parative uncertainty as to the number and situation of the enemy, and with the disheartening consciousness that he was fighting merely to secure a road for retreat. Nightfall found us unquestioned victors. But with barely time for reorganizing our forces in line of march, we stole away again in the darkness, leaving the rebels busily engaged in burying their own dead and rifling the bodies of ours. Our retreat was so hurried that the wounded were left behind, to meet a fate worse than death under any form -lingering, torturing life in rebel hands. The heart turns away speechless from the story of their sufferings. Many of our men also were taken prisoners before morning, in consequence of their having fallen asleep upon the ground immediately upon the cessation of the battle at midnight; sleeping undisturbed through the indescribable noise and confusion of the commencement of the march, waking at daylight to find confronting their astonished gaze the unfamiliar and unfriendly faces of rebel guards, strongly posted at every point, rendering their escape impossible. Gloomily they gave themselves up, and turned their faces toward the Richmond they had hoped to enter in triumph, but which would give to them now only a loathsome dungeon. Bitter as was their fate, however, we forget them as we turn to the hundreds of wounded left helpless in their agonies, to be picked up by merciless foes or to die alone. Before nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, July 1, the entire army had reached Malvern Hill in safety. The five protecting gun-boats lay full in view in the sparkling water to the southeast. Our siege guns were on the heights. The daring retreat was accomplished. Malvern Hill is about two miles to the northwest from James River, sloping gently to the north and east, but difficult of ascent on the south and west. The fine old country seat called Crow House stands on the summit, bowered in the vines and foliage of a century's growth. General M‘Clellan himself superintended the planting on this hill of three hundred and fifty pieces of artillery, which, with indomitable energy and wise provision, had been brought out of and through the swamps and the battles of the previous six days. To this artillery and to the gun-boats we owed our victory in the great battle which soon ensued. Without these our exhausted men, broken down by alternate marchings and battles for six days and nights, and broken-spirited at the humiliation of the abandonment of their campaign, could never have borne the furious onsets of the rebels on this seventh, last, and desperate day. The batteries were protected by rifle-pits, dug during the night, and covered with straw, so that no token was discernible of the ten thousand muskets lying in wait there to flash out upon charging foes. Early in the forenoon the rebel forces slowly advanced, feeling their way by shelling the woods to the right and left, uncertain at what precise points we were posted. General Magruder was VOL. XXXI.-No. 181.-C in command, assisted by Generals Jackson, Longstreet, Hill, and Huger. Our lines were drawn up in still readiness for the attack. General Keyes held the right flank, supported by General Smith in the rear. On his left was General Sumner's corps; and still farther to the left were Hooker and Kearney. The lines were three miles in length; and no road by which the rebels could advance was left unguarded. General Magruder's first movement, after discovering our position, was to advance a few batteries into a field in our front. In the twinkling of an eye they were dismantled and shattered to fragments by the rain of our shot, and nothing could be seen in the clearing smoke and dust but a few gunners escaping into the woods. His next effort was made against General Sumner's corps. Upon this part of our line he threw his entire left wing, composed of the finest troops in the Southern army-the brigades of Toombs, Cobb, Wright, Armistead, and others. Unflinchingly the first column advanced toward the smoking hill, from which such death had come to their comrades. But before they had crossed half-way they were mown down. Only a few crept back on their faces with no guns. A new column stepped forward over the same strewn road. Our gunners groaned with pity and admiration for brave men as they dealt the same death again. Once the thin column rallied, pressed a little nearer the cannon, and then they too melted away. The open plain lay piled with dead. When the air had cleared still a third column came on, swifter and more resolved than the others, closing up over its dead, and rushing at last, little more than a handful of men, into the reserved musket fire, which swept all the cannon had spared. General Slocum's division was hurried up to support General Sumner, and until six o'clock the battle raged in this part of our lines. But the great struggle was on the extreme left, where Generals Heintzelman, Kearney, and Hooker found themselves in the centre of the sorest fight. Only their veteran valor and the heroic endurance of their tried troops could have resisted the fierce persistence of the rebels. Late in the afternoon a large body of the rebels was thrown boldly forward from Magruder's centre, with orders to press on in the face of every obstacle, and not to fall back while a man was left alive. It has been said that these men had been drugged by whisky and gunpowder. Their reckless self-sacrifice is hardly explainable upon any other supposition. They were no longer men; they were maddened fiends. As the plowing balls struck them down dead by hundreds the living rushed on with yells that seemed exultant. Again and again and again they closed up and neared the mouths of the guns on the top of the hill till the shot flew over their heads, leaving them unharmed. Then, just as the gunners quailed before their approach, the rifle-pits blazed, and a thousand close, deadly musket-shots clicked through the | Hooker and Kearney rallied their divisions for air. The rebels wavered and fell back, but still fought bravely down the hill, and left its base thick with their dead. At six o'clock in the evening the rebels made another furious charge, which bore back our left. General M'Call's exhausted and reduced division was the last reserve which could come to its aid; but in a few moments it was routed, slaughtered, its General taken prisoner, and Biddle and Kuhn mortally wounded. General Sedgwick's division was then sent from the centre to aid the left, and Generals a grand charge. Four batteries of artillery were hurried forward and opened with effect. The gun-boats Aroostook and Galena, having taken their position about a mile above Turkey Bend, opened fire with their gigantic guns, when suddenly, in one tremendous panic, the entire rebel army turned and fled. The shells from the unseen gun-boats, crashing through the forests and dropping from high into the air in their midst, struck such terror to the foe that they ran in abject fright, seeking blindly for shelter in swamps and caves. The day was ours! The foe was in BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL. full retreat, having lost more than twice as many | an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against men as we. "If at this moment," writes an eye-witness, "we could have brought ten thousand reserves into the field, we might have marched back again, retaken all we had lost, and, without difficulty, have reached Richmond." Others, upon the ground, felt and dared to say that our army was as strong to follow as the rebel army to flee, and General M'Clellan's order to retreat to Harrison's Landing was received with a storm of incredulous indignation by many of his generals. Dr. Marks writes: "General Martindale shed tears of shame. The brave and chivalrous Kearney said, in the presence of many officers, 'I, Philip Kearney, the field early in the morning, in company with the city. They were sons, husbands, and brothhis nephews, the Duc de Chartres and the Counters, and we do not complain that loving hands de Paris, and had taken refuge in a steamer. turned first to them; but Nature as well as The fact that they who had hitherto been fore- Christianity must blush at the heathen neglect most in every danger and undeterred by any which, after their own sufferers had been cared fears had apparently recoiled from the prospect for, left ours to die unsuccored. Appeal after of this last day seemed a significant one. The appeal was made to the Confederate agents by paymasters, also, were all ordered on board of those of our devoted surgeons who had remained the gun-boats; and the evident apprehension behind, but to no purpose. Our men lay night and distrust on the part of the Commander-in-after night on the wet ground where they fell, Chief, who remained for the greater portion of and no stretchers, no ambulances, no nurses, the day on the steamer, had diffused general could be obtained to bring them in. Even the distrust and alarm. few stores our surgeons had of medicines, bandOur forces, moreover, were most undeniably ages, and food were taken from them by the in a deplorable state. Whole regiments were orders of the Confederate surgeons to be applied missing; divisions reduced to little more than to their own uses. In one instance a Federal a regiment; more than one half of the Grand surgeon lent his case of surgical instruments to Army of the Potomac, as it landed at Fortress a prominent surgeon in the rebel service, trustMonroe, dead from sickness or battle, or wound-ing to his sense of professional honor for its safe ed and in prison. It is estimated that during return. It could never be obtained again, and the three months of this Peninsular campaign nearly sixty thousand patriot troops melted away. It was not strange that it seemed impossible for this exhausted remnant to make one more effort. It is not strange that the commanding General could not realize that, bitterly smitten as his own army was, the army of his foe was still more enfeebled, and might be crushed. But his failure to realize this, and his persistent retreat to Harrison's Landing, closed the door for months, and even years, to our success on the Peninsula. As a part of the history of this campaign, it is a duty here to record the following statement, from the Report of the Congressional Committee on the Operations of the Army of the Potomac : "It would appear, from all the information your Committee can obtain, that the battles were fought, the troops handled, new dispositions made and old ones changed, entirely by the corps commanders, without directions from the commanding General. He would place the troops in the morning, then leave the field and seek the position for the next day, giving no directions until the close of the day's fighting, when the troops would be ordered to fall back, during the night, to the new position selected by him. In that manner the army reached the James River." The Battle of Malvern Hill was the most severe of all the battles of this memorable retreat. The loss of the rebels was terrible, owing to our artillery fire-equaling the total of our losses in the whole seven days. Our own loss was not so severe as in the other engagements. But the sufferings of our wounded, whom we were forced to abandon to the inhumanities of their foes, were more terrible than have been elsewhere known in the history of the rebellion. Four days after the battle of Glendale no bread or meat had been sent to some of the hospitals, in which our men were starving by scores. Ambulances, wagons, private carriages, and vehicles of all descriptions, had driven out from Richmond, bringing food and wine to the rebel wounded, and carrying them tenderly back to the Federal surgeon was forced to stand by powerless to relieve, and see his brave fellows die from loss of blood. From another of our surgeons were forcibly taken both his case of instruments and his horse. The heavy army-wagons were loaded with our wounded men as with produce, and then left standing for hours in the July sun, until some officer should remember to give the order for them to start on their fatal journey to Richmond. Some of them died before starting; some died on the road; all were jolted on together, and unloaded together at the prison gates, living, dying, and dead! Others, again, were forced to fall into line with the prisoners, and march, shedding their life-blood at every step, only to fall dead at the end of the fourteen miles. So many the less to feed! But "the tender mercies of" these "wicked," which "were cruel" and speedy death, are less harrowing to the soul than the conduct of those Confederate officers who had charge of the supplies, and day after day refused to our imploring surgeons the articles necessary to keep life in the bodies of their men. So long as men shall live to read the story of this war, so long shall these things make the names of those officers accursed on earth One hundred men, wounded at Gaines's Mill on Friday the 27th of June, had nothing from that day till the 16th of July but raw flour and water-not even salt, to enable them to swallow the nauseous porridge or rough-baked cake. During these twenty days many died of hunger. When the surgeons entered their tents the skeletons lifted themselves, and, with tears in their sunken eyes, cried, “Bread! bread!" The pain of their gaping wounds was forgotten in the more gnawing pangs of days and nights of hunger. Finally, in answer to the burning remonstrances and appeals of the surgeons, the Confederate authorities sent to Savage Station, where there were over 1500 men, stores as follows: camphor, 1 lb. ; cerate, 1 lb.; adhesive plaster, 5 yds.; iodine, 1 oz. ; opium, lb.; tincture of iron, lb.; whisky, 5 galls.; bandages, 6 doz. ; lint, 1 lb. These were sent as the supply for a to murder us, burn our houses, and destroy our fortnight! cities ?" The father's soul was roused in hearing this brutal attack upon his loved child. it cruel in you to come and insult us, and instead of bringing us relief, to add to our misery. You know we are in no condition to answer you." "Sir," said Mr. Moore, "I beg pardon," and left the hut. In the mean time the fields and hills were purple with the most luscious blackberries and whortleberries, which would have given life to Stop, Sir," said he. "This is my son. I the sufferers. But every hand of nurse and sur- brought him. The fault is mine, if fault there geon, for night and day, had more than its bur-be; and mine must be the punishment. I think den of work; and, moreover, it was with the risk of being shot down by Confederate soldiers that one of our men appeared in the fields. At Carter's house, however, was a hospital of less severe cases, and, in response to an appeal from one of their surgeons, this feeble band hobbled to the woods, and for days busied themselves in William Reed was a true Christian hero; filling their tin cups with the fruit, and sending more anxious for his father than for himself; it by the bushel to the poor fellows at Savage's patient, submissive, cheerful. Seeing one mornStation. Such acts as these shed a holy lighting some dead soldiers on the grass-plot under on the dark picture of woe. It brought tears his window, lying with upturned faces upon from eyes which had learned not to weep before which the night-dews had fallen, he said, "Fasuffering or death to see these helpless soldiers ther, the sweetest tears Heaven sheds are the in their beds look with speechless delight on dews on a dead soldier's face." the familiar berries, which they had gathered in peace on the hills of their New England homes. Rough, hard men, with moistened eyes, kissed the hands that held the cool fruit to their hot lips; and the givers were more blessed than the receivers. In suffering and in privation William lived about fourteen days, and then closed his eyes upon earth's woes, in the long-to-be-remembered Libey Prison. "I reached the room in which he lay," says a chaplain who had watched him tenderly, "just in season to commend his spirit to God; one of the most precious offer Among our wounded officers at Meadow Station was a Captain Reed, of the Twentieth Indi-ings laid on our country." ana. When he volunteered to serve his coun try with his sword, his son, a heroic boy of sixteen, insisted upon leaving college to accompany his father to the field. In one of the actions a ball pierced his body, and he fell, calling to his father, who was near him, "I am shot; I am badly burt." Captain Reed rushed to him; found him shot through the bowels, and, as it seemed, soon to die. Raising him up, William rallied a little, looked at his father, and said, smiling, "Father, leave me; take care of the men." Placing a pillow, made of an overcoat and some leaves, under his head, and tenderly bidding him farewell, he left his brave son to die, and resolutely nerved himself to duty. Ere long a rebel shot stretched the captain upon the ground; yet heroically he continued to direct the fire of his company. The suffering at the hospital in Willis's Church, on the Quaker Road, was, perhaps, more severe than that at any other. This hospital was under the charge of Dr. Marsh, of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, surgeon of the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry, and contained one hundred wounded men, who were mostly from General Sumner's corps, and of New York regiments. For four days they were absolutely without any other supplies than such as the surgeon and his assistant could gather in a neighborhood where the inhabitants, in addition to their own vindictive hostility, had orders from Richmond not to sell to the Yankees. Our men died of hunger; and before any food was sent to them they had reached such extremities that a single cracker found in the haversack of a dead soldier would be eagerly seized, broken, and distributed among twenty ravenous mouths. At night the battle closed. Colonel Gorman, of the Fourteenth South Carolina, passed over At last, after imploring appeals to General Lee the ground, viewing the result of the day's strife. and General Jackson themselves, there came, on To him Captain Reed surrendered his sword. the evening of the fourth day, two hundred To the honor of Colonel Gorman be it record-crackers and one hundred and fifty pounds of ed that he nobly refused it, and with his own hands replaced it in the sash of the wounded officer. After a time Captain Reed and his son were placed in a negro hut, where for five days they received neither food nor medicine. Here a party from Richmond visited them. One of fat bacon, which was totally unfit to eat. On the next day two barrels of flour completed the list of the provision deemed necessary for one hundred wounded Yankees. Could we believe that there was the shadow of a necessity for this restriction of supplies we could regard the agonies and death of our brave men as only a part these persons was Rev. Mr. Moore, said to be of the chances of a war waged against starving pastor of a Presbyterian church in Richmond, foes. But their own statements at this time who, approaching the noble, suffering boy, taunt-pointed to no such famine and destitution in ingly said, "I declare! here is a fine blue-eyed boy among the wounded Yankees! Why did you come from your father and mother and school their midst as would justify these inhumanities. Later in the war they were undoubtedly, at times, too near starvation themselves to be able to give food to their prisoners. |