This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [91]
Even so, McClellan very nearly beat Lee to the punch. On June 25 he carefully moved his skirmish lines forward, south of the Chickahominy. There was some sharp fighting in weedy fields and swampy woods, the Confederates gave ground, and a full-dress attack by three army corps was planned for the next day along a road leading past a place called Old Tavern.3 Meanwhile some of McClellan’s cavalry squadrons, ranging off far above the river, picked up a Confederate deserter, a ragged, footsore chap who was willing to answer his captors’ questions. He belonged to Stonewall Jackson’s corps, he said, and the whole outfit was just a day’s march away, hot-footing it down to fall on Porter’s unprotected right and rear. McClellan put Porter on the alert, and the plans for a big push at Old Tavern were temporarily laid aside.
They were never picked up again. Next day, June 26, Lee took the initiative, and from that moment on McClellan had to move in step with his opponent. The greater part of Lee’s army crossed the Chickahominy, brushed Union pickets out of the suburban hamlet of Mechanicsville, and went charging east across a wide plain that slanted down to shallow Beaver Dam Creek, behind which Porter’s men were in line, waiting. Confederate arrangements had got all messed up; nobody made contact with Jackson and his men did not get into action, but the assault was made anyway — a frightful, botched affair that could have been written off as an outright Confederate disaster if either of the rival commanders had chosen to interpret it that way. The Confederates went in, head on, against a trench line that was as strong as a regular fort, and the Federal cannon had a clear sweep across the plain and up and down the creek valley. The Southerners gave up, finally, after dark, fearfully cut up. They had done Porter’s men very little harm and had gained nothing worth talking about; furthermore, the Union commanders south of the river were reporting that a number of the Rebel camps opposite them seemed to be deserted, and now was perhaps a very good time for a solid whack at Magruder’s lines.
But McClellan had pulled in his horns. From the moment when he learned of Jackson’s approach he had gone entirely over to the defensive. He abandoned his supply line, which led from the Chickahominy to the York River, and set about establishing a new one leading down to the James. Porter was told, even before the June 26 attack hit him, to send his wagon trains and siege guns south of the Chickahominy so that he could get away fast if he had to; and both Lee and McClellan, on the night of June 26, were thinking about exactly the same thing — whether the entire Federal army might not presently be destroyed.
Porter’s men had won their fight, but they could not stay where they were. Although Jackson had not got into action he was known to have reached a spot where he could come slicing down behind Porter’s lines first thing next morning, and so during the night Porter’s corps retreated five miles to the east, posting themselves at last in a wide, irregular crescent on rising ground that covered some of the most important bridges over the Chickahominy.
The Confederates took out after them soon after daylight on June 27, broke through a rear guard at Gaines’s Mill, and early in the afternoon the biggest assault of the entire war, down to that moment, got under way — fifty-five thousand Confederates, Jackson and his corps in action at last, swarming in through swamps and dense underbrush to attack about half their number of Yankees.
All afternoon Porter’s men held their ground. They had a good position, they were supported by some first-rate artillery, and McClellan had brought them to a sharp fighting edge. Long