noon
Lee 's guns opened the fateful day . For hours his lines blazed with the steady sullen boom of artillery and rattle of musketry . Hooker 's hosts replied in kind . At noon a shout swept the Federal lines that Lee 's army was in retreat . Sickles ' division could see the long grey waves hurrying to the rear . They were close enough to note the ragged , dirty , nondescript clothes Jackson 's men wore . No man in all the Union hosts doubted for a moment that Lee had seen the hopelessness of his position and was hurrying to save his little army of sixty-two thousand men from being crushed into pulp by the jaws of a hundred and thirty thousand in two grand divisions closing in on him .