“Stuart quickly threw a regiment into line … and down upon them we swept with a yell, at full speed. They lowered their lances to a level and started in fine style to meet us midway, but long before we reached them the gay lancers’ hearts failed them and they turned to fly. For miles the exciting chase was kept up, the road was strewn with lances.”
The lancers returned to fight later in the afternoon when General Porter, as Townsend saw it, “hurled lancers and cavalry upon the masses of Stonewall Jackson and the Hills, but the butternut infantry formed impenetrable squares, hemmed in with rods of steel, and as the horsemen galloped around them, searching for pervious points, they were swept from their saddles with volleys of musketry.”
Lee and Jackson met for the first time on the field of battle at 1 P.M., near a church east of Beaver Dam Creek. Curious Alabamans of Trimble’s brigade watched them. Jackson saluted, reined short and dismounted. Lee’s grandly dressed staff stared at the strange figure of the army’s most famous field officer, as Stonewall took instructions from the commander. Lee sat on a cedar stump at the roadside, himself looking so undistinguished that the Reverend Dabney had to be told who he was. Jackson listened with his disreputable cap in hand, and soon mounted to ride away. The Alabamans remained to stare at the gold-braided brilliance of the young men who rode with Lee.
By two o’clock, the battle raged in A. P. Hill’s front toward the river, in a wilderness of thickets. Few Federals were in Jackson’s front at this hour. A cultured South Carolina fire-eater, Maxcy Gregg, found himself in the van of Lee’s army, and his men stormed through undergrowth to the site of Gaines’ Mill, where Lee had thought McClellan might make a stand. Gregg found the place unoccupied, and since strong hills lay there, he spread his men along them and waited for the enemy. Gregg began the fighting on the spot which was to give its name to the battle of the day.
When the Confederates finally reached the main strength of McClellan, there was no mistaking it, for a very hurricane of firing tore the woodlands. The Union troops had been waiting in thick cover, a position almost unassailable, in front of which the Rebel divisions were cruelly bled in the early afternoon. While this fighting raged, all but beyond control, nothing had been heard from Jackson on the far left of Lee’s position. Old Jack had not reported since he had left Lee at their private conference. And he now had marching with him a potent force, fourteen brigades, including those of D. H. Hill, his brother-in-law.
In the lengthening hours, Lee watched the troops of Longstreet and A. P. Hill take punishment; still Jackson did not appear. Men in the ranks openly doubted that Stonewall had come down from the Valley. At headquarters there was anxiety even deeper than yesterday’s. Where could Jackson be now?
Not even the lengthy report he would write in the winter to come would answer that question fully. He had been busy since leaving Lee, orienting his troops in the green maze. At three o’clock, it was known, he had been at the Cold Harbor Crossroads with his brigadiers, Ewell, Elzey, Lawton and Whiting. D. H. Hill was ahead of him, waiting near the menacing Federal position at a place known as Boatswain Swamp. Harvey Hill had halted because the enemy guns covered the only road over which he could bring up artillery. Jackson was needed there. That he was delayed could be blamed on nothing but his old habit of secretiveness, which was to him a cardinal military virtue.
Jackson had found a native guide and told him no more than he thought essential—that the army wanted to march to Old Cold Harbor (there was also a Cold Harbor near by). The guide had taken the column four miles astray southward in the swampland, down the shortest road to Jackson’s announced destination. Jackson discovered the error only when he came within sound of guns. They were in the wrong quarter.
“Where is that firing?”
“About Gaines’ Mill,” the guide said.
“Does this road lead by there?”
“Yes. By there to Cold Harbor.”
“But I do not want to go to Gaines’ Mill, I want to go to Cold Harbor, coming in so that the Mill is on the right.”
The guide, becoming vexed, explained that the column should have long ago taken an eastbound road to make a longer circuit—which it could have done with ease if Jackson had not been so close-mouthed. Jackson held his temper. A few moments later, when an officer suggested that the delay of an hour or more might be disastrous to the waiting army, Jackson was able to reply, “No, let us trust that the providence of God will so overrule that no mischief will result.”
Lee was not so trusting. He had sent his aide, Major Walter Taylor, to locate Jackson, and Taylor came upon Ewell in the narrow road at the head of the Valley column. Jackson was toward the rear, but if Lee must have help, Ewell could offer three brigades. After a brief conference, Ewell led the troops of Richard Taylor, Isaac Trimble and Arnold Elzey off the road into confusing woodlands. The men had no idea in what direction they moved; they came in on the flank of A. P. Hill’s desperate men, who shouted to them that certain death waited if they charged ahead. The Valley veterans gave derisive replies and went on toward the enemy. It was impossible for any single regiment to make out the situation, which in general was that the Federals lay along a ridge in this wilderness, between the Confederates and the Chickahominy, and it appeared that nothing could move them.
Ewell seemed everywhere in the strange fighting. When the Fifteenth Alabama ran out of ammunition, Ewell himself went to see more brought up, and sent in support the Fourth Texas, men who came in at a crouching run through the swamp, like turkey hunters. When it seemed that Ewell’s men must fall back, one regiment after another being torn and unable to move forward in one continuous line, reinforcements came. Lawton’s brigade of Georgians—men with new rifles from home, three thousand strong, not yet blooded—struck hard. There was a good deal of shouting at sight of them. Some Marylanders plunged forward at about the same time, though in one corner a curious diversion caught hundreds: a soldier waved aloft bundles of mail from home, and men crowded about him while charging infantry passed.
Ewell’s columns charged through a ghostly dust cloud in a field of stubble, and hundreds more died there as the sickly sun began to set. It was all but dark when Ewell led the final charge against the Federal line. Here at last the Confederate line was straightened out and drove the enemy. Before the guns had ceased, the lanterns of doctors and burial parties bobbed in the thickets.
Jackson had begun to work swiftly as Ewell attacked. He sent a message to Lee by Captain Boswell, reporting that the Valley men had closed on the enemy flank; this was soon apparent to all by the swelling of fire. Kyd Douglas said that he never again heard such a heavy volume of musketry. At sound of it, officers rode down the lines of other divisions, yelling that Jackson had struck. There were cheers in the storm of sound.
Jackson conferred with A. P. Hill and then D. H. Hill and was aware of the situation on their fronts. As Ewell’s battle raged, Douglas noted, Jackson went to the region of heavy fighting: “At that moment someone handed him a lemon … immediately a small piece was bitten out of it and slowly and unsparingly he began to extract its flavor and juice. From that moment until darkness ended the battle, that lemon scarcely left his lips except to be used … to emphasize an order. He listened to Yankee shout or Rebel Yell, to the sound of musketry … to all the signs of promise or apprehension, but he never for an instant lost his interest in that lemon.”
Once Jackson paused, his face as calm as ever. “I think I never had a better lemon.” He held the fruit until Sandie Pendleton came up to explain that a vast yell carrying through the forest came from the Stonewall Brigade, which Winder had taken into the swamp on a pell-mell charge. Jackson then tossed away the lemon.
“We soon shall have good news from that charge,” he said. “Yes. They are driving the enemy.”
The day had already cost fearfully in both officers and men. The Louisiana Tigers, for the first time, had been driven back and broken. And Major Rob Wheat was dead.
To the last, Wheat had
asked for Jackson at each passage of a staff officer and sent a blessing to “The Old General.” That day Douglas had seen Wheat’s last meeting with Jackson.
“General, we are about to get into a hot fight,” Wheat said. “It’s likely many of us may be killed. I want to ask you for myself and my men not to expose yourself.… Just let me tell them that you promised not to expose yourself and then they’ll fight like—er—ah—Tigers!”
Jackson shook hands with Wheat, thanking him. “Just like Wheat,” he said to a staff officer. “He thinks of the safety of others. Too brave ever to think of himself.”
Wheat was soon dead under Union fire, and officers reported that as he died he asked if Jackson had escaped harm and said a prayer for the General.
One of the day’s delays under Jackson grew from a shortage of staff officers. In the instant that Old Jack found Ewell was engaged, he had to send simultaneous messages to Whiting and Winder that they must move up in echelon and come between Ewell and D. H. Hill into the developing line of battle. He sent his quartermaster, John Harman, with the message. Harman was a wagoner and not a scholar, and in passing the order to Whiting, he became confused and managed to give the impression that Whiting was to remain just where he was. Whiting’s understanding was not improved by his feelings toward Jackson at the moment. It was Whiting who had felt Old Jack’s wrath after the collision with D. H. Hill’s men in the morning.
At any rate, Whiting did not move, and thus Winder could not, for the road was barred by troops, and Ewell suffered alone. The troops must soon get into line if the day was to be won. The Reverend Dabney stepped into the breach. He had overheard the conversation between Jackson and Harman, and he shrewdly suspected that Harman needed an interpreter for the phrase “in echelon.” Dabney went to Whiting as soon as he could finish his own errand and asked if the instructions had come through. Whiting growled, “Yes. That man has been here with a farrago of which I could understand nothing.” Dabney urged Whiting to attack at once and save Ewell’s men. Whiting’s brigade moved. It was now that the big advance began.
Jackson met Lee in a roadway. The commander in chief had no rebuke for Jackson’s tardy attack. Instead:
“Ah, General. I am very glad to see you. I had hoped to be with you before now.”
Jackson mumbled something that could not be heard and jerked his head.
“That fire is very heavy,” Lee said. “Do you think your men can stand it?”
“They can stand almost anything. They can stand that.”
Lee talked of his plan for battle in the short remaining daylight, and Jackson went into the perplexing area of fields and pine groves and swamp thickets to watch over the vital left flank.
After five hours of heavy fighting, at a cost it could ill afford to pay, the Army of Northern Virginia had at last concentrated and was moving forward as a unit. All the divisions now surged ahead. Jackson sent his brigadiers a dramatic order: “This affair has hung in the balance long enough; sweep the field with the bayonet.”
The Federals broke, first where Hood had swept in with his Texans (the First Texas lost about six hundred of its eight hundred men; the Fourth Texas lost all field officers, and ended under command of a captain). As darkness closed in, Lee held most of the field.
The reporter Townsend saw the retreat: “An immense throng of panic-stricken people came surging down the slippery bridge. A few carried muskets, but I saw several wantonly throw their pieces into the flood.… Fear, anguish, cowardice, despair, disgust were the predominant expressions.… A horseman rode past me, with blood streaming from his mouth and hanging in gouts from his saturated beard … black boys were besetting the wounded with buckets of cool lemonade. It was a common occurrence for the couples that carried the wounded on stretchers to stop on the way, purchase a glass of the beverage, and drink it.”
In the Confederate rear, a group of fifteen or twenty prisoners moved, almost jauntily. One called to bystanders, “Gentlemen, we had the honor of being captured by Stonewall Jackson himself.” The General, exposed during the bewildering engagement of the two huge armed mobs, had come upon these men in a road and impetuously charged them, ordering their surrender.
At night, having played a major, if belated, role in the concentration of the army for its first major thrust, Jackson visited Stuart. He ordered the cavalryman to go forward at daylight and to try to reach the White House, the home of W. H. F. Lee, now used as McClellan’s headquarters. The two daring commanders schemed to capture the Union general and all his staff.
Jackson then went to Selwyn, the home of the Hogan family, where he met Lee and Longstreet. Lee sent a victory message to President Davis, giving credit to the Lord for the saving of Richmond, in a phrase Jackson might have used: “Profoundly grateful to Almighty God.”
The generals talked over the terrible day, whose casualties were not fully known to them. Longstreet thought there had been more brave deeds on this field than on any other of the war. Lee had made general plans for the next day: He would pursue McClellan wherever the trail led.
Jackson left for his own headquarters. He found many of his ablest officers among the thirty-seven hundred casualties of his division. Among the dead were colonels Isaac Seymour of the Louisianans, Sam Fulkerson of the Third Brigade, and J. W. Allen of the Second Virginia. General Elzey had a painful head wound. In all, the army had lost eight thousand; ten colonels were dead, and many others wounded.
Deep among the Chickahominy swamps tonight, General McClellan sat in the White House, his small frame tense with anger. He wrote to Secretary Stanton, now in disregard for the consequences:
I now know the full history of the day. Our men did all that men could do, but they were overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers.
I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general who feels in his heart the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed today.
If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington.
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.
A grave misconception had heightened McClellan’s anger. His spies, led by the far-famed Allan Pinkerton, had convinced him that Lee’s army outnumbered him, almost two to one.
In the uncertain lantern light the Federal general saw that it was twenty minutes after midnight, and he signed the message which contained all the defiance and contempt of a military man for civilian meddlers, and sent it on to Washington, where it was to play a part in changing his destiny and that of the Union.
On Saturday morning, June twenty-eighth, Lee allowed the army to stand on the line of battle; and while men attended the wounded and buried the dead, he attempted to puzzle out the intentions of McClellan. At 10 A.M., he had Jackson send Ewell’s division along the river, pushing as far as Bottom’s Bridge, to see what had happened in the front. The news from there was exciting. The enemy had burned the Chickahominy bridges they had built with such patience and everywhere had abandoned rich stores. Ewell’s men were feasting on desiccated vegetables and fresh Java from Union supply dumps. The smoke of burning magazines lay over the swamps.
Jackson gave part of the morning to riding over the field of last night’s fighting. One officer thought he looked “brisk enough” today. When Old Jack came to the littered spot where the Texans of Hood had hit the enemy, he spoke as he seldom did: “The men who carried this position were soldiers indeed.”
The roads were dry, and dust clouds hung over the lowlands. It was clear that McClellan was on the move, but Lee could not yet know just where. The problem was fairly simple, but needed time to unravel:
Lee could not afford to uncover Richmond to give chase; yet he must soon strike, or permit McClellan to escape altogether. The Federals might be moving down the Peninsula toward York-town, whence they had come; they might also be moving southward to the James, to make a major change in the line of assault upon Richmond. Lee had shrewdly concl
uded that McClellan would take the latter course long before reports of scouts made that clear. In the evening, Lee went to bed in the home of a Dr. Gaines, where Longstreet was already sleeping. Orders were ready to open the pursuit in the morning.
Early on Sunday, the divisions of Longstreet and A. P. Hill crossed the Chickahominy, moving southward, hurrying after the enemy. Lee’s plan was now to strike McClellan as he moved, for the enemy had to cross a vast bog known as White Oak Swamp, on the fringes of the river, which made a large bend in the area. The Federals must take their endless trains over the narrow swamp roads and cross the river once more. Lee reasoned that he might fall upon the retreating column today if he could drive down the riverside.
Two of Longstreet’s engineers had found Federal trenches on the Chickahominy empty, even the big fortifications at Golding’s Farm, which was the keystone of the enemy line. It was clear that McClellan had given up hopes of taking Richmond in this campaign, or at least over this route. Lee made hurried plans to trap The Little Napoleon in or near White Oak Swamp.
Jackson’s column, near the ruined Grapevine Bridge, was ordered to repair the structure, cross the river, drive down the right bank and give support to General John Magruder. There might be battle at the swamp.
There were diversions today. The Federals, bent upon destroying what they could not salvage, plunged many locomotives over a broken bridge into the Chickahominy, most of them loaded with ammunition, which exploded the boilers in the sluggish stream and sent vast echoes over the bottom lands. Stuart and his riders found unusual loot.
Cavalrymen made lemonade by the barrel and pawed among cases of fine wines and liquors. Some eggs, packed in barrels of salt, had been roasted in the fires, and men broke open the kegs, picking out the tasty eggs. Colonel W. H. F. Lee, who went in with Stuart, had trouble with his riders; before he was aware of it, scores of them were roaring drunk. Lee cannily spread the rumor that the liquor was poisoned by the enemy. Blackford saw “bottles of champagne and beer and whisky … sailing through the air, exploding as they fell like little bomb-shells; while the expression of agony on the tipsy faces of those who had indulged too freely, as they held their hands to their stomachs, was ludicrous in the extreme.”
They Called Him Stonewall Page 24
