h. Hooker was now trying to approach the Confederate positions,
Meade's division of the Pennsylvania Reserves being in the advance.
A sharp skirmishing combat ensued, and artillery was brought into
action on both sides. I have mentioned our hearing the noise of this
engagement from the other extremity of the field in the fading light
of evening. On our side Seymour's brigade had been chiefly engaged,
and had felt the enemy so vigorously that Hood supposed he had
repulsed a serious effort to take the wood. Hooker was, however,
aiming to pass quite beyond the flank, and kept his other divisions
north of the hollow beyond the wood, and upon the ridge which
reaches the turnpike near the largest re-entrant bend of the
Potomac, which is only half a mile distant. Here he bivouacked upon
the slopes of the ridge, Doubleday's division resting with its right
upon the turnpike, Ricketts's division upon the left of Doubleday,
and Meade covering the front of both with the skirmishers of
Seymour's brigade. Between Meade's skirmishers and the ridge were
the farmhouse and barn of J. Poffenberger, on the east side of the
road, where Hooker made his own quarters for the night. Half a mile
further in front was the farm of D. R. Miller, the dwelling on the
east, and the barn surrounded by stacks on the west of the road.
[Footnote: Hooker's unfinished report says he slept in the barn of
D. R. Miller, but he places it on the east of the road, and the spot
is fully identified as Poffenberger's by General Gibbon, who
commanded the right brigade, and by Lieutenant-Colonel Rufus R.
Dawes, Sixth Wisconsin (afterward Brevet Brigadier-General), both of
whom subsequently visited the field and determined the positions.]
Mansfield's corps (the Twelfth), marching as it did late in the
night, kept further to the right than Hooker's, but moved on a
nearly parallel course, and bivouacked on the farm of another J.
Poffenberger, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. pp. 275,
475.] near the road which, branching from the Hagerstown turnpike at
the Dunker Church, intersects the one running from Keedysville
through Smoketown to the same turnpike about a mile north of
Hooker's position. [Footnote: See map, p. 299.]

On the Confederate side, Hood's division had been so roughly handled
that it was replaced by two brigades of Ewell's division (commanded
by Lawton), which with Jackson's own (commanded by J. R. Jones) had
been led to the field from Harper's