 D. H. Hill had been discouraged by the failure of the Confederate artillery , and asked Stonewall Jackson to supplement Chilton 's draft . Jackson 's response was that Hill should obey the original orders : charge with a yell after Armistead 's brigade . No yell was heard for hours , and Hill 's men began building bivouac shelters to sleep in . Around 6 pm , Hill and his five brigade commanders had assumed that the lack of a signal meant that their army would not attempt any assault . They were conferring together about Chilton 's order when they heard yells and the commotion of a charge from their right flank , roughly where Armistead was supposed to be . Hill took the yell as the signal and shouted to his commanders , " That must be the general advance . Bring up your brigades as soon as possible and join in it . " D. H. Hill 's five brigades , with some 8 @,@ 200 men , had to contend with the dense woodlands around the Quaker Road and Western Run , which destroyed any order they may have had . Men advanced out of the woods towards the Union line in five separate , uncoordinated attacks , and each brigade charged up the hill alone : " We crossed one fence , went through another piece of woods , then over another fence [ and ] into an open field on the other side of which was a long line of Yankees " , wrote William Calder of the 2nd Regiment , North Carolina Infantry . " Our men charged gallantly at them . The enemy mowed us down by fifties . " Some brigades in Hill 's division made it close enough to exchange musket fire and engage in hand @-@ to @-@ hand combat , but these were driven back . The artillery response on the Federal side to Hill 's charge was particularly withering , and soon , Hill 's men needed support just to hold their ground . In Extraordinary Circumstances : The Seven Days Battles , Brian K. Burton called Hill 's charge " unnecessary and costly . " The successive assaults of Hill 's brigades on the well @-@ entrenched Federals were short @-@ lived , and achieved little . 
