The Seven Days
CHAPTER TEN
Gaine's Mill: Battle of Decision
211
STONEWALL
JACKSON, again holding the key assignment in Lee's design, followed another of those
narrow roads that seemed to induce in him uncharacteristic caution. Vine-draped woods
obscured the right side of the road and dust rose in thin clouds over the columns. The sun
grew hot. At intervals across the road the enemy had thrown loose logs, as on the march of
the day before. When the columns halted for men to move the logs, minie balls from unseen
rifles whined through the foliage. Skirmish lines were thrown out on both sides of the
road, the men clawing their way through the matted screen until the road was clear ahead.
At the foot of a shaded slope the
road bore northeast, passing on the left the cultivated fields of the Cowardin farm. Soon
the road forked, and the slowly moving column turned right into a rough lane slicing
southeast through woods. The men rustled the brush on either side of the lane as they
moved cautiously ahead. Woods roads leading to private farms crossed their passage, and
after about a mile the van emerged into a farm clearing. Second-growth timber grew on the
opposite side of the farm buildings, covering a slope that led down to the upper end of
the large millpond of Gaines's cornmeal mill. The gaunt, dusty men halted short of the
timber. After a pause, the column was turned about and the troops retraced their steps
through the heat of the woods back out under the bleached sky at the fork.
This time Ewell's division, in the
lead, took the left fork on its northeast course. Following this and cross-country roads,
Ewell's van reached an intersection with the road D. H. Hill was using in his march from
the Old Church Road to Old Cold Harbor. Ewell halted until Hill's long columns rattled
past and then fell in behind his rear guard. At some distance, Jackson's own division and
Whit-
212
ing's two
brigades followed Ewell. Instead of four columns converging on Porter, Jackson was
bringing up the rear of D. H. Hill's division. Hill's five brigades had made the longer
march, and had encountered fragments of the enemy's army, taking prisoners, wagons and
an ambulance, without suffering delay.
Neither Jackson nor his division
commanders mentioned the countermarch. Whiting mentioned "frequent halts," and
Winder said it had been "a slow and tedious march." Countermarching in that
unfamiliar country was not unusual. John Worsham, a member of Richmond's Company
"F," a corps d'elite in the second brigade of Jackson's division, referred to it
as a trivial detail. "We halted and retraced our steps until we came to a road [the
fork] we had passed some time before." The significance of this uneventful
countermarch would have been unknown except for the attention called to it by one of
Dabney's anecdotes, which, emphasizing Jackson's secrecy obsession, played up the
eccentricities that contributed to his legend.
Dabney said Jackson had told a local
guide merely that he wanted to go to Cold Harbor by the shortest route. The shortest route
was the woods road that ran southward to the area of Gaines's millpond. On the opposite
side of this pond a lane led to the Cold Harbor Road east of Gaines's four-story brick
mill. Porter had passed this point on his retreat, and A. P. Hill's brigades had followed
in pursuit. While Jackson's men were halted, Hill's deployed lines struck Porter in his
new position about one mile to the east of Gaines's Mill. At sound of this firing, Jackson
asked the guide where it came from.
According to Dabney's story, the
guide told Jackson the firing came from "Gaines's Mill." To this information
Jackson revealed that he did not want to go to Cold Harbor via Gaines's Mill, but to pass
"that place" on his right. The guide then told Jackson he was on the wrong road,
and added, "Had you let me know what you desired, I would have directed you aright at
first."
The suspicious element in the
anecdote is this: the firing was not at Gaines's Mill, in the meaning of the mill of
William Gaines. The firing was in the valley of Boatswain's Swamp, more than one mile away
from the valley of Powhite Creek in which the mill was lo-
213
cated. It
was later that the battle fought on the hill above Boatswain's Swamp began to be called
"the Battle of Gaines's Mill."
Jackson's guide, a cavalryman from
the neighborhood, would not have placed the firing at Gaines's Mill when it came from a
more distant valley in the area of New Cold Harbor. No one who had heard rifle fire in
volume would have located Powell Hill's assault in the valley of Powhite Creek, where
Jackson was halted on his road behind Gaines's millpond, as Worsham said it was "the
heaviest musketry" he had then heard in the war.
As with many of the war's humble
legends, things were not so simply explained as by a general's eccentricities and a
guide's salty reply. The significance of Dabney's story, quite outside his intentions,
was its indication of Lee and Jackson failing to establish a precise understanding of the
objective.
What is
known of Lee's verbal order to Jackson, given in their brief conference at Walnut Grove
Church, is contained in Lee's telegram to Huger: "Jackson's command is . . . turning
Powhite Creek." On Jackson's woods road, he was turning Powhite Creek, which runs
north and south across the Cold Harbor Road at the mill of William Gaines.
When Lee wired Huger, he expected
Porter to make his stand on the hill on the east side of the Powhite Creek Valley. But
Porter, making his stand farther east, occupied the hill above Boatswain's Swamp. That was
not shown on Lee's map.
To make it more confusing: On the
assumption that Porter was at Powhite Creek, Lee wired Huger that Jackson was turning
Powhite Creek "on the road to Cold Harbor," to be "supported by D. H.
Hill." There were two Cold Harbors. New Cold Harbor, where A. P. Hill was fighting,
was at the curve in the road to Old Cold Harbor, where the tavern sprawled at the
crossroads one mile to the north.
D. H. Hill's orders took him to the
Cold Harbor tavern, clearly where he was assigned. The crossroads straddled the mazelike
netword of roads to the Chickahominy crossings, to the White House base, and to the York
River Railroad on its course north of the river. Hill was placed to intercept McClellan's
presumed movements toward his supply lines and base. If it can be assumed that Jackson
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was also
directed to Old Cold Harbor, Lee's plan would have placed the joint force on the flank and
rear of Porter's presumed position, in a duplication of the plan of the day before to
flank Porter out of the Beaver Dam Creek stronghold.
Jackson and Harvey Hill would have
been on Porter's flank and rear had he made his defense at Powhite Creek, and without
question Jackson expected to find Porter at Powhite Creek. This is made clear in his
report: "The enemy had receded from Powhite Creek." At this point occurred the
vacuum that would have been filled by a staff officer responsible for contact with the
movements of all units.
Jackson needed only to proceed on his
woods road to the south side of Gaines's millpond to have reached the Cold Harbor Road in
the rear of A: P. Hill's assault. By a short march his columns could have reached the
curve in the road at New Cold Harbor, then have turned north and extended Hill's line
until Jackson connected with D. H. Hill at Cold Harbor tavern. Instead, retracing his
march north away from the Cold Harbor Road, Jackson moved north and east until he turned
south to follow D. H. Hill into Cold Harbor from the north. When Jackson reached the Cold
Harbor crossroads, he was at a point of concentration of twenty-seven thousand troops
separated by about one mile from the heart of Porter's position, where A. P. Hill was
attacking with one division.
Jackson did not arrive on the field
like a general who had simply been delayed by a countermarch and was eager to put his
troops into action. When, around three o'clock, Jackson rode up to the Cold Harbor
crossroads, where D. H. Hill had already deployed his division, he looked tired and
ill-humored. Lethargic and peering myopically from under the brim of his cadet cap, he
began prolonged survey of the situation.
Having "receded from Powhite
Creek," Porter was neither where Jackson expected to find him nor, for the second
day, was he doing what Lee had anticipated. According to Lee's plans, A. P. Hill, with
Longstreet's support on his right toward the Chickahominy, should be driving Porter who,
with D. H. Hill on his flank and rear, should have fallen back toward the York River
Railroad to protect McClellan's line of supply.
From what Jackson could see and from
what D. H. Hill told him, the Federals were fixed firmly on defense with their right
flank,
216
near Old
Cold Harbor, bent back to face Harvey Hill's division. Far from being driven across D. H.
Hill's front at Cold Harbor, the Federal artillery had Hill deployed well back from the
swampy line on their own front. At New Cold Harbor, where the intensity of the battle
sounds remained stationary, A. P. Hill was obviously making no progress. He might even
be sustaining counterattacks from the Federals.
In the absence of either information
or orders from headquarters, Jackson had to apply his apathetic brain to resolve an
unexpected situation. In his condition, nothing was more difficult than reaching a
decision on a problem not readily soluble. The struggle seemed only to deepen his apathy,
and time slipped away as he sat his gaunt horse in the midst of the disordered movements
of troops, guns, wagons and ambulances.
Jackson's extremely reticent report
gave no hint of what had been going on inside him as the hours of the hot afternoon passed
and Powell Hill's division was being cut to pieces a strolling distance away.
2
Jackson reached the Cold Harbor
tavern ahead of his last divisions and after Ewell's division, which was nowhere in sight.
Presumably Jackson was told that Ewell had already been placed in line under Lee's orders.
D. H. Hill's division; that day under Jackson's command, was deployed to the left of the
road from Old Cold Harbor to New Cold Harbor. His lines, facing south, were at a left
angle to A. P. Hill's assault generally from west to east at New Cold Harbor.
Powell Hill's division was fighting
for the second day in a death trap at a water barrier in the bottom of a ravine.
Boatswain's Swamp, which contained a high-banked stream through part of its sluggish
course, roughly paralleled the Cold Harbor Road from near the tavern to south of New
Cold Harbor. The swamp was three quarters of a mile to the east of the road, and the plain
remained level to within about three hundred yards of the swamp. From there the land
dipped with increasing sharpness to the boggy bottom, mostly covered with dense
underbrush. On the opposite bank the hill rose steeply to a plateau on a level with the
plain at New Cold Harbor.
217
The formation of the ground along the
creek bed varied in the course of the swamp,
changing every several hundred yards, with the valley growing shallower and the banks less
steep toward the northern end. Near the Cold Harbor tavern the sides of the swamp
flattened out, and the swamp, as if designed by nature to protect a defensive position,
spread parallel to the road from Old Cold Harbor occupied by D. H. Hill. In effect, Hill's
division was deployed on the same level of ground as the Federals, but was separated
from them by the densely entangled swamp that spread at right angles to Porter's main
defensive line and thus protected the front of the Federal flank.
This right-angled flank position,
facing north, was held by the U. S. Regulars of George Sykes, Hill's fellow Southerner and
former West Point classmate, and a cold, hard-bitten professional. Though Sykes's
division did not hold a position as naturally strong as the lines above Boatswain's Swamp,
his regulars were posted behind felled trees to command the open ground approaching the
McGehee farm, and his powerful batteries commanded the road that ran across his front from
the tavern to the Chickahonminy. This road provided the only passage for Harvey Hill in
trying to move up his own guns. At about the time Jackson arrived, Sykes's guns had driven
off Bondurant's battery and Hill had no guns in action: His sweating troops, out of the
range of enemy rifles, were close to the spray from bursts of Federal shells.
Jackson first ordered Hill to move
his men into a more protected position. From Jackson's first order, he seemed to expect
the Federals to be driven across his front, despite the evidence of A. P. Hill's' hard
struggle at New Cold Harbor. D. H. Hill was placed where he would command the road when or
if the Federals were driven. In waiting for developments, Hill could occupy the enemy's
attention on their flank while Jackson brought forward his own division and Whiting's two
brigades. Those he planned to commit in echelon from south to north, from the left flank
of A. P. Hill's attack across the gap to D. H. Hill's right flank. Then, if Lee needed
support to drive home his assault, the lines would be connected for a general advance.
This uninspired reasoning would have
been sound except for his failure to communicate with Lee, one mile away. He neither in-
218
quired if
this movement fitted in with the commanding general's plans nor advised him of what he was
doing. This and other failures to communicate might seem to support the explanation that
Jackson's troubles during the Seven Days were partly caused by his unwillingness to
operate under another's orders after having grown accustomed to independent command. But
none of the generals knew how to cooperate. Nobody sent messages to anybody.
Lee had dispatched Walter Taylor
earlier in the afternoon to find out where Jackson was, and Colonel Taylor had hurried
Ewell forward. No other staff officers were sent by Lee to discover precisely when
Jackson had arrived and what he was doing or to provide him with any instructions.
Jackson's failure to communicate showed nothing about Jackson. What did reveal Jackson's
state was his failure to assume active command of the two divisions he ordered forward.
On his staff, as quartermaster
general, was a tough, rough-tongued character from the Valley, Major John A. Harman, who
had operated a stage line business before the war. Though he and Jackson had experienced
their personality difficulties, Harman was most efficient in handling Jackson's wagons and
supplies. It happened that Harman, like Dabney, operated directly under Jackson, and he
had little or no interest in any aspect of the army that did not concern his wagons. For
some unexplainable reason, Jackson selected the quartermaster to carry a verbal message to
the two division commanders to deploy and advance in echelon.
It also happened that the lead
division on the road approaching Old Cold Harbor was commanded by Chase Whiting who, in an
angrily uncooperative mood regarding Jackson, scarcely knew Harman. The efforts of the
wagon trainmaster in trying to tell surly Whiting what to do led to an unprofitable
exchange --- "a farrago of which I could understand nothing," Whiting said about
Harman's instructions --- and resulted in Whiting's halting where he was. Behind him, on
the road to the Old Cold Harbor tavern from the north, Winder did the same with Jackson's
division.
How long they waited nobody knows.
After more than enough time had elapsed for their appearance, Dabney on his own rode up
the road to learn if Whiting had properly understood Harman. Then Dabney took the liberty
of interpreting the general's orders and di
219
rected
Whiting and Winder to deploy through the woods to their right. They were not provided with
guides.
During the long wait before Whiting's
skirmishers emerged from the woods nearly one mile south of the tavern, between four and
five o'clock, Jackson did nothing. Nor did he send forward any instructions to Whiting,
if indeed he saw the division when it appeared. Whiting, moving obliquely through the
close woods and across two ravines, had drifted off course and reached the clutter of
ambulances, wounded men, dead horses and wrecked gun carriages around New Cold Harbor, the
backwash behind the divisions of A. P. Hill and Ewell which were out of view near the
ravine bottom. General Lee, with his staff, was mounted in a clearing just to the east
of the curve in the Cold Harbor Road.
From this curve in the road a private
road ran southeast toward Boatswain's Swamp. Before reaching the slope down to the ravine
this private road divided. One fork continued east toward the McGehee house and the
other sliced toward the south, crossing the swamp where Hill had been fighting for three
hours. This road ran up the Federal slope to the pleasant Watt house, whose cultivated
fields and orchards spread across the plateau. Fitz-John Porter had his headquarters in
the Watt house, and the most accurate designation of the battle would have been
"the Battle of the Watt House Hill."
Big John Hood rode at the head of the
brigade that first reached the field and from his arrival on the confusing scene all
coherence went from the sequence of orders. Though Lee was gradually assuming tactical
field command, he had not yet brought the action completely under his direction. From the
conflicting accounts of the participants, apparently everybody was giving orders and
brigadiers were acting on their own responsibility in putting their troops in as they
came on the field.
According to Hood, he encountered
Colonel Jones of Ewell's staff, who told him that Ewell's division needed help. Hood did
not wait to report to Whiting or anyone else. He deployed his regiments as they came up
and moved across the plateau toward the wooded slope. When his troops were ready to go in,
they would be sent to the right of Ewell, in support of A. P. Hill's fought-out brigades.
.
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When Whiting reached the field with
Law's brigade, he evidently reported to Lee, for Evander McIver Law was sent toward Hill's
right under Lee's orders. When Law was forming his brigade, the first troops of Jackson's
division found their way out of the woods. These belonged to the brigade of Charles
Winder, acting commander of the division. After losing his direction in the woods,
Winder seemed to leave the other brigades to shift for themselves. Winder's wilted men
also emerged from the woods near New Cold Harbor, and continued across the fields to the
road between Old and New Cold Harbor, near where Whiting had passed. Winder saw A. P. Hill
and reported to him. Hill placed him in reserve until the other brigades of Jackson's
division came up.
It is possible that Jackson knew
nothing of his two divisions' employment in the battle around New Cold Harbor---some
brigades under Lee's orders, others under A. P. Hill's, and Hood going on his own
initiative---while he waited for the enemy to be driven. Everybody else was too busy to
have noticed how Jackson occupied himself from the time he arrived, around three, until
after five o'clock. By then, he may or may not have learned that most of his command had
been ordered into line. Dabney said that Jackson "assumed" all his units were in
line, though the last was not then on the field.
At that time he apparently decided
that the enemy was not going to be driven. From the increased volume of fire along the
stationary line around New Cold Harbor, Lee's attack was unmistakably hanging. Around
five o'clock Jackson ordered D. H. Hill to change position and prepare to open an
assault on the Federal right flank behind the curve of the swamp. Then he left the
crossroads at the tavern on the awkwardly gaited sorrel and rode, in his short-stirruped
perch, to New Cold Harbor.
He found Lee at his informal field
headquarters off the private road, and for the second time that day the two generals
greeted one another without warmth.
Lee said, "Ah, General, I am
very glad to see you," but the words implied a rebuke when he added, "I had
hoped to be with you before."
According to Stuart's staff officer
John Esten Cooke (who passed his nights writing sketches for Southern magazines),
Jackson's
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brief answer
could not be heard over the heavy rattle of musketry. Lee then said, "That fire is
very heavy. Do you think your men can stand it?"
Jackson's pale eyes, peering from
under the cap's visor, ranged over the field. He replied loudly enough that time.
"They can stand anything. They can stand that."
Lee then spoke to him in a lower
voice and his words did not carry. Judging by the action that followed, Lee had told him
to prepare for a general assault to be delivered along the whole front from Longstreet,
off A. P. Hill's right, to D. H. Hill, on the Confederate left. From Jackson's own
reactions, in which he briefly asserted some personal force after twelve hours of apathy,
Lee must have told him also that the situation was desperate. The commanding general
stood on the verge of losing his first major battle.
3
During the afternoon while Jackson's
command was getting to the field in fragments, A. P. Hill's division fought one of the
longest, hardest, most unsung actions of the war. From the opening movement at daylight,
his troops had been in contact with the enemy for twelve hours. After feeling out the
enemy line along Beaver Dam Creek before the crossing at Ellerson's Mill, Hill moved close
on Porter's rear guard to the steep valley of Powhite Creek. Expecting the enemy to make a
stand on the hill east of the mill, Maxcy Gregg's lead brigade formed two regiments to
advance as a strong line of skirmishers. The South Carolinians, who had seen no action the
day before, rushed up the hill with the same elan the other brigades had shown in their
advance across the plain at Mechanicsville.
At the top, just above Gaines's Mill,
Gregg's regiments encountered only Porter's rear guard falling back. Leaving their camp
abandoned, the Federals were retiring to a stand of pines across the plateau. While the
bridges were rebuilt over Powhite Creek and a battery brought up, Gregg's advance
regiments gobbled up some undestroyed supplies and, as one of the soldiers reported,
"We refreshed ourselves." Then, after the guns shelled the pines where the
enemy's skirmish line could be seen, Gregg's men gave themselves -
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the glory of
a picture charge ---the lines sweeping across the open ground at double time.
The light Federal force fled before
them and gave inexperienced Gregg a false impression of Porter's retreat. His soldiers ran
after the enemy, across the Cold Harbor Road where it curved and on over the fields to the
slope beyond. This sprint, in full equipment under a noonday sun, loosened the formation
of the lines, and panting soldiers followed at intervals in the wake of the leaders. The
fastest men caught glimpses of the enemy disappearing in the shadowed fringes of timber
at the bottom of a ravine, and, without a pause, went whooping down the slope.
Immediately, hidden guns blasted from
the crest of the opposite plateau, and metal burst over the irregular lines. The looseness
of the lines and the speed with which the men went pell-mell down the slope saved them
from heavy damage.
At the bottom of the slope, along the
private road to the McGehee house, table ground descended into what one of the soldiers
accurately described as "a deep, wet ravine." The soldiers had reached that part
of Boatswain's Swamp north of the high-banked creek and south of the swamp that spread
across Harvey Hill's front. The ravine of the creek bed, curving slightly from northeast
to southwest, bulged forward toward the Confederates where Gregg reached it. By the
alignment of Porter's units on the hill, the Federal lines of defense were farther back
from the creek there than to the south. Where Gregg struck the ravine, only a skirmish
line defended the opposite side, and those Federals withdrew when Gregg's lead regiments
stumbled and slipped their way across the marshy bottom.
At the foot of the opposite hill, the
winded soldiers reached a growth of young pines, screening them from the enemy, and Gregg
ordered a halt for his men to rest and close up their regiments. At the bottom, though out
of the sun, it was humid and breathless. While his men panted up under scattered artillery
fire from the crest of the hill, and infantry opened on them from behind an abatis on the
hillside, Gregg surveyed the entrenched lines on the hill, located the batteries on the
crest, and knew he had found the enemy. The ruddy-faced, middle-aged scholar, as exultant
as if he had run
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a fox to
earth, sent the word back to A. P. Hill and asked to be allowed to attack.
Powell Hill, riding forward to where
the private roads branched off from the Cold Harbor Road, was not in the impetuous mood of
the day before. He could see that the Cold Harbor Road roughly paralleled the swamp for a
mile toward Old Cold Harbor to the north, where Jackson and D. H. Hill were expected. When
Hill halted, he could see no Confederates through the midday haze rising over the fields
between him and the tavern. First he ordered Gregg to remain where he was, on the north
side of the road to the McGehee house. Then he ordered up his other brigades, planning
to deploy them to the south of Gregg, between and overlapping the two private roads. In
making those dispositions to attack, A. P. Hill was at that time in command of the whole
field around New Cold Harbor.
Hill's front was wide, approximately
three quarters of a mile, for an attack without reserves on such a forbidding position,
and his flank was open to the north. While Hill's troops were deploying, General Lee
arrived at New Cold Harbor. Lee believed that Jackson's expected arrival would extend
the enemy's line on Hill's front, as well as provide protection for Hill's left flank.
Longstreet, then moving forward from Dr. Gaines's farm, would form in reserve on Hill's
right, between his flank and the Chickahominy. There he would be ready to go in at the
opportune moment. Lee began to assume tactical direction of the battle when he ordered
Powell Hill to open his assault upon receiving word that Longstreet was in position.
4
Between one and two-thirty, while
Crenshaw's battery formed on the Cold Harbor Road and opened on the enemy's position,
Hill's brigades advanced down the rough, brushy slope deployed in line of battle. From
Gregg's position, neither Hill, Lee, nor the brigadiers moving their men forward were
aware that Boatswain's Swamp was much more difficult of passage south of Gregg. The banks
deepened first to form a ditch and then rose so high that the Sol-
224
diers would
have to help one another climb the slick opposite wall. Nor did they know that A. P. Hill
was to attack in the exact center of a position whose southern flank was literally
impregnable. From the northern fringes of the swamp across Sykes's front, the ravine
coursed two miles south, bearing to the west, and then bent back to the east below the
rise of the hill at the southern end of the plateau. South of this abrupt end of the
plateau, the swamp coursed across marshy, open ground to the Chickahominy one half mile
away.
Federal guns posted back on the crest
of the plateau and heavy guns from across the Chickahominy swept this open bog between
Porter's flank and the river. The same batteries also commanded open stretches of ground
that approached the front of the southern end of Porter's line, the Federal left in
relation to its center at the Watt house. With his left flank impregnable and his right
secured by Sykes's regulars, Porter bunched his infantry in the area of A. P. Hill's
assault.
Across his whole front Porter had
placed his infantry in three tiers on the hillside, behind hastily built lines of logs and
loose earth packed in knapsacks. Porter's infantrymen were firing from stationary
positions, which increased accuracy, and in solid alignment, which increased the density
of the fire power.
The three tiers were made up, from
the center toward the left, of three brigades of Morell's division, which had not been
engaged the day before. To the right of center was Warren's fresh brigade of Sykes's
division. This portion of the line was manned by about twelve thousand troops, with
McCall's division, about eight thousand men, in support. During the afternoon, McCall was
put into line at the center. Late in the afternoon, some of McCall's units were pulled out
and shifted to the left, nearer the flank. They were replaced by two fresh brigades,
Taylor's and Newton's, of Slocum's division, sent over by McClellan. First and last, more
than twenty-five thousand men fought around the center ---on either side of the two
private roads..
A. P. Hill's division, after its
casualties at Mechanicsville, totaled approximately twelve thousand when all six brigades
were in line. Getting all six into line was the problem. From the beginning of the march
down the slope the possibility of the division attacking on a
226
solid front
was eliminated by the timber and thickets obstructing the view, the differences in the
terrain, the varying distances to the creek and the enemy's varying distances behind it.
As soon as the lines started down the slope, guns and rifles opened on them, and the
farther down the slope they marched, the heavier grew the gale of canister and bullets.
Though Hill exercised a general
control over the movements of his brigades, the actual attacks depended on the separate
brigadiers. Partly because of the different physical conditions on their separate fronts
and partly because of the inexperience of the field officers, little to no coordination
was maintained between the separate brigades once the troops entered the bedlam in the wet
jungle at the bottom of the hill. As it was difficult under the best circumstances to
bring green troops in solid units to points of attack, the miry ravine in one place, the
ditch in another and the high banks in yet another, caused the regiments in a single
brigade to move unevenly in trying to close with the enemy.
Gaps created by the enemy's fire
remained gaps. The men drifted to one way or another to close on their nearest fellows.
The gaps became serious when the ragged lines began to cross the ravine. The men were
firing then, without much, to shoot at, and as a whole the soldiers were eager to get
across to the opposite hill and the enemy. In their baptism the day before at Beaver Dam
Creek, Hill's troops felt they never had a chance to come to grips with the enemy, and at
the final stage of their assault across Boatswain's Swamp they plunged into the morass
with a resolve to go all the way.
With their high screams echoing
through the ravine, the determination of the attacking soldiers made their inexperienced
line and field officers slow to recognize that the units were being cut to pieces
separately. The range of view of the brigadiers could scarcely encompass the area of their
own regiments and even the professional soldiers knew nothing of what was happening in
adjoining sectors. Some units were halted before the men crossed the swamp. Others moved
up to and, briefly, in places, through the first fortified lines. Parts of one regiment
fought their way to the crest of the hill. With no friends nearby, the remnants fought
their way back out. Each momentarily opened breech was closed by the skillful
employment
of the enemy reserves, and the attackers lost as heavily falling back as they had going
in.
On Gregg's front, where the advance
was started from across the ravine, one regiment held desperately to a position on the
enemy's hill. Another, infected by the panic of several men, broke backward. By the time
the regiment was rallied, solidarity had been lost. In that area Orr's Rifles lost 315 of
the 537 men engaged.
Porter's three lines having absorbed
the continual assaults--- Dorsey Pender going in
again and again --- the Federal reserves began to carry the battle to the fragmented units
of the attackers. Then, on Hill's left, without Jackson to menace the Federal right, the
famed New York Zouaves of Sykes's division attacked Gregg in flank. As D. H. Hill, under
Jackson's orders, was doing nothing on Porter's northern flank, other units from Sykes's
regulars began to press against A. P. Hill's left.
Slowly the tide turned. From
attacking, Hill's remnants were fighting to hold their ground. Numbers of the men under
heavy fire for the first time broke under the horror which was so different from their
pictures of the charges of battle lines such as they had made from Powhite Creek. In the
matted brush over the marshy footing, the men could scarcely see the next company. In
Branch's brigade, Branch himself lost control of his units threshing about in all
directions. Some fell back, others sidled off to join another unit, and the rest took
cover where they were.
Their momentum gone and the Federal
pressure growing, Hill's brigades began to suffer as heavily from stragglers as they had
from casualties. Some of the men were exhausted. Gregg's troops had been so tired before
the assault that some of them slept behind the pine thicket, one hundred yards from the
enemy's rifle lines, with artillery fire breaking around them. Countless others, too
scared or too proud to cross the open field going back, huddled where they were without
firing. Yet, past four o'clock, perhaps half of Hill's men stood steadily behind what
protecting tree or bush or rise of ground they could find, and returned the enemy's fire.
During this disordered sequence of
movements, Hill's men delivered a surprisingly heavy fire power. Two of Hill's batteries
were doing far more damage than they had the day before, both against
228
the enemy's
personnel and his gunners. Even Willie Pegram, whose battery had had all except one gun
knocked out the day before, along with forty-seven gunners, got up two or three patched-up
pieces into action.
Though the Light Division had failed
to break the enemy's front, the troops, on their second day of fighting alone while
waiting for Jackson, had taken a toll of the enemy. A. P. Hill said they had done all that
could be asked of men. Usually furious at any skulker from his command, "Little
Powell" reproached none of the shattered, ashen-faced soldiers staggering out of
the ravine.
When four o'clock passed, and Jackson
had still not appeared, Lee realized that the relief of A. P. Hill had become imperative.
From the heavy commitment of enemy troops, Lee believed McClellan had the bulk of his army
on the field.
First, Lee ordered Longstreet to move
out of his cover and make a strong demonstration to distract the enemy and draw troops
from Hill's fronts. It was at this fortuitous moment that Walter Taylor led Ewell's
division forward. General Ewell reported that he did not know Jackson's whereabouts nor
that of the two other divisions of Jackson's command. There was no time to worry about
that. Ewell was ordered in immediately on Hill's broken and imperiled left.
Ewell began
to deploy his veterans of the Valley campaign behind Hill's flank by the road to the
McGehee house and extended the flank northward to stretch toward D. H. Hill's right.
Before Ewell's seasoned troops were in line, the overflow of the enemy's counterthrust
caught his regiments as they came up, and the fate of Lee's battle shifted off the center
of Hill to include Ewell's division.
5
Major General Richard Stoddert Ewell
had been Jackson's right-hand man in the Valley campaign. A West Pointer,
"Dick" Ewell had come to the Confederate armies from the tough assignment of
commanding a company of dragoons in the Southwest border service. Though his capacities
grew with his rise to command of a division, Ewell liked it best when he could join in
combat like a captain, as he did whenever Jackson was out of sight.
229
"Old Baldhead," as he was
called, was to become the character of the army as he then was of the Valley command. With
bulging eyes, sweeping mustachios, and the movements of a startled bird, he shrilled out
awesome curses and bombastic plaints in a high, piping voice. His quaintness was actually
the facade of a lonely; generous man of fine feelings. Ewell's once prominent family of
Northern Virginia had fallen upon hard days, and his joint ambitions had been to
reestablish a plantation and marry Lizinka Brown, a wealthy
widow whom he had known since childhood. While the war had ruined the plantation
dream, he still cherished the one of the Widow Brown.
When Ewell's soldiers pushed
confidently forward through the disordered groups of Hill's troops pulling out of line the
officers and men advanced with an almost contemptuous impatience to show the city soldiers
how fighting should be done. Jeering at their fellow Confederates, Trimble's brigade moved
through the woods and across the ravine to attack the enemy north of Gregg's survivors
along the road to the McGehee house.
Isaac Trimble, about the army's
oldest general officer at sixty, was a former professional who had achieved success in
civilian life as a railroad builder. A native of Powell Hill's Culpeper County, Virginia,
Trimble had become one of Maryland's prominent citizens. Self-confident and assertive,
he was inclined to attribute to himself a wide command of battle situations and reported
dispatching other brigades and even divisions to their positions on the field. However,
his self-assertion made him a strong combat leader.
Even while Trimble's brigade was
getting into line across the ravine, Ewell discovered the difficulties that had beset
Hill's division. As he reported, "the density of the woods and the nature of the
ground were such as to prevent any extended view . . . and . . . made it necessary to
confine my exertions mainly to that locality." As the weight of Porter's
counterattack was felt on their left, Trimble's hardened veterans locked with the enemy
lines in a stand-up fight. Illusions about driving the enemy were abruptly grounded.
To the right of the road, Elzey's
Virginia brigade went in and fared no better. Arnold Elzey, a thirty-five-year-old
professional from Maryland and one of the dependables from the Valley cam-
230
paign, went
down with an ugly wound in the face and head. His men were forced to shift to defense and
took positions to escape the density of fire pouring on them from the hillside. As with
Hill's brigades, the regiments lost so heavily in getting close to the enemy that they
lost the cohesion in which the men were accustomed to mass their fire.
After Elzey came Dick Taylor's
celebrated Louisiana brigade, sporting a pelican on its flags. Probably the most colorful
outfit to come to Virginia, its personnel presented an interesting contrast to the general
impression that the Southern armies were composed of big plantation owners "fighting
for slavery." Of the regiments in the brigade, one was all Irish, with a harp on its
flag; one was formed of Acadians, the simple, warm-hearted people of the bayous; and a
third was the notorious "Tigers," a battalion composed of plug-uglies from the
wharves and alleys of New Orleans. The only officer who could (or would try) to control
the "villainous" Tigers was gigantic Rob Wheat. The son of an Episcopal rector,
Wheat was a leader of that breed of soldiers of fortune which flourished in the
nineteenth century.
The big slaveholder among the
Louisianians was their brigadier, Richard Taylor, a Yale graduate and the son of a United
States President. Taylor, thirty-six, was a sugar planter whose only military experience
had been as secretary to his father, when Zachary Taylor was a general. Widely read in the
science of war, Taylor had the intelligence and personal qualities to become a superior
soldier. Cold and haughty except with intimate friends, Dick Taylor was very much aware of
his family connections, which included Jefferson Davis, a brother-in-law. On the march
to Ashland, Taylor was stricken with a strange nervous malady which caused a paralysis of
his legs, and he could not assume command of his brigade.
Taylor's brigade crossed over the
littered ground where Hill's troops had caught the greatest concentration of the enemy's
fire from solid lines of fresh riflemen. In passing through the clumps of Hill's shaken
men, the Louisianians may have missed the commanding presence of their brigadier. Before
the troops were in position Colonel Seymour, taking the brigade in, was killed. Then the
lovable Rob Wheat went down, mortally wounded. The Louisianians
231
faltered, began to fall back, and then broke to the
rear in a rush. This break, the only blight on the history of the brigade, gave the Valley
troops a sobering taste of the fighting which Hill's men had stood up against. In the open
country of the Valley, Jackson's men had experienced none of the effects of marshy ground
and brushy timber on troops advancing. By the time Ewell had all his regiments on the
field, the units were mangled and in danger of being overrun. The ferocious Tigers, who
could not be controlled after Wheat's death, were never the same again.
6
While Ewell was absorbing some of the
enemy's attention on Hill's left, Longstreet began his diversion below Hill's right.
Wilcox, with three brigades that had been lying behind the banks of Powhite Creek, moved
out toward the strongly protected Federal flank. They immediately drew fire from the
batteries on the Watt house hill and from the heavy guns across the Chickahominy.
The other three brigades, nearer to
A. P. Hill, had waited in a light woods, and Pickett moved his brigade forward to the edge
of the clearing to develop the enemy's strength. From the volume of fire drawn along the
whole front, Longstreet perceived that a demonstration would accomplish nothing. Without
communicating with Lee, Longstreet decided to act on his own initiative and turn the
demonstration into an assault. His division would attack precisely where the enemy
wanted him to but, as he said, there was no help for it if the day was to be saved.
It was around five o'clock when
Longstreet, customarily deliberate, began to prepare to advance his whole line. Pickett
by that time was wounded, but his brigade continued its steady fire from the edge of the
woods as the other brigades moved forward.
It was while Longstreet was forming
that Whiting was sent forward by Lee to report to Longstreet for orders. Longstreet
directed him to form on Pickett's left. Hood's brigade was then going into position behind
Hill's lines across the road leading to the Watt house. Whiting ordered Law to form his
brigade on Hood's right. When the men moved forward through the woods, regiment by regi-
232
ment, Law
saw that "a thin and irregular line of General Hill's troops were keeping up the
fight, but, already badly cut up, [they] were wasting away from the heavy fire from the
Federal lines."
When Hood
and Law were advancing into position behind Hill and to his right, Ewell got some relief
on his left by the arrival of Lawton's brigade. This Georgia brigade of 3,500 men ---about
the size of the rest of Jackson's division --- had arrived on the field separately from
the other brigades. In the drift through the swampy woods, all the brigades of Jackson's
division emerged separately, and by chance Lawton came out at a cornfield immediately in
the rear of Ewell's hard-pressed troops.
Alexander Lawton, a
thirty-seven-year-old native of Maryland, had entered the Harvard Law School after
graduating from West Point and had practiced law in Savannah. He was Porter Alexander's
brother-in-law. As he arrived on the field, Lawton heard that Ewell was in trouble.
Ordering his untried regiments forward in their new uniforms, Lawton went to look for a
staff officer to provide him with instructions or directions. He saw 'two regiments retire
out of woods onto an open field in front of him, and somebody told him the enemy's fire
had driven them out.
Like Hood earlier, Lawton decided to
act on his own. Without advancing first into the woods, he formed his brigade in a single
battle line on the fields east of the Cold Harbor Road. He excited the men, going into
their first battle, by sending them forward at a run. The troops were mostly armed with
new Enfield rifles and fired in a single volley when they burst into the brush. It was the
heaviest single blast produced on the Confederate front until that time. As soon as the
regiments reached the denser part of the woods lining the soggy creek bed, the usual
difficulties in keeping alignment arose. But the weight of Lawton's Enfields tipped the
balance of volume to the Confederate side in that area, and the worst was over for A. P.
Hill and Ewell.
During these movements --- of
Longstreet, Whiting, and Lawton --- Jackson rode to New Cold Harbor for his brief
conference with Lee around five o'clock. The deployment of these units in getting into
line was not completed until after six o'clock. It was between six and seven before a
continuous line was formed from Longstreet's right to Lawton's left, nearly connecting
with D. H. Hill.
233
When Jackson rode away from Lee,
there was little left for him to do. Powell Hill had already ordered in Winder, with the
Stonewall Brigade, to close on D. H. Hill's right. When Winder filled the remaining gap
between Lawton and Harvey Hill, Lee would at last , present an unbroken front between four
and five hours after A. P. Hill's assault had opened on the expectation of
Jackson's.arrival.
Jackson's last two brigades, with
communication lost between the --- vanguard and those behind, had drifted so far southward
in passing through the woods to the front that the 3rd Brigade reached the field southwest
of New Cold Harbor back near Powhite Creek. The 2nd Brigade appeared still farther to the
southwest on the western side of Powhite Creek. The two brigades had marched almost in a
circle to come on the field approximately where they would have if no countermarch had
been made from the road back of Gaines's. millpond.
Presumably because of the positions
of these brigades on their late arrival, Jackson ordered the 2nd Brigade to support
Longstreet's right and the 3rd Brigade to support Whiting in the center, where Hill's
troops were being relieved. Jackson, his pride involved, avoided mention of the undirected
march of the two divisions, which brought six brigades on the field in five different
locations and at five different times. In his, report, he stated that "Jackson's
division" went in as a unit between Ewell's and D. H. Hill's.
After Jackson's brief exchange with
Lee, his actions were characterized by a single sentence attributed to him by Dabney. He
sent messengers to his division commanders with the words, "Tell them this affair
must hang in suspense no longer; sweep the field with the bayonet."
This order has been used to indicate
a directing spirit of combat that rose in Jackson. "Cheek and brow were blazing with
crimson blood," Dabney recalled, "as his gigantic spirit was manifestly
gathering strength." As Dabney also reported that only half an hour of sunlight
remained, this placed the time that Jackson dispatched the often quoted message---around
seven o'clock. Lee's general assault had begun before the couriers could have reached any
of Jackson's division commanders.
To cover this point, Dabney wrote,
"the ringing cheers, rising
234
from every
side out of the smoking woods, told that his will had been anticipated . . ."
Omitting the poetic concept of "anticipation," Jackson's famous sentence had no
bearing on the battle at all.
When Jackson left Lee, he evidently
made an effort to rouse himself. He rode back and forth, studying the curving front from
different angles with the fierce glare ascribed to him by Dabney. As by then his command
had been committed to others, there was no direction for his briefly gathered energies to
take, and he could only show an animated presence. Yet, a spurious sense of
accomplishment accrued to Jackson's performance at the Battle of Gaines's Mill because
of the decisive part in the final action taken by troops then under his general command.
These troops, D. H. Hill's and
Whiting's, were not a part of Jackson's Valley command. Whiting was on brief loan from
Lee's army and had operated with Jackson only on the march to Richmond. During the battle,
after sending the garbled order that immobilized Whiting on the road, Jackson had had
nothing to do with his employment. Harvey Hill's division had been placed temporarily
under Jackson's command that day, and Jackson's authority over Hill at Old Cold Harbor
consisted mostly of restraining him during the hours when A. P. Hill's division was being
cut up in its isolated action. Though these two divisions operated only technically under
Jackson's command, the Battle of Gaines's Mill has usually been presented as a rise in the
level of Jackson's performance during the Seven Days.
Jackson's behavior as a military
commander was no different from what it had been since June 24, on the march to Ashland,
when he had first revealed the effects of stress fatigue. His slow march from Hundley's
Corner to the battlefield on the 27th and his bemused inaction on reaching Old Cape
Harbor revealed the same muffled faculties and inability to impart energy to his troops.
7
At around seven o'clock, when Lee
mounted his first general assault of the day, D. H. Hill had been pressing for some time
against the angled Federal right. There Sykes's regulars had been strengthened on the
flank by Bartlett's fresh brigade. of Slocum's division
235
sent from
the Nine Mile Road. Hill had gotten some guns in action and was exerting a heavy,
continuous pressure. Though he was not budging the regulars with their fresh reserves, he
was engaging every Federal soldier and gun at that end of the line.
This placed Porter under a burden
along his front. After the brigades of Taylor and Newton (of Slocum's division) were put
in the right center between Morell and Sykes, Porter had no more reserves at hand. The
fresh brigades of French and Meagher had crossed the Chickahominy but had not yet come on
to the field. In this circumstance, while the Federal center had not yet been extended,
the position was held by tiring men, their ranks thinned, from casualties, and there were
no replacements to help meet the solid thrust from Longstreet's division on the Federal
left.
Longstreet, having everything just so
before he went in, handled his brigades with the sureness that characterized the
performances which built his reputation. His men, jackets black with sweat from the long
wait in the sun, moved rapidly across the quarter of a mile of open ground, ignoring the
shells that ripped at the flank from the Federal guns south of the river. The troops
crashed into the thickets bordering the swamp with a dense burst of rifle fire.
Pushing steadily downhill toward the
high creek banks, pausing to fire as they walked, the regiments were not met with the
volume of canister and musketry that had
showered the advances of A. P. Hill and Ewell. The metal flew thickly, but troops could
live through it. Without a perceptible break anywhere, the Federal fire grew scattered
in places and the feeling of solidarity was missing from the tiers on the hillside.
Major General Morell, commanding the
division on the left center, and Butterfield, commanding the brigade on the left flank,
believed their line had been subjected to a general assault around five o'clock, when
Longstreet had made his demonstration and Whiting and Lawton had gone in to support Hill
and Ewell. For this reason, the Federal generals on the left center thought they were
facing fresh troops from an inexhaustible reserve when the weight of Langstreet's
brigades shook their lines.
At some point, segments of the
defenders began to falter. At the wrong time, regiments were pulled out of one part of the
line to support another. At the creek bank, Confederates jumped into the
236
water in
pairs, throwing their rifles up on the opposite side. One pushed another up, and then was
pulled out himself. On the .extreme right, sturdy Wilcox started his men up the hillside.
It was slow going but it was a tide, no longer a movement of thrusts that became
fragmented by concentrations of fire.
With Longstreet and D. H. Hill
pressing on opposite ends --- and the Federal left beginning to give a little --- Lee
delivered the main thrust where Porter least expected it. It came over the seemingly
impregnable center, at the steepest part of the hill, where Powell Hill's brigades had
been shattered in their five hours of fighting.
During the course of the piecemeal
arrival of the units upon the field, as Lee had gradually assumed direction of the battle,
he still avoided issuing detailed orders which denied an officer the opportunity to make
changes to conform, with the situation as it developed in his sector. To Whiting he said,
in effect: Break the enemy's line.
Hood approached after Lee had given
the order, and Lee told his former lieutenant in the old 2nd Cavalry that all the fighting
had not dislodged the enemy. "This must be done," Lee said. "Can you break
his line?"
"I can try," Hood said.
Hood's brigade was formed on the left
of Law's, the two totaling four thousand relatively fresh men. Whiting rode along the
lines as the men prepared to go in over the ground where Hill's dead and wounded were
strewn. Those remnants of Hill's division who continued to fire had formed behind a
slight rise on the slope near and parallel to the creek. Whiting ordered his officers to
send their men fast down the slope once they breasted this little rise, not pausing to
fire. With fixed bayonets, the men were to carry their rifles at.trail arms and place
their reliance on the quickness with which they could cross the creek and approach the
enemy's first and strongest line.
Law said, "Had these orders not
been strictly obeyed the assault would have been a failure. No troops could have stood
long in the withering storm of lead and iron that beat into their faces as they became
fully exposed to view from the Federal lines."
The assault would possibly have
failed anyway except for the instinct for combat leadership displayed by young Hood. Had
he advanced in the blindness with which Ripley had led his brigade at Ellerson's Mill, the
whole day might well have ended in failure.
237
From the
moment his regiments began their advance, Hood, striking no gallant pose of the general
inspiring his men by advancing with bared sword, moved to where he surveyed the whole
field of action.
His brigade and Law's passed over the
rise and plunged down the slope with a high yell. From the rise nearly to the bottom, the
two lines advanced in the range of the Federal batteries, and bursting canister took a
severe toll. In the thickets near the creek the men with their bright bayonets came under
rifle fire from the exhausted Federal infantrymen crouched behind the earth and logs. Many
of the Federal rifles had become fouled from the long firing and were useless, but the sun
was setting then, and Porter's soldiers knew this would be the last assault:
On the way to the ravine, Hood's men
moved through the woods , while Law's brigades crossed an open field. Mounted behind his
double lines, Hood saw a space widen where Law's right should connect with Longstreet's
left. One of Longstreet's regiments had halted to deliver fire and, not resuming its
advance, continued to fire from a stationary position. An uncomplicated, aggressive man
with quick reflexes, Hood reacted quickly to do what had to be done.
With no desire to claim credit
himself or to cast reflection upon another, Hood never reported that the failure of other
troops to advance exposed the flank of Whiting's division. He only said he had crossed two
of his regiments behind Law and threw the 4th Texas forward with the 18th Georgia in
support. Actually he dismounted and, towering above most of his men, personally led the
4th Texas toward the gap.
This regiment had been his first
Confederate command. The 4th Texas was not a young man's regiment. It was dominated by
substantial citizens - stockmen, farmers, merchants - with forty lawyers among its 130
commissioned and noncommissioned officers: After Hood was promoted to brigadier, the
assertive individualises could not. agree on a native Texan to command them. They selected
for their colonel fifty-year-old John Marshall, a Virginia native who, as editor of the
Austin State Gazette, was a state political power. The lieutenant colonel was
twenty-three-old Bradfute Warwick, of a distinguished Richmond background. A graduate of
medical college, Warwick, while continuing his medical studies in Eu-
238
rope, had
volunteered with Garibaldi and risen to captain. This handsome young man had, like Hood,
sent his mare to the rear., Going down the slope alone the Texans marched bent over,
"turkey hunting style," as a soldier from another outfit saw them. When their
line formed on Law's right at the bottom of the hill, the 4th Texas had taken the heaviest
casualties in the two-brigade division. At the brushy bottom of the hill in that area,
the Federal lines were the closest to the creek, no more than a few yards up the slope
from the high banks. When the 4th Texas reached the creek in line with the other
regiments, nearly one fourth of the men had fallen in the two brigades.
At the creek none paused to fire.
Some leaped the banks, while others jumped in and climbed out. Despite their different
methods of getting across, the men maintained their alignments in the battle lines and
started up the hill, still without firing. Colonel Marshall fell from his horse, dead when
they found him. Bradfute Warwick picked up a battle flag left behind in one of Hill's
earlier thrusts. Waving it, he yelled to the men to rush the first breastworks.
The worn-out Federals behind the
works had given all they had. It was clear that the screaming men coming toward them with
bayonets were not going to stop. The first line of defenders left their works and
started to scramble up the steep hill. At the second line they might get a chance to
reload, maybe replace a fouled rifle, and make a stand with the reserve line fifty or more
yards farther up the hill.
Only when Porter's troops began their
withdrawal to the second line did the Texans begin firing. As other segments of Porter's
first line were abandoned, Law's regiments--- from Mississippi, Alabama and North Carolina
--- paused to aim and fire at close range. The 4th Texas had lost 250 men, half its
personnel, but the 18th Georgia coming on behind gave weight to the fire.
The retreating Federal soldiers fell
in droves. The reserves on the second line, seeing their companions fall by the scores,
and themselves unable to fire with the withdrawing first line in their front, broke back
for the crest of the hill. When the weaker second line of works was abandoned, the
retreating soldiers from the first line made no effort to make a stand. Their retirement
became flight.
The two brigades, the men's blood up
with the chance to return
239
the thousand casualties they had
suffered, stayed on the heels of the Federals, firing rapidly and carefully. At last the
Texans, with no more breath for yells, reached the crest of the slope and saw the masses
of Federal troops milling on the plateau in the falling dusk. Bradfute Warwick went down
there, severely wounded. He was taken to his father's house in Richmond, where he died a
week later.
Though the consensus of reports
agreed that the 4th Texas had opened the first wedge, sections of the line of defense
beyond the creek were abandoned almost simultaneously across the front of the, two
brigades. Also, though the consensus agreed that the first break had been made by Hood and
Law, troops from Longstreet's long line of assault stumbled up on the crest of the Watt
house almost at the same time. Micah Jenkins's South Carolina regiment, which had sliced
through the Federal lines at Seven Pines with such speed and power, was among the first to
reach the disorder of the crest, near Hood. Further right Virginia regiments of Cadmus
Wilcox came storming up onto the plateau.
Porter said the first break came in
the center, near his headquarters in the Watt house. The Confederate pressure from the
Federal left flank to the center was so heavy, and the defenders so fought out, that a
break anywhere would have started the whole two-mile front to give.
8
The drives to the crest were not made
evenly. The first men to reach the center of Porter's force on the plateau seemed to be
confronted with more Yankees than they had faced all day. Though the separated
Confederate units, several with all field officers lost, found themselves in no position
to exploit the break, Porter's men were equally disorganized.
Nothing like a general rout had
begun. Most of the Federal soldiers were trying to establish order on regimental units.
But numbers of soldiers were fleeing, dropping their arms as they ran, and some units
were cut off in the suddenness of the break. In the center two regiments surrendered to
Whiting's two brigades.
Then, in the failing light, Sykes's
U. S. Regulars and their reinforcements began a stubborn withdrawal from Porter's right,
mov-
240
ing slowly
back in a slight arc from the McGehee house toward the road to the Chickahominy.
That had been a long, grim duel along
the swamp on the Federal right flank between the two Southerners, Harvey Hill and George
Sykes. They were a tenacious pair, and dour Sykes, commanding regulars, fought with the
pride of an old-line soldier against volunteers. Harvey Hill showed again, as at Seven
Pines, his skillful control of his units and the cohesive drive he could sustain in
assault. For his final push, after more than two hours of frustration, his right was
supported by the comparatively fresh brigades of Lawton and Winder. Sykes could not
contain the weight thrown in late, but Hill could not break him.
With Sykes retiring southeast across
the plateau, Porter could look only to withdrawing Morell, McCall and the brigades of
Slocum. Porter had fourteen or more guns lined up on the plateau to blast the disorganized
Confederate units breaking over the crest of the hill, and a curious episode nullified
their potential destruction.
Philip St. George Cooke commanded
several regiments of cavalry that had been held in reserve and the veteran professional
soldier decided to break the assault force before its units formed for pursuit. Cooke, a
Virginian, was Jeb Stuart's father-in-law and the father of a Harvard-educated infantry
colonel, both of whom had broken off relations with him for fighting against his state.
The arguments are evenly divided as to whether the cavalry charge was a bold stroke or a
foolish impulse doomed to disaster.
With the light dimming and smoke
drifting over the indescribable confusion on the plateau, the horses, looming out of the
fog, bore down on the foot soldiers. Against some troops such a charge might have worked,
but these soldiers were country boys as familiar with horses as with house pets, and they
calmly stood their ground and fired. When their rifles were empty, the men thrust bayonets
at the necks of the horses or at the riders trying to get at them with saber and pistol.
The charge quickly degenerated into a
stampede in reverse. Riderless horses ran about with wildly flapping stirrups, horses
went out of control and the riders lost all sense of direction. Their backward rush
carried the horsemen into Porter's fourteen guns. Artil-
241
lery horses
joined the gallop and ran off, gunners were knocked down, and by the time the dust settled
most of the guns had been overrun by Whiting's troops.
Porter claimed Cooke's cavalry charge
precipitated his retreat. Cooke claimed his charge made possible the relative order in
which Porter withdrew. From the condition of Porter's infantry, no confusion wrought by the cavalry was necessary
to force a hasty withdrawal. The luckless charge unquestionably intensified the general
confusion, though it also confused Lee's soldiers. Whatever the charge contributed, the
action of the 5th and part of the 2nd U. S. Cavalry marked the end of the battle.
Fitz-John Porter was a hard loser.
Many Confederates, in their official reports and later personal writings, paid the good
soldier the highest tributes for the magnificent stand made by his troops. Porter was not
at all generous. Back in May, when he had used half a corps to drive Branch's green
brigade at Hanover Court House, he had attributed his victory entirely to the valor of his
own men. At Gaines's Mill, where he was actually outnumbered by little more than five to
four, and where he enjoyed the advantage in artillery and possibly the strongest defensive
position of the war, he attributed his loss entirely to the enemy's
"overwhelming" numbers and presented a picture of orderliness in his withdrawal
which did not exist.
Blaming Cooke, Porter stated that the
fourteen guns which the cavalry charge had forced him to abandon were the only guns lost
except for two that ran off from the bridges in the night movement across the
Chickahominy. Some of those fourteen guns were still
firing after the cavalry charge, and the Confederates captured twenty-two guns
altogether. Thousands of Federal rifles, supplies which the Confederate quartermasters
were three days collecting, and several rapid-fire contraptions on a machine gun
principle were gleaned from the field. Nearly three thousand Federal soldiers were taken
prisoner and countless hundreds of stragglers were saved from capture by darkness.
The late arrival of French's and
Meagher's brigades provided a rallying point to troops making their way through the dusk
in poor order. The solid lines presented by these two brigades prevented
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any
spontaneous pursuit by the disorganized Confederate units on the plateau. It was too dark
for organized pursuit to be formed and the Confederates could not get their batteries up
the hill.
Porter retired from the dark plateau
southeastward to the Chickahominy, his guns using the road that ran from the McGehee
house. Units slowly converged on the new bridges McClellan had built, where Sumner had
crossed during the Battle of Seven Pines. The bulk of his army had crossed by daylight of
the next morning, though some stragglers never got to the bridges. Brigadier General
Reynolds, who had lain down to rest while his lines crept through the night, was captured
asleep the following morning. Porter brought his army off the field in highly commendable
order under the circumstances, but it was not the ordered withdrawal he claimed. His corps
was saved from more complete wreckage by the late hour of the final attack.
Demonstrating
the advantages of a strong defensive position and superior artillery, Porter's loss of
4000 killed and wounded was only half of Lee's total. Porter's total casualties were
brought to about 6900 by the loss of almost 3000 prisoners.
9
Driving Porter came at the heavy cost
of eight thousand Confederate casualties. This was never emphasized as were the losses
at Ellerson's Mill. In the first day's fight, where the responsibility could be shifted to
A. P. Hill's "impulsive attack," Ripley's losses were cited endlessly as waste
of life: "335 men in the 44th Georgia alone" was frequently mentioned, without
the mention that only one other of Ripley's. regiments was seriously engaged, or that Hill
lost little more than seven hundred out of five brigades engaged. Of Gaines's Mill, where
Lee commanded, it was never stressed that A. P. Hill's division lost 2688 killed and
wounded (6o per cent casualties in the regiment of Orr's Rifles) and uncounted hundreds
not included on the casualty lists. These were men who suffered minor concussions from
shell bursts, temporarily incapacitating injuries from blows from spent bullets, shell
fragments, or falling tree branches and heavy falls the men took in underbrush and ditch.
Many of these unlisted casualties, which returned to action within
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twenty-four
hours or a few days, would have been captured had the field been lost.
The highest proportion of casualties,
25 per cent, was suffered by Whiting's two brigades. Chase Whiting dimmed his own glory by
writing disparagingly of those remnants of Hill's troops through whose ranks Hood and Law
passed in their late assault. Whiting accused them of not following his attacking lines up
the hill, and said he doubted if any of the men passed the creek. Whiting's remarks came
ill from a general who had remained idle while ms's division splintered its strength in
wearing down successive lines of defenders.
Longstreet, in observing that A. P.
Hill was about the only general who did not claim credit for the breakthrough, pointed out
that the success of Whiting's assault was built on Hill's five-hour fight in the swamp.
"The troops of the gallant A. P. Hill, that did as much and as effective fighting as
any, received little of the credit properly due them. It was their long and steady fight
that thinned the Federal ranks and caused them to so foul their guns that they were out
of order when the final struggle came."
Ultimately, it was John Hood's
tactical initiative that sustained the assault of the two brigades then under Whiting's
command. Though Law was an intelligent, determined and ambitions soldier, whose record of
performance was uniformly high, he was, not a professional. At Gaines's Mill, he could
scarcely have been expected to exercise the intuitive tactical control of the combative
Hood. It was "Hood's Texans" the army spoke of (ignoring the 18th Georgia in
the brigade), and Hood's Texans, not Whiting's command, became from that day on Lee's
favorite shock troops.
Longstreet, in a generous mood after
the sound performance of his own troops, spoke for the majority when he said there was
glory enough for all. Longstreet was a different soldier than he had been at Seven Pines,
when Johnston had given him a range of responsibility that exceeded his capacities ---
at least in such an ill-defined command situation. Under Lee, Longstreet's part in the
whole was both more definite and more limited, since he was allowed initiative in tactics
within the framework of a clearly stated objective. In
his appraisal of the situation on the Union left at Gaines's Mill, in forming his troops
for the separate points of assault, and in delivering a
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thrust in
coordination with Whiting, Longstreet gave every evidence of living up to the reputation
he had built in Johnston's army. Immediately following the battle Lee conferred with his
laconic, unruffled subordinate, revealing by his manner trust in his dependability. For
his part, Longstreet seemed secure in the niche he had won in the new commander's army,
and his energies were directed to executing the orders of the leader who had won the first
major Confederate victory since First Manassas.
That night, June 27, the men with Lee
were not certain of the nature of the victory. Some, such as Whiting, doubted the action
was a victory. Whiting believed that McClellan had permitted Lee to become fully engaged
on the north bank of the Chickahominy in order to drive over Magruder and Huger.
If Lee considered this possibility,
there is no record of it. Longstreet's division was near the crossing to New Bridge,
connecting with Magruder, and his troops had not been hard used. Excepting Lawton's
brigade, the three brigades of Jackson's division had scarcely been engaged, taking less
than a hundred casualties.
More of a factor than his position to
shift troops across the river was Lee's belief that he faced the bulk of McClellan's army
on the north side. He might have felt less secure in the ability of Magruder and Huger
to hold their positions had he known that McClellan had more than sixty thousand
infantry in front of them, with his artillery containing twenty-odd of his semimobile
siege guns. In a case where ignorance supported boldness, Lee evidently thought only of
finishing McClellan on the north of the river or forcing him into a retreat back down the
peninsula.
On leaving the grisly battlefield to
go to temporary quarters at a country house near New Bridge, Lee planned to resume the
action early the next morning to discover the new position to which McClellan would
withdraw. He did not know that during the night Porter's corps was crossing the bridges to
fall in on McClellan's main force around Fair Oaks, nor did he suspect that McClellan was
abandoning his base at the White House.
According to the knowledge Lee
possessed, it seemed likely that McClellan would take a stand somewhere between the Cold
Harbor Road to the Grapevine Bridges and Dispatch Station. This was a
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stop on the
York River Railroad where it crossed to the north side of the Chickahominy, eight miles
east of the battleground.
For Lee and the rest of the army all
this was supposition during the night where uneasy small stirrings followed the violence
of the seven hours of battle. Lost units poked gingerly through the blackness looking
for water. Lanterns flickered where surgeons moved to those wounded they could locate by
their cries and moans. Harness and wheels creaked as artillerists moved their horses to
Powhite Creek. Captains and majors, assuming the commands of fallen field officers,
moved about establishing their regiments.
Jackson's wagons were not up, and
poor Dabney, trying to make a bed in a cornfield, had his stomach gag at a piece of raw
tongue an officer shared with him and his feelings outraged at the fiery liquid the
officer offered him to wash down the tongue. It was not a happy night at Jackson's
headquarters.
Throughout the army there was little
feeling of elation. The men knew they had won an engagement they had had to win. For the
rest, they ached with fatigue, brushed weakly at mosquitoes as they found spots on the
ground for sleep, and left the next day and the next battle to the unknown fates of
tomorrow.
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