THE DAY AFTER THE CLASH AT NEW BRIDGE THE 4TH MICHIGAN HELD A FUNERAL FOR THE TWO men killed. “We buried our comrades today (Piper and Drake),” noted George Millens of Company B, “with artillery honor & all due respect.” Their entire brigade attended. But that afternoon it was back to the routine of inspection and dress parade. The men learned that in honor of their victory, the brigade commander, Col. James McQuade, renamed their bivouac “Camp Michigan.” The next day the brigade and division rose before dawn and marched two miles closer to New Bridge. They set up their camp in the rain in a field near a mill owned by a local physician, a certain outspoken secessionist named Dr. Gaines.1
On May 27 the regiment was involved in another mission into Confederate-held ground. Their First Division, accompanied by two federal cavalry regiments and additional artillery, was ordered to deal with a Rebel force at Hanover Court House. McClellan felt these Confederates were a threat on his army's right flank and rear as he was “quietly closing in” on Richmond. Eliminating the threat would clear the way for reinforcements that McClellan hoped would join him from the north. “Left camp early in the morning in a drenching rain & marched,” Millens wrote. The road leading from New Bridge to Mechanicsville and on to Hanover Court House was bad, the going slow. Many troops straggled as the column moved through the thick mud, but the rain stopped around nine o'clock. The sun came out and the day became hotter. The Second Brigade halted around noon in some woods a few miles from a place called Peake's Station when the sound of gunfire reached them. Up ahead, elements of their division were in a fight.2
Millens wrote that the regiment had covered about 10 miles by that point, but “the fighting in front of us ca[u]sed us to hurry along. We did, coming to the place where the fight first commenced & the rebels were retreating.” Ahead of them, another Union brigade attacked the Confederate position blocking the road two or three of miles from Hanover Court House. After an hour or more of fighting, the Rebels retreated. By the time McQuade's brigade got to the scene, this skirmish was over. Some of the Union troops pursued the Confederates while most of Gen. George W. Morell's division, including the 4th Michigan, marched on in the afternoon heat along the railroad track to Hanover Court House. But then a larger force of Rebels, waiting in woods not far from the scene of the initial fighting, sprang an attack on the division's First Brigade. These soldiers, under Brig. Gen. John Martindale, were at the end of the First Division's column. “We passed about a mile when heavy discharges of Musketry gave us to understand that we were attacked in the rear,” Millens recorded.3
The 4th Michigan and other regiments turned and rushed back toward the fighting, and those closest quickly became engaged. Morell's men routed the attackers, a brigade of inexperienced soldiers from North Carolina, in a fierce firefight. The Rebels suffered heavy casualties. Lt. George Monteith, serving on the staff of General Porter, was one of the aides credited for carrying orders under fire, riding “fearlessly back and forth amid the showers of the enemy's bullets.” But the 4th Michigan, at the head of their brigade as it marched that afternoon, was at the rear when it turned to join this fracas. Therefore, Millens noted, “we did not get into the fight.” The 4th Michigan “was held in reserve in the wheatfield” not far from the battlefield, according to Colonel McQuade. “The fierce and irresistible attack of the other regiments routed the enemy so completely that it was not necessary to bring the Fourth into action.”
The Michigan men marched and ran for many exhausting miles that day, and more than 50 of their comrades from other regiments were killed. But some in the regiment weren't happy they didn't get in the fight. “Our Regt. was not in the battle, we were nothing but spectators,” wrote Lt. William F. Robinson. “The other Regts. cleaned them out with calling on the reserve. I was not at all sorry, though our boys thought it hard not to be allowed to pitch in, but we get just as much praise as though we were in it and had 50 or 100 killed.” The 4th Michigan and others of their division camped in the field, and the men “slept on our arms all night.”4
“This morning we buried the dead & went over the Battle field,” Millens wrote the next day. Charles W. Phelps said they also cared for wounded men. Others did picket duty and marveled at the numbers of prisoners. But the high point came when General McClellan rode through, congratulating their division on the victory. “Little Mc passed and was vociferously cheered,” Miner wrote. Sgt. Jonas Richardson said that the soldiers crowded around their beloved general, who told them, “Boys, you have done just what I expected of you.” Lieutenant Robinson wrote his father on “secesh” stationery he found or confiscated, expressing confidence the Union army would soon take the Rebel capital and he could come home. “When we get to Richmond I will try to get a furlough for a few days,” he wrote. Late in the afternoon of the next day the order came to march back to their camp near New Bridge, and they arrived early on the morning of May 30, “a good deal fatigued,” wrote Dr. David Chamberlain.”5
Perhaps they would have arrived earlier had not someone carried out a memorable prank on the regiment. Orvey Barrett wrote that as the 4th Michigan made the tiring march back to camp, Company B acted as the column's “flankers,” point men who moved through the countryside off the road, to make sure there were no traps or ambushes. Once the regiment was close to their camp, it halted on the road at a place where there were thick trees and brush on one side and a steep bank on the other. Here Company B rejoined the column. Though it was dark, “some mischievous fellow in the rear” noticed Union-strung telegraph wires drooping low from the overhanging tree limbs. Reaching up with his rifle, this soldier proceeded to strike the wires with the gun barrel. Knocking the wires back and forth immediately created a crackling electrical resonance in the night—a sound that rattled loudly down the cables as the soldiers waited to resume the march. This pounding, clattering noise from the telegraph lines sounded very much like a runaway team of mules stampeding out of control.
Officers and men alike thought they were about to be trampled, so they cleared the roadway “in two seconds,” jumping for their lives. Barrett tumbled 20 feet down the embankment. “I saw the colonel[‘s] and the adjutant's horses leap a ditch fence on the north side of the road,” he remembered. Albert Boies described the panic as “men pitching right and left, falling over each other and scrambling into the brush, in order to get out of the road.” He said he never did find out the cause of the noise. “If I could have known the fellow who caused the stampede, I think I could have mauled him,” Barrett complained.6
After dusting themselves off and trying to find their caps, they got back to camp and resumed picket along the Chickahominy. A fierce storm opened over the countryside, flooding the river on the night of May 30. Silas Sadler of Company G called it “the Hardest thunder Storm I ever seen[,] got wet through.” But other events were in motion that now brought the Union and Confederate armies into combat again. A day or so before the 4th Michigan had gone with its division to Hanover Court House, two Union army corps crossed the Chickahominy south of New Bridge, increasing the pressure on Richmond. This caused Confederate commander Gen. Joseph Johnston to strike at McClellan's forces on the south side of the river, in the vicinity of places called Seven Pines and Fair Oaks.
The attack began around noon on May 31, smashing into Union positions and sending thousands of Northern soldiers fleeing. Although the flooding from the previous night's rain swept away some of the bridges that they had rebuilt, Union reinforcements hurried over a surviving bridge and stopped the Confederate advance. Near New Bridge, the men of the 4th Michigan and others from the Fifth Corps heard the sound of this fighting and prepared to go into battle: “[In] the afternoon the roar of cannon & musket have been incessant,” George Millens noted. “We have been in readiness but not called upon.” Sgt. Jonas Richardson wrote that the men had been issued 60 rounds of ammunition and prepared to go in. But then they waited hours, not moving until early on the morning of June 1. The men only marched about a half a mile and halted by the side of the road, near the banks of the river.
The men soon learned that the bridges in their vicinity had been swept away or damaged badly enough to prevent crossing. The Confederates renewed their attack but again were stopped in bloody fighting. Orvey Barrett said that the men of the 4th Michigan wanted to get into the fight, but couldn't. “We could see the flash of bursting shells and vomiting cannon,” he wrote. “The excitement among the men of the regiment was very manifest.” Dr. Chamberlain agreed that “the treacherous little stream kept rising so rapidly as to baffle all attempts to construct a pontoon bridge to take us over.” They listened to the roar of battle, “and I fear some were doing some tall cursing and swearing because we could not get over,” he wrote. But the firing ended late that afternoon or early that evening.
Over the course of May 31 and June 1, over 5,000 Union men were killed, wounded, or captured, while the Rebels suffered more than 6,100 casualties. The battle of Seven Pines–Fair Oaks was over and Gen. Fitz John Porter's corps had no part in it. “We started to help,” Irvin Miner wrote that day, but “our boys can not cross the river so we return to camp at night.”7
A period of relative quiet descended along the Chickahominy, though illness spread and the muggy heat and mosquitoes seemed unbearable. Soldiers were put to work on fatigue as McClellan moved to bring more men and guns to the gates of Richmond, just as he had at Yorktown. Jonas Richardson wrote a letter as he sat on the riverbank, sure that McClellan's plan would soon have them in Richmond. “Pontoon bridges are being built all along the stream and we will soon be able to cross and drive the enemy inside his chane [chain] of fortifications [and] doubtless make one more stand,” he wrote. “But whatever may be their intentions, past events prove to us that their cause is a hopeless one.”
Richardson spoke to Rebels with differing views of the conflict. A soldier from North Carolina, wounded and captured at Hanover Court House, was pleasantly surprised that he hadn't been killed outright when he fell into Union hands. Not only had he been told that Yankees would show no mercy, the soldier also learned he didn't have a very accurate picture about the battles fought so far. “He now says that he is in hopes that old Jeff [Davis] will be caught and torn to pieces inch by inch,” Richardson wrote. But Dr. Gaines, the local plantation owner who served in the Confederate Congress, remained angry and hostile. Richardson said the doctor had vowed that he would eventually dig up the graves of Union soldiers buried on his property and feed their remains to his hogs. “It is rather tough to be compelled to protect such a man's property,” the sergeant wrote.8
The pickets at New Bridge also talked with their Rebel counterparts. Richardson told a friend that the soldiers exchanged newspapers, and the orderly sergeant of Company K, named William Ihrig, went out into the no man's land between the lines to speak to a Confederate who turned his gun upside down and stuck it bayonet first into the ground before walking over to meet him. The rebel asked Ihrig what regiment he belonged to. “The one that whipped the Louisiana Tigers so like hell,” the sergeant replied, referring to the New Bridge skirmish. “We know you,” the Reb reportedly answered. “You belong to the Michigan 4th; you took good care of our wounded and we are much obliged to you for it.” Charles W. Phelps of Company D heard a different version of that conversation. When the Rebel learned that the sergeant was from the 4th Michigan, he was said to have answered: “There is some goddam bully boys in [that] regiment.”9
Picket at night on the Chickahominy was nerve-wracking and exhausting for young Albert Boies of Company F. His sergeant warned him the swamp was full of Rebel guerillas. After a tense couple of hours watching shadows, Boies wrote that he couldn't sleep when he was relieved for a break. Thus when it was time for him to go back on picket at 2:00 A.M., he knew he was bound to nod off. Of course, it was a serious offense for a picket to fall asleep. Officers who noticed a picket guard dozing sometimes tried to approach him and grab the rifle out of his hands, proving beyond doubt the picket had been sleeping. Boies knew this. “Therefore I took off one of my suspenders, and tied it around my gun, and then to my wrist.” Sure enough, Boies drifted off to sleep. Shortly before daylight, the officer of the guard came up and tried to grab his rifle. But with the stock tied securely to Boies's wrist, the officer couldn't pull it away. Boies insisted he hadn't dozed off. “I made him think I was just musing, not asleep at all,” Boies wrote.10
Within the regiment, there were more changes. Edward H. C. Taylor wrote that Major James H. Cole had “went crazy from coup de soleil,” or sunstroke, something Capt. Charles Doolittle said occurred on June 3. In his resignation letter, Cole admitted that he'd been “sun-struck for the second time” and was no longer able to perform his duties. John Randolph, the senior captain, became major in the weeks ahead. “No officer is more capable than cap,” Sergeant Richardson wrote about Randolph. “Altho' we would hate to part with him we would like to see him gain a better position.” As for the men, William McCarty of Company E wrote that they were “anxious to try our hands once more” against the Rebels after their success at New Bridge, though the regiment was experiencing “considerable sickness” they attributed to the damp weather rather than bacteria-laden water and disease-carrying insects. “Many of our boys are very sick with the Typhoid fever,” he wrote.11
Of course, it was Dr. William Clark, the regimental surgeon, who was in charge of care for the sick. But Clark continued to chafe at Colonel Woodbury's treatment of him. Clark admitted that the colonel had been pleasant and kind for a time that spring while Woodbury was still hoping he would be made a brigadier general. But now Woodbury, having “relinquished all hopes of being made a Brigadier, has resumed his former insulting treatment of me,” the doctor complained. He asked the governor to move him into “a regiment commanded by a gentleman.”12
Despite Clark's ill feeling toward Woodbury, it seems that most personnel of the 4th Michigan trusted and respected the colonel, just as most soldiers of the Army of the Potomac seemed to have faith in Gen. George B. McClellan. Edward “Ned” Taylor resented the fact that Republican leaders, their press, and the Lincoln administration were angry and impatient with McClellan for not having opened his attack on Richmond. “We are confident of success with McClellan at our head, let his enemies and abolitionists say what they please,” Taylor wrote late in May. He was so confident the Union army was about to take the Confederate capital that he wondered if the Rebels might wage a guerilla war once Richmond fell.
His pro-McClellan, anti-abolitionist views were typical of comments made by Michigan soldiers and officers who were Democrats, who felt they were fighting to restore the Union rather than to bring an end to slavery. Taylor was outraged by legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate to enlist blacks as soldiers. “Now I speak not only for myself but for nineteen out of twenty in this Co. or Reg. or Army when I say that if that became law we would sooner lay down arms than fight…. When we cease to fight for the Union and begin to fight for Negro equality I am ready to lay down arms and will [do so].” In time, Taylor and many other Northern Democrats would change their minds about this.13
The weather was sometimes rainy and almost always hot as the men stood picket or worked on roads and bridges for the artillery. The colonel supervised the work on one of those crossings, so it naturally became known as “Woodbury's bridge,” a New York regiment recorded. Irvin Miner wrote that picket duty brought the men in plain view of the Confederates, but that they'd worked out an accommodation: “The lines are in sight of each other and they agree not to shoot except at officers.” Sgt. John Bancroft of Company I, after being temporarily assigned to the balloon service, returned to the 4th Michigan on June 7. He was warmly greeted by his old comrades, and he could still visit with friends he made while serving with Professor Lowe's aeronauts, since a team of balloonists was posted practically next door to the Gaines farm.
Despite the work and picket details, soldiers sometimes got their hands on liquor. “Gut [got] pretty tite,” Enoch Davis of Company B noted after a day of chopping trees near the river. Men could also go for a dip in the Chickahominy or in Gaines's millpond. George Millens, who'd been sick that month with fever, chills, and weakness, spent a brief period in a regimental hospital but soon returned to duty, though his symptoms periodically came back. It was also during this time that General McClellan shifted more of his army across to the south side of the Chickahominy, leaving the Fifth Corps, commanded by his most trusted lieutenant, Gen. Fitz John Porter, on the north side, reinforced by an additional division.14
Sgt. Eli Starr wrote a note home to Michigan, sending back $20 and stating he'd been experiencing “tough living, hard fighting and plenty of it.” “I shall either be in my grave or else home by the 4th of July if things prosper as they have,” he wrote. “I am now Orderly [sergeant] of Co. C. Write soon.” Perhaps the most unusual event came a week later when soldiers on picket found several bodies of Confederates in the river where they had fought New Bridge skirmish. In a case of macabre souvenir collecting, some men from Company K “divide[d] a rebel jaw-bone to send the teeth to the rural districts,” Bancroft noted.15
But the most significant development in front of Richmond was one the men knew nothing about. Confederate General Joseph Johnston had been wounded during the battle of May 31, and Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with his own military advisor, Robert E. Lee. By mid-June, Lee was making plans to go on the offensive. Lee intended to bring “Stonewall” Jackson and his three divisions down to join the Army of Northern Virginia; he would take most of his own men from the defenses of Richmond and move them northeast toward Mechanicsville. He would launch his attack directly on the Fifth Corps.
Soldiers heard the sound of periodic but distant shelling and skirmish fire during the hot June days, but the 4th Michigan wasn't affected. On June 20, however, Confederate shells fell into the camp for hours as gunners let fly. None of the Michigan men were injured, and over the course of the following days Rebel cannon again fired a few shots when they went on picket near New Bridge. Union siege guns were now in place and began firing. George W. Millens of Company B noted on June 25 that it was exactly one year ago that the regiment had left Adrian for Washington. He also wrote with satisfaction that the Confederates “have had a little taste of our siege guns, many of our shots passing through their works.” In the meantime Sergeant Bancroft got sick and noted he was variously treated with morphine, tincture of sulfuric acid, mercury, and whiskey; he also wrote that the big Union batteries were firing.
That same day, General McClellan received reports that Stonewall Jackson's command was less than 20 miles away—Jackson had brought his men on a wearying march from the north—and he knew a fight was coming. The 4th Michigan, as part of Porter's Fifth Corps, was ordered to be ready to move north to meet the Confederates. “We fell out with three days rations in haversacks to march,” Miner wrote, “but did not go.” The next day Sergeant Bancroft, still sick, was told to report to the hospital. On the way he met Colonel Woodbury, who asked him if he was interested in working as a draftsman for General McClellan. Bancroft replied that he was.16
Mechanicsville or Beaver Dam Creek
But there would be no new posting for the sergeant. That morning, the men of the 4th Michigan were again told to be ready to march, Dr. Chamberlain wrote. In the afternoon, about three miles to the northwest near the town of Mechanicsville, Lee's attack on the Fifth Corps began, and this was the start of what became known as the Seven Days. At New Bridge, the men of the 4th Michigan and the other regiments of their division heard the gunfire as Confederate soldiers opened the assault. The Second Brigade of which the 4th Michigan was part, now commanded by the gruff Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin, previously their brigade's artillery commander, was put in motion toward Beaver Dam Creek.
“At three o'clock P.M. we got the orders to go to Mechanicsville in light marching order, where we arrived about two hours before sundown, found our force engaged with a superior force of the enemy,” the assistant surgeon wrote. The Union troops fighting here were from a division called the Pennsylvania Reserves under Gen. George McCall. This division, recently sent to reinforce the Fifth Corps, was supported by artillery and dug in on high ground behind Beaver Dam Creek at the point where it joined the Chickahominy River.17
Much of the Rebel infantry of Gen. Ambrose P. Hill's division had to cross fields and swamp to attack the Union positions, and scores of them were cut down by cannon and rifle fire. Stonewall Jackson hadn't entered the fight as ordered, probably he was suffering from a kind of nervous and physical exhaustion. But other Rebel troops under generals James Longstreet, A. P. Hill, and Harvey Hill did attack. The fight was well under way by late afternoon when the 4th Michigan reached the Union lines east of Mechanicsville.
Capt. Marshall W. Chapin of Company F, 31, from Detroit, said the regiment halted for a few minutes on the road, probably the old Church Road leading to the town. “McCall's division were having it hot & heavy just to the left of us,” he wrote. The 4th Michigan's brigade got its orders and marched over fields on the right of the Union line, where Rebel troops were trying to force a crossing of the creek in some woods. McCall asked the newly arrived troops to go in at that place, one of the most vulnerable spots in his position. The 4th Michigan and the 14th New York tramped in as the sound of the fighting raged. Although the Michigan men got there shortly before the battle subsided, they relieved a regiment, the 5th Pennsylvania Reserves, that had used up its ammunition. “Our regiment was passed along the entire length of the line of battle, and finally formed on the right where they had a position facing a piece of thick woods and underbrush,” Dr. Chamberlain wrote. “They were ordered to lie down, all but one company (I) which were deployed as skirmishers.”18
This company entered the woods, to “see what was there,” the assistant surgeon said. These skirmishers got about 50 yards into the woods when Confederate troops in the underbrush opened fire. “Our boys soon fell back, it being so dark in the woods that they were unable to distinguish friend from foe,” wrote Chamberlain. Other accounts indicate the entire regiment quickly became involved in a fierce but brief firefight. Captain Chapin wrote that the 4th Michigan relieved some of the Pennsylvanians just as Confederates attacked their line. “When we commenced the Rebells were advancing but we soon drove them back killing any quantity of them & losing very few our selves, but soon it got to dark to see to fight,” he wrote. Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin reported that “the Fourth Michigan was scarcely in position when it was attacked by two regiments of the enemy, which were repulsed in the handsomest manner, the regiment firing about 15 rounds per man.”
“Several were killed on the spot and some taken prisoners,” Dr. Chamberlain wrote of his regiment's casualties. “Our loss was about twenty killed, wounded and missing.” More specifically, General Griffin reported that the regiment suffered three men killed, 22 wounded, and four missing. Company B's Enoch Davis noted that the Union troops had “hild [held] the enemy at bay.” Lt. George Monteith, serving as an aide to Porter, was again among the staff credited by the general for gallantry in “carrying orders, conducting reinforcements, directing batteries and rallying troops.” While the 4th Michigan's came into the battle late on the far right of the Union line, the U.S. Army officer commanding one of the Pennsylvania brigades appreciated it. “[H]ere the Fourth Michigan…(Griffin's brigade) were engaged and rendered important service,” wrote Brig. Gen. Truman Seymour. Of course, things might have turned out worse for the Michigan soldiers had Stonewall Jackson attacked that part of the Union line as Lee ordered. In that case the 4th Michigan could have paid a much higher price at Mechanicsville.19
Darkness brought a close to the fighting and Union soldiers lay down with their rifles close at hand in the trees and fields south of the creek. The Confederates suffered casualties of nearly 1,400 men, while Union casualties were under 400. Yet that night, Gen. George McClellan made his controversial decision: He pulled Fitz John Porter's Fifth Corps back to defensive positions on the high ground near Gaines' Mill. McClellan had already given the order for his army to move its wagons, the sick and the wounded, and the big guns to points south of the Chickahominy River. As historian Jeffry Wert described it, the commander of the Army of the Potomac “had lost the strategic initiative to Lee.” Lee correctly gambled that an attack on McClellan's right would cause him to halt his offensive.20
The men of the 4th Michigan, like most of the Union troops who fought at Mechanicsville, rested and waited until orders came to withdraw early the next morning, June 27. Captain Chapin wrote that he found a blanket among the dead on the battlefield, wrapped himself in it, and “was soon asleep.” At about three o'clock in the morning, the order came for the men to withdraw, Capt. John Randolph reported. The men were on the march with their Fifth Corps before daybreak, back to Gaines' Mill. Now they were the rear guard of the Union army. “We could not understand it for we had driven the enemy back with very little loss,” Captain Chapin wrote of McClellan's decision. Capt. Charles Doolittle agreed. He didn't understand the withdrawal either, but he “presume[d] it is all right.”
“Our route led us through our old camp, where we arrived about 7 o'clock in the morning,” Dr. Chamberlain wrote. Though he had expected to find that the regiment's baggage and hospital had been packed and evacuated when they returned to camp, “we found our hospital tents still standing, filled with the sick, and everything as we had left it, the rebels only two miles in our rear.” The doctor managed to load the sick men on passing ammunition wagons, but he still had plenty of tents, medicine, books, clothes, and bedding. Choosing about 75 pounds worth of items, he then made a pile of the rest of the supplies, splashed them with turpentine, and set them ablaze. “I went to Col. Woodbury, told him what I had done, and asked if I had done right,” Chamberlain wrote. “He laughed and said he thought I would not be court martialed, as there was no possible chance to save anything more from the camp.” Sgt. John Bancroft helped the assistant surgeon and went to work putting the torch to supplies. “Move and burn stores and send wagons to the rear over the Chickahominy,” he noted. “Go back about one-and-one-half miles and form in line to check the enemy.”21
Gaines' Mill
The Fifth Corps dropped back, south of the two crossroads communities called New Cold Harbor and Old Cold Harbor, an area that was a short distance south of Gaines' Mill. Charles Griffin, the 4th Michigan's brigade commander, reported that this position was on the east side of “Gaines' Creek,” but more correctly it was just south and east of Boatswain's Creek, one of the many small runs that wound through the valleys into the Chickahominy. That river now lay behind the Fifth Corps, posted on high ground in a curving line of battle facing west, northwest, and north. Griffin's men got their orders after 9:00 A.M., moving about a mile or so south from the site of their old camp to a large hill or ridge with their brigade. The men stacked their knapsacks in the rear of their lines and built defensive positions. Then they waited. Orvey Barrett later claimed that the advancing Rebels “took possession of our deserted camp, rioted awhile on what was left—whiskey, hard-tack and other commodities.”
The First Division, to which the 4th Michigan belonged, held the left, or the western section of the Fifth Corps's line. This was a strong defensive position, stretching east through some woods and along high, rolling ground and farmland above Boatswain's Swamp. Some accounts called this high ground Turkey Hill. Captain Randolph characterized the regiment's position as being on “the left center” of the Union line. Specifically, the 4th Michigan's Second Brigade held the right of their division's line, while the regiment was itself on the left of its brigade. This was a point about 1,000 yards south of the town of New Cold Harbor and a stone's throw from a farm occupied by a family named Watt. To the regiment's right the line of troops and artillery continued along the hilltops for more than a mile. “Our Regt was in the woods facing a ravine[,] Captain Chapin wrote of this position; “we built up brest works of logs rails [and] 7 bales of hay, Co. A & F had a first rate one of bales of hay. Here we lay untill about three PM when…the ball opened on the right & left of us & kept up some time without attacking us.” Albert H. Boies of Company F later said he suggested the men cover the hay with earth so they wouldn't catch fire.22
Another of the regiments in their brigade was given the task of delaying the attacking Confederates, from the direction of Gaines' Mill. These Union troops were forced back late that morning as the Rebels came on. Lee ordered his forces forward, but the Rebel attacks took place in a piecemeal fashion. The fighting started for other Union troops much earlier than it did for the 4th Michigan. Gen. George W. Morell, First Division commander, wrote that “the enemy approached through the woods from the direction of New Cold Harbor, and made their first serious attack about 12 o'clock upon the right, which was handsomely repulsed by Griffin's brigade.”
The regiment helped to blunt this and other assaults that followed at 2:30 and 5:30 P.M., attacks that extended along the division's front. Private Millens of Company B said that he and his comrades also fought behind a temporary breastwork of rails. “They made an attack & were repulsed & ran in every direction leaving the colors on the field but soon they came up & were repulsed & a third time came up[,] one Regt after another in line of battle to our one[.] we pored in a discharge of musketry piling their dead in heaps,” Captain Chapin wrote. “At last they came down on us & we gave it to them in good style. At this time the musketry was terrific but we held them right to it & our brest works did good service.” Emerging from the woods on the other side of Boatswain's Swamp, scores of men under A. P. Hill were hit by Union rifle fire and artillery as they tried to cross. Some of those who made it across the creek faced being shot down as they tried to climb the high banks. In front of the 4th Michigan, Rebels who survived this fire had to charge up the ravine toward the strong Union defenses.23
Just as they held a good position at Beaver Dam Creek, the soldiers of the Fifth Corps again had the advantage of high ground and good cover. They also had excellent artillery and accurate rifles. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers were killed and wounded by late afternoon as Robert E. Lee again waited for Stonewall Jackson to strike the right flank of Porter's position. Finally, by 5:30 or 6:00 P.M. the Confederates had a coordinated assault hitting the entire Union line in fighting the likes of which soldiers hadn't seen before. Some Union reinforcements arrived on the field, but regiments that had been fighting for hours were running out of ammunition.
A Union commander who witnessed the battle in the vicinity of the 4th Michigan late that afternoon was Col. H. G. Sickel of the 3rd Pennsylvania Reserves. His regiment was ordered to support one of the Union batteries on the hill. Sickel reported his men came under terrible fire when they were shifted to help the 4th Michigan as the regiment attempted to cover a gap in the Union line: “Soon after the attack by the enemy on the center of the line[,] we were ordered to support the Fourth Michigan, which soon shifted to the left, under a galling fire from the enemy's guns.” Another officer who saw this heavy fire was Capt. Edwin Bishop of the 2nd New Jersey Infantry, sent to relieve the 4th Michigan by Gen. Fitz John Porter.
Now the last two veteran Confederate brigades available to Lee joined in the attack on Porter's men. One was Gen. John Bell Hood's famous Texas Brigade, thought to contain the best combat troops in the South. As this wave of soldiers stormed up the slope toward Morell's First Division, men from the brigade to the left of the 4th Michigan broke, running back over the hill. Confederates poured through the gap and hit the remaining Union troops, including the 4th Michigan, with fire from the side or flank as well as from the front—a deadly and untenable situation for soldiers. “At the fourth and last [attack], about 6:30 o'clock, they came in irresistible force, and throwing themselves chiefly against the center and left, swept us from the ground by overwhelming numbers and compelled us to retire,” General Morell wrote. It was a critical moment. “Just at the time that we were about being relieved by another Reg't”—probably the 2nd New Jersey—“the Regts on the left of us gave way & the Rebells commenced to flank us,” Captain Chapin wrote.24
Capt. John Randolph of Company D reported that “the regiment held its ground until its ammunition was nearly expended, when it was relieved and fell back, contesting every foot of the ground, and formed our line of battle in the rear of the reserves.” He stated that as the action came to a close that evening, “we held the ground where we had fought against such fearful odds.” Yet reports by Union commanders described this action as the 4th Michigan and its brigade being driven back. Though the regiment fought well, the breaking of the First Division's First Brigade set off a chain reaction of panicking men, with Confederates troops delivering cross fire at close range. Col. Dwight Woodbury did his best to keep his men fighting, as did another colonel from their Second Brigade, and for that their commander gave them credit. “The left wing of the brigade, consisting of the Fourth Michigan and the left wing of the Fourteenth New York, under command of Colonel McQuade, held its position until late in the evening, but was forced to retire after the troops on the left of the line gave way,” General Griffin wrote.
The soldiers retreated into the woods. Woodbury had been sick that day, Captain Randolph wrote, and so was Lt. Col. Jonathan Childs, but both were courageous and conspicuous on the field. But then Childs was hit, reportedly wounded in groin, and carried from the battlefield. Woodbury wasn't ready to give up the fight as Union soldiers retreated from the trees. The colonel, on horseback, rode back to a point where he could re-form his regiment as soldiers streamed toward the Chickahominy. “Col. Woodbury seeing how it was going[,] planted our colors in the…open field in the rear at right angles to the position we had formerly held & shouted to rally on the collors [sic],” Captain Chapin wrote. “Each captain lead [sic] his co. out of the woods at the order & formed the new line.”25
I lead [sic] mine out & in doing so lost one Lieutenant Joseph Smith & several men. I made my men as all the rest did lay down & fire laying [down] & thus avoid as much as possible as shell & sollid shot that flew around us for we were in a perfect crossfire the enemy being on three sides of us. Col. Woodbury, Capt. [George W.] Spalding, Lieut. [Simon B.] Preston, & Lieut. [Charles] N. Marvin were in the immediate vicinity…& we did all we could to rally the men of other Regts into our ranks….
We succeeded in rallying a good many of them to lay down & fire with our men. After the men of our side had about all got in & Col. Woodbury & Spalding & Marvin had gone to their posts I called Lt. Preston to my side & told him to lay down, that I could take care of the Co. & there was no use exposing both of us to such a fire[.] he stopped a moment at my side & asked for Lieut. Smith[.] I told him he was shot. At that moment he jumped round & said my God Capt. I have lost an arm. I looked & sure enough a ball had passed through his arm near the shoulder & into his side.26
Chapin used his handkerchief to tie a tourniquet around Preston's arm above the wound and directed two men to twist the ends of the cloth to a stick, tightening the cloth to stem the bleeding. They took Preston to the field hospital, which Albert Boies described as a log house to the rear. But within minutes one of the soldiers returned with bad news—the surgeons had left the hospital, and he was sure that Preston was bleeding to death. “The hospital was afterwards taken by the Rebells & I lost both Lieut. Preston & the man that staid with him,” Chapin wrote. Preston, then about 36 and previously captured at the first Bull Run, survived three days. The man who took him to the hospital, Hiram B. Fountain, was initially listed as missing in action, but he had been captured and would eventually be released in a prisoner exchange.
The fighting on the hillsides and fields above the swamp raged as the sun went down behind the trees. A young soldier named Converse (probably Orrin Converse) later said he witnessed the death of Capt. Richard DePuy, the Ann Arbor man who commanded Company K. DePuy, 31, just halted his company on one of the fallback moves; he had put his sword back in his scabbard when a bullet struck him in the head, killing him instantly. Converse believed the same bullet that had killed DePuy also struck him in the hand.27
The situation for the men of Porter's Fifth Corps was going from bad to worse. Millens, like others, observed that the Union line broke on the right as well as the left, so that the 4th Michigan was hit with the cross fire. “[We] were compelled to fall back which we did,” he wrote, “halting three times & forming & delivered our volleys to the enemies ranks.” Albert Boies saw Corporal Charlie DuPont of Company K fall to the ground, struck in the head by a gunshot. Charles Barlow, 22, saw it, too. They thought DuPont was dead, but he survived with the loss of an eye. “[O]ur Captain killed, First Lieutenant, killed, First Sergeant killed…a whirlwind of bullets, yells and shrieks. Was it so or was it a bad dream?” Barlow later asked DuPont.
The regiment was ordered to fall back again. Captain Chapin said the men did this quickly, moving “20 or 30 rods,” or roughly 400 feet. But then the order came to double-quick, or run, as Confederate forces flooded across the battlefield, nearly surrounding them. The men had left their knapsacks at the rear in piles, said Edward H. C. Taylor of Company A, but as the Rebels threatened to overwhelm them, someone ordered them to be burned. Now it was just a matter of escape. Other Union troops were also retreating, some of them crossing paths with the 4th Michigan, breaking their ranks and mixing in. “[I]t looked as if the army was panic stricken,” Albert Boies remembered, “masses surging to the rear, officers striving to check them and form them into a line, riderless horses galloping about, dead and dying on every hand, wounded being carried to the rear, and then the sharp musketry fire, and belching of a hundred cannons, all made it seem as though pandemonium reigned supreme.”
“I myself got astray & followed the wrong collors [sic] for some distance,” Chapin wrote of the retreat. “When I discovered my mistake, I found I had but six of my men with me but saw others striding along [—] none could tell where our collors were.” As soldiers headed for the Chickahominy, where Union forces held the south side of the river, some tried to find their regiments. Chapin made up his mind to stop and gather them up: “I began to shout fall in 4th Mich[.,] fall in 4th Mich & my boys took up the cry.”28
Men from the 14th New York joined them and Chapin soon rounded up 200 soldiers. He was joined by Lieutenant Marvin and Sgt. Maj. William H. Loveland of Company D. They blocked the road, only allowing wounded soldiers to pass, and ordered others into their line. In short order he had as many as 500 men from various outfits, but General Porter decided that men should return to their own regiments. After this, Captain Chapin was left with about 250 men from his brigade—not enough for the counterattack he had in mind. He resumed a tired march to the rear. By the time he found the rest of their brigade, it was clear the fight was over. “I tell you I was very tired & hoarse from haloring [hollering],” Chapin wrote.
George Millens, who managed to stay with the main part of the regiment in the retreat, said that the men had been nearly out of ammunition after the third time the 4th Michigan fell back and reformed: “We retreated about one mile & met some reinforcements & halted & formed. As they passed us on double quick the Rebels broke & run in turn. we were soon supplied with ammunition & were ready to go in again but were not needed.” The diary of Henry Seage of Company E, though brief, didn't reflect as much order in the retreat as Millens and Chapin did. “[F]ell back fighting,” he noted that night; “commenced about 1 o'clock. Had to fall back. Am wounded in leg. Lost knapsacks. We were routed & retreated in bad order.”29
According to Millens, those reinforcements regained possession of the battlefield, but historians say the fresh Union troops pushed the Confederates back so that they could withdraw. Though Lee's army incurred high casualties, it succeeded in breaking the confidence of George McClellan. He moved the Union army to the south toward the James River. Richmond was no longer in danger from the Army of the Potomac. Though the battles continued for a few more days, McClellan's offensive was over.
The men of the 4th Michigan who hadn't been captured or killed rested briefly near the Chickahominy with no food, supplies, or blankets. Edward H. C. Taylor wrote that thousands of other survivors of the battle had already crossed or were then crossing the river, where the rest of the Union army was standing guard or moving toward the James. Charles Barlow remembered “lying on the ground that night, completely exhausted by the fearful fighting, dazed by the terrible and shocking sights that had met my gaze but a few hours before.” A soldier named George Crogan was next to him.
“George,” Barlow said. “The captain is killed?”
“Yes,” Crogan answered. “It's so.”
Barlow asked about Lt. Jeptha Beers.
“Yes,” Crogan replied. “He's dead.”
Barlow said he went on naming comrades, “one after another,” with Crogan confirming the terrible truth, though in reality, Lieutenant Beers was mortally wounded and in Confederate hands.30
Other survivors rested. “Sleep on the sand without any blanket,” wrote Sgt. John Bancroft in his diary. “Woke up about 1 o'clock [the morning of June 28] and crossed the river.” Captain Chapin said the regiment moved before daybreak, joining the rest of the army on the south side of the Chickahominy. The movement across the bridge south of the battlefield was “one of those awful marches, night marches where we move 150 or 100 feet to rest ten minutes or one-half hour,” Bancroft wrote. Dr. Chamberlain said the night was cold and that the men were silent as they slowly trooped over a causeway and bridge through the swamp and over the river. When they finally got across before the sun came up, they slept in a field.
The 4th Michigan lost 15 men and officers killed in action in the fighting on Turkey Hill and the woods and fields above Boatswain's Swamp, with another 41 wounded and 32 missing. The regiment's death toll rose to 23 as eight of those seriously wounded died in the days after the battle. In addition to Lieutenant Beers, 41, from Tecumseh, Lt. Thomas D. Jones, 24, had been mortally wounded. Beers, who'd been reassigned from Company G to Company K, died in a Confederate field hospital. Jones, from Coldwater, survived less than a month, dying on a hospital ship in New York Harbor. Dr. William E. Clark, the regiment's surgeon, was at the field hospital that was captured and it seems he chose to remain behind to take care of wounded men. He would stay at Gaines' Mill for several days before he was released by the Rebels, by then seriously ill himself.
Among of the 4th Michigan's dead at Gaines' Mill was Sgt. Frederick W. Meech, 25, of Company B, from Indiana—the man rescued from the sheriff in Angola more than a year before by his friends so he could join the regiment with them, and who had married his sweetheart at Adrian. Meech had proved to be a good man—Sergeant Major Loveland called him “as true and brave a soldier as ever took up arms” and “a hero on the battlefield,” one of a few soldiers he recognized in his report. Irvin Miner from Company F was one of the men unable to get away with the regiment as they retreated. He spent the next 40 days as a prisoner before gaining his release on parole in prisoner exchanges.31
One 4th Michigan soldier captured at Gaines' Mill was fortunate to recognize and be acknowledged the next day by his old U.S. Army commander from the Mexican War—General John Bankhead Magruder of the Confederate army. The soldier, 36-year-old John Sanders, a Washtenaw County man in Company D, was with a group of prisoners brought to Magruder's headquarters. According to an account published years later, Sanders thought he might get better treatment if he could demonstrate he had a connection with the Rebel division commander. “Hello, General Magruder,” Sanders greeted his old commander from the last war. “How have you been these past 20 years?”
Magruder was shocked that a Union solider recognized him. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.
Sanders gave his name and said he'd been in the 4th U.S. Infantry Regiment in the Mexican War.
“Who was your colonel?” Magruder asked sharply.
“You were,” Sanders replied.
“Your captain?”
“Anderson.”
“Your first lieutenant?”
“Roberts.”
Magruder was delighted at this coincidence, according to the account. “Gentlemen,” he said, turning to his staff, “he was thar. This fellow was in my regiment in the Mexican War. W-e-l-l, well. Gentlemen, what can we do for one of my old boys who has happened to get on the wrong side this time?” Magruder's aides laughed and Sanders was removed from the prisoners, who were sent on to Richmond. Sanders reportedly was escorted under a white flag to Union lines and turned over to Union pickets. There is no mention in the state summary of his service record that he was ever a prisoner of war.32
But while Sanders came out of the battle of Gaines' Mill with a fine story, more than 6,800 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. For Lee's army, it was even worse, with 8,700 casualties. For the next few days, the Army of the Potomac, though strong and intact, retreated. The 4th Michigan Infantry would face an even worse fight.