midday
Here she made out Stone Bridge , guarded by a brigade called Jackson 's ; here , crossing it east and west , the Warrenton turnpike , and yonder north of them that rise of dust above the trees which meant a flanking Federal column and crept westward as Evans watched it , toward Sudley Springs , ford , mill , and church , where already much blue infantry had stolen round by night from Centerville . Here , leading south from these , she descried the sunken Sudley road , that with a dip and a rise crossed the turnpike and Young 's Branch . There eastward of it the branch turned north-east and then southeast between those sloping fields beyond which Evans and Wheat were presently fighting Burnside ; through which Bee , among bursting shells , pressed to their aid against such as Keyes and Sherman , and back over which , after a long , hot struggle , she could see -- could hear -- the aiders and the aided swept in one torn , depleted tumult , shattered , confounded , and made the more impotent by their own clamor . Here was the many-ravined , tree-dotted , southward rise by which , in concave line , the Northern brigades and batteries , pressing across the bends of the branch , advanced to the famed Henry house plateau -- that key of victory where by midday fell all the horrid weight of the battle ; where the guns of Ricketts and Griffen for the North and of Walton and Imboden for the South crashed and mowed , and across and across which the opposing infantries volleyed and bled , screamed , groaned , swayed , and drove each other , staggered , panted , rallied , cheered , and fell or fought on among the fallen . Here cried Bee to the dazed crowd , `` Look at Jackson 's brigade standing like a stone wall . '' Here Beauregard and Johnson formed their new front of half a dozen states on Alabama 's colours , and here a bit later the Creole general 's horse was shot under him . Northward here , down the slope and over the branch , rolled the conflict , and there on the opposite rise , among his routed blues , was Greenleaf disabled and taken .