Terrible Swift Sword (49 page)

This plan, to repeat, was risky, since
if McClellan once bestirred himself he could smash his way into Richmond,
letting his rear take care of itself. But it would be altogether out of
character for McClellan to do anything of the kind, and one of Lee's strong
points was his ability to assess the spiritual limitations of the men who
fought against him. Besides, Lee felt certain that his Major General John B.
Magruder could once again make McClellan believe in perils which did not exist.

Magruder would be responsible for the
defense of Richmond while Lee was making his attack north of the river, and
although he would soon reveal grave shortcomings as a field commander he had
undeniable talents in the dramatic arts; in the Old Army he had been an
enthusiastic dabbler in amateur theatricals, and he at least knew how to create
an illusion. Magruder now was told to move his men about, making a big noise
and a great to-do, causing his outnumbered battalions to look both aggressive
and numerous, acting as if he were about to unleash a terrible offensive all
along the line—and, if none of this worked, to hold the line with the bayonet,
dying hard and slowly until either Lee or the end of everything came to him.
Magruder had done this earlier with vast success. During the first few days at
Yorktown he had sprinkled 5000 men along a 13-mile front, making McClellan
believe that the position was much too strong for anything but the famous siege
train; the whole operation leading Joe Johnston, when he reached the scene, to
report that "no one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack."
²
What Magruder had done once he could doubtless do again. Lee was betting the
Confederacy's life on it.

In the end Magruder played his role to
perfection. The actor who put on such a poor performance that the entire production
almost failed was, of all people, Stonewall Jackson himself.

Famous for the speed
of his marches, Jackson here came in late. He was supposed to arrive opposite
A. P. Hill on the morning of June 26; at 3
p.m
.
on that day neither Jackson nor any tidings of him had arrived, and the
hot-blooded Hill went ahead without him: crossed the river, marched east
through Mechanicsville, drew up his men in a broad battle line facing the
Federal position behind Beaver Dam Creek, and without further ado opened his
attack.

When Hill did this
the entire operation was put in motion, irreversibly. Longstreet and D. H. Hill
dutifully crossed the river in his wake, and Lee went with them, supposing that
he would at once come in touch with Jackson, whose moving column ought to be
just beyond A. P. Hill's left flank. Lee quickly discovered that no one had
seen anything of Jackson; he was presumably on the way, but when he would show
up was anyone's guess. Hill had made his move strictly on his own hook, and now
Lee had two thirds of his army north of the Chickahominy and there was nothing
in the world to do but go on with the assault even though it was exactly the
sort of operation Lee had planned to avoid—a straight frontal attack on a
position which was altogether too strong to be carried that way. Regardless of
what had happened to Jackson, the offensive must be pressed hard; the thing
that could not be forgotten for a moment was that McClellan right now was
closer to Richmond than Lee was. If the Federal General were allowed to look
up, even for a moment, he might see it.
³

The
Federal position was immensely strong, and Hill's men never had a chance. The
attack was rebuffed with heavy loss—Hill's division sustained between 1300 and
1500 casualties, inflicting fewer than 400 on the enemy—and McClellan was
elated. During the morning, when scouts confirmed the rumors that Jackson was
approaching, he had sent Stanton an anxious wire: "There is no doubt in my
mind now that Jackson is coming upon us, and with such great odds against us we
shall have our hands full. No time should be lost if I am to have any more
reinforcements." During the evening, while the fight was still going on,
he telegraphed that "my men are behaving superbly, but you must not expect
them to contest too long against great odds," but by nine o'clock at night
he was full of confidence, reporting: "Victory of today complete and
against great odds. I almost begin to think we are invincible."
⁴

They might be invincible, but they were
going to have to move. Jackson had finally arrived, and although he was twelve
hours late he was at last precisely where Lee wanted him to be, massed just
north of Porter's right flank. Porter's lines could never be carried by direct
assault, but they would collapse as soon as Jackson advanced, which he was
certain to do when daylight came. McClellan thus made up his mind to do two
things—bring Porter back to a position where he could make an all-out defense of
the supply line to the Pamunkey, and at the same time make preparations for a
change of base to the James River in case Porter should be overwhelmed. At
daylight, accordingly, Porter retreated, going back three miles or more, past
Dr. Gaines's Mill to a long crescent of high ground behind a meandering
watercourse called Boatswain's Swamp. The ground had been well chosen; the
left flank was firmly anchored on the Chickahominy, there was a jungle of
second-growth timber, brambly fields and intricate gullies to delay attacking
troops, and along the crest there was abundant room for Federal infantry and
artillery. While the infantry was countermarching, Porter's wagon train began
its laborious movement toward the south side of the Chickahominy, while Major
Elisha S. Kellogg of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery moved ten of his big
guns to the Golding farm, where they could fire on either bank of the river.
⁵

These
guns were the light heavyweights—five of the four-and-one-half-inch Rodmans and
five 30-pounder Parrotts. They had long range and good hitting power and they
would be most useful; but the forty-eight blockbusters were still aboard ship
at White House, and unless Porter could hold his position they would stay
aboard ship until a new campaign was launched. If the White House base had to
be given up they could be carried around to the James easily enough, but it
would be next to impossible to place them where they could be used in any
attack on Richmond. No matter how it might be rationalized, a change of base
would be a defeat—unless McClellan solved all of his problems by breaking
Magruder's line and marching in to Richmond.

. . . Which is much
easier to say, of course, than it could have been to do; the hardest part of
all, perhaps, being to understand (in the midst of battle smoke, conflicting
reports and universal confusion) even that the thing
might
be done. Staying at headquarters on the south
side of the river, McClellan saw the battle through the eyes of his generals,
accepting the distorted vision they gave him, not realizing that it was doubly
distorted because most of them did not really know what they were looking at;
and presently it seemed to him that he was being assailed, furiously and with
overwhelming numbers, on both sides of the river at once. Magruder was putting
on a show, as instructed, and he had his audience enthralled all the way. He
staged mock charges, had artillery and infantry open sudden bursts of fire,
shuttled men in and out of sight with a great deal of cheering and stentorian
shouts of command—and, all in all, simulated a terrible fight which failed of
realism only in that hardly anyone got hurt. All along the line, McClellan's
subordinates assured him that they were hard pressed and could not spare a man.

North of the Chickahominy there was no
fooling. After a long delay—it took time to get the real assault columns
formed, and once again Jackson was strangely tardy in reaching his
position—Lee struck Porter's lines on June 27 with everything he had, and by
mid-afternoon an enormous battle was rolling and rocking up and down the tangled
slopes and marshes of Boatswain's Swamp. There was deadly twilight in the
ravines, where the trapped rifle smoke eddied in the hollows like heavy fog,
and the Confederates who fought here recalled a half-blind advance through an
unending din, and when they tried to tell about it they could speak only of
isolated bits of action that had no particular sequence or meaning . . .
riderless horses galloping off to nowhere, stretcher bearers stumbling in and
out of vision, a long rank of cannon stabbing the darkness with bright jets of
flame "fifteen feet long and large around as a barrel," officers
waving swords and trying in vain to make their orders heard, a lone battalion
running up hill, its colonel riding in front with the regimental colors, the
men all cheering and waving their hats; and all the time, without ever a break
or a pause, the crashing tumult of sound which at least one veteran, long
afterward, called the most terrible noise he heard in the war except possibly
for Spotsylvania Court House. In the rear, regimental surgeons met the
ambulances and tried in vain to keep up with their duties. (One Confederate
doctor said that the stretcher cases unloaded at his station filled a two-acre
lot in no time; he and his fellows operated all night, and in the morning found
many wounded men still awaiting attention.) Trying to sum it all up, a Southern
gunner wrote to his wife: "Satan was holding his orgies on earth &
death supped fat on the feast" —which, after all, may have been as good a
way as any to describe it.
⁶

Some
fantastic freak of acoustics kept most of the racket from being heard at
McClellan's headquarters, where for a time it was supposed that nothing more
than an artillery duel was going on. (A mile or two downstream Professor Lowe
had a balloon in operation. An officer from McClellan's staff went up in it and
saw what was really happening, and when he came down he got his horse and went
to McClellan all in a gallop to report; late in the day McClellan sent Henry
Slocum's division from Franklin's corps and two of Sumner's brigades across the
river to help.)
⁷

Lee
had trouble getting his attack co-ordinated. For a time A. P. Hill's division
fought unaided, and it was badly mangled. Some of Jackson's units went astray
on the winding country roads, so that Hood's brigade at last went into action
with Longstreet's division, some distance to the right of Jackson's proper
front. Not until dusk did all the gray divisions north of the river go forward
together, but when they did they were irresistible and Porter's line finally
collapsed. Twenty-two Federal guns and 2800 Federal soldiers were captured, and
as darkness came Porter's broken divisions fled across the bridges to the south
bank, with Slocum's men acting as rear guard. As the roar of battle died away
an insistent crying filled the air; thousands of wounded men were calling for
help, and all about there were unwounded Confederates trying to get their
fragmented battalions together, chanting regimental numbers endlessly so that
stragglers could know where their comrades were: "First South Carolina!
Thirteenth Georgia! Fourth Alabama!" The darkness was necked with
shifting lights as stretcher bearers with lanterns probed the splintered
underbrush.
⁸

All through the battle, McClellan had
done his best to keep the War Department advised. During the morning he wired
that the whole army was "so concentrated that it can take advantage of the
first mistake of the enemy," adding: "Success of yesterday
complete." At noon he wrote that the Confederates were making a heavy
attack north of the river, and that an attack was also anticipated on the south
side, and an hour later he reported that things were going well but that the
worst was yet to come: "If I am forced to concentrate between the
Chickahominy and the James I will at once endeavor to open communication with
you. . . . Goodbye, and present my respects to the President."

At 4:30 in the
afternoon he sent an odd message across the river to the embattled Porter:
"Send word to all your troops that their general thanks them for their
heroism, and say to them that he is now sure that nothing can resist them
...
I look upon today as decisive of the
war. Try to drive the rascals and take some prisoners and guns. What more
assistance do you require?" Half an hour later he assured Porter that he
was ordering up more troops, and instead of urging him to drive the rascals he
warned: "You must hold your own until dark." Dark came, and defeat
for Porter came with it, and at eight in the evening McClellan telegraphed Stanton
that there had been a terrible battle. He specified: "Attacked by greatly
superior numbers in all directions on this side; we still hold our own, though
a very heavy fire is kept up on the left bank of the Chickahominy. The odds
have been immense. We hold our own very nearly. I may be forced to give up my
position during the night, but will not if it is possible to avoid it. Had I
20,000 fresh and good troops we would be sure of a splendid victory
tomorrow."
⁹

To avoid possible confusion, it should be
remarked that "this side," which superior numbers had been attacking
in all directions, was the south side of the Chickahominy, where nothing at all
had been happening except General Magruder's game of bluff; and "the left
bank," where the dogged Rebels still kept up a heavy fire, was the north
side, where McClellan's whole campaign had just gone to ruin. When the wire was
written there were three times the needed "20,000 fresh and good
troops," lying ready to hand below the river. Nobody was giving them
anything to do, and the vision of splendid victory flickered and died.