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156

THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS.

[1862.

Johnston resolved to strike the detached left wing of the National army, which had crossed the Chickahominy and advanced to 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 reënforcement from the other wing. The attack, May 31st, fell first upon General Silas Casey's division of Keyes's corps, which occupied some half-finished works. It was

bravely made and bravely resisted, and the Confederates 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. Reënforcements 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

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THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS.

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But he

The frail

under water, and it was almost a wreck. unhesitatingly pushed on his column. structure was steadied by the weight of the men; and though it swayed and undulated with their movement and the rush of the water, they all crossed in safety.

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.

For some time after the battle of Fair Oaks heavy rains made any movement almost impossible for either of the armies that confronted each other near Richmond. General Alexander

S. Webb says: "The ground, which consisted of alternate layers of reddish clay and quicksand, had turned into a vast swamp, and the guns in battery sank into the earth by their own weight." McClellan kept his men at work, intrenching and strengthening his position, while he himself seems to have been constantly occupied in writing despatches to the President and the Secretary of War, alternately promising an almost immediate advance on Richmond and calling for reënforcements. He wanted McDowell's corps of forty

158

THE DEADLY SWAMPS.

[1862.

thousand men, and the authorities wanted to give it to him if it could be sent by way of Fredericksburg and united with his right wing in such a way as not to uncover Washington. But in one despatch he declared he would rather not have it at all unless it could be placed absolutely under his command. His position was in several respects very bad. The Chickahominy was bordered by great swamps, whose malarial influences robbed him of almost as many men as fell by the bullets of the enemy. His base was at White House, on the Pamunkey; and the line thence over which his supplies must come, instead of being at right angles with the line of his front and covered by it, was almost a prolongation of it. It was impossible to maintain permanent bridges over the Chickahominy, and a rain of two or three days was liable at any time to swell the stream so as to sweep away every means of crossing. He could threaten Richmond only by placing a heavy force on the right bank of the river; he could render his own communications secure only by keeping a large force on the left bank. When it first occurred to him that his true base was on the James, or how long he contemplated its removal thither, nobody knows; but he received a startling lesson on the 12th of June, which seems to have determined his apparently indeterminate mind.

When General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Fair Oaks, the command devolved upon General G. W. Smith; but two days later General Robert E. Lee was given the command of the Confederate

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STRENGTH OF THE ARMIES.

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forces in Virginia, which he retained continuously till his surrender brought the war to a close. The plan that he had opposed, and caused Mr. Davis to reject, when Johnston was in command - of bringing large bodies of troops from North Carolina, Georgia, and the Shenandoah valley, to form a massive army and fall upon McClellan - he now adopted and proceeded at once to carry out. Johnston enumerates reënforcements that were given him aggregating fifty-three thousand men, and says he had then the largest Confederate army that ever fought. The total number is given officially at 80,762. This probably means the number of men actually carrying muskets, and excludes all officers, teamsters, musicians, and mechanics; for the Confederate returns were generally made in that way. McClellan's total effective force, including every man that drew pay the last week in June, was 92,500. His constant expectation of reënforcements by way of Fredericksburg was largely, if not wholly, what kept him in his false position, and it is fair to presume that but for this he would have swung across the peninsula to the new base on the James much sooner and under more favorable circumstances.

Wishing to know the extent of McClellan's earthworks on the right wing, Lee, on June 12th, sent a body of twelve hundred cavalry, with two light guns, to reconnoitre. It was commanded by the dashing General J. E. B. Stuart, commonly called "Jeb Stuart,"who used to dress in gay costume, with yellow sash and black plume, wore gold spurs, and

160

STUART'S RAID.

[1862.

rode a white horse. He was only ordered to go as far as Hanover Old Church; but at that point he had a fight with a small body of cavalry, and as he supposed dispositions would be made to cut him off, instead of returning, he kept on and made the entire circuit of McClellan's army, rebuilding a bridge to cross the lower Chickahominy, and reached Richmond in safety. The actual amount of damage that he had done was small; but the raid alarmed the National commander for the safety of his communications, and was probably what determined him to change his base.

Stonewall Jackson, if not Lee's ablest lieutenant, was certainly his swiftest, and the one that threw the most uncertainty into the game by his rapid movements and unexpected appearances. At a later stage of the war his erratic strategy, if persisted in, would probably have brought his famous corps of "foot cavalry" (as they were called from their quick marches) to sudden destruction. An opponent like Sheridan, who knew how to be swift, brilliant, and audacious, without transgressing the fundamental rules of warfare, would have been likely to finish him at a blow. But Jackson did not live to meet such an opponent. At this time the bugbears that haunt imaginations not inured to war were still in force, and the massive thimble-rigging by which he was made to appear before Richmond, and presto! sweeping down the Shenandoah Valley, served to paralyze large forces that might have been added to McClellan's army.

The topography of Virginia is favorable to an

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