Upon
my expressing surprise at this statement, Jackson replied that he
also had been surprised, as he had supposed the Potomac much further
away; but he remarked that Stuart had an excellent eye for
topography, and it must be as he represented. "It is a great pity,"
he added; "we should have driven McClellan into the Potomac""* (*
Battles and Leaders. volume 2 pages 679 and 680.)
That a counterstroke which would have combined a frontal and flank
attack would have been the best chance of destroying the Federal army
can hardly be questioned. The front so bristled with field artillery,
and the ridge beyond the Antietam was so strong in heavier ordnance,
that a purely frontal attack, such as Longstreet suggested, was
hardly promising; but the dispositions which baffled Stuart were the
work of a sound tactician. Thirty rifled guns had been assembled in a
single battery a mile north of the West Wood, where the Hagerstown
turnpike ascends a commanding ridge, and the broad channel of the
Potomac is within nine hundred yards. Here had rallied such portions
of Hooker's army corps as had not dispersed, and here Mansfield's two
divisions had reformed; and although the infantry could hardly have
opposed a resolute resistance the guns were ready to repeat the
lesson of Malvern Hill.
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