THE SEVEN DAYS' BATTLES
It was explained in the last chapter that Lee's first object when
he took personal charge of the army defending Richmond was to raise
McClellan's siege of the Confederate capital, drive him away, and
transfer the scene of active operations to some more distant field.
To that end, first of all, he had strengthened the army at Richmond
by calling to it every man that could be spared from coast defense
and from the regions farther south. Next he had set Jackson at work
in the Valley, to occupy the forces there and in West Virginia, and
by threatening Washington to divert from McClellan's reinforcement an
additional army of 40,000 men which had been intended to strengthen him
into irresistibility.
When Jackson, beset by four armies, had escaped from two of them and
had defeated the other two, Lee sent strong reinforcements to him in
a conspicuous way, so that he might seem about to advance down the
Valley, cross the Potomac and in strong force occupy the region north
of the Potomac and threaten the capture of Washington itself.
By this strategy Lee had managed to detain 65,000 Federals in the
Valley, and 20,000 or 30,000 more in and around Washington, whose
fighting force must otherwise have been added to McClellan's already
superior army before Richmond. Then he had managed to have Jackson
suddenly and secretly quit the Valley, with the force that had there
achieved such spectacular results, together with the troops that had
been ostensibly sent to reinforce him for an aggressive campaign and
by a rapid movement to join the army at Richmond and assist it in a
supreme endeavor to dislodge McClellan.
The situation then was this: Relying upon a reinforcement of 40,000 men
under McDowell, McClellan had dangerously divided his army, keeping
about half of it north and about half of it south of the Chickahominy
river. His desire was to press forward his siege operations on the
east of the Confederate capital and at the same time to maintain a
threatening force north of the city. It was his purpose so soon as
McDowell should add his 40,000 men to this army on the north, to sweep
forward with the combined forces and irresistibly to push a conquering
column into Richmond.
But Lee had baffled all these plans by his masterful strategy. He
had compelled the diversion of McDowell to the Valley, and while the
authorities at Washington were nervously expecting Jackson to swoop
down upon that city, Jackson with his whole force, which had slipped
out of the Valley, suddenly appeared at Ashland, about a dozen miles
northwest of Richmond and immediately upon McClellan's right flank.
In the meanwhile Lee had sent Stuart--perhaps the most daring and
enterprising of the Southern cavalry leaders--with a body of 1,200 or
1,500 horsemen and two guns, to the rear of McClellan's position,
there to find out the disposition of troops, the condition of the
roads and bridges, and whatever else might open the way to that
gigantic operation of offensive defense which Lee intended presently to
undertake.
Stuart moved promptly into McClellan's rear and swept around it like
a whirlwind. Finding that a tardy resistance was taking the form of
an organized effort to cut off his retreat by the route over which he
had come, the gaily enterprising cavalier of the South, instead of
turning back and trying to retrace his steps as his enemy expected him
to do, decided to ride on all the way around McClellan's army and thus
spectacularly to emphasize the imperfection of McClellan's precaution
for the protection of that rear which Lee was planning presently to
assail tempestuously. He rode completely around McClellan, crossing his
line of communications, rebuilding a bridge which had been destroyed
for the purpose of cutting him off and entrapping him, and returning to
Richmond with a loss so small as to be scarcely worthy of mention in an
official report.
This raid was made on the twelfth and thirteenth of June, and equipped
with the detailed information secured by it Lee planned to assail
McClellan on the twenty-sixth of June with a force sufficient to
dislodge him from his besieging positions, to break his line of
communication and supply by way of the White House on the York river,
and to compel his retreat from the front of the Confederate capital
to some point on the James river, where his gunboats could afford him
needed protection.
For the purposes of this operation Lee had a force somewhat inferior
in men and guns to McClellan's, but not greatly inferior. On the
other hand McClellan's army was badly placed, with half of it on the
north and half of it on the south of the Chickahominy, neither half
being within easy supporting distance of the other, while the line
of communication and supply by way of the White House was peculiarly
vulnerable in case of an attack from the rear.
Reckoning upon these advantages, it was Lee's plan to have Jackson move
down from Ashland, assail McClellan's right wing in flank and rear,
drive back his forces and thus open the crossings of the river to the
other Confederate corps, which were to cross one after the other and
assail the enemy in front while Jackson should attack him in rear and
flank.
The plan miscarried in part. For once Jackson was not on time, and,
after waiting for him until the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of June
A. P. Hill grew impatient of the delay, and pushed his corps across the
river at Meadow Bridge and, after a strenuous fight, drove the Federals
out of Mechanicsville, without any help from Jackson. Longstreet and
D. H. Hill at the lower crossings also grew impatient of delay, and
without waiting for orders crossed and engaged the enemy. On the next
morning Jackson was with them and he led the advance.
The plan of battle was that Jackson, with D. H. Hill for support, and
keeping well in rear of McClellan's fortified positions, should push
rapidly forward towards the York-river railroad, which constituted
McClellan's sole line of communication and supply, while A. P. Hill
and Longstreet, advancing upon Jackson's right, should attack McClellan
in flank, front and rear whenever he might seriously oppose Jackson's
movement.
There was some further miscarriage of plans, and in consequence of a
delay in Jackson's advance Longstreet and Hill fell upon the right wing
of McClellan's army posted in a strong strategic position at Gaines's
Mills before the advance under Jackson was ready to strike its blow.
The Confederates here encountered a very obstinate resistance and they
were not able to force the position until Jackson came up and joined
in the assault. It was a critical moment of the war. Had McClellan
been able to hold this position the Confederate campaign of offense
must have completely collapsed, and with a superior force, the Federal
general would have been free to conquer Richmond at that leisure which
his engineering soul so greatly loved.
But with Jackson's force added to the commands of Longstreet and Hill,
the Confederates, after a very determined and bloody contest, drove the
Federals from their position and made themselves prospective masters of
McClellan's sole line of communication with his only depot of supplies
at the White House.
There was nothing now for McClellan to do but retreat as best he
could to the James river at Harrison's Landing and make that, instead
of the White House, a base of supplies. To do that was exceedingly
difficult, as McClellan had open to him only one road and that a very
bad one, while the Confederates on his flank had many roads by which to
intercept and annoy his retreat.
During the course of that retreat, which was attended at every step by
bloody contests, McClellan wrote in great bitterness of spirit to the
Secretary of War in Washington (Mr. Stanton) on the twenty-eighth of
June: "If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks
to you or to any other persons in Washington [obviously meaning Mr.
Lincoln]. You have done your best to sacrifice this army."
McClellan, with an overwhelmingly superior force, had invested Richmond
on the east and north. There he had strongly fortified himself. He had
pushed his advance to within four miles of the Confederate capital.
He had brought up tremendous siege guns and had apparently made
himself complete master of the situation. Then Jackson, the two Hills,
Longstreet and Ewell, under direction of Robert E. Lee, had fallen upon
his flank and rear and had driven him out of one position after another
with fearful slaughter, until his White House communication was cut
off, and nothing remained to him but retreat to a new base on James
river. The Confederates confidently calculated upon cutting off that
retreat also and compelling the surrender of an army superior to their
own in numbers, arms, resources and everything else except fighting
ability.
This they would very probably have accomplished if McClellan had not
developed in answer to a pressing need a fighting quality which he
had not before shown, and his army a resolute determination to endure
punishment such as none but the best of veterans are expected to show.
McClellan's one hope, one purpose, was to march his army out of the
swamps and escape from the ceaseless Confederate assaults to a point on
James river where the resistless fire of the gunboats might protect his
men from further attack and give them a chance to rest. To that end,
he retreated night and day, standing at bay now and then as the hunted
stag does, and fighting desperately for the poor privilege of running
away.
And the splendid fighting of his men was a tribute to the skill and
genius with which he had created an effective army out of what he
had described as "regiments cowering upon the banks of the Potomac,
some perfectly raw, others dispirited by recent defeat, others going
home." Out of a demoralized and disorganized mass reinforced by
utterly untrained civilians, McClellan had within a few months created
an army capable of stubbornly contesting every inch of ground even
while effecting a retreat the very thought of which might well have
disorganized an army. For soldiers in retreat do not usually fight as
soldiers do when advancing upon an enemy. They are apt to be filled
with the sentiment of hopelessness which retreat suggests and to
hesitate to risk their lives in contests that seem to offer no adequate
return for sacrifice.
If McClellan conspicuously failed as an energetic commander, in this
his first important campaign, he succeeded at any rate in demonstrating
the perfection of that work of organization by means of which he had
created the splendid Army of the Potomac out of raw recruits and
panic-stricken fugitives from battle.
At Gaines's Mill they gallantly endured a loss of no less than 9,000
men, and while they were driven from their position at last, they
lost nothing of their morale, but were ready two days later to fight
an equally determined battle, though it was the battle of a beaten
and broken army which had been driven by force out of a supremely
advantageous position and was now seeking safety in a flight that
knew no ceasing night or day, except now and then a pause to offer a
sullen resistance to an ever-present and pressing foe, and to ward off
complete destruction by the offer of battle wherever the ground gave
opportunity for resistance.
Here was McClellan's reward; here was his glory. This army of his a few
months earlier under such a succession of defeats would have broken
into panic-stricken rout. Thanks solely to his discipline and his
dominant influence, it now endured compulsory and disastrous retreat
with fortitude and stubbornly contested every inch of the blood-soaked
ground.
It outnumbered Lee's force and its equipment was immeasurably superior
to his. Under a commander of high gift for field work it might perhaps
have beaten Lee and forced its triumphant way into Richmond. Under
the commander it had it did itself great honor by retreating in good
order and stubbornly resisting the Confederate advance wherever it was
permitted to do so.
McClellan being now in full retreat and considering only those problems
which related to escape, abandoned the position at Fair Oaks and posted
Sumner and Heintzelman at Savage's Station. Their sole function was
to guard the flank of the hurriedly retreating Federal army. To that
end they were ordered to defend the position at Savage's Station until
nightfall, or, in other words, until McClellan's retreating army should
have passed that point in its hurried flight.
Here the Confederates under Magruder attacked with fury and the Federal
general Heintzelman was driven into retreat. But Sumner heroically held
his ground until nightfall, thus accomplishing McClellan's purpose,
though at cost of a fearful loss in killed and wounded. He was so
hard pressed indeed that when he retired at nightfall, he was forced
to leave all his wounded in the enemy's hands and make a precipitate
retreat to avoid the capture of his entire force.
Fortunately his enemy was a civilized one, so that his wounded
men, left in their hands, were as tenderly cared for as if Federal
surgeons had had them in charge. The only difference was that Federal
surgeons had all possible medicaments and surgical appliances,
while the Confederates, by reason of the blockade, lacked many
life-saving agents, particularly the quinine which men wounded after
long campaigning in the Chickahominy and White Oak swamps needed as
imperatively as a shipwrecked crew needs life-lines and breeches-buoys.
The war was so far civilized that the surgeons on either side eagerly
did their best for such of the enemy's wounded as might fall into
their hands. But it was still so far savage,--and it remained so to
the end--that the side which possessed a navy shut out from the other
as contraband of war the medicines necessary to the saving of human
life and the rescue of the wounded from a needless death, as resolutely
as it shut out gunpowder itself. In other words, the blockade was to
this extent a part of that savagery which makes war upon the sick
and wounded and other non-combatants as determinedly as it does upon
stalwart men with guns in their hands and cartridge boxes strapped
around their waists. There is cruelly no room for doubt that during
the Seven Days' battles thousands of gallant fellows on both sides
were buried in the fetid mud of those swamps, who might have been
saved, had the world then been civilized enough for the Federals to
let the Confederates have the quinine, the calomel and the opium they
needed for the salvation of the lives of those who could fight no more,
whether Federal or Confederate in their allegiance.
No nation is even yet civilized enough for this. "War is all Hell,"
said General Sherman, and its hellishness is nowhere so aggressively
manifest as when it denies to a hard-pressed adversary the medicines
necessary to the salvation of human life, the rescue from death of
those who are already incapacitated, either by wounds or by disease,
from further fighting. It is quite legitimate and logical to forbid the
sending of food supplies to your enemy, because food is the foundation
of every army's resisting power. But when a starving army surrenders,
as Lee's did at Appomattox, the first care of its conqueror is to issue
rations to the men who have ceased to fight, as Grant issued them on
that historic occasion, even before the terms of capitulation could be
written out. But it is a very different and a very much more barbarous
thing to deny to surgeons in the field the means of saving human life
whether the subjects of such life-saving happen to belong to the one
army or to the other. The people of the United States are to-day paying
princely sums as pensions to the families of those who died under
Confederate surgeons' hands simply because the laws and usages of war
forbade to those surgeons the medicines necessary to their life-saving
work, and treated life-saving appliances as they treated gunpowder and
arms, as contraband of war. Why should this hideous wrong have existed
after the middle of the nineteenth century? Why should it continue to
exist at the dawn of the twentieth? Are we, after all, only savages
under a thin veneer of pretended civilization?
On the thirtieth of June the Confederates again assailed McClellan's
retreating columns at Frazier's farm. A fearful contest ensued, for so
superbly had McClellan organized and disciplined his army that even
after days of disaster and depressing retreat it stood ready still to
resist and to fight for every inch of ground.
Here the Confederates confidently expected to overwhelm and capture
McClellan's army, compelling its surrender. And there is small
doubt that such must have been the outcome of the action had Lee's
lieutenants accomplished that which he had set them to do. But
Magruder and Huger failed Lee at the crisis. It was his plan that they
should assail the Federals in flank with all possible vigor, while
Jackson, Longstreet and A. P. Hill should press them upon the rear
of their retreat which now became their front for purposes of battle.
The destruction of McClellan's army seemed a certainty. But neither
Magruder nor Huger arrived in time to make Lee's plan of assault
successful. There was a bloody battle, but by reason of the delay
of these two lieutenants it was an abortive one, failing utterly to
accomplish that final and decisive overthrow and capture of McClellan's
army upon which Lee had reckoned as the crowning achievement of this
Seven Days' campaign.
The failure of these two generals to fulfil their obligations--a
failure which resulted in the baffling of Lee's supreme purpose at the
very moment when their presence must have given him quite all that he
desired of victory--might well have been made the subject of an inquest
by court martial or by a court of inquiry. But as Lee in the exceeding
gentleness of his nature omitted to order any such inquest, the matter
presents no authoritative basis of fact on which the historian may rest
an award of blame. This much, however, seems to be certain--that if
Huger and Magruder had done what Lee had ordered them to do, and what
they might easily have done, McClellan's army must have been destroyed
or captured on that thirtieth day of June, 1862.
As it was, McClellan fought all day and at night resumed his retreat,
still doggedly intent upon that one difficult problem of "saving
this army," concerning which he had written so doubtfully and so
despairingly and so bitterly in his heart-wrung protest to Secretary
Stanton.
After a fearfully bloody struggle the Federal army was able during the
night to retire toward Malvern Hill, a position which the Confederates
could not assail without exposing themselves to the destructive cross
fire of the Federal fleet in the James river.
McClellan had now been completely dislodged from his position on the
east and north of Richmond. He had been defeated in battle day after
day, and driven out of his fortifications into a helpless retreat to
the cover of his gunboats in the James river. His base of supplies at
White House had been utterly broken up. He had lost in this series
of battles no less than 15,249 men. The Confederates, being the
assailants, had suffered even greater losses.
The Confederates at this point made one disastrous mistake. They
had believed that McClellan would retreat by the route by which he
had come, and in that belief they had remained where they were for
twenty-four hours. During that precious time McClellan had moved his
enormous wagon train and his great herd of 2,500 cattle towards his new
base.
At White House General Casey loaded all the supplies he could upon
transports and sent them to the new base. But he was obliged to burn
millions of pounds of food and destroy hundreds of tons of ammunition
which he could not remove. Trains of freight cars were loaded with food
and ammunition and deliberately switched off the railroad tracks and
into the river to prevent them from falling into the possession of the
Confederates.
In brief McClellan's defeat was disastrous in the extreme; but by
reason of the failure of Lee's lieutenants to do their proper part at
the critical time the Federal commander was spared the humiliation of
a surrender. He escaped instead to Malvern Hill after a succession of
bloody defeats and after sacrificing the greater part of his reserve
stores of food and ammunition at what he had established as a secure
base of supplies.
It is not easy to imagine a completer or more disastrous defeat than
this of the Seven Days, or an enforced retreat more humiliating. Yet at
the last moment McClellan was enabled, by the mistake or the misconduct
of Lee's lieutenants, to escape to Malvern Hill, under cover of his
gunboats, and there Lee mistakenly assailed him, thus giving him, at
the end of a series of conspicuous defeats, the appearance at least of
a compensating victory.
Malvern Hill is rather a high plateau than a hill in the proper sense
of the term. It lies about sixty feet above the surrounding country.
It is a mile wide and a mile and a half long. At its base is a
network of streams and impassable swamp lands, constituting a natural
fortification practically impassable to any army in the field except
at one point where a narrow road leads up the hill. The plateau lies
so close to the James river that gunboats anchored in that stream can
command its one approach with deadly certainty.
Here McClellan stood at bay. Here a wise direction should have made
an end of the Confederate pursuit of him. To assail him there was to
invite needless slaughter with no hope of any result commensurate with
the inevitable sacrifice of human life.
But the Confederates were flushed with a week of continuous victories,
and they hurled themselves recklessly upon Malvern Hill, hoping there
to retrieve their lost opportunity of destroying or capturing the army
that a week earlier had besieged and threatened Richmond.
The assault upon such a position ought not to have been made at all.
Still worse, it was blunderingly made. The Confederates were not
ready to bring their whole force into action when the first advance
occurred, or in any wise to support the assailing force. Seven thousand
men, with six guns, charged up the slope. There were thirty guns in
position to sweep them away as with a broom, and many times seven
thousand men to resist their advance. There was also the terrific fire
of the gunboats to tear their columns into shreds and to throw their
men into confusion. Still more important perhaps was the fact that
the Confederate artillery had not yet been organized as a separate
arm of the service. Each brigade had its battery, but there was
nowhere any authority to bring these scattered batteries together
and make them effective by massing them. Six guns in the presence of
thirty were quickly put out of action, and throughout the day there
was a like disproportion, due to the mistaken system which assigned
batteries to brigades instead of organizing the whole artillery force
into a single arm of the service and placing each corps of it under a
commander of its own who could mass it at will and make it effective by
concentration.
McClellan had massed his artillery; Lee had not massed his. The result
was that McClellan's artillery fire quickly dismounted Lee's guns and
rendered them useless.
After this first fruitless assault was repelled, there was nothing
but artillery dueling for some hours. It was not until late in the
afternoon of July 1 that Lee was ready to assail his enemy with his
entire force. Then there was a strange lack of concert. One division
after another attacked without support and was beaten back for want of
it. At no time did the Confederates hurl their whole force upon their
enemies. They fought gallantly, but in detail, and therefore without
effect.
The fighting was continued till nine o'clock in the evening. Its net
result was that the Confederates had failed to dislodge McClellan from
his strong position. But they had so nearly accomplished that object
that McClellan dared not risk another day's trial of the issue, even
in his supremely advantageous position. He withdrew during the night
to Harrison's Landing under cover of his gunboats, and the Seven Days'
battles were done.
No military operation was ever more dramatic than this. At the
beginning of that fateful week McClellan, with about 120,000 men,
was closely besieging the Confederate capital. His heavy guns were
almost within shelling distance of the city, and an army of 40,000
men or more, was marching to his reinforcement. At the end of that
week's fighting the broken remnant of his army was thankfully cowering
under cover of a resistless gunboat fire, with siege abandoned, works
deserted, millions of dollars worth of stores destroyed, and such a
record of daily defeats as falls to the lot of few armies in the field.
But one thing had been demonstrated, McClellan had made an army out of
the exceedingly raw material furnished to his hand. He had converted "a
mere collection of regiments cowering on the banks of the Potomac, some
perfectly raw, others dispirited by recent defeat, some going home,"
into an army capable of meeting and fighting Lee at Mechanicsville,
Frazier's Farm, Gaines's Mills, Savage's Station and Malvern Hill.
Henceforth the war was to be fought out by armies of seasoned soldiers
and not by raw recruits and panic-stricken volunteers.
This great series of battles had cost the Confederates about 19,000
men and the Federals 15,249. It had made an end of the second attempt
to conquer Richmond and in that way to finish the war. It had left
the Confederates as conspicuously victorious in the east as they were
conspicuously defeated in the west.