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Field Trip to the Seven Days Battles

April 20 – 23, 2012

As has been done the three previous years, members of the CCWRT embarked on a spring field trip in a rented 15 passenger van. Unlike our previous three trips, this year’s group of ten persons headed east with the destination being Richmond, Va. The trip began on a beautiful Friday, April 20th with a ten hour drive from Cincinnati to Richmond. After checking into the Hampton Inn – Mechanicsville, we had a little over one hour of daylight to see as much of the

nearby Cold Harbor Battlefield as we could take in via a self guided tour. Sadly only a very small portion of the Cold Harbor Battlefield is preserved, but for our group it was large enough to keep our interest until darkness fell. After a quick bite to eat it was time to bivouac for the night.

The next morning, Saturday, April 21st, NPS historian Bob Krick met us at the motel to begin our tour of the Seven Days Battles. Our first stop was the Dabbs House (pictured above). This became Robert E Lee’s headquarters after taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 1st, 1862. The house is located just east of downtown Richmond and was where Lee devised his strategy for the defense of Richmond.

Next, Mr. Krick took us to the site of Ellerson’s Mill (pictured at right), a major landmark in the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek, also known as the Battle of Mechanicsville. The battle took place on June 26, 1862, and was the first major engagement of the Seven Days Battles. Although the mill is long gone, we

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were able to walk across a pedestrian bridge extending over Beaver Dam Creek. Here 14,000 well entrenched Union infantry, supported by 32 guns in six batteries Fitz John Porter’s V Corps, repulsed repeated A. P. Hill’s 11,000 Confederate attackers with substantial casualties. Although this battle was a tactical victory for the Union, McClellan realized that he could not keep Porter's corps in place with Jackson threatening his flank. He ordered Porter to begin a withdrawal and at the same time decided to change the army's base of supply from White House on the Pamunkey River to Harrison's Landing on the James River.

At right, Bob Krick describes the action near the center of the Gaines’ Mill Battlefield.

By next afternoon, June 27th, four of the five corps at McClellan’s disposal were south of the rain swollen Chickahominy River. Only Fitz John Porters Fifth Corps was still north of the river. Lee met with Jackson and A. P. Hill at Walnut Grove Church and formulated a plan that would either cut Union supply lines or force a battle. Krick directed our van to the Walnut Grove

Church parking lot to talk about this meeting, the first of the famous Lee –

Jackson partnership. The combined effort of all of Lee's force was destined to be the

largest Confederate

attack of the war, about 57,000 men

in six divisions.

The plan called for Jackson to march toward Old Cold Harbor, and then south beyond Porter's right flank. Bob Krick took us to the crossroads where the Old Cold Harbor Tavern still stands

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(pictured above). The first actions of the battle occurred here between noon and 1 p.m. on June 27 after D.H. Hill's division reached Old Cold Harbor, where it was scheduled to link up with Stonewall Jackson's command. Hill pushed through the crossroads with two brigades, which encountered unexpected infantry fire. When Stonewall Jackson finally reached Old Cold Harbor, weary from the marching and counter-marching, he began to arrange his troops and those of D.H. Hill to trap the Federals he expected to be driven east by Longstreet and A.P. Hill.

The photo above shows the ten people who attended the Seven Days Tour. Pictured from left to right are Tom Williams, Bob Limoseth, Esly Caldwell, Dan Bauer, Andy Simmons, John McGee, Ken Anderson, Becket Burkett, Randy Donohue, and Mark Fidler. The group is standing in front of the Watt House on National Park Service section of the Gaines’ Mill

Battlefield.

Thanks to some hospitable property owners and Bob Krick’s knowledge of the land, we were able to access the eastern half of the battlefield. The area is typically restricted from the general public. Although this was very fortunate for our group, it is a shame to think

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that unless one has the benefit of guide, these portions of the battlefield are seen by only a few.

As the group was walking to the east section of the Gaines’ Mill Battlefield, we passed by an old country road (pictured below). Bob Krick was eager to point out you will not find a more

authentically preserved Civil War era road than this.

After walking about a mile, we finally reached the most eastern part of the Union line along Old Cold Harbor Road. In the photo below Bob Krick describes the fierce action that took place around the McGhee House which sits about 100 yards off the Old Cold Harbor Rd. Unfortunately, the McGhee house is house

is long since gone. This piece of land has the distinction of being the sight of two major Civil War battlefields. The Cold Harbor line of battle ran along a north south axis while the Gaines’ Mill battle lines ran east-west with the intersecting point being around the McGhee House.

Porter's reinforced V Corps held fast for the afternoon as the Confederate attacked in a disjointed manner, first with the division of Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill, then Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, suffering heavy casualties. The arrival of Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson's command was delayed, preventing the full

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concentration of Confederate force before Porter received some reinforcements from the VI Corps.

To make his stand, Porter selected a plateau encircled at its base by the marshy stream known as Boatswain Swamp. The photo at left shows part of this plateau which is on the west end of the battlefield. The position was later overrun by Confederate forces.

Porter observed the gathering Confederate lines and, suspecting his enemy's intention to "overwhelm and crush" him, finally requested reinforcements. They had not

yet arrived when the Confederates, under A. P. Hill, launched their initial assault that afternoon. The narrow hilltop allowed little room for maneuvering, so the ensuing battle was a heated contest of brute force.

As the sun was starting to go down, William Whiting's Division achieved the breakthrough on Longstreet's front. Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade move forward swiftly and aggressively and broke a hole in the line. Pickett's brigade also succeeded in its second assault of

the day. Confederate breakthroughs on their center and right could not be countered and the Union line crumbled. Sykes's regulars conducted an orderly withdrawal from the McGehee house to Grapevine Bridge. The Union brigades of Brig. Gens. Thomas F. Meagher and William H. French arrived from the II Corps, too late to help other than as a rear

guard for Porter's retreat. A battalion of the 5th U.S. Cavalry under Captain Charles J. Whiting

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made a desperate charge against the Texas Brigade, but was forced to surrender after heavy losses. By 4 a.m. on June 28, Porter withdrew across the Chickahominy, burning the bridges behind him. The above photo above is of the newly erected Texas monument just west of Boatswain Creek which commemorates the Texans breakthrough.

Eventually, the Union line broke in several places almost simultaneously, with the 4th Texas and 18th Georgia infantry regiments are generally credited with initiating the breakthrough. The

fighting was brutal; in the words of one Texas soldier, "One volley was poured into their backs, and it seemed as if every ball found a victim, so great was the slaughter." As the Confederates advanced down into the creek, Union troops were driven from their position on the other side of the creek. The photo at left is of the Boatswain Creek bed.

The Union Brigades of Martindale and Butterfield were forced to retreat to higher ground away from the creek. The splintering Union line and deepening darkness gradually brought the battle to a close. Reinforcements arrived as the bulk of the army was retreating, but had little hope of reversing fortunes. Two entire Union regiments—nearly a thousand men—surrendered to Confederates after finding themselves surrounded by the enemy. Below is the monument erected for Cadmus

Wilcox Alabamian’s.

Many veterans would remember the nine hours at Gaines's Mill as the most vicious fighting of the entire war. McClellan soon declared publicly what he had already decided privately: that he would abandon his campaign against the Confederate capital. Lee, meanwhile, earned the confidence of the Army of Northern Virginia and

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President Davis, although the rest of the Seven Days' Campaign would fail to destroy the Union army. Gaines's Mill was an intense battle, the largest of the Seven Days and the only clear-cut Confederate tactical victory of the Peninsula Campaign. Union casualties from the 34,214 engaged were 894 killed, 3,107 wounded, and 2,836 captured or missing. Of the 57,018 Confederates engaged, casualties totaled 7,993 including 1,483 killed, Since the Confederate assault was conducted against only a small portion of the Union Army (the V Corps, one fifth of the army), the army emerged from the battle in relatively good shape overall. Lee's victory, his first of the war, could have been more complete if it were not for the mishaps of Stonewall Jackson. Although McClellan had already planned to shift his supply base to the James River, his defeat unnerved him and he decided to abandon his advance on Richmond and begin the retreat of his entire army to the James. Gaines's Mill and the Union retreat across the Chickahominy was

a psychological victory for the

Confederacy, signaling that Richmond was out of danger.

In the photo at left, Andy Simmons and Dan Bauer present Bob Krick a check for $300 donated by the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table and made out to the Richmond

Battlefield Preservation Association. The photo is taken in front of the Watt House.

We finished off the day by driving to the site of Savage’s Station. Bob Krick explained that this was a railroad depot along the Richmond & York Railroad. It was here that McClellan’s rear guard was attacked on June 29th, 1862. In Union Army’s haste to evacuate the area, much of the army’s supplies were ordered to be burned if they could not be carried. With the group weary after the long walk at Gaines’ Mill, we did bother getting out of the van at Savage’s Station. With that, we headed back to the Hampton Inn for the night.

Sunday, April 22 As was forecasted, Sunday was a rainy, cold day. Bob met us at the motel at 8:00 AM, and we headed for White Oak Swamp, the site fighting on June 30, 1862. After the van was parked on the side of the road next to White Oak Swamp, it became apparent to us that White Oak Swamp is a far less formidable barrier than the Chickahominy River is. The Chickahominy River seems more of your classic looking swamp while the White Oak Swamp seems to be more of a creek.

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Nevertheless, as we sat in the van with the raindrops hitting the windshield, Mr. Krick explained how easy it would have been for Stonewall Jackson’s forces to cross the creek to left of the main road and simply bypass the Union’s strong defensive position. Instead, Jackson engaged in a pointless artillery duel. Bob went onto say that that Thomas Jackson, who would go onto to become a legendary figure, was not himself during the Seven Days. This was no more apparent than his lack of action at White Oak Swamp. With rain falling steadily, nobody wanted to get out of the van to take pictures. Aside from a sign on the road, there is not much to photograph.

Next Bob directed our van a little further south to the Glendale (Frayser’s Farm) Battlefield. He asked that the van to be parked on the side of the Long Bridge Road. With the rain subsiding a bit, he said this would be as good as anytime to go for a walk. We walked into woods, then into a clearing under a high tension power line, and then back into more woods. Finally we came upon

this lone marker shown above. This marker was placed in this spot two years ago to memorialize the furthest advance of the 69th PA bayonet charge. The marker was paid for and dedicated by members of the 69th PA reenactors. The historians knew this was the spot because it sits right next to a depression in the ground which is known to be the sight of the Whitlock Farm House, located right in the middle of the Glendale fighting. If you look closely at the photo on the right, the depression can be seen just beyond the marker. Bob said if

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we know of any other groups would be interested in putting up a marker at Glendale or any of the other Seven Days Battlefield sites, he and the NPS would gladly accept them. The modern Glendale Battlefield is unique in all the battlefields I have ever visited in that nowhere else is there so much of the battlefield preserved or on the cusp of being preserved with so little in the way of monuments or markers. Mr. Krick said this affords great opportunity for him and the NPS to develop the land into a meaningful way. He said if you come back in 15 years, the hope is that you will hardly recognize the place. Next Bob took us to the Glendale Visitors Center (GVC) which is pictured below. This building is open only seasonally and would have been closed the day we visited. The center has some very nice exhibits including an electric map which gave a good understanding of the fighting at Glendale and Malvern Hill. However, the best feature of the GVC was that had a bathroom. Bob said that because Glendale gets so visitors, when he is assigned to work at the GVC it gives him an excellent opportunity to catch up on his Civil War reading.

At Glendale, Lee ordered his Army of Northern Virginia to converge on the retreating Union forces, bottlenecked on the inadequate road network. The Army of the Potomac, lacking overall command coherence, presented a discontinuous, ragged defensive line. Although belated and not initiated as planned, the assaults by the divisions of A.P. Hill and Longstreet, under Longstreet's overall command, turned out to be the only ones to follow Lee's order to attack the main Union concentration. Longstreet's 20,000 men assaulted the disjointed Union line of 40,000 men, arranged in a 2 miles arc north and south of the Glendale intersection. The brunt of the fighting was centered on the position held by the V Corps, 6,000 men under Brig. Gen. George A.

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McCall, just west of the Nelson Farm owned by Nelson, north of Willis Baptist Church. (The farm was owned by R.H. Nelson, but its former owner was named Frayser and many of the locals referred to it as Frayser's, or Frazier's, Farm.)

Three Confederate brigades, Cadmus Wilcox, Micah Jenkins, and James Kemper, were sent forward in the assault. Longstreet ordered them forward in a piecemeal fashion, over several hours. Kemper's Virginians charged through the thick woods first and emerged in front of five batteries of McCall's artillery. In their first combat experience, the brigade conducted a disorderly but enthusiastic assault, which carried them through the guns and broke through McCall's main line with Jenkins's support, followed up a few hours later by Wilcox's brigade of Alabamians. The Confederate brigades met stiff resistance in bitter hand-to-hand combat where men stabbed each other with bayonets and used rifles as clubs.

Heavy fighting continued until about 8:30 p.m. Longstreet committed virtually every brigade in the divisions under his command, while on the Union side they had been fed in individually to plug holes in the line as they occurred. That night, the Union army established a strong position on Malvern Hill. Union casualties were 3,797 (297 killed, 1,696 wounded, and 1,804 missing or captured). Confederate casualties were comparable in total—3,673 (638 killed, 2,814 wounded, and 221 missing. Longstreet lost more than a quarter of his division.

After our stay at the GVS, it was time for lunch. Our choice of where to eat was an easy one as there is only one restaurant in the Glendale/Malvern Hill area, the Dairy Queen. With our stomachs full it was time to take on Malvern Hill which meant more walking and more rain.

Malvern Hill was Lee’s final opportunity to

intercept McClellan's army before it reached the safety of the river and the end of the Seven Days, at the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1. After parking the van in a small, gravel lot, we crossed the road to examine what is left of the Parsonage, which was home for the preacher of the Willis Baptist Church. As shown in the photo above, all that remains are a couple of chimneys. Pardon the raindrop on the photo.

After that, Bob directed us to a trail going up a hill into the woods. Upon emerging from the woods, we were in clearing which was where the Confederate Army was massed. In the photo

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on the top of the next page, Mr. Krick explained to us that the Confederate attack on Malvern Hill was really going up only a very slight grade. The terrain slopped downward on each side of the Confederate advance, but the bulk of the attack was done on relatively level, open ground. In

the photo on the next page, the group is facing the same way the attacking Confederates faced.

After that we walked the length of the Confederate attack. At this point the rain was coming down the heaviest of the day, almost sideways. Along the way, Bob had us top at a marker that described where some slave cabins existed. Due to some recent archeology work, historians now know the exact spot where the cabins stood.

After walking about half a mile, we came to where the center of the Union line was. Fortunately, there is a little shelter at marking the spot of the Union artillery positions. In the below photo, the photographer is standing under the shelter looking out toward the Confederates advance.

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The slopes of Malvern Hill were cleared of timber, providing great visibility, and the open fields to the north could be swept by deadly fire from the 250 guns placed by Col. Henry J. Hunt, McClellan's chief of artillery. Three gunboats on the James River, added even more firepower. Beyond this space, the terrain was swampy and thickly wooded. Rather than flanking the position, Lee attacked it directly, hoping that his artillery would clear the way for a successful infantry assault (just as he would plan the following year in Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg). Lee's plan was to attack the hill from the north on the Quaker Road, using the divisions of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Richard S. Ewell, D.H. Hill, and Gen. William H.C. Whiting.

Unfortunately for Lee, Henry Hunt struck first, launching one of the greatest artillery barrages in the war from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. The Union gunners had superior equipment and expertise and disabled most of the Confederate batteries. The advancing columns of Confederate infantry were blasted to pieces by the massed artillery. Adding to the terror were the huge 50-pound shells lobbed from the three gunboats. Despite the setback, Lee sent his infantry forward at 3:30 p.m. D. H. Hill launched his division forward along the Quaker Road, past Willis Church. Across the entire line of battle, the Confederate troops reached only within 200 yards of the Union Center and were repulsed by nightfall with heavy losses. D.H. Hill wrote afterward in a postwar article, "It wasn't war; it was murder." Lee's army suffered 5,650 casualties (versus 2,214 Union) in this wasted effort. Malvern Hill ended the Seven Days Battles when McClellan's army ceased to threaten Richmond.

Since it was only midafternoon, Bob offered a little bonus tour. We drove to Drewery’s Bluff.

Drewry's Bluff, rises 90 feet above the water and commands a sharp bend in the James River, making it a logical site for

defensive fortifications for the defense of Richmond. The area was fortified with earthworks, barracks, and

artillery emplacements

with three large seacoast guns (one 10-inch Columbiad and

two 8-inch Columbiads) in the fort.

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A Federal squadron steamed around the bend in the river below Drewry's Bluff early on the morning of May 15,1862. The force, under Commander John Rodgers, consisted of five ships. At 7:15 a.m. the flagship Galena opened fire on the fort, sending three giant projectiles toward the Confederate position.

When Confederate batteries in the fort replied, the whole vicinity shook with the concussion of the big guns. After four long hours of exchanging fire, the "perfect tornado of shot and shell" ended. With his ammunition nearly depleted, Commander Rodgers gave the signal to discontinue the action at 11:30. His sailors suffered at least 14 dead and 13 wounded, while the Confederates admitted to 7 killed and 8 wounded. The massive fort on Drewry's Bluff had blunted the Union advance just seven miles short of the Confederate capital. Richmond remained safe. Our group was very appreciative for Bob to take us to Drewry’s Bluff considering the rain was still coming down steady.

Drewry’s Bluff was very interesting, but due to the bad weather, we did not do much more than quickly walk the loop and take a couple of pictures. We still had several hours of daylight. Mr. Krick offered to take us on a driving tour of downtown Richmond. Our tour consisted of a drive down Monument Avenue, Chimborazo Hospital, many of the state sponsored hospitals, Libby Prison, and finally Tredager Iron Works. The NPS maintains, free of charge, museums at both Chimborazo and Tredager. With afternoon now getting late, Bob was reluctant to let us get out the van at any of these locations. After a little prodding, we promised to be back in the van in by twenty minutes, if Bob let us check explore Chimborazo. This is where Mr. Krick maintains his office on the second floor. The first floor includes an excellent display of Civil War medical artifacts.

Since we kept our promise, Bob also let us go inside the

Tredager museum if we promised to be out in

twenty minutes. The photo at left shows the remains of the Tredager Iron Works. We kept our promise, for the most part, and with that

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our tour was done. Bob guided the van back to the Hampton Inn and we finished our tour and were done for the day.

The next day, on our return trip to Cincinnati, we decided to stop by Lexington, VA and check our Washington and Lee College and VMI. Robert E. Lee served as the president of Washington College from 1865 to his death in 1870. Lee was buried in crypt in the lower level of the chapel shown in the photo below. There was a guide inside the chapel who told us about the building and the crypt. We also wandered around the museum in the basement. Photos are no longer permitted to be taken inside the chapel.

Next, we got back in the van and drove just a few hundred yards to VMI and past the parade grounds. After that we got back on the highway and drove straight back to Cincinnati returning at 6:30 on Monday, April 23.

Many thanks to Bob Krick and his outstanding tour of the Seven Days Battles and Richmond.

Submitted by Dan Bauer