To the Gates of Richmond by Stephen W. Sears

Author:Stephen W. Sears
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

AT THE HEIGHT of A. P. Hill’s assault, Captain William Biddle of McClellan’s staff arrived at Fitz John Porter’s to get an appraisal of the situation. Biddle found Porter calmly sitting his horse behind a strip of woods overlooking his left flank. A tide of wounded men streamed past, and bullets and shells were dropping all around. Biddle asked the general if he had any message for headquarters. “You can see for yourself, Captain,” Porter said. “We’re holding them, but it’s getting hotter and hotter.” Just then the head of Slocum’s division came up from the river crossing, and Porter hurried off to place his reinforcements. Slocum’s arrival raised his total count of men to 36,400. Porter did not send Captain Biddle back to McClellan with a demand for additional forces with which to mount a counteroffensive. “The design of battle,” a Fifth Corps brigadier observed, “seemed to contemplate that we should simply hold our position.”

Porter’s telegram reporting A. P. Hill’s repulse momentarily brightened General McClellan. “If the enemy are retiring and you are a chasseur, pitch in,” he telegraphed Porter. In the same mood, he told William Franklin, on the south bank of the river, “If you see a chance to go over the Duane bridge and take the enemy in flank please do it.” He was taken aback by Franklin’s reply. He had seen Rebels near the northern end of Duane’s Bridge, Franklin explained somewhat apologetically, and fearing they would cross over and attack him, he had had the bridge destroyed. Soon after, General Sumner reported to headquarters an enemy force in the Richmond lines drawn up in line of battle threatening him; soon after that, it appeared that an assault on Baldy Smith was imminent.

McClellan’s optimism evaporated, and he became resigned to events taking their course. Captain Biddle never forgot the scene around the Trent house when he returned: all the headquarters tents down and packed away, wagons loaded, horses saddled, only the telegraph office still operating, and in the shade of a tall walnut tree General McClellan sitting silently by himself on a stump and the staff standing around in little groups, everyone “waiting the result of Porter’s fight.”

Stonewall Jackson was meanwhile experiencing yet another bad march. At Walnut Grove Church he had obtained a guide, to whom he apparently said only that he wanted to go to Old Cold Harbor. Something less than two miles into the march the guide dutifully turned the column off on a woods road that forked to the right, a road that led past Gaines’s Mill and near New Cold Harbor intersected the Telegraph Road running eastward to Old Cold Harbor. This was more direct and shorter than the more northerly Old Cold Harbor Road they had been following.

A mile and a quarter down the woods road, as they neared Dr. Gaines’s millpond, the rising sound of battle could be heard ahead. “Where is that firing?” Old Jack demanded of the guide. The man replied that he supposed it came from around Gaines’s Mill.

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