Notes of a staff officer of our First New Jersey Brigade on the Seven Day's Battle on the peninsula in 1862

by E. Burd Grubb

On the morning of the first of June the brigade moved down across the Chickahominy and out on the battle field of Fair Oaks. General Taylor informed me that we had been held in reserve through the morning and were considered the support of the second line. We were not engaged because the fight was practically over before we reached the field, but Captain George Wood, whose mother lived next to my father's house in Burlington and who was captain in a Pennsylvania regiment, was carried by and spoke to me while I was sitting on my horse with General Taylor at the edge of the battle field. Captain Wood was shot through the leg. The brigade was encamped on this battle field along the eastern side of the road running to Richmond, having crossed on what was known as the Grapevine Bridge, across the Chickahominy, and while there I visited the Second Brigade, many of whom, particularly in the Fifth Regiment, came from Burlington. George Burling, afterwards Gen. Burling, commanded a regiment. They had had a very desperate fight and many of them had been killed and wounded. They were camped directly on the spot where they had fought, and for many reasons it was the most disagreeable camp I ever saw, dead men and dead horses having been only covered with perhaps six inches or a foot of earth and the stench and the flies exceeded anything I ever saw before or since. We remained here until the morning of the 27th of June. All through the afternoon of the 26th up to nine o'clock that night there had been a heavy battle raging at and around Mechanicsville and the roar of the guns and the flashes of the shells had been very continuous. Early in the morning of the 27th the brigade was moved down with the rest of Slocum's division near the Grapevine Bridge and over the small hill from which the north side of the Chickahominy River could be very well seen.

It is my recollection that the tents which were of course shelter tents, and the knap-sacks of all the brigade, were left in the camp when we moved out that morning and the reason I think so is because I was in charge of the detail which buried the knap-sacks of the entire Fourth Regiment which were in their camp when we returned late on the night of the 27th after the battle. These knap-sacks were buried on the morning of the 28th of June, 1862, and while I have never been at the place since, although I have visited the battle field of Gaines' Mills twice, I have always thought that I could find this place. If the members of the Fourth Regiment have not already done so, of this I do not know.

About eight o'clock in the morning General Taylor directed me to go over the river and get some idea of the topography of the ground upon which we would probably fight. After crossing the river, riding across, I went to the westward, crossing a field or two, and came to a barn on the top of which were some signal officers, one of whom I knew, he being from my own regiment. He asked me to come up on top of the barn, and I climbed up and from there about half a mile away through a small gap in the woods, I watched a solid column of the enemy passing from left to right, until I was sure that a very heavy body of infantry was making that movement, I then went to the northwestward until I came to our line of battle. The men were lying down along the edge of the pine woods and so far as I saw, there was no rifle pit or attempt of any shelter of that kind, I rode along for certainly the length of the entire division and got a fair idea of the lay of the land, and I saw a place which has considerable to do with my account of this battle. It was a swale or shallow ravine possibly, where it came through the pine woods, about six feet deep and one hundred feet wide. On the northwest side of it there was a peach orchard and high grass and from the configuration of the country, I judged that the swale was formed from the water wash through that orchard towards the Chickahominy. There was no creek or rivulet going through it, but there was quite a deep ditch running along in the fields to the eastward perpendicular to the direction of the swale. Our line of battle was not in the ditch but considerably to the westward of it, say one hundred and fifty yards, I do not remember what troops were there, but I think that at least some of them were Regulars. My reason for thinking so is because I spoke to and saw regular officers whom I knew. The line of battle was not extended across this swale when I saw it in the morning, nor was it in the afternoon when I saw it again. I extended my observations along the line of battle for probably a mile to which this swale was nearly a central point. I made careful observations because I could not tell where our brigade would go in. I made a pencil sketch of the line as it appeared to me and returned to General Taylor with as much information as I could give him together with the sketch. The swale and ditch were marked upon the sketch as was also the barn where the signal officers were, and the general direction and the distance from the bridge head as near as I could give it. I do not know why it occurred to me that the course of the brigade should be to the left after we crossed the bridge, but it was so, and the reason I did think so was because I saw immediately that that was the weakest part of our line of battle.

About two o'clock in the afternoon we had not yet crossed the bridge. It will be remembered that one of the names of this battle of Gaines' Mills, is the "noiseless battle." A four o'clock in the afternoon there were nearly sixty thousand men engaged, having a great number of cannon, firing an immense number of cartridges, (of course at that time loaded with black noisy powder) and it is a fact that persons within two miles of that battle never heard a sound of it. Ordinarily the noise of that battle would easily have been heard for fifty miles.

I remember afterwards that although the smoke of the guns and of the musketry and the bursting of the shells in the air was distinctly visible to all of us; yet there was exceedingly little or no noise where we were until after we crossed the bridge, although we were within three-quarters of a mile from where the battle was going on.

I think there are only one or two occasions in the history of the world in which such peculiar conditions of the atmosphere existed at the time of battle. About three o'clock one of General Slocum's aides came to General Taylor with orders to cross the bridge at once, we moved down and crossed, and were directed to move obliquely to the left and take position in a large field which was a clover field, in echelon. The battalions were closed in mass on the centre with intervals of one hundred and twenty paces between the battalions. The Fourth Regiment was the left rear echelon; the Third was the next; then the Second; then the First. The field was a very large one and sloped both ways, first the rise from the river to the top of it, then a slope towards the pine woods which I have spoken of on the northern side. In forming the echelon, all the brigade passed over the crest of the hill. As soon as the brigade was in this position General Taylor ordered arms in place rest.

In front of us and about five hundred yards away there was going on a very severe battle, and many bullets came up from the woods and some cannon balls and shells. In a few moments the General sent orders to the brigade to lie down. Just as we came into position, a brigade which had been fighting in the woods right in front of us and which contained Duryea's Regiment of Zouaves of New York, fell back out of the woods not in very much disorder, but breaking both to the right and left. Their place was taken by Sykes' Brigade of the regular army which passed into their place coming from the left and which went into position just about the time that our men lay down on the hill. The regulars took up a fight which commenced to rage again with great fury; their line pressed into the woods and disappeared from our sight. The bullets commenced to come out of the woods and come in where we were in a very disagreeable manner, which I distinctly remember, as I sat on my horse with much more apparent coolness than I really felt, alongside of the General who certainly was very cool. In a few moments a very great many wounded men began to come back from the woods, some being carried, some being assisted, and some limping back themselves; and before very long an aide of General Slocum's came to General Taylor and ordered him to put his brigade in line of battle and advance. At this moment an incident occurred of which I was personally cognizant and part of which I was an eye witness to. I may digress here for a moment, and say that on the crest of the hill of which I have spoken and which we passed, lying between the Fourth and the Third Regiments, was a battery of seven machine guns, the first that were ever tried in battle, I believe, and the only ones I think at that time in any army of the world. They were called the "Union Coffee Mill Guns" and consisted of a single rifle barrel with an arrangement like a hopper at the butt of the barrel, into which cartridges were put, and the turning of a crank did the rest. I have also called to mind the fact that at the battle of Gaines' Mills the first New Jersey Brigade used a cartridge in which the powder and ball were enclosed together in some inflammable paper, it not being necessary to bite the cartridge but merely to put it in the rifle and ram down. I do not think they were ever used after the Peninsula Campaign, but the brigade was furnished with from sixty to eighty of these cartridges per man at the battle of Gaines' Mills, I think the "Union Coffee Mill Guns" had this same kind of a cartridge, but I am not sure of this.

Sergeant Dalzell of the Third New Jersey Regiment in the writhings of this battle was for a time in charge of this battery and I think that finally all the guns were lost. The reason that I speak about this battery so particularly is because it was at a trial of these machine guns some weeks previous at which I was present, by General Taylor's orders, I met for the first time the two French officers now known as the Comte de Paris, the Bourbon Pretender to the throne of France, and his cousin the Duke de Chartres. These officers I subsequently met on several occasions when I was sent with messages from General Taylor to General McClellan while the brigade occupied the extreme right of the army above Mechanicsville near the Meadow Bridge. I knew them by sight and from introduction and they did not very much resemble each other.

Immediately after General Slocum's aide had given orders to General Taylor to advance his brigade and before the brigade had gotten into line of battle from the massed formation, an officer riding very fast and coming down the line from the east rode up to General Taylor and commenced speaking to him very rapidly in French (both of these officers whom I have mentioned spoke English perfectly well). General Taylor neither spoke nor understood French, and he turned to me and said: "Who the devil is this, and what is he talking about?" I said to him: "This is the Comte de Paris serving on General McClellan's staff, and he has come to you by General Porter's orders under which you are to give him one of our regiments." General Taylor said to me. "Do you know him?" I said, "Yes, sir, I do." He said: "Very well, then give him the Fourth Regiment and go and see where he puts it and come back and report." These last few words saved me a trip to Libby Prison. We started up at once after the Fourth Regiment where we arrived in a few jumps of our horses. The French officer was a good deal excited. He was a young man probably about twenty-five or six years of age. I do not think that he said anything to me as we were riding, but I do remember that his horse shied at a dead man who lay in our way and very nearly threw him over his head. Arrived at the Fourth Regiment whose Colonel Simpson, a West Point officer, was just beginning to form his line of battle. I introduced him. Colonel Simpson spoke French very well and their conversation was in French. I understood it and heard him tell Col. Simpson just what I had told General Taylor and he said that if Col. Simpson would get his regiment in columns of fours he would conduct him where he wanted to go. The regiment was put into columns of fours and went off to the left front with Col. Simpson, the French officer and myself riding at the head of it, Col. Simpson on the left of us and the French officer between us. We had not gone far before I saw that we were approaching the swale that I have spoken of before, and soon we arrived at it. To my great surprise there was no more line of battle there than there was in the morning, although there was a very heavy battle going on on the right on the eastern side of this swale. My recollection is that there was not much going on on the left or western side, but I cannot say that I remember distinctly about that. At the mouth of this swale, apparently waiting for the Fourth Regiment, was the Eleventh Pennsylvania Regiment also in columns and also apparently under the orders of this French officer; for as soon as the Fourth came up both regiments moved off together through this swale. The rest of this is soon told. The last I saw of the French officer and Col. Simpson and the right of that regiment was a swarm of grey coated soldiers with their rifles in their hands within no more than thirty yards from us, and with General Taylor's words in my ears to "Come back and report," I lay flat down on my horse, put both spurs to him and did so. I rode up the line until I came to some wounded soldiers of the Third Regiment, and right here I saw Col. Tucker of the Second Regiment carried out of the woods and put on a stretcher and then shot dead after he was on the stretcher. I asked some of the Third men where General Taylor was, and they said "With the Third Regiment," of which regiment he had been colonel before he was promoted. I dismounted and tied my horse to a little mulberry tree at the edge of the woods and to which tree General Taylor's horse was also tied, and which tree is still alive, or was so within the last four years, as I saw it. I then went up through the woods about one hundred and fifty yards and came upon the line of battle and soon found General Taylor parading up and down the line like a wounded lion and in the midst of one of the most terrible battles I ever saw.

As soon as I came close to him and he saw me he said: "Where is the Fourth?" I said: "Gone to Richmond, sir." I shall never forget how the old fellow's eyes glared, as with his sword in his hand, he turned to me and said: "Young man, this is no place for levity." I said: "They are captured, every man of them." He said: "My God, My God," and fairly wrung his hands.