Clouds of Glory

by Michael Korda

  For almost half an hour, as the woods grew dark except for the bright orange flashes of the guns, the noise of artillery drowned out every other sound. Then, from both sides of the field, Lee heard the shrill rebel yell, as the entire Confederate line moved forward. Charles Page, the New York Tribune correspondent, stood on the slope directly behind those woods while “a spatter of Rebel lead lifted little puffs of dust” all around him. He described how the sound of the fierce rebel yell rose above the “the incessant roar of musketry,” and, being a northerner, added, “There are cheers and yells, for our men cheer, while they, like other savages, yell.”

  Page described what it was like to be on the other side of that charge, and the “awful firing that resounded from that smoke-clouded valley” as Jackson on the Confederate left and Longstreet on the right attempted to turn both Porter’s flanks, while Hood’s brigade, yelling ferociously, led the assault on the center of the Union line. “The fire grew faster. So did the pace of the men. By the hundred they fell, but without a break in their alignment . . . they were plunging down the grade to the swamp. A thousand had fallen now, but scarcely a musket had been fired from the attacking division. The men were within twenty yards of the Federal front line—within ten—and then suddenly, as if the same fear had seized every heart, the Federals were leaving their works, were running, were throwing their arms away. . . . Up the hill and over the second line they rushed, and then, as the bluecoats spread in a confused mass, the Confederates loosed their volley, where every bullet reached its mark.” Lee’s aide Major Taylor, not a man given to overstatement, rode over the field where Hood’s men had made their charge, and remarked that he “had to take great care in guiding my horse not to strike a dead or wounded Federal soldier.”

  The Federals fought a good deal better than Page’s words would suggest, but Longstreet’s attack on the Federal far left effectively turned Porter’s flank, at which point the Union line began to crumble. By 7 p.m. “our officers judiciously ordered their men to fall back; the order was not obeyed so judiciously, for they ran back, broken, disordered, routed. Simultaneously the wounded and skulkers about the buildings used as hospitals caught a panic, whether from a few riderless horses plunging madly across the field, or from instantaneously scenting the rout, does not appear. A motley mob started pell-mell for the bridges.” Still, some Federal units fought on amid the chaos. A battery of twenty guns “opened a terrifying fire of canister* at short range. The enemy recoiled. The bridge at Lodi [where the twenty-seven-year-old general Napoleon Bonaparte had rallied his troops in circumstances of great difficulty in 1796] was not half so terrible.” As darkness fell, the battlefield was a place of confusion and slaughter and headlong panic. Page described “Scores of riderless, terrified horses dashing in every direction; thick-flying bullets singing by, admonishing of danger; every minute a man struck down; wagons and ambulances and cannon blockading the way; wounded men limping and groaning and bleeding amid the throng.”

  The crush of Porter’s retreating army was so great that Page himself did not manage to get across a bridge to the south shore of the Chickahominy until after 11 p.m. He remarked that “few of the dead were brought from the field, and not one half of the wounded.”*

  The Confederates spent the night on the field. Those who could slept, but most of them were kept awake by the cries of the wounded and the silent presence of so many dead.

  Lee had won his first victory.

  Gaines’s Mill made Lee overnight not only a southern hero, but the southern hero. Hitherto, he had been overshadowed by Joseph E. Johnston and by Jackson. Now, in two battles fought in just forty-eight hours, he had broken the siege of Richmond and forced McClellan to retreat with an army more than twice the size of his own. Everyone overlooked the fact that both these battles were poorly planned and executed, and that at Mechanicsville he had scarcely managed to get a third of his army into action. In the South Lee could do no wrong, and in the North, by his dignity and gentlemanly bearing as much as by his victories, he also acquired a miraculous reputation, sustained because no Union general managed to beat him decisively on the battlefield until the third day of Gettysburg in July 1863, despite the numerous deficiencies of the Confederate Army in manpower, supplies, and material.

  McClellan had been slow and reluctant to recognize the danger facing Porter at Gaines’s Mill—he did not even approach the battlefield; he remained at his headquarters south of the Chickahominy listening to the sound of the battle and arranging the vast and tedious movement of his army’s supplies and artillery from the York River to the James River. He confined himself to sending cheerful, supportive messages to Porter, but did not attempt to transfer any significant reinforcements to him, although this would have been easy to do. That night he wrote a dispatch to Secretary of War Stanton that laid all the blame for his defeat on Stanton and Lincoln. “I have lost this battle because my force was too small. I again repeat that I am not responsible for this & say it with the earnestness of a General who feels in his heart the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed. . . . I have seen too many dead & wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the Govt has not sustained this Army. If you do not do so now the game is lost. If I save this Army now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other persons in Washington—you have done your best to sacrifice this Army.” McClellan was so vitriolic that his last sentence was expurgated before the letter was shown to Stanton and Lincoln. McClellan guessed this might happen and leaked it to the press intact the next day. The tone of the rest of the letter was enough to alert the secretary of war and the president to a major crisis for the Army of the Potomac, and perhaps to lead them to question its commander’s sanity as well. With commendable restraint Lincoln attempted to calm McClellan the next day with a dose of common sense, advising him to “Save your army at all events.” Having predicted only a few days before that he would be in Richmond at any moment, McClellan was now no longer even certain he could still save his army, and clung to the illusion that he was outnumbered by two to one. Apparently he was convinced by reports from Allan Pinkerton, the Union spymaster, that there were at least 180,000 Confederate troops in Richmond, and that “Jackson’s whole force [is] estimated at two hundred and twenty thousand to two hundred and sixty thousand,” when in fact Lee had only 37,000 men at Gaines’s Mill, and the lines around Richmond were held by a mere two understrength divisions.

  Early in the morning on June 28 Lee sent J. E. B. Stuart off in the direction of White House and West Point to seize the bases McClellan had placed in these towns, but McClellan was already carrying out the transfer or destruction of his supplies there, without having informed Washington of the fact. The Confederate general Richard Taylor gives a graphic description of the scale of the destruction: “A train was heard approaching. . . . Gathering speed, it came rushing on, and quickly emerged from the forest, two engines drawing a long string of carriages. Reaching the bridge the engine exploded with terrific noise, followed in succession by explosions of the carriages, laden with ammunition. Shells burst in all directions, the river was lashed into foam, trees were torn for acres around. . . . The enemy had taken this means of destroying surplus ammunition.”

  The day after Gaines’s Mill Lee’s youngest son, Robbie, who had left the university to enlist in the Confederate Army despite his father’s reservations, and who was serving as an artillery private in Jackson’s army, was “rudely awakened by a comrade, prodding me with his sponge-staff,” as he slumbered under a caisson. He staggered out, face and hands blackened with powder stains, and stood, “face to face with General Lee and his staff. Their fresh uniforms, bright equipments and well-groomed horses contrasted so forcibly with the war-worn appearance of our command that I was completely dazed . . . but when I saw my father’s loving eyes and smile it became clear to me that he had ridden over to see if I was safe and to ask how I was getting along.”

  Apart from this brief but charming scene, Lee’s primary con
cern on June 28 was to ascertain where McClellan was going. His own army was occupied with gathering up prisoners and safeguarding the thousands of muskets the Federal soldiers had discarded during their retreat. The Confederates were also burying the dead of both sides in common mass graves. Across the Chickahominy columns of smoke rose from where the Union quartermasters were burning their supplies, rather than let them fall into the hands of the enemy, and from time to time huge explosions erupted as ammunition dumps were destroyed. There was no doubt that McClellan was in retreat, but in what direction? Lee at first thought that McClellan would probably move east toward Yorktown and Fort Monroe; but to retrace his steps all the way back to the tip of the peninsula would be a tremendous admission of defeat, so he might instead be moving directly south to the James River, where he could be supplied by the U.S. Navy and still remain a threat to Richmond. If McClellan moved eastward, the configuration of the Chickahominy River would give him the opportunity of crossing by a number of bridges farther downstream. If Lee moved his army to the south of the Chickahominy in pursuit he might have to fight his way back across it against considerable opposition. Lee decided not to move his army until he was sure where McClellan was going, and in the opinion of several military historians thereby missed his last opportunity to engage the Union army while it was still widely spread out and destroy it. On the other hand, there was now a Union army of 100,000 men on the south side of the Chickahominy within eight miles of Richmond, which was defended only by the two divisions of Huger and Magruder, about 23,000 men at most. Might McClellan make a bold move to take advantage of his defeat and seize the capital while Lee was on the wrong side of the river? Lee’s men were exhausted and most of the bridges in front of them had been destroyed or badly damaged. Could he move the army quickly enough to join Huger and Magruder and save Richmond if he had to? Uncharacteristic as it was of Lee to wait, he had no choice—for the moment it was more dangerous to move his army in the wrong direction than to stay put.

  Battle of Savage’s Station—June 29, 1862

  Late in the morning a message arrived from Stuart saying that he had ridden all the way to Despatch Station without serious opposition. The Federals had retreated across the Chickahominy and burned the railway bridge behind them. Not until mid-afternoon would further reports make Lee believe that McClellan was moving south, not east, though that would not preclude his making a bold dash for Richmond. Magruder was anxious as only a general with 13,000 men can be who is facing an enemy army of 100,000 men just a mile or so away from him; and Lee was equally anxious for him, urging on him “utmost vigilance,” though it is hard to imagine that Magruder was not already peering into the woods in front of him with all the vigilance he could muster.

  Toward the end of the day Lee came to a decision—he would cross the Chickahominy in pursuit of McClellan, with the intention of destroying the Federal Army before it reached the James River. The priority now was to restore the bridges the Federals had destroyed. Jackson had already been wrestling with the task of making “Grapevine Bridge,” so called because it was a ramshackle construction of untrimmed logs and timber, usable. He also sent engineers to the more important “Alexander’s Bridge,” named after the U.S. Army engineer officer who had constructed it. Unwisely, Jackson had placed both these projects in the hands of the unfortunate Major Dabney, and it was not until June 29 that another officer, a former civilian contrator with a more practical hands-on approach, appeared to take charge. Photographs of the restored Grapevine Bridge, which acquired a certain historical glamour, make it look precarious indeed,* but Alexander’s Bridge was more important because once rebuilt it could take horses, artillery, and wagons, as well as men. Both jobs were difficult in the absence of several companies of well-trained military engineers with the proper tools and equipment. The Chickahominy itself was not particularly wide—about fifteen yards at this point—or fast moving, but its banks on both sides were so marshy and swampy that they might almost have been extensions of the river. The rough-and-ready reconstruction of the two bridges is best described by the former contractor, who, when Jackson asked him whether he had followed the drawings prepared for him, replied: “Gineral Jackson, I ain’t seen no sketch, and don’t know nothing about no pictures . . . but that bridge is done, sir, and is ready, and you can right now send your folks across in to it.”

  “Done” the bridges might be, but Jackson would not begin moving his four divisions over them until dawn on June 30, despite the noise of battle from across the river, where Magruder had begun an attack toward Savage’s Station, the main supply base for the Federal forces facing Richmond, in the expectation that Jackson would be crossing the river to support him. Lee’s orders to Jackson were ambiguous, however, and Jackson obeyed them literally, believing that he was to stay on the north side of the Chickahominy until ordered otherwise.

  Lee was determined not to let the Federal army slip away to safety on the James. He understood that the only way the Confederacy could win its independence was by inflicting on a Federal army a defeat costly enough to bring the Union to the negotiating table—“annihilation,” in fact, like Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz. He launched a number of attacks in the hope of provoking a major battle while the bulk of McClellan’s army was spread out and still north of White Oak Swamp Creek. But these attacks were widely separated and ill coordinated—Lee was still learning the art of high command by experience in the field. He told Magruder to move east along the York River Railroad and Williamsburg Road, and attack the Union lines around Savage’s Station in cooperation with Jackson, but he seems to have ignored the fact that Jackson was still on the other side of the river waiting for his bridges to be repaired. In the absence of Jackson, Magruder called on Lee for reinforcements, but Lee was able to give him only two of Huger’s brigades, which were to be returned to Huger if they were not in action by 2 p.m. Lee may have hoped this would make Magruder move swiftly, but if so it had no effect.

  Magruder, who was suffering from a stomach ailment, probably severe dysentery, that required treatment by either opium or alcohol,* was in no shape to carry out an attack against a larger force than his own. He delayed his assault until the late afternoon, by which time he had lost Huger’s brigades, and had still seen no sign of Jackson. The result was a bloody draw, despite the use of Lee’s famous “armored railroad battery,” with its enormous 32-pound rifled naval cannon. Neither Magruder nor his opponent Major General Edwin V. Sumner managed to get even half his troops into action, and despite a considerable number of casualties on both sides, the day ended inconclusively, in pouring rain and violent thunderstorms. Sumner’s aim, after all, was not to win a victory but to get his men away and moving toward the James River more or less intact. In that he succeeded, though he got scant thanks from McClellan for it. The degree of misery on the sodden battlefield was no doubt increased by the fact that the Federals had retreated from Savage’s Station taking their field hospital with them, leaving over 2,500 Union wounded behind to be captured by the Confederates, who had little means of caring for them.

  Nobody comes out of Savage’s Station with much credit, Lee least of all. His orders to Jackson were unclear, and Magruder was certainly entitled to expect Jackson’s support; the only map available to Lee was poorly drawn; and his staff officers passed on changes to Lee’s original orders in ways that only increased Magruder’s confusion and Jackson’s delay.

  By the time Jackson finally crossed the Chickahominy early on June 30, the battle for Savage’s Station was over and the Union forces defending it had gone. Magruder may not have handled things effectively, but considering his own befuddled state and the disparity between the strength of his forces and those of General Sumner, he does not seemed to have merited Lee’s uncharacteristically sharp rebuke: “I regret much that you have made so little progress today in the pursuit of the enemy.” It is hard to see how Magruder could have pursued Sumner’s corps with any effect; besides, the Federals had abandoned a virtual treasure tro
ve of supplies and equipment at Savage’s Station—to ragged, poorly fed Confederate soldiers the temptation to stop and loot was irresistible, and the number of muskets Federal soldiers had dropped was so great that it required work parties to gather them up and load them into wagons. All of these things would have slowed down any “pursuit,” even had Magruder intended one.

  During the night, the confusion about which side of the Chickahominy Jackson’s divisions should be on was straightened out, but twenty-four hours had been lost because of Lee’s doubts about McClellan’s intentions. Sometime in the middle of the night it became evident at last to Lee that McClellan would probably not turn east, and that his own object must now be to crush McClellan’s army before it reached the safety of the James River.

  This presented Lee with a number of tactical problems. Just as the peninsula was divided laterally by the Chickahominy River, so the country between that river and the James below Savage’s Station was divided by White Oak Swamp Creek, which was directly in McClellan’s path as he moved south. The swamp was a significant military obstacle, broad, boggy, and with few bridges spanning it. If McClellan found it hard to cross with his artillery and wagon train, as he surely would, Lee calculated that it might be possible to trap him. If the divisions of Huger and Magruder attacked from the west, and Jackson’s four divisions attacked him from the north and east, the Army of the Potomac—virtually immobilized by the swamp in front of it and surrounded on three sides, with its lines of communication cut off—could then be annihilated despite its superior numbers.*

  Time was now the critical element—time, and weather, and neither of them was working in Lee’s favor. During the night of June 29 rain poured down, making such roads as there were scarcely usable. “Darkness fell as we bivouacked on the low ground south of the river,” wrote one of Jackson’s brigade commanders, Richard Taylor. “A heavy rain came down, converting the ground into a lake.” A “half-drowned courier” was brought to the small ambulance in which Taylor was resting (suffering from “severe pain in the head and loins” and unable to mount his horse); he proved to carrying an outdated dispatch from Magruder asking for reinforcements, not surprisingly, since Magruder had used his division to attack an entire corps. By this time Lee had gotten the divisions of A. P. Hill and Longstreet across the Chickahominy farther upstream and was pressing them hard down the Central (Barrytown) Road in pursuit of McClellan. As for McClellan himself, he neither sought to control the fighting nor appointed anyone to do it for him. He had already ordered his headquarters to be set up at Haxall’s Landing, on the James River, and was pressing his quartermasters hard to get over 100 guns, “supply trains [consisting] of something over 3,000 wagons and ambulances, drawn by nearly 14,750 horses and mules,” as well as “a lumbering herd of 2,500 beef cattle” along the one road across White Oak Swamp. His major concern was that his retreat should be seen as a “change of base” to the James River, rather than as a defeat. He had abandoned his carefully prepared entrenchments on the outskirts of Richmond around Fair Oaks and Seven Pines, and his whole army was now moving across or around White Oak Swamp in the direction of Malvern Hill, the most prominent high ground between Richmond and Harrison’s Landing, which was as far up the James as Federal gunboats could get without coming under fire from Confederate batteries on the shore.