubbornly maintained lines.

Nor is the darkness the most potent influence toward this end.  Illy as Sickles’s advance has resulted thus far, it is now a sovereign element in the salvation of the Army of the Potomac.  His force at the Furnace, Birney, Whipple, Barlow, and Pleasonton, amounts to fifteen thousand men, and over forty guns.  None of these officers are the men to stand about idle.  No sooner has Sickles been persuaded by a second courier,—­the first he would not credit,—­that the Eleventh Corps has been destroyed, and that Jackson is in his rear, than he comprehends that now, indeed, the time has come to batter Jackson’s flank.  He orders his column to the right about, and moves up with all speed to the clearing, where Pleasonton has held his cavalry, near Birney’s old front.

Howard, upon being attacked, had sent hurriedly for a cavalry regiment.  Pleasonton, having received orders to send him one, instructed Major Huey, commanding the Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry, to march to Dowdall’s and report to Howard.  Huey set out by the wood road which leads through Hazel Grove into the plank road.  From the testimony of the persons chiefly concerned it would appear that, at the time this order was given by Pleasonton to Huey, there was at Hazel Grove, where the cavalry regiments were drawn up, no sign whatever of the disaster to Howard.  There were no fugitives nor any confusion.  Nor does the evidence show that Pleasonton ordered any charge on the enemy:  it rather shows that Huey was not directed to go at urgent speed.  And he must have been very deliberate in his movement, for by the time the cavalry had reached the vicinity of the plank road, Jackson had demolished the Eleventh Corps, and had advanced so far that the head of this cavalry column, marching by twos, suddenly came upon the Confederate lines.  The officers in the lead at once gave the order to charge, and right gallantly did these intrepid horsemen ride down into the seething mass of exultant Confederate infantry.  The shock was nobly given and home, but was, of course, in the woods and against such odds, of no great effect.  Thirty men and three officers, including Major Keenan, were killed.  Only one Confederate report—­Iverson’s—­mentions this charge.  Its effect was local only.