On December 13, 1862, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's corps held the right of the Confederate army at Prospect Hill, where 35,000 troops spread along a mile front in woods, fields, ridgetops, and swampy bottoms with the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad in front of them, and some used the railroad embankment as a ready-made earthwork. At dawn, fog obscured the Union army maneuvering on the plain beyond the railroad and concealed that Jackson would face the first major Union attacks of the day. When the fog lifted in midmorning and a staff officer remarked on the strength of the Union army forming on the plain, Jackson replied, "Major, my men have sometimes failed to take a position, but to defend one, never! I am glad the Yankees are coming." A Confederate artilleryman recalled that he could see fully half the whole Yankee army, reserves and all, and that it was a grand sight to see them come into position that morning, though it seemed the host would eat them up.