by Bruce Catton
This plan, to repeat, was risky, since if McClellan once bestirred himself he could smash his way into Richmond, letting his rear take care of itself. But it would be altogether out of character for McClellan to do anything of the kind, and one of Lee’s strong points was his ability to assess the spiritual limitations of the men who fought against him. Besides, Lee felt certain that his Major General John B. Magruder could once again make McClellan believe in perils which did not exist.
Magruder would be responsible for the defense of Richmond while Lee was making his attack north of the river, and although he would soon reveal grave shortcomings as a field commander he had undeniable talents in the dramatic arts; in the Old Army he had been an enthusiastic dabbler in amateur theatricals, and he at least knew how to create an illusion. Magruder now was told to move his men about, making a big noise and a great to-do, causing his outnumbered battalions to look both aggressive and numerous, acting as if he were about to unleash a terrible offensive all along the line—and, if none of this worked, to hold the line with the bayonet, dying hard and slowly until either Lee or the end of everything came to him. Magruder had done this earlier with vast success. During the first few days at Yorktown he had sprinkled 5000 men along a 13-mile front, making McClellan believe that the position was much too strong for anything but the famous siege train; the whole operation leading Joe Johnston, when he reached the scene, to report that “no one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack.”2 What Magruder had done once he could doubtless do again. Lee was betting the Confederacy’s life on it.
In the end Magruder played his role to perfection. The actor who put on such a poor performance that the entire production almost failed was, of all people, Stonewall Jackson himself.
Famous for the speed of his marches, Jackson here came in late. He was supposed to arrive opposite A. P. Hill on the morning of June 26; at 3 P.M. on that day neither Jackson nor any tidings of him had arrived, and the hot-blooded Hill went ahead without him: crossed the river, marched east through Mechanicsville, drew up his men in a broad battle line facing the Federal position behind Beaver Dam Creek, and without further ado opened his attack.
When Hill did this the entire operation was put in motion, irreversibly. Longstreet and D. H. Hill dutifully crossed the river in his wake, and Lee went with them, supposing that he would at once come in touch with Jackson, whose moving column ought to be just beyond A. P. Hill’s left flank. Lee quickly discovered that no one had seen anything of Jackson; he was presumably on the way, but when he would show up was anyone’s guess. Hill had made his move strictly on his own hook, and now Lee had two thirds of his army north of the Chickahominy and there was nothing in the world to do but go on with the assault even though it was exactly the sort of operation Lee had planned to avoid—a straight frontal attack on a position which was altogether too strong to be carried that way. Regardless of what had happened to Jackson, the offensive must be pressed hard; the thing that could not be forgotten for a moment was that McClellan right now was closer to Richmond than Lee was. If the Federal General were allowed to look up, even for a moment, he might see it.3
The Federal position was immensely strong, and Hill’s men never had a chance. The attack was rebuffed with heavy loss—Hill’s division sustained between 1300 and 1500 casualties, inflicting fewer than 400 on the enemy—and McClellan was elated. During the morning, when scouts confirmed the rumors that Jackson was approaching, he had sent Stanton an anxious wire: “There is no doubt in my mind now that Jackson is coming upon us, and with such great odds against us we shall have our hands full. No time should be lost if I am to have any more reinforcements.” During the evening, while the fight was still going on, he telegraphed that “my men are behaving superbly, but you must not expect them to contest too long against great odds,” but by nine o’clock at night he was full of confidence, reporting: “Victory of today complete and against great odds. I almost begin to think we are invincible.”4
They might be invincible, but they were going to have to move. Jackson had finally arrived, and although he was twelve hours late he was at last precisely where Lee wanted him to be, massed just north of Porter’s right flank. Porter’s lines could never be carried by direct assault, but they would collapse as soon as Jackson advanced, which he was certain to do when daylight came. McClellan thus made up his mind to do two things—bring Porter back to a position where he could make an all-out defense of the supply line to the Pamunkey, and at the same time make preparations for a change of base to the James River in case Porter should be overwhelmed. At daylight, accordingly, Porter retreated, going back three miles or more, past Dr. Gaines’s Mill to a long crescent of high ground behind a meandering watercourse called Boatswain’s Swamp. The ground had been well chosen; the left flank was firmly anchored on the Chickahominy, there was a jungle of second-growth timber, brambly fields and intricate gullies to delay attacking troops, and along the crest there was abundant room for Federal infantry and artillery. While the infantry was countermarching, Porter’s wagon train began its laborious movement toward the south side of the Chickahominy, while Major Elisha S. Kellogg of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery moved ten of his big guns to the Golding farm, where they could fire on either bank of the river.5
These guns were the light heavyweights—five of the four-and-one-half-inch Rodmans and five 30-pounder Parrotts. They had long range and good hitting power and they would be most useful; but the forty-eight blockbusters were still aboard ship at White House, and unless Porter could hold his position they would stay aboard ship until a new campaign was launched. If the White House base had to be given up they could be carried around to the James easily enough, but it would be next to impossible to place them where they could be used in any attack on Richmond. No matter how it might be rationalized, a change of base would be a defeat—unless McClellan solved all of his problems by breaking Magruder’s line and marching in to Richmond.
… Which is much easier to say, of course, than it could have been to do; the hardest part of all, perhaps, being to understand (in the midst of battle smoke, conflicting reports and universal confusion) even that the thing might be done. Staying at headquarters on the south side of the river, McClellan saw the battle through the eyes of his generals, accepting the distorted vision they gave him, not realizing that it was doubly distorted because most of them did not really know what they were looking at; and presently it seemed to him that he was being assailed, furiously and with overwhelming numbers, on both sides of the river at once. Magruder was putting on a show, as instructed, and he had his audience enthralled all the way. He staged mock charges, had artillery and infantry open sudden bursts of fire, shuttled men in and out of sight with a great deal of cheering and stentorian shouts of command—and, all in all, simulated a terrible fight which failed of realism only in that hardly anyone got hurt. All along the line, McClellan’s subordinates assured him that they were hard pressed and could not spare a man.
North of the Chickahominy there was no fooling. After a long delay—it took time to get the real assault columns formed, and once again Jackson was strangely tardy in reaching his position—Lee struck Porter’s lines on June 27 with everything he had, and by midafternoon an enormous battle was rolling and rocking up and down the tangled slopes and marshes of Boatswain’s Swamp. There was deadly twilight in the ravines, where the trapped rifle smoke eddied in the hollows like heavy fog, and the Confederates who fought here recalled a half-blind advance through an unending din, and when they tried to tell about it they could speak only of isolated bits of action that had no particular sequence or meaning … riderless horses galloping off to nowhere, stretcher bearers stumbling in and out of vision, a long rank of cannon stabbing the darkness with bright jets of flame “fifteen feet long and large around as a barrel,” officers waving swords and trying in vain to make their orders heard, a lone battalion running up hill, its colonel riding in front with the regimental colors, the men all cheering and waving their hats
; and all the time, without ever a break or a pause, the crashing tumult of sound which at least one veteran, long afterward, called the most terrible noise he heard in the war except possibly for Spotsylvania Court House. In the rear, regimental surgeons met the ambulances and tried in vain to keep up with their duties. (One Confederate doctor said that the stretcher cases unloaded at his station filled a two-acre lot in no time; he and his fellows operated all night, and in the morning found many wounded men still awaiting attention.) Trying to sum it all up, a Southern gunner wrote to his wife: “Satan was holding his orgies on earth & death supped fat on the feast”—which, after all, may have been as good a way as any to describe it.6
Some fantastic freak of acoustics kept most of the racket from being heard at McClellan’s headquarters, where for a time it was supposed that nothing more than an artillery duel was going on. (A mile or two downstream Professor Lowe had a balloon in operation. An officer from McClellan’s staff went up in it and saw what was really happening, and when he came down he got his horse and went to McClellan all in a gallop to report; late in the day McClellan sent Henry Slocum’s division from Franklin’s corps and two of Sumner’s brigades across the river to help.)7
Lee had trouble getting his attack co-ordinated. For a time A. P. Hill’s division fought unaided, and it was badly mangled. Some of Jackson’s units went astray on the winding country roads, so that Hood’s brigade at last went into action with Longstreet’s division, some distance to the right of Jackson’s proper front. Not until dusk did all the gray divisions north of the river go forward together, but when they did they were irresistible and Porter’s line finally collapsed. Twenty-two Federal guns and 2800 Federal soldiers were captured, and as darkness came Porter’s broken divisions fled across the bridges to the south bank, with Slocum’s men acting as rear guard. As the roar of battle died away an insistent crying filled the air; thousands of wounded men were calling for help, and all about there were unwounded Confederates trying to get their fragmented battalions together, chanting regimental numbers endlessly so that stragglers could know where their comrades were: “First South Carolina! Thirteenth Georgia! Fourth Alabama!” The darkness was flecked with shifting lights as stretcher bearers with lanterns probed the splintered underbrush.8
All through the battle, McClellan had done his best to keep the War Department advised. During the morning he wired that the whole army was “so concentrated that it can take advantage of the first mistake of the enemy,” adding: “Success of yesterday complete.” At noon he wrote that the Confederates were making a heavy attack north of the river, and that an attack was also anticipated on the south side, and an hour later he reported that things were going well but that the worst was yet to come: “If I am forced to concentrate between the Chickahominy and the James I will at once endeavor to open communication with you.… Goodbye, and present my respects to the President.”
At 4:30 in the afternoon he sent an odd message across the river to the embattled Porter: “Send word to all your troops that their general thanks them for their heroism, and say to them that he is now sure that nothing can resist them … I look upon today as decisive of the war. Try to drive the rascals and take some prisoners and guns. What more assistance do you require?” Half an hour later he assured Porter that he was ordering up more troops, and instead of urging him to drive the rascals he warned: “You must hold your own until dark.” Dark came, and defeat for Porter came with it, and at eight in the evening McClellan telegraphed Stanton that there had been a terrible battle. He specified: “Attacked by greatly superior numbers in all directions on this side; we still hold our own, though a very heavy fire is kept up on the left bank of the Chickahominy. The odds have been immense. We hold our own very nearly. I may be forced to give up my position during the night, but will not if it is possible to avoid it. Had I 20,000 fresh and good troops we would be sure of a splendid victory tomorrow.”9
To avoid possible confusion, it should be remarked that “this side,” which superior numbers had been attacking in all directions, was the south side of the Chickahominy, where nothing at all had been happening except General Magruder’s game of bluff; and “the left bank,” where the dogged Rebels still kept up a heavy fire, was the north side, where McClellan’s whole campaign had just gone to ruin. When the wire was written there were three times the needed “20,000 fresh and good troops,” lying ready to hand below the river. Nobody was giving them anything to do, and the vision of splendid victory flickered and died.
McClellan called in his corps commanders that night and issued his orders for a retreat to the James. His staff was busy, and the detailed schedules by which the ponderous army and its long wagon trains would move through the bottleneck between the Chickahominy and White Oak Swamp toward Harrison’s Landing were carefully drawn; when the conference ended, the different commanders hurried off to put these orders into effect. McClellan sent a dispatch to Flag Officer Goldsborough, the Navy’s ranking officer in Virginia waters: “We have met a severe repulse today, having been attacked by greatly superior numbers, and I am obliged to fall back between the Chickahominy and the James River. I look to you to give me all the support you can in covering my flank as well as in giving protection to my supplies afloat in the James River.”10 Then, a little after midnight, he got off one more message to Stanton: possibly the most remarkable of all the dispatches he ever wrote.
“… I have lost this battle because my force was too small. 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. I still hope to retrieve our fortunes, but to do this the Government must view the matter in the same earnest light that I do. You must send me very large re-enforcements, and send them at once. I shall draw back to this side of the Chickahominy, and I think I can withdraw all our material.” He returned to his earlier thesis: if he had 10,000 fresh men he could win a victory within twenty-four hours, and a few thousand more would have made the battle which had just been lost a victory instead of a defeat. Then came the peroration:
“As it is, the Government must not and cannot hold me responsible for the result. I feel too earnestly tonight. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the Government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now the game is lost. 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.”11
The Seven Days Battle would go on for four more days, but its outcome was signed, sealed, and delivered when that dispatch was composed. Whatever might be true of the Army of the Potomac, its commanding general had been whipped into something close to hysteria. His gaze was fastened with such feverish intensity on the shortcomings of his superiors and on his own innocence that it was not possible for him to see the opportunity which Lee’s daring maneuver had opened to him. The man who wrote that dispatch had given up the effort to win and was preparing for the post-mortem.
Ordinarily, a field commander who accuses the Secretary of War, to his face, of trying to destroy the country’s most important army can expect nothing less than instant dismissal, and McClellan knew this as well as anyone. He told his wife, not long afterward: “Of course they will never forgive me for that. I knew it when I wrote it, but as I thought it possible that it might be the last I ever wrote it seemed better to have it exactly true. The President, of course, has not replied to my letter and never will. His reply may be, however, to avail himself of the first opportunity to cut my head off.” What McClellan did not know, however, was that his dispatch was expurgated before it reached the President and the Secretary. Custodian of military telegrams at the War Department was Major A. E. H. Johnson, and when he read this wire he sent for his superior, Colonel Edward S. Sanford. Properly horrified, Sanford simply lopped off the last two sentences before sending the dispatch on to Mr. Stanton, and that choleric offic
ial never saw the final, furious accusation until some time after McClellan had been removed from command.12 Unaware of this, McClellan naturally assumed that the Secretary of War either felt too guilty or lacked the courage to discipline him: an assumption which could only confirm the low opinion of Mr. Stanton which he already had.
In point of fact Mr. Lincoln did reply, on June 28. He told McClellan: “Save your Army at all events. Will send re-enforcements as fast as we can. Of course they cannot reach you today, or tomorrow, or next day.” Then he and Mr. Stanton set about it to get those reinforcements. General Burnside, at New Berne, North Carolina, was told to send north all the men he could spare and to come with them himself. To Halleck, at Corinth, went a peremptory wire from Stanton telling him to send 25,000 men “by the nearest and quickest route by way of Baltimore and Washington to Richmond”; this was made necessary, the Secretary explained, “by a serious reverse suffered by General McClellan before Richmond yesterday, the full extent of which is not yet known.” On the same day Lincoln notified Major General John A. Dix at Fort Monroe that they had lost touch with the Army of the Potomac, and ordered Dix to do everything possible to open communication with General McClellan and tell the War Department how things were going.13
