The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: From Yorktown to the Seven Days, Volume 2

© 1995, 2013, by Theodore P. Savas

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by

any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any

information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

publisher.

The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: Yorktown to the Seven Days, William J. Miller, editor

Originally published: Campbell, California (Savas Publishing, 1995).

Includes bibliographic references and index

Digital First Edition

eISBN-13: 978-1-940669-06-9

989 Governor Drive, Suite 102

El Dorado Hills, CA 95762

916-941-6896 (phone)

916-941-6895 (fax)

David Woodbury

David A. Woodbury

Contents

Publisher’s Preface

Prelude to the Seven Days: The Battle of Slash Church (Hanover Court House), May 27, 1862

Robert E. L. Krick

Down the Peninsula with Richard Ewell: Capt. Campbell Brown’s Memoirs of the Seven Days Battles

edited by Terry Jones

Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the Peninsula Campaign, January—August, 1862

Carmen Brissette Grayson

Joseph B. Kershaw’s South Carolina Brigade in the Battle of Savage’s Station

Mac Wyckoff

‘Scarcely any Parallel in History": Logistics, Friction and McClellan’s Strategy for the Peninsula Campaign

William J. Miller

The Merits of This Officer Will Not Go Unrewarded: William R. J. Pegram & the Purcell Battery in the Seven Days

Peter S. Carmichael

End Notes

List of Maps & Photos

Peninsula Campaign, Area of Operations

Seven Days Battles

Prelude to the Seven Days:

The Battle of Slash Church, May 27, 1862

Area Map: Slash Church

Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch

Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter

Battle of Slash Church, May 27, 1862 Map 1

Battle of Slash Church, May 27, 1862 — Map 2

View of the Kinney House

Intersection of the New Bridge and Ashcake Roads

Battle of Slash Church, May 27, 1862 — Map 3

Men of 17th New York and Captured Howitzer

Down the Peninsula with Richard Ewell:

Capt. Campbell Brown’s Memoirs of the Seven Days Campaign

Captain Campbell Brown

Facsimile of Sketch from Brown’s Memoirs

The Battle of Gaines’ Mill

Military Advisor to Stanton and Lincoln:

Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs

and the Peninsula Campaign, January—August, 1862

Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs

Joseph B. Kershaw’s South Carolina Brigade

in the Battle of Savage’s Station

Joseph Brevard Kershaw

Brig. Gen. Edwin Sumner

Battle of Savage’s Station

Scarcely any Parallel in History: Logistics, Friction

and McClellan ‘s Strategy for the Peninsula Campaign

Theater Map, Virginia

A Portion of Federal Army Encampment at Cumberland Landing, May 1862

Area of Operations — White House Landing to Richmond

Quartermaster Transports at White House Landing

Stewart Van Vliet

Rufus Ingalls

Charles Green Sawtelle

Henry Francis Clarke

Charles P. Kingsbury

The Merits of This Officer Will Not Go Unrewarded:

William R. J. Pegram & the Purcell Artillery in the Seven Days

William Ransom Johnson Pegram

Purcell Artillery at Mechanicsburg

Purcell Artillery at Malvern Hill

Publisher’s Preface

In his introduction to the first volume of this series, editor William J. Miller wrote that George B. McClellan’s 1862 effort to capture Richmond was one of the most monumental campaigns of the war. From the Federal perspective, the Peninsula Campaign was the most complex and ambitious operation of the war to that point, as well as the most expensive… . For the Confederacy, the Peninsula Campaign was the greatest crisis the young government would face in the first three years of the war.

It remains somewhat of a mystery that, in the literature on the war, a campaign of the magnitude of the Peninsula Campaign has historically taken a back seat to many smaller-scale operations with fewer battles. There are innumerable, and important reasons why—as students of the Civil War—we should be drawn to the study of this complex military and political drama, and The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: Yorktown to the Seven Days continues to explore those reasons in greater depth than has previously been attempted.

This collection of essays marks the second volume in the ongoing Campaign Chronicles series examining events on the Virginia peninsula in the spring and summer of 1862. Essays in this assemblage include detailed looks at some of the prominent personalities associated with George B. McClellan’s movement against the Confederate capital, two of the battles in which they participated, and the logistical problems with which they grappled. From the under-studied fighting at Slash Church in Hanover County, to the climactic showdown a month later at Malvern Hill; from Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs to the Confederacy’s boy artillerist, Willie Pegram, the six articles brought together here add significant new information to the growing body of work on this largely overlooked campaign.

Leading off this volume is Prelude to the Seven Days: the Battle of Slash Church (Hanover Court House) by Richmond historian Robert B. L. Krick. Nervous about the vulnerable right flank of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan dispatched a division under Fitz John Porter to eliminate the threat posed by assorted Confederate forces in upper Hanover County, which included a brigade of North Carolinians. On May 27, 1862, Porter’s men crashed into a regiment of Carolinians near the home of Dr. Thomas H. Kinney, and the carnage was underway. Krick chronicles the events of that sanguinary afternoon in a cogent and compelling narrative highlighted with precise maps and modem views of the battlefield. Slash Church, Krick writes, magnified many times is Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, or Gaines’ Mill. While those encounters consumed thousands of men, featured vast hordes of combatants, and produced far-reaching strategic ramifications, they were not much different from Slash Church to the farmers and factory workers doing the shooting.

Terry Jones, assistant professor of history at Northeast Louisiana University and author of Lee’s Tigers: The Louisiana Infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia, contributed the second selection in this volume, an outstanding excerpt from the memoirs of Campbell Brown, assistant adjutant general to Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell. As his memoirs illustrates, Brown was a highly educated, keenly observant, and well-spoken witness to the participation of Stonewall Jackson’s column in The Seven Days Battles. Enhanced by Jones’ generously informative and pertinent annotations, Campbell Brown’s recollections of the campaign provide us with an unusually unique on-the-scene perspective of events from Beaver Dam Creek to Malvern Hill.

Professor Carmen Grayson of Williamsburg, Virginia, rendered exceptional service in the study of this campaign with the contribution of her essay, Military Advisor to Lincoln and Stanton: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs. Even long-time students of the war will be surprised to learn of Meigs substantial influence with Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton during the critical operations on the peninsula. Among other things, Meigs directed the Union’s initial responses to Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign; was instrumental in the disposition of Irvin McDowell’s corps; signed Stanton’s name to official orders without the secretary’s knowledge; and played a large role in Lincoln’s decision to evacuate the Army of the Potomac from the peninsula after the Seven Days fighting had ended. Grayson adroitly reports on these events and others with an insightful analysis which ultimately conveys to the reader a still clearer picture of an exceedingly complicated campaign.

Following Grayson’s contribution is Mac Wyckoff’s Our Loss Was Great: Joseph B. Kershaw’s South Carolina Brigade in the Battle of Savage’s Station. Wyckoff, a National Park Service historian for the past 15 years—the last seven years at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania NMP—delivers a fast-paced, blow-by-blow account of the service rendered by Brig. Gen. Joseph Brevard Kershaw and his brigade of South Carolinians at the June 29 Battle of Savage’s Station. After Lee’s sledgehammer attacks on the right of McClellan’s army at Mechanicsville and Gaines’ Mill caused Little Mac to begin a hasty but guarded flight for the protection of his James River gunboats, Lee instructed Prince John Magruder—to whose command Kershaw’s brigade belonged—to interdict the Federal change of base. Wyckoff presents the ensuing battle on a solid foundation of disparate primary sources, focusing in detail on the valiant efforts and grievous suffering of the four South Carolina regiments under Kershaw’s able command.

Series editor William Miller, in Scarcely any Parallel in History: Logistics, Friction, and McClellan’s Strategy for the Peninsula Campaign examines, from a broader perspective, the premises upon which the Federal campaign for Richmond were based, the unhappy alliance between McClellan’s headquarters and Washington, and most importantly, the specific logistical demands of feeding, supplying, and efficiently moving more than 100,000 soldiers in a country ill-suited for such large-scale operations. That the officers of the Federal quartermaster department succeeded as well as they did in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles—and yet go virtually overlooked and unnamed in the vast sea of books on the war—suggests that most us, however well read, have a weak understanding of one of the most important aspects of any campaign. Miller, in brilliant fashion, has taken a big step toward remedying that oversight. While there might have been good logisticians who were bad generals, Miller tells us, it is unlikely that there were good generals who were bad logisticians.

Completing this volume is a gripping look at a young artillery officer who for the Confederacy became the personification of daring and courage, William R. J. Pegram. In The Merits of this Officer Will Not Go Unrewarded: William R. J. Pegram & the Purcell Battery in the Seven Days, Peter S. Carmichael, author of the forthcoming Lee’s Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram (Lexington, 1995), delivers a compelling account of the all-but-suicidal service of Pegram and the Purcell Artillery in The Seven Days Battles. As Carmichael points out, not only did the Seven Days set the stage for unnecessarily high standards for acceptable losses in later battles, it also served as an intensive, week-long seminar in tactics in the early stages of the war. One lesson, learned the hard way, was the brutal efficiency of artillery on the tactical defensive. Compounding the problem for the Confederates was their habit of dispersing batteries to separate commands throughout the army. Consequently, the Southern artillery battery worked more or less alone against the mass fire of the enemy. Carmichael’s essay on Pegram and the Purcell Battery is the story of brave men doing dangerous work. Before Mechanicsville, Pegram counted 80 to 90 men in his command. During three engagements of The Seven Days Battles, at least 57 of those men were killed or wounded.

These essays, it is hoped, along with many others in subsequent volumes, will help provide a fuller understanding of this colossal—and colossally important—campaign.

Volume Two

Robert E. L. Krick

Robert E. L. Krick, a Richmond-based historian, is the author of The 40th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, 1985) and is a regular contributor to many journals, including Civil War magazine. He specializes in the Army of Northern Virginia’s battles and personnel, and is at work on a biographical register of the army’s staff officers.

Prelude to the Seven Days

The Battle of Slash Church (Hanover Court House)

May 27, 1862

As George B. McClellan inched his army toward the Confederate capital city in May 1862, few observers doubted that the climax of the war was at hand. The Young Napoleon apparently had only to marshal and unleash his substantial forces before the defenders could regroup and maneuver for advantage. In the event, the Peninsula Campaign proved to be a mismanaged duel dominated by the floundering of awkward neophytes. The battles that began at Yorktown and concluded at Malvern Hill exposed several leaders on both sides as fumblers with no future in the main theater of the war; the campaign culled these men out via natural selection. The Battle of Slash Church-known among Northern participants as the Battle of Hanover Court House-was a part of this testing process. It featured as its star performer Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch of North Carolina, certainly a suspect figure for such a weighty position. Branch’s reaction to unaccustomed military responsibility, the behavior of the raw infantrymen on both sides, and the ferocity of this obscure action make the Battle of Slash Church an interesting component of the 1862 campaign for Richmond.

The northern section of Hanover County, Virginia, oozed history long before the contending armies began crowding its roads. Patrick Henry and Henry Clay lived their early years just south of Hanover Court House. Henry even suffered matrimony at a nearby mansion that figured prominently in Civil War operations many decades later. In 1862, the area offered a patchwork of open farmland and thick, immature woods. One particularly dense section earned the local designation of The Slash, a term inspired by an abundance of briars and swamps. Two features of the landscape gave upper Hanover County military significance in the operations around Richmond in May 1862. The Virginia Central Railroad sliced through northern Hanover, passing villages bearing names like Peake’s Turnout and Atlee’s Station. The evolving status of railroad transportation and supply increased the Virginia Central’s importance. Upper Hanover fell only a few miles short of being the mid-way point between Richmond and Fredericksburg. Those two cities marked the flanks of the opposing armies, each of which had elements scattered over the 60 intervening miles. Whatever troops dominated northern Hanover and controlled the railroad line in that section enjoyed the advantage of position.

*    *    *

By the middle of May 1862, General McClellan apparently had determined his pattern for the next phase of the campaign. While predicting an orderly reduction of Richmond, he still fretted incessantly over the dispersal of the Union troops in the central part of the state. He viewed their presence with the Army of the Potomac as an essential ingredient to the success of his enterprise.

Irvin McDowell, stoic in the face of his public relations nightmare at First Manassas, commanded the most substantial outpost of Union troops between Richmond and Washington. His mission was to remain around Fredericksburg, near enough to Washington to react in case the unpredictable Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson broke loose from his tormentors in the Shenandoah Valley. McClellan craved the presence of McDowell’s troops to further his plan of victory through method and statistical superiority. Abraham Lincoln was accustomed by mid-May to McClellan’s harangues on the subject of reinforcements. In this case, he agreed with his top-ranking general. McClellan received the happy intelligence on May 17 that McDowell, with an entire corps, would march toward Richmond to reinforce the Army of the Potomac.¹

This promising development ended in disaster. In a well-timed movement, Stonewall Jackson commenced his rampage in the Valley, driving Union armies before him as he indirectly threatened Washington. Jackson’s victories had the desired effect: Lincoln succumbed to his fears and recalled McDowell to northern Virginia to help protect the Republican Party’s capital city. Thus a series of relatively small battles more than 100 miles distant had a significant role in the successful Confederate defense of Richmond.

Since aid from McDowell now seemed doubtful, McClellan found himself in a difficult position. Much of his army-including the corps commanded by Fitz John Porter-languished on the north side of the Chickahominy River, stretching hopefully toward Fredericksburg. Thus, the textbook soldier George McClellan found himself in violation of the fundamental concepts of flank protection. Not only did Porter’s flank dangle unprotected in Hanover County, but a bad dose of weather could flood the Chickahominy and isolate Porter and the other Union troops north of the river.

The Confederates’ situation by May 25 hardly differed from that of their Federal counterparts. The Southerners, too, maintained an isolated force in Hanover County. These troops were commanded by Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’B. Branch and were, in theory, situated for defense. Branch, however, barely controlled enough soldiers to merit attention as a strategic force.² Joseph E. Johnston had telegraphed Branch on May 18 and 19 to move from his post near Gordonsville eastward to Hanover Court House. Branch grappled with railroad transportation, and finally began assembling his force at Hanover Court House early on May 22.³ Farther north, Brig. Gen. Joseph R. Anderson commanded a small division below Fredericksburg that also began moving south that week. Anderson was at Hanover Junction by May 26. In the event of a serious move toward Richmond by McClellan, Anderson and Branch would be in position to harass the Union flank. They could also observe the erratic wanderings of McDowell. If the Union high command decided to unite McDowell with McClellan, the Confederates were well posted to block the move.

All through his career in Virginia, George McClellan reacted to setbacks in the same way. After consolidating and regrouping as much as he could justify, he would set off on some movement designed to demonstrate to everyone just how furiously he progressed. These little expeditions were, however, usually limited and closely regulated operations. On May 26, for example, McClellan claimed that We are quietly closing in upon the enemy preparatory to the last struggle. About the same time, however, McClellan felt he had to take every possible precaution against disaster⁴ and dispatched orders to Fitz John Porter for a demonstration against Confederates in upper Hanover. The commander of the Army of the Potomac saw these Southern troops as a threat to his supply line and thought Porter’s expedition necessary to eliminate that threat. Porter gathered a division of three brigades commanded by Brig. Gen. George W. Morell, several batteries, a strong provisional brigade under Col. Gouverneur K. Warren, and a swarm of cavalry. Porter hoped to exterminate Branch’s brigade of North Carolinians.

Lawrence O’Bryan Branch owed his rank to his antebellum political skills. In May 1862, he was a 41-year-old ex-congressman with an unsuccessful battle at New Berne, North Carolina, as his sole military credential. Few Confederate generals displayed a more acrimonious disposition than Branch. During his relatively brief Civil War career, Branch engaged in several unseemly public disputes with subordinates and other officers, one of which will be documented here. His private letters to his wife reaffirm the notion that he could not endure fools, that they surrounded him and that his military career was a constant struggle against their pernicious influence. The presence of Joseph R. Anderson to the north left the Confederacy in the unsettling position of having a politician and an ironworks magnate commanding thousands of men protecting the approaches to the capital from the north.⁵

General Branch would distinguish himself in the war, but as his second attempt at independent command approached that late May, he was far from confident and seems to have been unready for battle. On May 24, the general wrote hopefully that perhaps General Anderson would arrive the next day: He ranks me and I would rather be relieved of the responsibility of the chief command.⁶ Branch continued to cling to the hope that Anderson would reinforce the North Carolinians around Hanover Court House, but Anderson had other worries.

The morning of May 27, 1862, began earlier for Porter’s raiding force than for most other soldiers around Richmond. The troops were awake by 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. in their camps near New Bridge on the Chickahominy. One soldier of the 25th New York recorded that his regiment packed 60 rounds of ammunition per man with two-days’ rations. Nearly all accounts agree that the head of the column had started by 4:00.⁷ The troops faced a march that tested their soldierly bearing. It rained, a routine discomfort May, but on this day Porter’s men faced the prospect of a long march and possibly a battle. The rain soaked the roads in Hanover County. One Federal recalled that the columns marched through one broad mass of plastic mud knee deep, while the rain pelted us in torrents. Wrote a man of Brig. Gen. Daniel Butter field’s brigade, The depth became disgusting.⁸

David Woodbury

Brig. Gen. Lawrence O’Bryan Branch. Generals in Gray

Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter. Carlisle Barracks.

The other wing of the Union advance, led by Gouverneur K. Warren, moved from lovely Old Church northwest toward Hanover Court House, nearly 12 miles away. With 2,700 men, Warren’s column was surprisingly powerful. Although the Union high command did not seem to realize the dimensions of Branch’s position in northern Hanover, the approach of the blue columns from two different directions proved fortuitous. Warren was to prevent Confederate movement toward the Pamunkey River and destroy bridges in that area.

*    *    *

Only a few miles southwest of