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As an appendix to today's posting, among offerings I have seen from historians attempting to explain Jackson's mysteriously passive conclusion to his march to the battle.....
1) Jackson did not know the terrain into which he was advancing. Having superior maps and knowledge of the ground had been a key element to Jackson's success in the Valley and he did not want to stumble blindly onto a field before it could be scouted and the key locations identified.
2) Poor staff work by Lee caused Jackson to misunderstand his orders. He thought he was supposed to be met at Hundley's Corner by one of Lee's officers who would guide him to the proper position for the attack. He was unable to locate A.P. Hill's flank.
3) Jackson was physically spent, so were his men, and they were simply incapable of action after their long, difficult march. Jackson had only slept about ten hours total in the previous four days. The fatigue overwhelmed him at some point and it was all he could do just to arrive where he did when he did.
4) All of the above
Left unexplained by any of those theories is why Jackson did not at least communicate his position and dispositions to Lee or to A.P. Hill.
General McClellan had stayed with General Porter until 1 in the morning, discussing their options for the next day. According to Porter, he was instructed that he would receive a divsion from one of the Corps across the river as reinforcement, and he was to do all that he could to keep the Confederates from crossing the river while Little Mac made the "proper dispositions" with the rest of the army. Porter interpreted McClellan's words to mean that he was to hold off the rebel flanking attack, while Mac advanced the rest of the army against what had to be the weakly held Confederate right South of the river.
If that is what Mac had in mind, sometimes between departing Porter's headquarters and arriving back at his own, he seems to have changed his mind. Two reports awaited Mac when he reached his tent, and both sent him into a state of shock. The first told of a contraband slave who had come through the lines and swore that he had seen General Beauregard and 30,000 men arriving by train at Petersburg on the 24th. The second was from Porter's cavalry, stating that they had definitely located Jackson's army three miles to the NE of Porter's Corps. What shook Mac so badly was that until that moment, he had been assuming that yesterday's fight at Beaver Creek Dam had been against Jackson...and that Stonewall had been whipped.
It all came together in a rush in McClellan's mind. Lee's enormous advantage in numbers, now inflated in Mac's mind to 210,000 by the addition of the imaginary Beauregard force, meant that Lee's plan was to crush the Army of the Potomac with simultaneous strikes against both flanks. There was only one thing that he could now do...try and save the army with a skilled retreat to the James River. Orders began to go out while it was still dark. Among those orders was the one which pulled Porter back from Beaver Dam Creek and assigned the Fifth Corps to defend Boatswain Swamp Creek, four miles to the rear.
And it was at this moment that the campaign was decided, the siege of Richmond was lifted, McClellan would go over to the defensive and abandon all that he had gained over the last two months.
This was unknown to General Lee at the time. His major concern that night was reworking his fizzled assault plan from the previous day into a more successful attempt today. At least he would now have all of his forces on the field, and a hopefully rested Stonewall Jackson who could be counted upon to tear into the enemy flank.
When the advance did go forward in the morning, it quickly discovered that Porter was gone. Lee ordered his division commanders to get their troops into columns and start the pursuit. With the required redeployments, it wasn't until 2 pm that the leading rebel elements began arriving in front of the Fifth Corps defensive line on the ridge behind the stream. It was a depressing sight, looking nearly identical to the unfavorable ground of the day before....open, boggy ground to cross before reaching the creek, and then a climb up the ridge to come to grips with the Yankees. And where the Beaver Dam Creek line had delivered artillery Hell from 36 guns, this ridge had more room and Porter had arrayed 92 field pieces to greet any attacker.
Lee sent D.H. Hill's division to join with Jackson and attempt to get around Porter's right flank. Generals A.P. Hill and Longstreet were to attack the center and right of the line, distracting Porter while Jackson got around the flank.
But Stonewall was still suffering from a case of the slows. After 90 minutes of losing men to the Union guns, A.P. Hill again lost patience with Jackson's failure to materialize, and he called off his attacks. A half hour later, with his men still not at the jump off point, Jackson sent word to D.H. Hill to go in and support A.P. Hill. Not knowing A.P. had canceled his assault for the moment, D.H. Hill's division went in unsupported and the Yankees were able to concentrate their powerful artillery on him. No progress was made.
Also losing patience was Lee. He rode all the way around to the far rebel left to see why the flanking attack was not taking place. He encountered Jackson on the road and said to him "Ah, General, I am very glad to see you. I had hoped to be with you before." That was what passed for a rebuke by the hyper polite and controlled Lee. There were still several hours of daylight left and Lee's concern was not punishing Jackson, it was getting him into action. Together they brought the troops into position and at 7 pm, at last Lee had what he had been trying to achieve for the past two days...a coordinated assault by all four of the divisions North of the Chickahominy.
The attack swept forward, made progress in some place, was stalled in others, and the outcome remained in doubt until one of the last units to reach the field, General John Hood's Texas Brigade, was put into the line by Longstreet and told to avance. This was the same Hood whose Texas Brigade had attacked with such elan and vigor during the Williamsburg battle that they had stampeded an entire Yankee divison back to their ships on the York River.
Hood climbed down from his horse, strode to the front of his men, bellowed at them to fix bayonets and follow him. Despite the wall of iron thrown at them by the Union guns and rifles, Hood's brigade never stopped until they were within 10 yards of the Federal works. There Hood halted them and had them blast the Yankees with a volley, then they went in yelling, bayonets first.
Porter's men, who had been unmovable for two days of heavy assaults, now gave way as Hood's men rushed through the break they opened and began to fan out behind the Federal position. Most of Porter's men behaved well and retired in good order, maintaining unit cohesion. Many others gave in to panic and ran, and quite a number simply threw up their hands in surrender.
It was at this point that darkness settled over the battlefield, enabling Porter to make a disciplined retreat, and frustrating Confederate attempts at pursuit. Porter was able to get his entire surviving force across the Chickahominy that night and fire the bridges after they crossed. Left behind were 6,800 casulaties, a third of those prisoners taken in the final assault. But Lee's men had suffered even greater for their victory, 8750 rebels were dead or wounded. The battle became known as Gaine's Mill, honoring the mill which stood about a mile in front of the Union line.
And just as he had been over elated by his victory the day before, McClellan was now thrown into a deep state of depression by the defeat of today. He wired Washington with what was to be his most famous dispatch:
Quote:
“I now know the full history of the day,” he wrote. “On this side of the river (the right bank) we repulsed several strong attacks. On the left bank our men did all that men could do, all that soldiers could accomplish but they were overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers, even after I brought my last reserves into action. The loss on both sides is terrible.… The sad remnants of my men behave as men.… I have lost this battle because my force was too small.… I feel too earnestly to-night. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the government 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 to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”
The supervisor of the military telegraph was so shocked by the final two sentences that he decided to edit them out of the message before passing it along to War Secretary Stanton. However, Stanton shortly learned of the orginal contents and Mac had made himself a powerful enemy.
The Battle of Gaine's Mill....or Boatswain's Swamp Creek....or First Cold Harbor ..all of the Seven Days battles seemed to have multiple names.
A confusing day for General Robert Lee 150 years ago as he tried to figure out what General McClellan was doing.
What McClellan was doing was a marvelous job of executing a retreat. The night before he had called in his Corps commanders for a conference and announced to them that the Army of the Potomac would be changing its base. This puzzled the gathered generals since they all already knew that Mac was transferring his supply base from White House Landing on the Pamunkey River (tributary of the York) to Harrison's Landing on the James River. It eventually became clear to them, it wasn't just the supplies that were being moved, McClellan intended to march the enture army there, giving up the siege of Richmond. He was retreating and using the "change of base" as an excuse to not have to call it a retreat. Generals Hooker and Kearney, division commanders in Heintzelman's Corps, risked charges of insubordination with their strong, angry arguments in favor of going over to the offensive on the rebel right, not retreating. But Mac had made up his mind 24 hours earlier and remained convinced that he must fly or face certain destruction from the 210,000 men he imagined Lee to have.
Lee, who had so far correctly guessed Little Mac's moves and reactions the past three days, became less decisive in the morning when he was given the news that the Yankees had retreated across the Chickahominy and destroyed the bridges behind them. Lee had thought that the reverse would happen, that McClellan would rush men to the North side of the River to shore up Porter in an effort to protect his supply base. Now with Porter gone, Lee dispatched Jeb Stuart to find out what was happening at White House Landing. It wasn't until mid afternoon that word came back from Stuart that the Yankees were gone, the base abandoned and set aflame. Word was also starting to come from Generals Magruder and Huger on the Southern bank of the Chickahominy that the Federal activity on their fronts had seemed to have ceased. Probes were sent out and discovered that these troops were gone as well.
Where was McClellan going? If he had destroyed his supply base at White House Landing, he obviously wasn't falling back on that. Was he headed East down the Pensinsula to Yorktown or Fortress Monroe? Was he headed for the existing trenches of Williamsburg to make a stand there where the rebels would have to fight in the open? Had he pulled back his entrenched lines on the rebel right in preparation for an assault being assembled? Or might he be headed for the James River where he could shelter under the gunboats of the US Navy?
Lee was not to find out with certainty until the next day. The consequence was a day of paralysis for the Army of Northern Virginia, one which allowed the Army of the Potomac to get a full days head start. Lee believed that an attack by Little Mac was the least likely of his options, and that the siege of Richmond had been broken as of that moment. But that was not enough for Lee, he wanted to catch and destroy the enemy army, thinking that such a victory would most probably mean the end of the war.
He had to find his foe first. And then catch him. This would call for well coordinated cooperation among his divisions on the field, something which had been proving very difficult to achieve so far.
The only combat action of any consequence today took place when one of Magruder's brigadiers, under orders to simply probe for the enemy and report, instead launched an ill advised attack against the Union Sixth Corps. It was a quick, bloody failure for the rebels. That Brigadier was our old friend Robert Toombs who you recall had been a pre war moderate (Conscience Whig), a hell breathing radical in favor of scession when he thought he might be made president of the new republic, a strident critic of Davis when the presidency went to him instead, and the first Confederate Secretary of State, who then resigned after just two months on the job in quest of greater glory on the field of battle.
Though his strategy of retreat was foolish, McClellan's tactical execution of it was exceptional. He started two of his five Corps South with orders to turn East and entrench on Malvern Hill a mile from the James River. With them went the supply wagons, siege guns and ambulances with the wounded. Covering their retreat...excuse me, change of base...would be the remaining three Corps who were pulled back to White Oak Swamp and placed in a defensive posture. All of this was begun and carried out with such stealth that the evacuations would come as a complete surprise to the rebels in the morining.
June 29th, 1862:
Day Five of the Seven Days and General Lee received word early in the morning that there appeared to be no Union activity in any of the areas through which the Army of the Potomac would have to pass if it was retreating East toward the tip of the Peninsula. No attack, or signs of an impending attack on the rebel right had materialized, so Lee finally was certain that General McClellan was headed for the James River. Once there his army would have the protection of the Union gunboats, so if it was to be destroyed, it would have to be while it was still in route.
Generals A.P. Hill and Longstreet were sent with their divisions to the White Oak Swamp area to link up with General Huger's division and try and intercept the Yankees there. General Magruder, whose theatrics had been so critical in convincing Mac that disaster lurked on his left, was now to cease acting and start fighting. He was to drive due East and link up with General Jackson's division which was to cross the Chickahominy, find Magruder's left, and coordinate their pursuit.
Since the Federals had been given a day's headstart on their retrograde "change of base", Hill and Longstreet were not expected to catch up on this day, but Magruder, moving at a 90 degree angle to the Union line of retreat, should.
And he did, but it was not moving columns strung out on the road as expected, instead he came upon half of the Federal force which had entrenched at a railroad depot called Savage's Station. These 33,000 represented Heintzelman and Sumner's Corps, along with half of General Franklin's. Magruder commanded 11,000 in his division and he recognized that he was going to have to wait for Jackson and his 18,500 before any sort of an attack could be made.
Stonewall had arrived too late and then gone to bed on the second day, had gotten lost and arrived late on the third, and now on the fifth day, he was a no show. Magruder settled into a long range artillery duel while waiting for Jackson, one where once more the Federal artillery proved very much superior to their rebel counterparts. Finally around six in the evening, with no sign of Jackson, Magruder felt obliged to obey his orders and attack. The result was predictable, the Confederates made no headway and suffered severe casualties from the Yankee guns.
And where was Stonewall all this time? His division had spent the entire day rebuilding the Grapevine Bridge across the Chickahominy. He seemed to be in a mental fog all day according to reports, ignoring a ford across the water a short distance away in favor fn 100% concentration on the bridge. That there was any sort of urgency associated with his orders, he seemed unaware. Around three in the afternoon he had settled down for a lengthy nap.
It was probably a fortunate thing for the Yankees that Jackson disappointed Lee once more. McClellan had gone with the two Corps which were making for Malvern Hill and he spent the day supervising their dispositions. He had left none of the three Corps commanders at Savage Station in over all charge of that field. The consequence was that they all fought on their own hook, and had a greater challenge been presented, might well have fallen into command confusion. As an illustration, Heintzelman decided about mid afternoon that his troops were not needed to hold off Magruder, so he pulled them out of line and sent them to join the retreat. He cleared this with no one.
After darkness, the remaining Union Corps pulled out of Savage's Station and began making their way toward Malvern Hill. Left behind was the main Union "hospital" (a series of homes and barns turned into treatment centers) which was coping with 2500 wounded. McClellan had been so anxious about getting his men to safety that he had ordered all those who were non ambulatory, to be left behind to become prisoners. The fight at Savage's Station had cost the rebels a bit over 1000 casulaties, while the defending Federals lost but 473.
One more days march would see the Army of the Potomac safe on the James, so Lee had one last shot tomorrow of catching them while in motion.
The Action At Savage's Station:
Photograph of the Abandoned Union Wounded After Capture
If you look at the map above you will note that General Magruder's advance was along the line of the Richmond and York River Railroad. These circumstances allowed Magruder to bring along and employ, the first ever railway gun. Called the "Land Merrimack" it was a 32 pounder mounted on a flatcar, shielded in an open casemate, and pushed into position along the tracks by a locomotive.
The conception outstripped the execution. Magruder got it into action, but before it had a chance to do much damage, the massed Yankee batteries focused on it and the rain of shells forced the rolling artillery to have to pull back out of range.
I could not locate a photograph of it, but I did find a model someone had constructed.
General Lee's plan for the day was to have General Jackson's division bring pressure on the rear most elements of the Union army from the North, while Generals A.P. Hill, Longstreet and Holmes drove East to hit the flanks of the march. If they could finally act in a coordinated manner, they could still strike a serious blow at the seven Federal divisions which were still a day's march from safety. Two of those divisions were assigned to keep Jackson at Bay in the White Oak Swamp area. There was a dangerous three mile gap between that force and the other five divisions which were posted on either side of a crossroads called Glendale where the two roads from the North merged into a single bottleneck route to the James. (see map)
For a change, Stonewall was up early and seemingly back to his old self. He met with Lee and expressed confidence that today they would bag McClellan. Around noon his force reached the destroyed White Oak bridge where across the water they could see the Union rear guard pulling out, about a half mile away. Unlike yesterday when Jackson had become obsessed with rebuilding the Grapevine Bridge, today he snapped into action, bringing his artillery to the water's edge to begin a shelling of the retreating troops, and sending skrimishers and cavalry splashing across a ford to take up the pursuit.
The retreating Union divisions were those of Generals William F. Smith and Israel Richardson, and they refused to be stampeded by Jackson's aggressive moves. Together they rolled four batteries of artillery into position and sent Jackson's men fleeing back across the fords when they opened fire. Jackson now decided that he needed to rebuild this bridge as well, but the Federal artillery drove off his engineers each time they ventured toward the water. Jackson then lapsed back into the strange, passive mode which had marked his behavior throughout the Seven Days. He did not go in search of an alternative crossing, he left his men to continue their attempts at rebuilding the bridge...and once more settled down for an afternoon nap. When he awoke around 4 pm, he spent some time writing a letter to his wife where he discussed the tricky issue of how much to donate to their church that week. Jackson and his force would have no further impact of consequence this day.
A result of Stonewall's lethargy was that when General Huger's division came in on the apex of the Union defensive position, he was blocked from linking up with Jackson's left flank by a barrier of felled trees across the road. Huger took a page from Jackson and rather than trying to blast his way through with an attack, he ordered his ment to begin hacking an enteirely new road through the woods. This activity was detected by the Federals and they infilitrated the woods and began chopping down more tress across Huger's projected new road. This ax war went on until 2 pm when Huger's troops finally prevailed and emerged into the open.
There he encountered another roadblock, General Slocum's division. After a short artillery duel which was going in favor of the Yankees, Huger pulled his division back and was through for the day. Thus by 3:30 pm, Lee's pushing force from the North was out of the fight.
Lee had held A.P. Hill and Longstreet back in anticipation of Huger and Jackson's attack first distracting Federal attention. Since no such attacks materialized, Hill and Longstreet remained idle. The Southern most rebel division, that led by General Theophilus Holmes, did go in and arrived at the western side of Malvern Hill. He advanced a section of artillery and was getting it set up to shell the Union position, when at 4:30 pm 30 Federal guns opened up and rained iron terror on the Confederate artillerymen. General Porter already had his entire Corps planted there and ready for an attack. Even worse, 100 pound shells from the Union gunboats on the James, being directed by a flagman on a hilltop, zeroed in on the rebel battery. It was nearly destroyed and had to be pulled back as rapidly as possible. Holmes was never able to launch his attack. Like Jackson and Huger, Holmes was through for the day.
This left only Longstreet and Hill's divisions. When Lee heard the firing to the right which was the Union guns smashing Holmes' artillery, he took it to be Holmes's assault and he ordered Longstreet and Hill forward to complete what he thought was a general attack being made all along the Federal fronts.
Defending this portion of the field were the divisions of Generals Hooker and Kearny, the men who had so loudly protested the retreat to McClellan. Longstreet's men managed to overrun the base of a hill defended by Union infantry, but the artillery batteries at the top of the hill made it too hot for them to stay. Therefore they rose up and charged uphill, taking the guns. Soldiers from Hill's division were rushed forward to try and exploit this breakthrough, but they arrived just in time to be run over by a Federal counterattack led by Kearny in person. They retook the lost ground. Hill, in his red battle shirt, was not going to be upstaged by Kearny. He moved out in front of his troops and personally led them in a counter attack to the counter attack.
There was a lot of blood, but not much in the way of results. The two sides stalemated one another and remained at each other's throats until darkness ended the fighting around 9 pm. Lee had gained a hill in the middle of a swamp, a half dozen captured Federal guns, and had inflicted 2850 casualties on the Yanks. It had cost 3300 rebel casualties to achieve these hollow triumphs. The day had been another failure and it had been the last chance to catch McClellan on the road. Tomorrow the entire Army of the Potomac would be entrenched on Malvern Hill with an array of gunboats behind them to discourage attacks.
Last edited by Grandstander; 06-29-2012 at 06:53 PM..
The seventh, and as you might suspect of a battle called "The Seven Days", final day of Lee's fight to save the Confederate capitol, which had now turned into a determination to destroy the invading army.
It had all been rather strange. The purpose of Lee's attack had been to lift the siege of Richmond, and that he had already accomplished, thus the strategic victory in Seven Days belonged to the South. This had somehow been accomplished despite Lee losing three of the four major battles which had been fought, despite the serial inability of Lee to get his divisions to act in concert with one another, despite the uneven casualty exchange which had been in favor of the Federals, and despite the inexplicably sluggish performance of Stonewall jackson. By contrast, acting in unison or on their own, the Union Corps commanders had performed well, especially Porter who fought four rebel divsions with his one Corps on days two and three. They had executed a great retreat, if retreats may be thought of as a positive thing. The Army of the Potomac had gotten itself and all of its supply wagons to safety, inflicting more losses on their pursuers than they themselves sustained.
Nearly everything on the tactical level had gone the North's way, yet it remained undeniably a severe defeat for them. One need look no further than the man at the head of this army to fix the blame for this situation.
One more act remained in the drama, a rather tragic one in that it did nothing at all to alter the strategic situation, took place as a result of some misunderstandings, and was especially one sided for the Yankees and costly for the rebels.
General McClellan's wagons had gone on to Harrison's Landing on the James, but all five Union Corps were occupying Malvern Hill, a plateau about a mile and a half long and 3/4ths of a mile wide. It rose to a height of 100 feet and blocked any approach to Harrison's Landing. It was jam packed with artillery, 240 field peices and 14 of the heavy siege guns which had been dragged up during the night. Supplementing this firepower would be the heavy naval weapons aboard the gunboats in the James.
In that the Union army was no longer in motion, Lee had the luxury today of bringing up his entire force and studying the opposition position before deciding on a course of action. Surveying the Yankee's defensive dispositions, Lee could find no weak point, no place where the hill could be flanked, no place where infantry could assault with prospects for success. Then General Longstreet came to him with an idea. His personal reconnaissance had discovered a knoll on the right which was equal in height to the hill in front of them a half mile away. Longstreet argued that if they could get 60 guns onto the knoll, and another 100 in an open field a half mile to the east, they could enfilade the Federal guns, throw them into confusion and open an opportunity for an infantry assault.
Lee approved and issued an order which was to have unintended consequences. His division commanders were informed of the artillery plan, and told that Brigadier Lewis Armistead, who was in the best position to observe the effects of the fire, would advance when he saw that the fire was at its most damaging. Armistead's advance "with a yell" would be the signal for the other Confederate divisions to join in the attack.
The great rebel bombardment was not to take place. It turned out that the route up the knoll upon which Longstreet was to place his 60 infilading guns, was swampy and tangled with growth. Only twenty of the guns were able to be manhandled into position, and they arrived one at a time...and one at a time they were blown to pieces by the massed Federal artillery. The plan was such an obvious and immediate failure that Lee canceled the the rest of the bombardment and decided to call off the attack as planned. He did not issue formal orders, relying on Armistead to see that the conditions under which he was supposed to attack, had not materialized.
Fate intervened.
The last Confederate unit to arrive on the field was Prince John Magruder's division. Lee had been unhappy with Magruder's lack of aggression on Day Five, and had kept his force in reserve, although marching around all day, on the sixth day. As he arrived he was handed a copy of Lee's order, the one Lee had decided against executing, a fact unknown to Magruder. He complied with the order by bringing his division into assault positions and as he did, he came upon Armisteads men in an advanced position. Magruder interpreted this to mean that Armistead had seen that the Union guns were in confusion and had advanced as the orders required. Thinking this was the go ahead for the entire army attacking, Magruder sent his men forward. He dispatched a message to Lee stating that Armistead was making good progress and he was joining in the attack.
What Magruder had actually seen was the result of some of Armistead's units advancing on their own in order to drive off Union sharpshooters who had been having target practice with them as they waited for the time for the assault. Armistead's main body was out of sight, crouching in a ravine to avoid the unrelenting fire from the Federal artillery.
In an unfortunate piece of timing, just as Magruder's message reached Lee about the "progress" on the right, he received another from General Whiting on the left stating that he had seen movement on the Federal flank he faced which suggested the Yankees were getting ready to retreat. What Whiting had actually seen was General Bull Sumner adjusting his lines by moving a few units around.
Lee so very badly wanted to not just defeat McClellan, but disable the Army of the Potomac, that he allowed these two optimistic reports to rule the day. He sent word to Magruder to press his atatck and exploit Armistead's "success." Word was sent to the other division comamnders to join in the attack.
The net result was a series of uncoordinated attacks which were met and destroyed by the Federal guns at every point. On Magruder's front, Armistead's men had jumped up and joined in the advance as Prince John's brigades came past them. They were greeted with a storm of metal which sent rifles, knapsacks, canteens, heads, arms and legs flying through the air. No one got closer than 200 yards to the Yankee line.
In the center D.H. Hill sent his division forward and they had been halted 75 yards short of their goal and forced to shelter behind a slight rise before retreating. Jackson and A.P. Hill, who were to follow D.H. Hill's advance, were blocked by the retreating men in grey.
Back on the rebel right, Magruder was still feeeding units into the battle, and they were still being blown apart with nothing to show for their efforts. The General Porter organized a counter attack and his men charged down the slope, driving away Magurder's survivors.
Darkness ended the one sided affair at 9 pm, save for the Yankee guns keeping up their fire for another hour. When they finally fell silent, for the first time could be heard the agonized screams and pleas of the wounded on the slopes of the hill. The fruitless fight had cost Lee 5,335 casualties, a third of them dead. 2100 had fallen for the Union, with just 237 mortal.
Thus ended the campaign which had set out from the Potomac River two and a half months ago. The losses had been staggering, 15,849 for the Army of the Potomac, 20,614 for the Army of Northern Virginia. Both sides had fought with tremendous courage and discipline. The Confederates had enjoyed outstanding leadership at the top, but terrible performances by some of its unit commanders. For the North it was the reverse, the unit commanders had been outstanding, the man at the top a flop.
Both halves of the divided nation had been shocked by the butcher's bill from Shiloh, more than 23,000 in that contest. Three months later the eastern theater had topped that, 36,463 total casualties.
General McClellan had moved his army off Malvern Hill that night and collected them at Harrison's Landing on the James River, protected by the Union gunboat fleet. General Lee had the Army of Northern Virginia briefly occupy Malvern Hill and other nearby heights, but it was evident that McClellan wasn't stirring, so Lee left a skeleton force to keep an eye on Mac and pulled the remainder of his army back to the Richmond lines for a well earned rest. Almost immediately the pickets from both armies arranged informal truces, and these same men had just spent a week trying to muder one another, met between lines to discuss the recent battle, exchange newspapers, and launch a lively trade in tobacco and coffee.
The fallout from the battle began right away. Little Mac of course was attemting to spin the defeat into a triumph....he successfully managed a change of base across a hostile front against twice his numbers. Or that was how Mac was to market the retreat. And of course the only reason that the siege failed was that the government in Washington had stabbed him in the back and denied him the appropriate number of troops needed to do the job. He really and truly saw no fault at all in his conduct of the campaign. Unsurprisingly the Northern Democrats embraced McClellan's explanations, while the Radical Republicans competed to see who could rain the most invective upon Mac.
Lee was bitterly disappointed at the failure to catch and destroy McClellan's army while it was on the march, although simply lifting the siege had made him an immense hero. Unlike most other generals on both sides, Lee did no public complaining. His subordinates had let him down time and time again duuring the Seven Days, but he made no public criticism. Instead he quietly rid himself of two of his divsion commanders, Huger and Prince John, by having them transferred to the western theater. Magruder, who had been so outstanding when it came to creating the illusion of an attack, had been too timid in Lee's eyes on day five, and had been overly incautious on day seven.
Lee also recognized that trying to coordinate seven independent divisions was a large part of the Confederate problems during the battles. It was still against the law for the CSA army to have any units larger than a division, a statute which would be repealled at Lee's request a few months later. Meanwhile Lee circumvented the law by dividng his army into two "wings" rather than Corps. Though the wings had no legal standing, it was understood by all that the wing commanders were to have the same authority as a Corps commander would. To lead one wing Lee tapped General James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson was given the other.
The Penisula Campaign had produced four new heroes for the South. Lee of course, General Stuart for his ride around the Army of the Potomac, General Hood for the ferocity of the Texas Brigade attacks at Williamsburg and Boatswain Swamp Creek, and William Pegram, a previously obscure, mild mannered, bespectacled capatin of an artillery battery in A.P. Hill's division. Pegram's battery had been ordered up the knoll facing Malvern Hill and was among the few rebel artillerymen to actually get his guns in action. This of course attracted the unwanted attention of the massed Federal batteries and in short order Pegram's 80 man battalion was reduced to just one left standing...Pegram himself...who continued to work his one remaining gun by himself until its shells were exhausted. He miraculously survived unhurt and would go on to serve Hill for the duration of the war, with both he and his general getting killed in the conflict's final days.
Captain William Pegram...his rather mousy appearance masked the soul of a warrier. His fellow officers stated that Pegram seemed to go into a state of absolute joy during combat.
The nation's 86th birthday 150 years ago today, celebrated with enthusiasm, despite, or perhaps because of the failure of the Peninsula Campaign.
The CSS Teaser had been a York River tugboat called Georgetown until purchased by the State of Virginia and converted into a warship with the James River Defense Squadron. It had been part of the supporting fleet which had fought with the CSS Virginia in Hampton Roards and later employed as a mine layer. 150 years ago today near Turkey bend in the James, the Teaser encountered the USS Maratanza, a sidewheel steamship also converted into a war vessel. Both ships opened fire and the Teaser was disabled when a shot hit her boiler, the explosion of which sent her crew diving over the sides. The Teaser was towed back to Fortress Monroe and when examined, it was discovered that the ship was being used as the support vessel for the Confederacy's first observation balloon. It wasn't exactly in the same class as Professor Lowe's specially designed balloons. It was made from a patchwork of donated silk, looking like "Joseph's coat of many colors" as one Union officer described it. Where the Union balloons were filled with gas which was created by a portable generator in the field, the rebel balloon had to rely on heated air, making it far more dangerous to its operators, and greatly reducing the time it could stay aloft.
The world's first aircraft carrier?
Also on this day, Colonel John Hunt Morgan, commander of a cavalry regiment attached to the Army of Mississippi (soon to become the Army of Tennessee) launched the first of what were to be a series of raids which were to make him feared in the North and celebrated in the South. With 900 riders Morgan departed Knoxville, Tennessee, aiming for Kentucky. His goals were to get into the rear of the Union forces there, destroy supplies, wreck railroads, and force the Federals to withdraw troops from Tennessee to deal with the fire in their rear. President Davis also believed that the raid would boost the morale of those Confederate supporters among the Kentuckians.
Morgan was a strikingly handsome bon vivant, addicted to high adventure and a multitude of lovers across the South. He was tailor made to be a cavalry hero, especially as a raider.
In response to General McClellan's repeated pleas for more troops to save his army, which wasn't in any particular danger at the moment, the Lincoln adminsitration decided to suspend further attempts at penetrating the North Carolina interior and ordered General Burnside to report to Harrison's landing with two thirds of his command. 150 years ago today they took ship.
In a couple of days President Lincoln would be taking ship for Harrison's Landing. He had decided to inspect the situation in person and confer with McClellan, deciding whether to withdraw the Army of the Potomac, or keep it in place for another advance against Richmond.
Some catch up work...events neglected while the concentration here was on the Seven Days.
Out west....General Beauregard's Army of Mississippi had been camped at Tupelo, Mississippi since their evacuation of Corinth. President Davis had been angered that Beauregard had retreated without putting up a fight, an unjustified rage in that more than a third of the army had been disabled with malaria and an array of infestation related diseases in the swampy Corinth region. In that Beauregard was already a high ranker on Davis' Ugly List dating to the Creole's service in Virginia, any excuse he provided the rebel president would be quickly used to sack him.
Beauregard produced the excuse in early June when he became ill in Tupelo. Without requesting permission, he gave command to General Bragg and headed for Bladon Springs to recuperate.
Beauregard's illness was actually jealousy and political cunning. He had received word that his subordinate, General Bragg, was to be given command of the forces defending the vital river city of Vicksburg. The Creole perceived that post as the most important one in the west, and was infuriated that it had not gone to him. He wired Richmond that he could not spare Bragg from his army, and to confirm this fact, he placed Bragg in command while he took his "sick leave." If he couldn't have the Vicksburg command, at least it would not be going to someone who served under him. Or so Beauregard thought.
Beauregard had bested Davis in their newspaper war back east, but this time he badly miscalculated. Wasting no time, he declared Beauregard awol and gave command of the Army of Mississippi to Bragg. This triggered an extended political war between the Confederate president and the Southern Congressional supporters of Beauregard. The Creole would be on the shelf while this was sorted out, and then finally given command of the defense of Charlston, the scene of his first becoming a hero.
Bragg was a severe, humorless disciplinarian from North Carolina. A West Point graduate who had served in the Seminole War, and become a hero during the Mexican War. He was famed for his literal mindedness and his stuborn, argumentative nature. Some of his men had hated him so much that they attempted to frag him during the Mexican War, placing an artillery shell under his cot, the explosion of which Bragg miraculously survived unhurt.
Though his public reputation was sterling, in private Bragg generated enemies everywhere he served. A toady to his superiors, a martinet to his subordinates, about the only man in the South with an unreservedly high opinion of Bragg was Jefferson Davis. It was Bragg's good fortune that this one good opinion counted more than any other.
A man who was as warm as he looks....General Braxton Bragg
It was also during this time that the Republicans, unfettered by the opposition of Southern Democrats, began to turn their programs into realities. In the first week of July the US Congress passed an act sanctioning the construction of a cross country railroad, and the Morril Act which set aside at least 90,000 acres in each state to be used as the sites of agricultural and mechanical schools. Both were programs long blocked by Southern Senators.
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