brought up reinforcements, and in the night the Confederates in front of him moved off to join their main army, leaving in Williamsburg four hundred of their wounded, because they had no means of carrying them away, but taking with them about that number of prisoners. The National loss had been about two thousand two hundred, the Confederate about one thousand eight hundred. This battle was fought within five miles of the historic site of Jamestown, where the first permanent English settlement in the United States had been made in 1607, and the first cargo of slaves landed in 1619.
Gen. William B. Franklin's division of McDowell's corps had now been sent to McClellan, and immediately after the battle of Williamsburg he moved it on transports to White House, on the Pamunkey, where it established a base of supplies. As soon as possible, also, the main body of the army was marched from Williamsburg to White House, reaching that place on the 16th of May. From this point he moved westward toward Richmond, expecting to be joined by a column of forty thousand men under McDowell, which was to move from Fredericksburg. On reaching the Chickahominy, McClellan threw his left wing across that stream, and sweeping around with his right fought small battles at Mechanicsville and Hanover Junction, by which he cleared the way for McDowell to join him. But at this critical point of time Stonewall Jackson suddenly made another raid down the Shenandoah Valley, and McDowell was called back to go in pursuit of him.
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| CAMP OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC AT CUMBERLAND LANDING. |
Johnston resolved to strike the detached left wing of the National army, which had crossed the Chickahominy, and advanced to a point within half a dozen miles of Richmond, and his purpose was seconded by a heavy rain on the night of May 30th, which swelled the stream and swept away some of the bridges, thus hindering reinforcement from the other wing. The attack, May 31st, fell first upon Gen. Silas Casey's division of Keyes's corps, which occupied some half-finished works. It was bravely made and bravely resisted, and the Confederate suffered heavy losses before these works, where they had almost surprised the men with the shovels in their hands. But after a time a Confederate force made a detour and gained a position in the rear of the redoubts, when of course they could no longer be held. Reinforcements were very slow in coming up, and Keyes's men had a long, hard struggle to hold their line at all. They could not have done so if a part of Johnston's plan had not miscarried. He intended to bring in a heavy flanking force between them and the river, but was delayed several hours in getting it in motion. Meanwhile McClellan ordered Sumner to cross the river and join in the battle. Sumner had anticipated such an order as soon as he heard the firing, and when the order came it found him with his corps in line, drawn out from camp, and ready to cross instantly. He was the oldest officer there (sixty-six), and the most energetic. There was but one bridge that could be used, many of the supports of this were gone, the approaches were under water, and it was almost a wreck. But he unhesitatingly pushed on his column. The frail structure was steadied by the weight of the men; and though it swayed and undulated with their movement and the rush of water, they all crossed in safety.
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| NORTH BATTERY OF CONFEDERATES AT SHIPPING POINT, POTOMAC RIVER.. |
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| MAJOR-GENERAL E. W. GANTT, C. S. A. MAJOR-GENERAL R. E. RODES, C. S. A.. |
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| REVIEW IN WASHINGTON, UNDER McCLELLAN, OF EIGHT BATTERIES OF ARTILLERY AND THREE REGIMENTS OF CAVALRY, BY LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET. |
Sumner was just in time to meet the flank attack, which was commanded by Johnston in person. The successive charges of the Confederates were all repelled, and at dusk a counter-charge cleared the ground in front and drove off the last of them in confusion. In this fight General Johnston received wounds that compelled him to retire from the field, and laid him up for a long time. The battle—which is called both Fair Oaks and Seven Pines—cost the National army over five thousand men, and the Confederate nearly seven thousand. It was a more destructive battle than any that, up to that time, the Eastern armies had fought. A participant thus describes the after appearance of the field: "Monday, June 2d, we visited the battlefield, and rode from place to place on the scene of conflict. We have often wished that we could efface from our memory the observations of that day. Details were burying the dead in trenches or heaping the ground upon them where they lay. The ground was saturated with gore; the intrenchments, the slashing, the rifle-pits, the thicket, many of the tents, were filled with dead. In the Fair Oaks farmhouse, the dead, the dying, and the severely wounded lay together. Along the Williamsburg road, on each side of it, was one long Confederate grave. An old barn, near where the One Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania volunteers first formed, was filled with our dead and wounded; and farther to the right, near the station, beside an old building, lay thirteen Michigan soldiers with their blankets over them and their names pinned on their caps. Near the railroad, by a log house, the dead and wounded were packed together. Both were motionless; but you could distinguish them by the livid blackness of the dead. We could trace the path of our regiment, from the wood-pile around by the intrenchments to its camp, by the dead still unburied. Those that died immediately could not be touched, but were covered with ground where they lay; the wounded, who crawled or were carried to the barns, tents, and houses, and who died subsequently, were buried in trenches. Our little tent was still standing, though pierced by several bullets. Beside it lay two dead men of the Ninety-eighth, whom we could not identify; for the sun, rain, and wind had changed their countenances. On the bed lay a dead Confederate. At the left of our camp, in the wood, where the Eighty-first, Eighty-fifth, and Ninety-second New York volunteers and Peck's brigade fought with Huger, the dead were promiscuously mixed together, and lay in sickening and frightful proximity; strong and weak, old and young, officer and private, horse and man—dead, or wounded in the agonies of death, lay where they fell, and furnished, excepting the swaths on the Williamsburg road, the darkest corner on that day's panorama."
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| BATTERY No. 1 IN FRONT OF YORKTOWN. (Five Views.). |
Col. William Kreutzer, of the Ninety-eighth New York Regiment, which went into that battle with three hundred and eighty-five men, and lost eighty-five, gives some interesting particulars of the action:
"The whole of Company A went to work on the road near the Grapevine bridge. Details were made for men to make abatis and work on the breastworks. Company A left its rifles in camp, and lost them. When it rejoined the regiment, on the 1st of June, it appeared like a company of pioneers, or sappers and miners, carrying axes, shovels, and picks. … Soon after one o'clock our pickets begin to come in sight, retiring through the woods and slashing before the enemy. The skirmish line of the enemy pursued them. We could see both parties