midnight
Jackson having crushed and mangled Hooker 's right wing and rolled it back in red defeat over five miles in two hours , was slowly feeling his way on his last reconnaissance for the day to make his plans for the next . Through a fatal misunderstanding he was fired on by his own men and borne from the field fatally wounded . A shiver of horror thrilled the Southerners when the news of Jackson 's fall was whispered through the darkness . At midnight Sickles led his division back into the dense woods and for three terrible hours the men on both sides fought as demons in the shadows . The long lines of blazing muskets in the darkness looked like the onward rush of a forest fire . At times two solid walls of flame seemed to leap through the tree tops into the starlit heavens . A small portion of the captured ground was recovered at a frightful loss -- and no man knows to this day how many gallant men in blue were shot down by their own comrades in the darkness and confusion of that mad assault .