five o'clock in the afternoon
Hooker consented , and Sickles leaped from his entrenchments and set out in mad haste to overtake the flying columns . He got nearly ten miles in the woods away from the battle lines before he realized that the ghostly men in grey had made good their escape . Certainly they had disappeared from view . It was five o'clock in the afternoon when Jackson 's swift , silent marchers began to draw near to the unsuspecting right wing of Hooker 's army under the command of General Howard . Ned Vaughan was in Jackson 's skirmish line feeling the way through the tender green foliage of the spring . The days were warm and the leaves far advanced -- the woods so dense it was impossible for picket or skirmisher to see more than a hundred yards ahead -- at some points not a hundred feet . The thin , silent line suddenly swept into the little opening of a negro cabin with garden and patch of corn .