reduced from 10,000 to 6,000 strong, | flanks of the baffled column, hurling was immediately in their front, and his men for a time held their ground gallantly; but days of fighting, succeeded by nights of marching-always, alas in the wrong directionhad told upon the spirits as well as the numbers of these green troops, so suddenly transformed into veterans; while the flushed and confident enemy who assailed them were twice if not thrice their number. An attempt to crush their left by the Rebels was met by a charge of the 5th, 8th, 9th, and 10th regiments, led by Col. Simmons, of the 5th, which hurled the enemy back to the woods in their rear, leaving about 200 prisoners in our hands, who were triumphantly marched off the field. But here Simmons fell, mortally wounded; while hundreds of his soldiers strewed the field; and the charging column, broken as it entered the woods, was unable to reform under the murderous fire of the enemy's infantry and artillery, and fell back in disorder to the woods behind its original position, which they held until night put an end to the contest. A succession of desperate struggles ensued: the Rebels rushing forward in charge after charge to capture our guns, which poured volleys of grape and canister, at short range, into their close masses, sweeping them down by hundreds and forcing them to recoil in dismay; when our supporting regiments would pour a leaden hail of musketry upon the Brig. Gen. Roger A. Pryor, 5th brigade of Longstreet's corps, says: "About 4 o'clock, I received an order from Maj.-Gen. Longstreet to go into the fight. At, once, I moved in line toward the field; but the wood and other obstructions forced me to form column and send my regiments in successively. Arriving on the field, I discovered that the brig it back in confusion to the sheltering forest. Thus, for two hours, the desperate conflict raged; until Kerns's battery, having fired its last charge, was, by McCall's order, withdrawn from the field, and Col. Roberts's infantry, having just repulsed a Rebel charge, was charged again on its left flank and driven from the field by a fresh force, which, rushing furiously on Cooper's battery, drove off the gunners and captured the guns. A counter-charge was instantly made by the 9th, with parts of other regiments; and, after a desperate but brief struggle, the battery was recovered, and the standard of the 10th Alabama taken. The Reserves still held the field, and not one of their guns had been lost, when, between sunset and dark, Meagher's Irish brigade, of Hooker's division, came up on our left, and, charging desperately across the open field, drove the Rebels back again into the woods. McCall's right, under Gen. Meade, had been likewise engaged with overwhelming numbers, by whom a final charge was made, just at dark, for the possession of Randall's battery; which was carried at the point of the bayonet, though at a fearful cost. Gens. McCall and Meade instantly rallied their infantry for its recapture, and a hand-to-hand struggle of unsurpassed ferocity ensued, wherein the Reserves were overpowered and driven back, though the Rebels had suffered" too severely to pursue ade on my right had been repulsed, and that my command were exposed to a destructive fire on the flank as well as in front. Nevertheless. they stood their ground, and sustained the unequal combat until rëenforced by the brigade of Gen. Gregg. We did not return to our original position until the enemy had abandoned the field and surrendered his artillery into our possession. CLOSE OF THE GLENDALE FIGHT. them. Even the guns, so severely | contested, were not held by them; the cheers of a New Jersey brigade, advancing in the dusk to the relief of McCall, impelling them to fall back in haste to the woods. In this closing struggle, Gen. Meade was severely wounded in the arm and hip; Gen. McCall, who had lost all his brigadiers, riding forward a short distance to reconnoiter the apparently deserted field, was suddenly confronted by the leveled muskets of Rebel infantry, and compelled to yield himself a prisoner; and when Gen. Seymour, who had succeeded to the command, withdrew by order, at 11 P. M., to share in or cover the general retreat, the batteries of the division, their horses long since killed, their men worn out with desperate fighting, were left on the hard-fought field, where nearly onefourth of the division had been killed or wounded. The noise of this vehement struggle had brought Hooker, from our left, and Burns's brigade, and Taylor's 1st New Jersey brigade, from Slocum's division, to the aid of McCall; so that we were doubtless in force to have won the battle just after we had lost it, had any daylight remained. Gen. Sumner, speaking from hear-say, thus mistakenly reports it: 163 menced; and, after a furious contest, lasting Heintzelman, who was present after the battle, also very mistakenly till 5 P. M., and that in less than an reports that McCall was not attacked hour his division gave way; adding: "General Hooker, being on his left, by moving to his right, repulsed the Rebels in the handsomest manner, with great Gen. Sedgwick in McCall's rear, also greatly slaughter. Gen. Sumner, who was with aided with his artillery and infantry in driving back the enemy. They now renewed their attack with vigor on Gen. Kearny's left, and were again repulsed with heavy loss." Lee, more plausibly though not quite fairly, says: "The superiority of numbers and advantage of position were on the side of the enemy. The battle raged furiously until 9 P. M. By that time, the enemy had been driven with great slaughter from every position but one, which he maintained until he was enabled to withdraw under cover of darkness. At the close of the struggle, nearly the entire field remained in our possession, covered with the enemy's dead and wounded. Many prisoners, including a General of division, were captured; and several batteries, with some thousands of small arms, taken. Could the other commands have cooperated in the action, the result would have proved most disastrous to the enemy. After the engagement, Magruder was recalled to relieve the troops of Longstreet and Hill. His men, much fatigued by their long, hot march, arrived during the night." pas misled as well as delayed in his 38 "The battle of Glendale was the most when he proceeded to post his troops, severe action since the battle of Fair Oaks. About three o'clock P. M., the action comIn this engagement, my loss was uncommonly heavy in officers as well as men. The 14th Alabama, bearing the brunt of the struggle, was nearly annihilated. I crossed the Chickahominy on the 26th, with 1,400 men. In the fights that followed, I suffered a loss of 849 killed and wounded, and 11 missing." Col. J. B. Strange, commanding 3d brigade, 2d division of Longstreet's corps, in his report of this fight, says: as they arrived, so as to command "The brigade carried into action 723 muskets; and of this small number the loss was 228, including 4 officers killed and 13 wounded." Gen. C. M. Wilcox reports the loss of his Alabama brigade in this battle at 471. Among the Rebel wounded were Brig.-Gens. Anderson and Featherston. It is probable that the respective losses here were about equal. 39 June 30. all the approaches, but especially | and assailed at every turn, rendered those from Richmond and the this retreat an ordeal for our men Swamp. The last of our trains and long to be remembered." Gen. Mcour reserve artillery reached him Clellan had reached Malvern the preabout 4 P. M. of this day; about the ceding day. Early this morning, time that Holmes's force, moving leaving Gen. Barnard with directions down the James, appeared on our for posting the troops as they arrived, left flank (our army having here he had gone down the river on the faced about), and opened a fire of gunboat Galena from Haxall's, to artillery on Warren's brigade, on our select a position whereon his retreat extreme left. He was at once aston- should definitively terminate. ished by a concentrated fire from 30 guns, and recoiled in haste, abandoning two of his cannon. "Huddled among the wagons were 10,000 stragglers-for the credit of the nation be it said that four-fifths of them were wounded, sick, or utterly exhausted, and could not have stirred but for dread of the tobacco warehouses of the South. The confusion of this herd of men and mules, wagons and wounded, men on horses, men on foot, men by the road-side, men perched on wagons, men searching for water, men famishing for food, men lame and bleeding, men with ghostly eyes, looking out between bloody bandages, that hid the face-turn to some vivid account of the most pitiful part of Napoleon's retreat from Russia, and fill out the picture-the grim, gaunt, bloody picture of war in its most terrible features. "It was determined to move on during the night. The distance to Turkey Island Bridge, the point on James river which was to be reached, by the direct road was six miles. But those vast numbers could not move over one narrow road in days; hence every by-road, no Jackson's corps, consisting of his own, with Whiting's, D. H. Hill's, and Ewell's divisions, came in the Rebel advance down the Quaker Road, whereon our army had mainly emerged from the Swamp; while Magruder, with most of Huger's division, advancing on the direct roads from Richmond, menaced and soon assailed our left. Longstreet's and A. P. Hill's divisions, having had the heaviest of the fighting thus far, and been badly cut up, were held in reserve by Lee in the rear of Jackson, and were not brought into action. It is none the less true, how matter how circuitous, had been searched out by questioning prisoners and by cavalry excursions. Every one was filled by one of the advancing columns. The whole front was in motion by seven P. M., Gen. Keyes in command of the ad vance. “I rode with Gen. Howe's brigade of Couch's division, taking a wagon-track through dense woods and precipitous ravines winding sinuously far around to the left, and striking the river some distance below Turkey Island. Commencing at dusk, the march continued until daylight. The night was dark and fearful. Heavy thunder rolled in turn along each point of the heavens, and dark clouds overspread the entire canopy. We were forbidden to speak aloud; and, lest the light of a cigar should present a target for an ambushed rifle, we were cautioned not to smoke. Ten miles of weary marching, with frequent halts, as some one of the hundred vehicles of the artillery train, in our center, by a slight deviation, crashed against a tree, wore away the hours to dawn, when we debouched into a magnificent wheat-field, and the smoke-stack of the Galena was in sight. Xenophon's remnant of the Ten Thousand, shouting, The sea! the sea!' were not more glad than we." THE BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL. ever, that the entire Army of Virginia was present, engaged in or supporting the attack, and animated by a sanguine confidence that its results could differ only in being more decisive from those of the recent bloody conflicts. But much time was consumed in getting into position and bringing up the artillery necessary to respond to our heavy and well-placed batteries, so as to cover the advance of assaulting columns of infantry. 165 and Griffin's divisions, holding our advance on the right. Being unsupported, however, by the general advance which had been ordered, Hill was hurled back with heavy loss, though Ewell's and Jackson's own divisions had meantime been sent forward to his aid; as A. P. Hill's division was brought up by Longstreet to the aid of Magruder. Jackson, at 3 P. M., pushed forward D. H. Hill's division on his right, and Whiting's on his left, with part of Ewell's in the center, holding his own division in reserve; Huger simultaneously advancing on their right, with Magruder's three divisions on his right, under general orders to break our lines by a concentric fire of artillery, and then "charge with a yell" on our entire front with columns of infantry, which, however torn and thinned by our fire, should rush right over our defenses, as they did in the final assault at Gaines's Mill, and drive our fugitive army into the James far more hurriedly than Porter's wing had been driven across the Chickahominy. The infantry attack, after a brief cannonade, was made accordingly, and for the most part with great intrepidity; and, though the carnage was fearful, some ground was gained by Magruder on our left, where Kershaw's and Semmes's brigades, of McLaws's division, charged through a dense wood, nearly up to our guns; as did those of Wright, Mahone, and Anderson, still farther to their right, and Barksdale, nearer to the center; while D. H. Hill, with Jackson's foremost division, charged on Couch's A Warren's MALVERN HILL. Explanations. division next, then Kearny and Hook- | ion, were ordered up to the support er, forming Heintzelman's corps; next to these, Sedgwick and Richardson, under Sumner; with Smith and Slocum, under Franklin, on our right; while McCall's shattered Pennsylvania Reserves and our cavalry were posted in the rear, near the river. Batteries above batteries, along the brow of the hill, rendered the attack little less than madness, on any other presumption than that our men were cowards, who, if resolutely charged, would inevitably run. Apart from the great strength of our position, we had more men than the Rebels, and many more and heavier guns; and then the battle opened too late in the day to justify a rational hope of success: the main assault being made, after a very considerable pause for preparation, so late as 6 P. M. ; yet it was made with such desperation-the sheltering woods enabling the Rebels to form their columns of assault within a few hundred yards of our batteries, emerging on a full run, and rushing upon our lines in utter recklessness of their withering fire-that Sickles's brigade of Hooker's division, and Meagher's, of Richardson's divis 41 Jackson reports the loss of his corps (comprising his own, Ewell's, Whiting's, and D. H. Hill's divisions) in this fight: 377 killed, 1,746 wounded, 39 missing; total, 2,162. Magruder thinks his loss will not exceed 2,900 killed and wounded, out of 26,000 or 28,000 under his orders. Brig.-Gen. Ransom reports the losses in his brigade at 499, out of 3,000. Brig.-Gen. Mahone, of Huger's division, reports a total loss of 321, out of 1,226. Gen. A. R. Wright reports the loss of his already weakened brigade, in this fight, at 362. D. R. Jones reports the losses in his division at 833. Among the wounded in this fight were Brig.-Gen. Jones, Va.; Col. Ransom, 35th N. C., severely; and Col. Ramseur, 49th N. C. Brig.-Gen. J. R. Trimble, of Ewell's division, giving an account of the conduct of his brigade in this battle, says: of Porter and Couch, who held our right front, which Jackson was charging; but not one of our guns was even temporarily captured or seriously imperiled throughout the fight, wherein the losses of the Rebels must have been at least treble our own." Darkness closed this one-sided carnage; though our guns were not all silent till 9 o'clock, when the Rebels on our front had been fairly driven out of range; though on our left they sunk to rest in ravines and hollows somewhat in advance of the ground they had held when their artillery first opened. And still, as throughout the struggle, our gunboats continued to throw their great missiles clear over the left of our position, into the fields and woods occupied by the enemy, probably doing little positive execution, since that enemy was not in sight, but adding materially to the discomforts of his position. Gen. McClellan, who had been down to Harrison's Bar in the Galena, in the morning, landed toward night, and was on the field during the last desperate charge of the enemy." "The next morning, by dawn, I went off to ask for orders; when I found the whole army in the utmost disorder; thousands of straggling ambulances, wagons, and artillery, obstructing men asking every passer-by for their regiment; every road; and altogether, in a drenching rain, presenting a scene of the most woeful and disheartening confusion." 43 There has been much unseemly controversy respecting McClellan's being or not being on a gunboat during this action; the interest thereof being heightened by this passage in Gen. M.'s testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War: "Question: Were you down to the river, or on board the gunboats during any part of that day, between the time you left the field and your return to it? "Answer: I do not remember; it is possible I may have been, as my camp was directly on the river." |