 | III.
SEVEN PINES AND THE SEVEN DAYS. Hammer and rapier |  |
3. III.
SEVEN PINES AND THE SEVEN DAYS.
On the left bank of the Chickahominy, about two
miles from New Bridge, stands, in the midst of bleak
and melancholy fields, a lofty, rugged, and solitary
oak, riven by cannon balls.
At about two o'clock in the morning, between the
27th and 28th of June, 1862, two officers—one of
them very illustrious, the other very obscure—had
wrapped themselves in their blankets, and were falling
asleep beneath this tree, when a third personage,
entirely unattended, rode up, dismounted, and lying
down between the weary men, began to converse.
“Yesterday was the most terrific fire of musketry I
ever heard,” he said; and any one who had listened to
the accents of that brief, low, abrupt voice, would have
recognized it. The speaker was Stonewall Jackson;
he was addressing General Stuart, and he referred to
the bitter, desperate, and bloody conflict of “Cold
Harbor.”
A battle which the man of Manassas, Kernstown,
and Port Republic called “terrific” must be worthy of
description. Let us therefore try to paint the grand
and absorbing panorama which those summer days of
1862 unrolled upon the banks of the Chickahominy.
swampy fields and the tangled underwood—here was
struck a blow which shook the fabric of the Federal
Government. It did not overthrow it; but it made
the huge mass tremble.
One month before, that is to say, at the close of
May, McClellan had ascended the Peninsula; thrown
his left wing across the Chickahominy; erected admirable
works there—and with his army of one
hundred and fifty thousand men, had rooted himself
within sight of the spires of Richmond. Then commenced
his slow, steady, inexorable advance. Inch by
inch, foot by foot, he began to traverse the four or five
miles which separated him from the “doomed city.”
It was a siege commenced at the distance of five miles,
as Grant's was afterwards commenced at the distance
of twenty—and every day McClellan ascended his
tall tree on the bank of the river to reconnoitre through
his glasses the roof-tops of the city which he was thus
assailing by “regular approaches.”
In the last days of May he was in excellent spirits.
His dispatches will show that. His great army was in
light marching order; his left was pushed to a point
upon the Williamsburgh road, where seven lofty pines
gave their name to the locality; thence he was on the
point of springing upon the enemy in his front, when
that enemy sprung upon him.
Johnston, the cool and wary soldier who had foiled
his great adversary at Manassas, now took the initiative.
On the last day of May the Southern lines advanced
into the swampy thicket at Seven Pines; a furious
assault was made upon the enemy's left there, and on
and sangninary struggles of the war, the Federal left,
under General Casey, was swept from the field, shattered,
paralyzed, and with “no longer any fight” in
that wing of the United States Army. The enemy
fought gallantly at Seven Pines. Did the “rebels”
fight as bravely? Let a member of the New York
Artillery, writing to the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper,
give his evidence:
“Our shot tore their ranks wide open,” says this
writer, “and shattered them asunder in a manner that
was frightful to witness; but they closed up at once,
and came on as steadily as English veterans. When
they got within four hundred yards, we closed our case
shot and opened on them with canister; and such destruction
I never elsewhere witnessed. At each discharge
great gaps were made in their ranks—indeed
whole companies went down before that murderous
fire—but they closed up with an order and discipline
that was awe-inspiring.... It was awful to see
their ranks torn and shattered by every discharge of
canister that we poured into their faces, but they closed
up and still kept advancing right in face of the fire.
At one time, three lines, one behind the other, were
steadily advancing, and three of their flags were
brought in range of one of our guns, shotted with canister.
`Fire!' shouted the gunner, and down went
those three flags, and a gap was opened through three
lines more, as if a thunderbolt had torn through them,
and their dead lay in swaths. But they at once closed
up, and came steadily on, never halting or wavering,
right through the woods, over the fence, through the
before them, captured every piece!”
If that had been written by a Confederate, it might
be doubted by some readers. But the writer was a
soldier of the Federal Army—was there anything to
make him say that, but a love of truth? He saw a
charge which the Old Guard of Napoleon never surpassed,
and he described what he saw, like a worthy
soldier, forgetting under which flag he fought.
At nightfall on the 31st of May, the Federal left,
on the south bank of the Chickahominy, was driven.
It had fallen back from Seven Pines—the Confederates
held the works there—a bloody if not decisive
blow had been struck at Gen. McClellan's programme.
But Johnston had been wounded by a fragment of
shell, and was lying faint and pale in his house upon
Church Hill, in Richmond. Who was to succeed him?
All eyes turned to a man as yet little known except
in military quarters—an officer, first of the engineers,
then of the cavalry—Robert E. Lee. He was then in
Richmond, rode every day out to the lines; but had
no command. He was now assigned to duty as commander
of the Confederate forces, in place of Johnston.
The heavy and firm hand of the great Virginian was
soon felt at the helm. The ship which had drifted
rudderless for a moment, after the fall of Johnston,
was again under command, and bore down upon the
enemy's line of battle, as Nelson's flag ship did at Trafalgar.
The moment called for action, action, action! Important
events were taking place in every part of the
issue the great campaign of the Valley.
On the day after the battle of Seven Pines, “Old
Stonewall,” as the country now began to call him,
passed between the converging columns of Fremont
and Shields at Strasburg; struck them with his right
hand and his left, and retreated with his prisoners and
spoils toward the Upper Valley, where nine days afterward
he was to fight the battles of Cross Keys and Port
Republic, and remain the master of the situation.
Lee had scarcely taken command when the intelligence
of the victory at Port Republic came to him,
borne on the breeze of the mountains. Fremont was
paralyzed, which was as good as routed; Jackson was
free to move wherever he was ordered; now was the
time for a great blow at McClellan, and the arm was
raised.
Before it fell, it was necessary to discover whether
an opening existed in the enemy's coat of mail, through
which the point of the weapon could pierce him. On
his left, below Seven Pines, to which locality he had
again advanced, the armor was perfect. Frowning
works behind bristling abattis rose everywhere, and it
was determined to assail, if possible, the Federal right
beyond the Chickahominy. An important point was
still, however, to be decided. Had Gen. McClellan
fortified his right wing as he had fortified his left?
Was he ready on the north bank as on the south of the
stream? To determine this point, Stuart was sent
with fifteen hundred horsemen to make a reconnoissance.
Stuart—that model cavalier with the keen-edged
the hour was darkest, bated one jot or tittle of the
heart of hope—Stuart set out one night about the
middle of June, at moonrise, struck for Old Church,
beyond the Federal right; ascertained that they had
no defences in that quarter; drove their cavalry before
him; made the circuit of McClellan's army, not intending
to surrender, but, if intercepted, to “die game;”
crossed the Chickahominy far below; and made his
re-entrance into the Confederate lines just as the Federal
forces rushed upon him.
“He has gone in at the back door,” said Col. Rush,
of the Federal Lancers, on returning from the pursuit.
“I saw his rear-guard as it passed the swamp.”
But the information was the important thing, whether
brought in at the back-door or the front. Stuart rode
thirty miles to Richmond on the night of his entry into
Charles City, below Malvern Hill, and before daylight
Gen. Lee and the authorities knew that the Federal
right beyond Mechanicsville was undefended.
From that moment the best plan of assault was obvious.
In front at Seven Pines, the enemy were posted
behind works, so heavy and complete, that the best
troops in the world would have recoiled from them,
or dashed themselves to pieces, without hope. On
the left were defences almost as strong, and to reach
them—even to arrive within range of the long rows of
cannon—it was necessary first to wade through the
frightful ooze of White Oak Swamp. Thus both these
approaches, in front and on the Federal left, were impracticable.
The right remained, and that right was
now known to be open, undefended; here was the
sword's point could reach the Federal heart.
The hand to grasp that weapon must be trusty, the
eye to direct the blow, clear and sure. The firm and
daring hand of Jackson was best of all suited for the
work; and the issue of affairs at Port Republic had
left him free as the wind to move wherever he was
needed.
He was beyond the Blue Ridge, but it is certain that
in spirit he was on the Chickahominy. He knew what
was demanded of him, and as though obeying a voice
which called him, hastened, in the language of his men,
to “strip for a fight.” Then the order came, and at
once he began to move.
The column crossed the Blue Ridge and headed toward
the lowland. The soldiers had ceased to ask any
questions. In a general order, Jackson had forbidden
all discussion of his movements; enjoined upon the
troops not even to inquire the names of the villages
through which they passed, and to reply, “I don't
know,” to any question. The order was obeyed. Seeing
a man climb a fence to pull some cherries:
“Where are you going?” asked Jackson.
“I don't know,” was the reply.
“To what command do you belong?”
“I don't know.”
“Well, what State are you from?”
“I don't know.”
A dry smile flitted across the tanned face under the
sun-scorched cadet cap, and the man in the dingy gray
uniform rode on. His entire command had become
veritable “Know-Nothings.”
That result was more important than it may appear.
The great point was that deserters should have little to
communicate, even if they knew where to find the
enemy, and that Gen. McClellan should be the greatest
Know-Nothing of all. The plan succeeded. In Washington
and on the Chickahominy there was utter ignorance
of Jackson's whereabouts. The secret was as
closely guarded in the Confederate army.
On the night of the 26th of June, Gen. Stuart handed
to the present writer a dispatch for delivery to a confidential
emissary before daylight. It was directed
simply, “Gen. T. J. Jackson, Somewhere.” Ashland,
within sixteen miles of Richmond, was this “Somewhere.”
Jackson had reached that point, and his heavy
arm was already raised to strike. Gen. McClellan,
meanwhile, was smoking his cigar, and looking at the
spire of St. Paul's Church in Richmond, where he probably
expected soon to hear the prayer for the President
of the United States.
There were many who would doubtless have been
glad to have seen that edifice, and all others in the
“doomed city,” blown to atoms with gunpowder. This
soldier and gentleman had no such desire or intention.
At West Point he had learned war, not rapine.
From this rapid summary of the “situation,” the
reader will be able to form a just estimate of the relative
positions which the two great adversaries, Lee and
McClellan, occupied toward each other, on the night
of the 26th of June, 1862.
On both sides of the Chickahominy, the fields of
Henrico, Hanover, and New Kent, were dark with the
swarm of Federal soldiers, in their bright blue uniforms.
half-destroyed woods—artillery rumbled across the
desolated fields—every dwelling-house was overrun—
the whole face of the earth had become one huge, dirty
camp. The very owls and whippoorwills had disappeared
in the tangled depths of the swamp—the venomous
moccasins of the ooze had been frightened into
their holes by the tramp, the roll, and the thunder of
moving columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery.
The army numbered one hundred and fifty thousand
men, one hundred and twelve thousand effective
for the field—see the Federal reports—and this great
engine, Gen. McClellan was about to hurl against
Lee, whose force numbered about sixty thousand, when
“contrabands” hastened in, and announced that he
himself was to be attacked; that the dreaded Stonewall
Jackson was on his flank, ready to assail him. At
noon on the 26th of June, he wrote to Washington:
“I have just heard that our advanced cavalry pickets
on the left bank of the Chickahominy, are being
driven in. It is probably Jackson's advance guard.”
Two hours and a half afterwards he was sure of the
fact.
“Jackson is driving in my pickets, etc., on the other
side of the Chickahominy.”
An hour afterwards, A. P. Hill had crossed the
stream at Meadow Bridge, nearly north of Richmond;
had hastened forward to Mechanicsville, and then
thrown himself like a tiger against the Federal works,
which he carried at the point of the bayonet. The
bridge being thus uncovered, Longstreet and D. H.
Hill crossed—the enemy were again assailed at Beaver
Jackson swept around their right, and leaving the
ground behind them encumbered with burning stores,
they fell back rapidly to the formidable position behind
Powhite Creek.
Lee's excellent plan of battle was thus in progress
of execution. It was simple, as all great things are.
While Magruder remained in front of Seven Pines,
that is to say, the Federal centre opposite Richmond,
with orders to hold his position at all hazards, and to
the last, the remainder of the army was to cross at
Meadow Bridge and Mechaniesville, and sweep down
the left branch of the stream in echelon of divisions,
the left in advance.
From left to right the line would be, Jackson—D.
H. Hill—A. P. Hill—Longstreet; Longstreet to
make a heavy feint on the river's bank; the two Hills
to protect his flank and the centre; Jackson to move
around, and coming in upon their right, compel them
to abandon their strong works, come out into the open
fields, and either fight there, or retreat toward the
White House—that is, their bread and meat.
Let the reader glance at the map. Without a map,
all descriptions of military movements are, as Hamlet
says, but “words, words, words!” Pushing through
the fields and forests of Hanover, Jackson was to gain
ground toward the Pamunkey; reach out his ponderous
arm beyond Cold Harbor; envelope the enemy's
position on Powhite Creek; and crush them in his
grasp. If they drew back and eluded him, so much
the better. In open fight, he would dash them to
them behind the breastworks.
Such was the order of battle conceived and mapped
out, in its minutest details, by the clear brain of the
great soldier at the head of the Confederate Army.
What Lee had thus matured in his tent, was translated
into action in the field, with little modification. Longstreet
and A. P. Hill threw their columns against the
enemy near Gaines' Mill, and closed in, in a hand to
hand struggle; nearly the whole Federal Army was
discovered there in front of these two divisions, and
Jackson, advancing grimly, steadily, like a coming
Fate, to his appointed work of getting in the enemy's
rear, was now recalled, and ordered to concentrate his
entire force near the Old Cold Harbor House, and
attack.
He obeyed. The roar of artillery there doubtless
drew him; for under that calm exterior was the inborn
spirit of “fight” which characterizes the lion or
the tiger. At the word, he changed his line of march,
half faced to the right; and at five in the afternoon
swept forward to the arena upon which the mighty
adversaries had grappled in a mortal embrace.
He did not come too soon. Let us see what had
happened, but look first at the topography of the country.
The character of the ground in battles often
saves or destroys. A swamp involves the fate of five
thousand men; a mile of open field in front of works
crowned with cannon, means ten thousand corpses. In
the battle of Cold Harbor neither the swamp nor the
open ground was wanting, and it was the assailing
The writer of this page had been familiar with this
locality from his youth. He thought he knew it well
before the war; but, after June 27, 1862, he felt he
had nothing more to learn.
Fancy a rolling country of fields, woods, water-courses;
and, along the margins of these water-courses,
swamps overgrown with brushwood, flags, and marsh-grass—an
actual jungle. You place the foot on firm
earth apparently,—it sinks. You step upon a prostrate
log,—it turns. You try to advance,—ooze, slush,
brambles, and “jungle” are before you.
Through this swampy undergrowth, the haunt of
the owl, the whippoorwill, and the moccasin, the men
of Jackson, Hill, and Hood, charged triple lines of
Federal breastworks.
Where the swamp ended, the slopes appeared,—
slopes bare of trees, and swept from one end to the
other, as a broom sweeps a floor, by the shell or canister
of artillery posted on the crests.
Across these slopes, the Confederate lines advanced
to storm the defences of Gen. McClellan.
Near Gaines' Mill, and a little lower down, the
ground often rises into abrupt ridges, flanked by deep
ravines, which afford a fatal advantage to sharpshooters.
It was upon a ridge of this description, behind
Powhite Creek,—that is to say, behind open slope,
swampy undergrowth, and sheltering ravine,—that
McClellan had erected his triple tiers of earthworks,
with cannon.
Behind this impenetrable armor the great Federal
gladiator awaited the assault of the opponent, whose
skill and courage no one knew better than himself.
The assault began between the hours of two and
three on a cloudless day of June,—one of those afternoons
when the face of nature seems to be wrapped in
calm repose, and the very birds appear to slumber.
The dying on that day were, at least, to see the blue
sky bending over them, and the sunlight glittering on
the woods and streams as they passed away.
A. P. Hill, pressing forward to the two or three
cabins called New Cold Harbor, threw himself upon
the Federal forces posted near that place, and soon
the battle began to rage with fury.
The style of the late “war correspondents” in the
journals will not be adopted by the present writer,
here or elsewhere. It is easy to pile up adjectives,
and invent the curious phenomena of “iron hail,”
“leaden storms,” “tempests of projectiles,” and “hurricanes
of canister, mowing down whole ranks.” Battle
is a stern, not a poetical affair; the genius of
conflict a huge, dirty, bloody, and very hideous figure,
—not a melodramatic actor, spouting a part. Smoke,
uproar, blood, groans, cheers, and the cries of the dying
enter into war; but these are as small a portion of
the real subject as the “iron hail,” or the “leaden
storms.” Lee's plans, and the manner in which his
lieutenants carried them out, are more rational subjects
of interest than the roar of the artillery, or the groans
of the wounded.
Hill charged the enemy's breastworks, swept over
the first and second lines, reached the third on the
summit of the ridge, stormed that, too, with the bayonet,—from
the heights above the woods resounded
the Confederate cheers of victory.
They were not uttered a second time; the men who
uttered them were at the next moment either driven
back into the ravine, or had passed to eternity. The
enemy had made a vigorous charge, regained their
works, and, advancing in their turn, drove the little
force of Hill, about eight thousand men, steadily back
upon New Cold Harbor.
The struggle now became more desperate and bloody
than before. Hill was a true heart of oak; no human
soul was ever braver than this slender Virginian, in
his plain uniform, his old slouch hat, and with his
amiable smile. He never shrunk to the end of the
drama any more than there in the first act—peace to
that brave!
For an hour after the successful assault upon the
Federal works, Hill continued to hold his ground near
New Cold Harbor, in spite of determined attacks, and
heavy loss; but then it became evident that succor
must be sent him, or he would be swept away. With
him Lee's centre would disappear; his wings would
be divided; then good-bye to Longstreet—perhaps to
Jackson.
Lee acted with decision. Longstreet was ordered to
make a feint against the Federal left, upon the high
ridge in his front, and this he proceeded to do, with
that steady vigor which procured for him from Lee
the name of “The Old War-horse.” His men advanced
the front, and the Federal guns beyond the stream;
the feint was made, and the enemy did not move.
Then Longstreet, as always, assumed the responsibility
of acting according to his judgment, when a new
phase was presented by events. He turned the feint
into an attack; his men threw themselves with obstinate
courage against the enemy's works, and the battle
began to rage more furiously than ever.
For more than another hour Longstreet and Hill
held their ground in front of McClellan, receiving the
attack of a force amounting to about seventy thousand.
The two divisions opposed to this force numbered
about thirty thousand. Add the fact that the seventy
thousand were behind works, the Confederates in open
field, and the proportion will be really four to one.
The one fought the four until nearly five o'clock,
dying where they fell, torn to pieces by artillery, or
riddled with musketry, without a murmur. Men never
fought better, or died more bravely. The two commands
were slowly being destroyed—it was merely a
question of time—but they did not shrink or avoid
the work.
It was at this moment, when every heart began to
face the conviction that defeat and death awaited
them, that the long roll of musketry and the thunder
of artillery resounded from the woods in the direction
of Old Cold Harbor house. At that sound every heart
throbbed, every face flushed. Fierce cheers ran along
the decimated lines of Hill and the regiments of Longstreet,
holding their ground obstinately. “Jackson!
Jackson!” rose in a shout so wild and triumphant,
the Federal army.
It was truly Jackson who arrived—the Deus ex
machina—and General Lee, who had awaited that
welcome sound, spurred forward and met his great
associate.
The spectacle was interesting—the contrast between
the two illustrious soldiers very striking. Jackson was
riding a raw-boned sorrel, with his knees drawn up by
the short stirrups, his eyes peering out from beneath
the low rim of his faded cap; there was absolutely
nothing about him, save the dingy stars on his collar,
to indicate his rank. Lee, on the contrary, was clad
in a neat uniform, with decorations—rode an excellent
and carefully-groomed horse, and every detail of
his person, every movement of the erect and graceful
figure of the most stately cavalier in the Southern
army, revealed his elevated character, the consciousness
of command, a species of moral and “official”
grandeur both, which it was impossible to mistake.
The Almighty had made both these human beings
truly great; to only one of them had He given the
additional grace of looking great.
“Ah, General!” said Lee, grasping Jackson's hand,
“I am very glad to see you; I had hoped to have been
with you before.”
Jackson saluted, and returned the pressure of that
hand, of whose owner he said, “He is a phenomenon;
he is the only man I would follow blindfold!”
Gen. Lee then looked with anxiety in the direction
of the firing on the left.
“That fire is very heavy,” he said, in his deep voice;
“do you think your men can stand it, General?”
Jackson turned his head quickly, listened for an instant,
and then replied in the curt tones so familiar to
all who knew him:
“They can stand almost anything, General. They
can stand that!”
Ten minutes after uttering these words, Jackson
saluted his commander, put spur to his raw-boned
horse, and went at full speed to rejoin his corps, which
in his own words, had “closed in upon the front and
rear of the enemy, and was pressing forward.”
Lee remained at the centre. There he was ready to
deliver his great blow.
It came without delay, and was struck at the heart.
Recoiling from the heavy pressure of Jackson on his
right, McClellan threw that wing of his army a little
to the rear, to avoid being flanked, and then, concentrating
his best troops upon the commanding ridge,
near McGhee's house, received the Confederate assault
with sullen courage.
That assault was resolute, desperate, of unfaltering
obstinacy. To carry the formidable position which the
Federal forces occupied, the heaviest fighting was a
necessity; this ponderous obstacle could only be removed
by gigantic blows; the hammer might be shattered,
but it must strike until it broke in the hand of
him who wielded it. Closing up his lines as the regiments
grew thinner, Lee presented to the enemy, at
five in the evening, an unbroken front, with Longstreet
elinging, with teeth and claws, to the ground on the
right, A. P. Hill's decimated division fighting in the
woods and swamps upon the left.
From this moment the interest of the battle of Cold
Harbor concentrates upon the movements of Jackson.
Hill was worn out by his long and tremendous struggle;
Longstreet was reeling under the enormous blows
dealt at him; Jackson was fresh, “in full feather,”
and steadily advancing.
Let us pass to that portion of the field, and look at
the man of Port Republic and his veterans. To see
them fighting in old days was a splendid spectacle; to
recall their combats is, even now, a thing to make the
pulses throb.
Jackson's corps had gone in. The sinking sun was
almost hidden by the lurid smoke which rose from the
woods; the ears were deafened by the streaming volleys
of musketry and the thunder of artillery. Jackson
was riding to and fro in the fields around Cold
Harbor, silent, abstracted, glancing quickly at you if
you spoke to him, and sucking a lemon.
A staff officer gallops up, and salutes the plain-looking
soldier.
“Gen. Hood directs me to say, General, that his
line is enfiladed by a battery of thirty-pound Parrotts,
which are decimating his men, and making it impossible
for him to advance!”
Jackson rises in his stirrups and beckons to an
officer, who hastens up, saluting.
“Go back and get fifteen or eighteen guns,” he says
to the latter, “attack that battery, and see that the
enemy's guns are either silenced or destroyed.”
The officer gallops off, and in twenty minutes a
between nearly fifty pieces of artillery, all apparently
firing at the same moment, takes place; then the Federal
fire slackens, and from the woods arise wild cheers
as Hood's men charge.
Half an hour then passes. Jackson is riding to and
fro, still abstracted, and sucking his lemon, when a
second officer hastens up, and reports that D. H. Hill
is hard pressed, and must have reinforcements.
“Where is the Stonewall Brigade?” Jackson asks,
abruptly.
“Behind that hill, General,” says a member of his
staff, pointing to a clump of woods.
“Order it to advance to the support of General
Hill.”
The officer disappears at a gallop in the woods; five
minutes afterwards a line of glittering bayonets emerges
from the copse. Above them flutters the bullet-riddled
flag.
Jackson's eye flashes at them from beneath his faded
cap.
“Good!” he says, in his quick tones; “we will have
good news in a few minutes now!”
The old brigade passes over the wide field, plunges
into the wood in front; then a long, steady roar of
musketry is heard. Hill is reinforced, and can press
on.
From this time the battle is no longer a conflict of
human beings, but a mortal grapple of wild beasts.
An incredible bitterness seems to inspire the opponents;
in spite of the desperate attack of the Southerners,
splendid gallantry, not receding an inch.
Jackson is looking toward the front, and listening
in silence to Stuart, whose cavalry is drawn up on the
left, when a messenger arrives from Ewell.
“General Ewell directs me to say, sir, that the enemy
do not give way in his front.”
Jackson rose in his saddle; his eye blazed; extending
the hand in which he held the lemon, he replied:
“Tell Gen. Ewell, if they stand at sunset, to press
them with the bayonet!”
The words were jerked from the lips, rather than
spoken. They made the heart of one listener beat.
Ewell charged, Hood charged, the whole Southern
Army swept forward, as though the low words of
Jackson had been breathed in every ear.
In front of Hood was a tangled swamp, an almost
impenetrable thicket, and a ditch apparently impassable—beyond
was a high hill bristling with cannon,
vomiting shell and canister. Hood rushed in front of
his Texans.
“Forward! quick march!” was his order.
The line swept forward in the midst of an appalling
fire, leaving the ground littered with dead and dying,
—among the former was Col. Marshall, one of the
best officers of the Fourth Texas.
“Close up! close up to the colors!” came from the
lips of Hood.
The line closed up, broke through the swamp, cleared
the ditch, and rushed up the hill, in face of the murderous
fire of the Federal guns.
“Forward!” shouted Hood, “forward! charge right
on them, and drive them with the bayonet!”
Bayonets were fixed, as the men rushed forward;
they charged the breastworks in their path; the enemy
gave way and fled; the flag of the Texans was placed
upon the works which crowned the hill, and then arose
a shout which made the forest ring. “Right and left,”
says an eye-witness of the scene, “it was taken up and
ran along the line for miles, long after many of those
who had started it were in eternity.”
Hood had lost a thousand men, but he had taken
fourteen pieces of artillery, a regiment of prisoners,
and had won for his command the right to place upon
their battle-flag the words which Jackson uttered the
next day, on looking at the ground:
“The men who carried this position were soldiers
indeed!”
The sun had sunk; the enemy had been “pressed
with the bayonet;” the Federal army were in hopeless
disorder and full retreat toward Grapevine bridge—
on their way, that is, toward James River, where, under
the port-holes of the Federal gunboats, was the only
hope of safety.
The fields and forests of New Kent were covered
with the dying and the dead; in the shadowy swamps
upon which night had descended, some of the bravest
gentlemen of the South were passing slowly, as their
blood flowed, drop by drop, into eternity; around them
were the dead fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands of
Southern children, sisters, mothers, and wives—but the
“Star-Spangled Banner” had gone down in the storm,
and the “Red-Cross Flag” was floating still.
Two days afterwards, Gen. McClellan's disheartened
forces were undergoing the horrors of that terrible
retreat to the James River. They were retreating day
and night, horse, foot, and guns, with the foe upon their
track; but it was a retreat which will remain forever
famous in history. In the Federal commander was
skill, courage, the heart that does not despair. In his
army was a nerve in face of defeat, and an equanimity
under adverse fortune, which are prouder glories for
the Federal flag than the poor repulse of Lee at Gettysburg,
or the burlesque “victory” of Sheridan with his
forty-five thousand over Early with his ten thousand at
Opequon.
At the bridge in White Oak Swamp, McClellan sullenly
confronted Jackson, and said to that King of
Battle, “Halt!” And he halted.
At Frazer's Farm, the veterans of Longstreet tried
to drive the Federal forces from their ground—and
they failed.
At Malvern Hill, Gen. Lee made a resolute attack
upon the position of McClellan; threw the élite of
his army on the enemy's line, in charge after charge
—and at night the obstinate blue lines were still unbroken;
skill, courage, and obstinacy in the General
and his troops had foiled the best soldier of the age.
It is true that before morning, McClellan abandoned
his position, and retreated to James River. But that
was the movement of a good soldier. Defeated at
“Cold Harbor” in a pitched battle, army against army,
he had brought off his troops, repulsed every assault,
cut his way through, and was saved.
Looking back now, over the wide field, through the
struggle meant—what the result really was.
One glance is sufficient.
Gen. McClellan had invaded Virginia, and was within
five miles of Richmond, with one hundred and fifty
thousand men.
On the 25th of June, he was about to advance, and
fully believed that the city would fall. On the 2d of
July, he was thirty miles distant from it, seeking shelter
under the gunboats on James River.
He had lost a great battle; an appalling number of
his men; a large part of his artillery; thousands of
small arms; twenty-five miles of country, and his head
was about to fall.
To the candid observer this meant decisive defeat.
It is certain that the world thought so—and the most
penetrating military mind in the Southern army was in
favour of prompt action, upon that theory.
One day, after Malvern Hill, while conversing with
a friend in his tent, Jackson rose from his camp couch,
struck the pillow with sudden violence, and exclaimed:
“Why don't we advance? Now is the time for an
advance into Pennsylvania! McClellan is paralyzed,
and the Scipio Africanus policy is the best! Let the
President only give me the men, and I will undertake
it. Gen. Lee, I believe, would go; but perhaps he
cannot. People say he is slow. Gen. Lee is not
slow. No one knows the weight upon his heart—his
great responsibilities. I have known Gen. Lee for
five-and-twenty years—he is cautious; he ought to be.
But he is not `slow.' Lee is a phenomenon; he is the
only man whom I would follow blindfold!”
Why was not this policy adopted? The reply to that
question will be disinterred, probably, some day, from
the depths of the Department of “Rebel Archives” at
Washington.
A month afterwards it was seen that Jackson was
right. That “erratic” individual had, as usual, arrived
at the solution of the problem by “good luck”—not
brains. This of course.
Pope was in Culpeper, plundering and burning;
McClellan was decapitated—it was necessary to go
and fight Pope's “Army of Virginia;” the battle took
place; then, dragged by the current of events, the
Confederate authorities advanced to Maryland.
But the golden moment had passed away. In July,
the Scipio Africanus policy was the best—in September
it was the worst. The soldier who had retreated
before Lee from Cold Harbor, again appeared in his
front, joined battle at Sharpsburg, and Lee was compelled
to retreat in turn.
In the fall of 1864, the present writer revisited the
country around Cold Harbor, and looked with interest
upon the localities where the gigantic struggle had
taken place in June, 1862. After that time, he had
not again seen the ground, not even when the wave of
war bore him thither in June, 1864; for then Gen.
Grant had taken a fancy to the neighborhood, and his
heavy earthworks barred the way.
In that autumn preceding the downfall of the
Confederacy, the appearance of the battle-field was
bleak, sombre, and had a dolorous effect upon the
feelings. There was the old Cold Harbor House, torn
and dismantled, near which “the gallant Pelham” had
guns—where was Pelham?
There was the knoll where Jackson and Stuart rode
between the guns at nightfall; there was the solitary
oak, torn now by canon balls, under which they
had conversed that night—where were Jackson and
Stuart?
Dead—Pelham at Kelly's ford; Jackson at Chancellorsville;
Stuart at Yellow Tavern.
These immortals, whose hands I had touched, whose
voices I had listened to, whose smile had greeted me,
had gone down in the bloody gulf of battle, to appear
no more; but their eyes still shone, their words still
resounded, their figures still moved amid the bleak
and melancholy fields around Cold Harbor.
They were there on the 27th of June, 1862—and
are there forever!
| III.
SEVEN PINES AND THE SEVEN DAYS. Hammer and rapier | |