v1.1.1 / chapter 23 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* After taking the initiative at Gaines' Mill, Lee kept up the pressure on the Federals in a series of bloody and often chaotic battles. Although Lee was not able to decisively defeat the Union Army of the Potomac, he still accomplished the miraculous, completely dislodging the Federal hold on Richmond. The series of battles would later be memorialized simply as the "Seven Days'.
* On the morning of Saturday, 28 June 1862, the Federals began their withdrawal to the James landings with impressive stealth and efficiency. Two of the five corps, under Porter and Keyes, were to move ahead to a position named Malvern Hill where they could defend the base at Harrison's Landing. The other three corps were to remain behind to delay the rebels and then pull back in turn. The main thing was to get around White Oak Swamp, a snaking obstruction that circled between the current Federal positions near Richmond and their intended new position.
The orders went out to the men to load up with all the supplies they could carry and burn what they could not. Later in the day, a Massachusetts regiment had to destroy an entire train full of ammunition. The bridge over the Chickahominy was out, so they simply set the train on fire and let it steam backwards to crash off the bridge into the river. The results were loud, violent, spectacular, and entertaining.
President Lincoln sent a message to McClellan that day to encourage him:
SAVE YOUR ARMY AT ALL EVENTS. WILL SEND RE-INFORCEMENTS
AS FAST AS WE CAN. OF COURSE THEY CANNOT REACH YOU
TODAY, OR TOMORROW, OR THE NEXT DAY.
Lincoln and Stanton cast their nets wide, ordering Burnside to take every man
he could spare and send them all north by train, and wiring Halleck to send
25,000 men by the fastest rail route.
* Lee's troops could hardly find any Yankees on the previous day's battlefield except for a few stragglers, including Brigadier General John F. Reynolds, who had slept too long and been captured. The bridges over the Chickahominy had been destroyed and Federal artillery guarded the far bank. Lee could not move until he knew what McClellan was up to. At about noon, Lee began to receive reports that the Union forces south of the Chickahominy had torched their supply depots and were blowing up their ammunition dumps, sending smoke billowing up into the sky. The Federals were retreating and the immediate threat to Richmond had now been ended.
But where were they retreating to? Scouts reported that the Federals had burned the bridge connecting their position to their base at White House, meaning they were not retreating north. Lee deduced that McClellan was falling back to the James, but needed more intelligence to be sure. The day passed without real fighting.
* On Sunday, 29 June, Confederate patrols confirmed that the Federals were withdrawing to the south, towards the James. Lee quickly revised his plans, and ordered Longstreet, A.P. Hill, and Benjamin Huger to cross the Chickahominy, loop around behind Magruder's entrenchments and emerge to the south of that line, then advance east to intercept the retreating Federals. Lee hoped to strike McClellan's columns while they were straddling White Oak Swamp. In the meantime, Magruder was to move out of his entrenchments and, in cooperation with Stonewall Jackson, attack the Yankees from the east. Lee hoped to trap a large part of McClellan's army, despite the fact that the Federals had a day's head start on him.
It didn't work out that way. Magruder and his men were exhausted from four days of noisy theatrics. In fact, one of these exercises, under the direction of the fire-eating Robert Toombs, now one of Magruder's brigadiers, got a little too enthusiastic in lunging at the Yankees and sustained severe casualties. Magruder's men were also up against three Federal corps, arrayed around the Union supply base at a railhead named Savage Station. They were outnumbered three to one, and Jackson's reputation as a lunatic didn't give Magruder confidence that help would arrive as planned.
Orders were still orders, and in the early afternoon, Magruder advanced through last month's battleground at Fair Oaks, which was still smoldering with burned supplies that the Federals had torched as they pulled out, and came under long-range artillery fire. He continued to advance until he was confronted by ranks of Yankee artillery and infantry arrayed in front of Savage Station.
It was about 5:00 PM. Unsurprisingly, Jackson was nowhere to be found, having become distracted trying to rebuild a bridge and was taking his time at it. Magruder made such an attack as he could nerve himself to make. The fighting around Savage Station went on until dark and hardly budged the Federals, even though Heintzelman pulled his corps out during the day. Both sides took about 500 casualties, but for the much larger Federal force that amounted to a light injury. The senior Union general on the spot, old Bull Sumner, was so encouraged that when he received orders to withdraw, he replied: "I never leave a victorious field! Why, if I had 20,000 more men, I would crush this rebellion!" He was tactfully reminded that his orders were to pull out after dark. Sumner gave in, but protested: "General McClellan did not know all the circumstances when he wrote that note. He did not know that we would fight a battle and gain a victory."
At about 10:00 PM, Sumner marched his men away from the lines, leaving behind almost 2,500 sick and wounded in a hospital camp. McClellan had given orders that anyone who could not walk had to be left behind, along with surgeons, workers, and medical supplies to care for them. For whatever reason, several Federal units did not get the order to pull out. Two batteries of artillery went to sleep in the woods after fighting all the evening, to wake up the next morning and find themselves with rebels all around. The captain in charge had them quickly and quietly pack up and march out at an inconspicuous and silent walk. The batteries managed to escape, and picked up a similarly stranded infantry battalion on the way.
* Lee was frustrated by the results of that Sunday's fighting. Magruder had accomplished nothing, Jackson had hardly tried, the rest of his generals weren't close to the enemy, and the only good news was that McClellan had pulled out of his base at White House and burned it behind him.
The Confederates might be able to make up for the lost time. One part of Lee's army, under Jackson, D.H. Hill, and Dick Ewell, was north of White Oak Swamp, while the other, under A.P. Hill, Longstreet, Huger, and Magruder, was south of it. A third element had become available as well, consisting of 6,000 men under Major General Theophilus Holmes that had crossed the James over a pontoon bridge at Drewry's Bluff to join the fight. They might still be able to converge on the retreating Federals, catch them out in the open, and destroy them.
That assumed that the various generals could move quickly and in coordination, but the record so far was not encouraging. Lee ordered them all to move out at dawn, and in his edginess unreasonably singled out Magruder for a reprimand, even though Magruder had been the only one of them to do any fighting that day. Lee wrote Magruder: "I regret very much that you have made so little progress today in the pursuit of the enemy," -- and ended with: "We must lose no more time, or he will escape us entirely."
* There was not much time left. By 10:00 AM the next morning, Monday, 30 June, the Union columns were across White Oak Swamp. They burned the bridge behind them, and at least were not going to be attacked straddling the swamp's bogs and quagmires. The Federals were still extremely vulnerable. McClellan's column stretched for 10 miles (16 kilometers) between White Oak Swamp and Malvern Hill, leaving the Federals in a poor position to run and a poor position to stand and fight. If Lee could strike a focused blow against the column, he stood a good chance of wiping out the bulk of McClellan's army.
By this time, Keyes and Porter had reached Malvern Hill as planned. McClellan placed his remaining seven divisions to cover the retreat, leaving two at White Oak Swamp under Franklin, and five at a crossroads named Glendale, about half of the way in a southwesterly direction from the swamp to Malvern Hill.
Jackson was, for the first time in the whole campaign, demonstrating his accustomed aggressiveness. By 2:00 PM, the forces under his command, including D.H. Hill's, had caught up to the Federal rear guard and got into a hot artillery duel them. In the face of stubborn Yankee opposition, his burst of energy faded. Jackson fell asleep at 3:00 PM; when he awoke an hour later, he hardly seemed to know that a battle was in progress. He ignored reports of nearby fords that could be used for pursuit and remained immobile.
In the meantime, General Benjamin Huger was leading one column of 9,000 rebels toward Glendale, while Longstreet and A.P. Hill led a larger column of 18,000 men to the south along a parallel road toward the same objective. By noon, Huger was only two miles (3.2 kilometers) from Glendale, but his lead brigade, under Brigadier William Mahone, ran into an obstruction. The Federals had been busily chopping down trees and the road in front of Mahone and his men was an impassable tangle. Instead of trying to untangle the mess, Mahone ordered his men to cut a new road alongside the old. The Federals were near enough to see what the Confederates were up to and began cutting trees to obstruct the new route as well.
This odd contest lasted until 2:00 PM when, after cutting their way through a mile of forest, Huger's men managed to make their way into the open, only to run into a Union division under Brigadier General Henry Slocum. Huger moved up a battery of artillery, and at 2:30 PM began a listless exchange of fire with the Yankees. That was as far as he went for the day.
* On hearing the firing. Lee rode in search of Longstreet and found him chatting with Jefferson Davis. Davis, no doubt remembering the curt reprimand he had received from Lee a few days earlier, asked Lee: "Why, General, what are you doing here? You are in too dangerous a position for the commander of the army."
"I'm trying to find out something about the movements and plans of those people," Lee said, referring not to "the enemy", not "the Federals", just "those people". Lee then shot the question back at Davis: "But you must excuse me, Mr. President, for asking what you are doing here, and for suggesting that this is no place for the Commander in Chief of all our armies?"
Davis replied, refusing to be cowed this time: "Oh, I am here on the same mission that you are." Lee let it go at that. Longstreet rode off to direct his own artillery to fire on the Federals, who then replied with artillery fire of their own. A shell burst nearby Lee and Davis, killing horses and wounding several men. A.P. Hill rode up to them and bluntly said to them both: "This is no place for either of you, and as commander of this part of the field I order both to the rear!"
Davis replied: "We will obey your orders." -- but the two men simply rode back farther on the battlefield. Hill rode up to them again and let them have it: "Did I not tell you to go away from here, and did you not promise to obey my orders?! Why, one shot from that battery over yonder may presently deprive the Confederacy of its presidency and the Army of Northern Virginia its commander!" Lee and Davis left the field in embarrassment.
Annoyed by the bombardment, Longstreet sent a brigade forward to deal with the Federal batteries, but Huger's guns had gone quiet, and so Lee decided not to order a general assault.
* In the meantime, even farther to the south, Theophilus Holmes' men were moving towards the Federal line of retreat. Lee was not counting on much from Holmes, who was 57 years old and deaf, and whose men were very green. However, Lee met him on the road shortly after 4:00 PM, and indicated that he would like Holmes to take artillery forward and bring the Federals retreating towards Malvern Hill under fire.
By 4:30 PM, Holmes had six guns ready to fire on the Yankees. He had stepped inside a farmhouse when an thunderclap exploded over the little battery, followed by a "perfect shower of shells of tremendous proportion and hideous sound." The Federals on Malvern Hill had opened up on his little battery with thirty guns of their own, while a signal officer on the hill directed fire from Union gunboats on the James onto the rebel position using signal flags. The incident was a clear demonstration of the simple rule of combat that if the enemy is in range, so are you.
The gunboats were firing 100 pound (30 kilogram) shells that were so big, loud, and destructive that Holmes' men called them "lampposts". There was general panic and confusion, with the green soldiers trying to hide behind saplings or simply crouching down with their hands over their heads. Holmes, however, simply came back out of the farmhouse to see what the commotion was all about, cupped a hand to his ear, and said: "I thought I heard firing." Holmes quickly sized up the situation, and pulled his men back out of harm's way. They were rattled but not greatly harmed.
* None of the four Confederate columns converging on McClellan's retreating army were getting anywhere, and scouts reported to Lee that the enemy's wagon trains would soon be out of his reach. In fact, they already were. The Federals that Holmes had tried to bombard were the tail end of the column, and the Confederates were in fact facing nothing but McClellan's divisions, set up for defense. Lee didn't know that, and so at about 5:00 PM he ordered Longstreet and A.P. Hill to attack in hopes that Huger and Jackson would hear the fighting and join in.
The collision took place near a homestead named Frayser's Farm. There were three Federal divisions facing the Confederates, with Kearny on the right and Hooker on the left, but the center was held by a division of Pennsylvania Reserves under Brigadier General George McCall. The Pennsylvanians were not only understrength, but had been in the thick of the fighting since Lee's counteroffensive began and were exhausted in every sense. They held out for a while, but finally, one of the division's regiments, the 4th Pennsylvania Reserves, broke and ran. The rebels raced in after them, and in vicious hand-to-hand fighting overran a battery of six guns backing up the Union line. A.P. Hill's men poured into the gap and McCall's division collapsed.
McCall was trying to rally his men when he wandered into a Virginia regiment. The Confederates fired a volley that killed one of his staff officers; McCall surrendered. Taken to the rear, he encountered Longstreet, who had known him well before the war. Longstreet started to greet McCall but realized the prisoner was in no mood for civilities, and ordered him sent to Richmond.
Despite the pressure, Hooker and Kearny stubbornly held the ends of the line and fought back. A Yankee gunner, watching the tattered Confederates advancing on his battery, muttered: "I ain't goin' to git from no such ragged fellers as they be." None of the Federals around him seemed too much inclined to "git", either. Fresh troops from John Sedgwick's and Israel Richardson's divisions of II Corps were thrown into the battle. Kearny launched a counterattack that plugged the break in the Federal line, and seemed near to pushing the Confederates back to where they had come from.
A.P. Hill went to the front lines to lead the wavering rebels forward again; when they hesitated, he shouted at them: "Damn you! If you will not follow me, then I'll die alone!" They rallied, and stopped Kearny's drive. Darkness put an end to the battle, referred to later as Frayser's Farm or Glendale. The rebels lost over 3,000 men, the Federals less than 3,000. Lee's army had lost its last chance to do McClellan's army serious injury. That evening, the exhausted Stonewall Jackson fell asleep in front of a campfire while he still had food in his mouth. He snapped awake and said: "Now, gentlemen, let us at once to bed, and see if tomorrow we cannot do something."
* The telegraph lines to Washington had been quiet since Lincoln had
promised McClellan all the reinforcements that could be scraped up, and the
day before Lincoln had told Stanton: "I think we have had the better of
it." Stanton agreed, and predicted that McClellan would probably be in
Richmond in two days. Halleck had protested against the order to send
25,000 men eastward, since it would require calling off a planned move
against Chattanooga, and both the President and Secretary Stanton revoked the
order. This optimistic mood was crushed that evening as more panicky
telegrams came in from McClellan:
SEND US VERY LARGE REINFORCEMENTS ... SEND MORE GUNBOATS.
BACK_TO_TOP
* Early the next morning, 1 July 1862, Jackson led his men across White Oak Swamp to join Lee at Glendale. Lee said nothing about Jackson's failings of the previous day, but when an officer mentioned to Lee that it seemed that McClellan would escape, Lee replied in frustration: "Yes, he will get away, because I cannot have my orders carried out!"
Lee still felt he had an opportunity to destroy McClellan. He believed the Yankees were demoralized and that a good push on their positions at Malvern Hill would break them. Lee had no way of knowing if this assumption was correct, but if the Army of the Potomac got away unharmed, it would be back, and would almost certainly be stronger and more dangerous.
Malvern Hill was a high plateau rising about 100 feet (30 meters) above the countryside, protected by swampy ground to the south and streams and ravines to the east and west. D.H. Hill had a chaplain who was from the area. The chaplain described the terrain to Hill, and Hill in turn told Longstreet and Lee: "If General McClellan is there in force, we had better let him alone." Lee ignored Hill's comment. Longstreet laughed: "Don't get scared, now that we have got him licked!" Longstreet's optimism was not well based in facts. McClellan had three divisions of infantry and a total of 250 guns, including 14 big siege guns that had been hauled up the hill with great effort during the night, with the hundreds of guns arranged in a semicircle along the northern rim of the plateau. Charging such a defense would be sheer suicide.
At midmorning Jackson led his men to the approaches of Malvern Hill. He immediately came under a storm of artillery fire from the batteries on the hill and the Federal gunboats in the river. D.H. Hill sat at a camp table with theatrical casualness as the shells rained down. When an officer urged him to take cover, Hill replied: "I am not going to be killed until my time comes." A shell then blasted him off his chair, and Hill decided to seek cover after all, apparently having decided that his time shouldn't come quite so soon.
This was just a sample of what the Yankees were capable of dishing out, but Lee went ahead anyway. Longstreet had noticed that Lee seemed tired and unwell the previous day, and in fact Lee was exhausted. Longstreet returned from a personal reconnaissance to report to Lee that there was a grassy knoll to the east of Malvern Hill that was roughly as high. If the Confederates could get guns up there, they might be able to suppress the powerful Union artillery so that infantry could crack the Federal positions.
At 1:30 PM, Lee sent a message telling his commanders that the batteries were in place, and that the men were to charge the hill once their fire had disrupted the Federal line. The attack was to be led by Brigadier General Lew Armistead's division, and the other divisions were to advance when they hear the yell of Armistead's charge. These orders were puzzling, since Lee was not in touch with his own chief of artillery, Brigadier General William Pendleton, and in fact Pendleton was bogged down in the rear with his guns.
The various Confederate division commanders tried to get their own guns in place on the knoll, but the terrain was rough and the Yankees were very active. Federal batteries fired on the rebel guns often and accurately, and the rebels didn't manage to get more than 20 guns in place. Federal fire methodically demolished them all in a half hour, sometime focusing 50 guns to knock out a rebel piece. The exercise only proved that the Confederate gunners were very brave and determined. Captain William Pegram, the commander of a six-gun Virginia battery, fought on until he lost all his guns but one and was serving it personally.
While it lasted, rebel fire made life extremely unpleasant for the massed Federal infantry on Malvern Hill, but by 3:00 PM Lee had realized that Longstreet's suggestion was impractical. Lee rode over the battlefield to see what other opportunities were available, but did not cancel his previous order for a general attack to follow a charge by Armistead.
The early afternoon passed without the attack, but at 4:00 PM Lee got a report that the Federals seemed to be withdrawing from Malvern Hill and that Armistead's division was driving back the enemy. Both these reports were false. The Federals had shifted some of their units on the hill, and this was misinterpreted as a withdrawal. The report of the advance by Armistead and his men was from Magruder, who had just arrived on the battlefield after a long and blundering march, and was exhausted himself. Armistead's men had gotten into a firefight with some Yankee skirmishers and Magruder misinterpreted this as a battle. However, Lee heard what he wanted to hear, and sent a verbal order back to Magruder: "Press forward your whole line and follow up Armistead's success."
Although the situation on the battlefield was far from clear to Magruder, he was still pained by the reprimand he had received from Lee a few days previously, and so he advanced with two brigades across the wide open fields in front of Malvern Hill. As they passed Armistead's division, Armistead's men joined in the assault. To the east, in the center of the battlefield, D.H. Hill was smoking a cigar when he heard the cheering of Armistead's men. Remembering his orders, he sent his five brigades forward at 5:00 PM.
The Federal guns, under the direction of Colonel Henry J. Hunt, McClellan's chief of artillery, poured fire and lead into the advancing Confederates. One battery expended 1,392 rounds. Hill's men were particularly exposed, and Federal artillery hit them with devastating effect. As they approached Union lines, Yankee gunners switched to canister. "Our batteries literally cut lanes through their ranks," one Federal soldier wrote later, and D.H. Hill would later write himself: "It was not war. It was murder." When the survivors of the charge came within musket range, Union infantry blasted into their ranks with equal enthusiasm. One regiment fired so heavily that their rifles became blistering hot and had to be aimed by their slings.
By 6:00 PM Hill's brigades were broken and falling back. At that time Magruder brought up additional brigades, sending them over a battlefield carpeted with the mutilated bodies of their comrades. They pressed Fitz-John Porter's command hard enough so that Porter, remembering how his lines had been broken the week before at Boatswain's Creek, had to set up batteries to sweep the field with double loads of canister, even "at the risk of firing upon friends", and personally led several brigades in a countercharge.
Porter advanced through the twilight and gunsmoke with his brigades behind him and suddenly came upon Magruder's men, a stone's throw in front of them. The rebels fired volleys into Porter's ranks, but he turned to see his own men standing firm as they fired with terrible effect into the Confederate advance, breaking up the charge. Porter's horse was shot and threw him to the ground during the fight; he feared he would be captured, but managed to get back to his own lines.
As the rebel attack faltered and disintegrated, Lee looked over the bloody ground over which it had stumbled and concluded that no responsible general would have gone ahead with such an assault. He found Magruder and reprimanded him again: "General Magruder, why did you attack?" Magruder could only answer: "In obedience to your orders, twice repeated."
As night was falling, Jackson, whose men had not been involved in the assault, came upon one of Ewell's brigadiers who was forming his men for an attack. Jackson asked: "What are you going to do?" The brigadier replied: "I am going to charge those batteries, sir!" Jackson, normally inclined to the aggressive, didn't think much of this idea: "I guess you had better not try it. General D.H. Hill has just tried it with his whole division and been repulsed. I guess you had better not try it, sir." He didn't.
* By 9:00 PM, the battle was over, except for the fireworks of occasional artillery rounds arcing over the battlefield. An hour later the guns went silent and the soldiers could hear the cries of the wounded Confederates strewn below the hill. A Federal lieutenant wrote: "One in particular we could hear for hours in the same strained, high-pitched key, alternately praying and cursing."
McClellan's soldiers picked up their own wounded during the night, and withdrew to Harrison's landing. Many of the commanders on the spot protested bitterly, since they believed they were in a position to drive the battered rebels off the field. Even Porter, a close friend of McClellan's who rarely disagreed with him, felt that they could throw Lee back through the streets of Richmond. Phil Kearny was even more adamant: "I, Philip Kearny, an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against this order to retreat. We ought, instead of retreating, to follow up the enemy and take Richmond. And in full view of the responsibility of such a declaration, I say to you all, such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason!" Even such a violent declaration did not persuade McClellan. He was taking no chances, and the counterstroke was not delivered.
When the sun came up the next morning, 2 July, Colonel William Averell, commanding the Federal rear guard on the hill, looked down its slopes and later wrote: "Dead and wounded men were on the ground in every attitude of distress. A third of them were dead or dying, but enough were alive and moving to give the field a singular crawling effect."
* The fight to drive McClellan from Richmond, known as the Seven Days' Battles, were over. The Confederates lost over 5,000 men at Malvern Hill, for a total of over 20,000 in the entire sequence of fights, amounting to a quarter of Lee's command. The Federals had lost a little over 3,000 men on 1 July; their total losses were almost 16,000, though after stragglers came in and the less seriously wounded returned to the ranks, the casualties would be lower on both sides and tip the ratio back to favor the Confederates, with a loss of about 12,500 rebels to 14,000 Yankees.
This was still not the kind of losses the Confederacy could tolerate for long. Longstreet told Lee the day after the assault on Malvern Hill: "I think you hurt them about as much as they hurt you." Lee answered with a trace of black humor: "Then I am glad we punished them well, at any rate."
Despite the fact that the Confederates had taken casualties that they could not afford, the Seven Days was a clear Confederate victory. McClellan's plans had been frustrated, and little he said could conceal the fact that he had been driven off in retreat by an inferior force, which had in fact taken the worst of it in many of the fights that made up the battle. This humiliation was all the more striking because Lee's army had done little but blunder from the first to the last of it. Lee wrote in frustration in his report: "Under ordinary circumstances, the Federal Army should have been destroyed."
This sounded like bluster. Lee's command had been put together from parts and was inexperienced, and trouble was almost certain under those circumstances. If Lee had been fighting a general with nerve, it would have been Lee who would have been destroyed. But Lee was never inclined to bluster: such a statement was simply a reflection of his mentality. Nothing less than total victory was acceptable. The most courteous man imaginable in his demeanor, Lee was a tiger underneath with an instinctive desire to move in for the kill -- and though he loved and honored the men who fought for him, he would demand very much of them in battle, and large numbers would pay with their lives. It was an indication of the kind of leader he was that his men not only gave him all that he demanded, but revered him as well.
