So that at last the North, which had so excitedly shouted “On to Richmond!” beheld in growing amaze the reverses of its bravest sons, and clamored vainly for a change. From Washington, too, came first protests, then rebukes, then an imperative command that the peninsula campaign be brought to an end and the army of the Potomac remove from the Chickahominy pesthole.
Back from the swamp and to less fatal ground, farther away from the lost goal of its ambition, the huge army was withdrawn, the Confederates working havoc upon their retreating foes.
It was in one of these flank attacks—a mere fleabite for the main body of the army, but as vital as Gettysburg itself to the army corps directly concerned in it—that Lieutenant James Dadd won his captaincy for gallant conduct in the face of the enemy.
A week later the demi-corps to which his regiment was attached chanced to be far to the left of the massed army on special detail, and was returning to headquarters.
The regiments, marching in close formation, were ascending the long, gradual slope of an almost interminable hill when their videttes appeared over the summit, riding back like mad, while at almost the same moment from a wood to their left, and slightly to their rear, broke out an irregular line of white smoke.
A masked battery in the forest, supported by several regiments of Confederate riflemen, had opened fire on them.
Before the nearest Federal ranks could wheel to repel the attack the flying videttes from in front reported a large body of Confederates who had somehow gotten between the detachment and the main army, and were approaching at the “double” from the far side of the hill up which the line of march led.
Even the Federal corps commander—a political appointee with three months’ actual military experience—saw the gravity of the position. Cut off from in front and attacked on the left flank, they might well be captured as had been more than one equally large body of Federals during the calamitous year.
And on realizing that fact the newly appointed corps commander, who was still weak in nerve and body from a touch of swamp-fever, proceeded to lose his head.
Regardless of the presumably greater danger that was approaching from behind the far-off hilltop to the front, he noted only the more palpable peril in that booming cannonade and rifle-fire from the wood to the left. Being only a temporary fool and not a coward, he stuttered to his aids a series of orders that sent fully half his attenuated corps swinging leftward in close-formation attack on the forest.