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

Now this is an incident of the capture of the Fourth Regiment as witnessed and participated in by a staff officer. The identity of the French officer who conducted the Fourth Regiment into the woods where it was lost has been a subject of question ever since.

Colonel Simpson in his report of the battle and his capture mentions the name of the Duke de Chartres as having been his conductor.

When I joined General Taylor he was near the left of the companies of the Third Regiment; the smoke was so thick that it was impossible to see twenty yards. The afternoon was very hot and the air close, and probably the peculiar condition of the atmosphere of which I have spoken had something to do with it, for I never saw smoke so thick in any battle as it was at Gaines' Mills.

The firing of the enemy in our front was very constant, rapid, and heavy, and while a good many of our men were being hit it appeared to me that the bullets went high and the bark and the chips fell off the trees over our heads. All of the men of the Third Regiment were lying down on the ground loading and firing from that position and the same was true of the First and Second Regiments who were on the right of the Third. The first and only order that General Taylor gave me after I joined him in the woods was given within two or three minutes after I came up to him and after my report of the Fourth Regiment which I have detailed above. He said: "Those men are not firing at anything. It is too thick to see. Go to the regiments and give the order to cease firing and let the smoke rise." I went along the line, gave the order to every officer whom I saw—captains, lieutenants, and field officers. There were a great many of the poor fellows dead and hurt, and my dear cousin, Penrose Buckley, Captain of Company C, of the Third Regiment, with whom I had enlisted in May, 1861, was lying on the ground among his men, several of whom were dead and a number wounded, and he was pressing a bloody handkerchief to his left hip as I passed along. I said to him: "How is it with you, Penn?" and he said: "Not bad, Ned, only a buck shot in my hip." That is the last I ever saw of him. He was shot through the lungs a few minutes afterwards and lay on that spot four days in agony and died there. Before this last mortal wound he had a hand to hand encounter with two of the enemy, one of whom he killed, and the other shot him through the lungs. This is the testimony of John Stewart, Sergeant of Company C, who was lying on the ground beside him with his right arm shot off at the wrist, and who is still living at this day. After having communicated the order to fire I returned along the line looking for General Taylor, as I reached about the centre of the Third Regiment the smoke had risen from the ground as a curtain rolls up slowly and there was no firing on the part of the enemy, our men doubtless glad to be relieved from their cramped positions, arose from the ground, some on their knees, and some standing erect peering through the smoke.

As we know now that the enemy were in the sunken road which passed through the woods parallel with the line of the brigade and where undoubtedly our line of battle should have been formed in the morning. This sunken road was deep enough to cover a man to his arm pits and therefore only the head and shoulders of the enemy were above the level of the ground, and the enemy was distant only about forty-five yards when what I am speaking of occurred. I have paced the distance more than once since on that spot and I believe this to be accurate.

Both General Taylor and I distinctly heard the clear order, "Aim," come out of the smoke at the front, and instantly the order, "Fire." The volley that fell upon the brigade was the most withering I ever saw delivered, for the men were totally unprepared for it. Under that volley, the New Jersey Brigade broke all to pieces I do not know whether before this there was any break in the line of battle to the left of the New Jersey Brigade. History is somewhat misty about this, but I do know that the brigade fell back in great disorder upon receiving this volley.

General Taylor and several of the officers attempted to rally the men, but this was impossible. The General said to me: "We must get in front of them. Where's my horse?" It happened that I knew where his horse was for I had tied my own beast to the same mulberry tree and he was no more than fifty or sixty yards from where we were. James Morrow, of Company C, Third Regiment, who is still living, helped me to find these horses, and directly at the edge of the woods and right in the midst of the retiring brigade Gen. Taylor ordered me to get in front of the men, which would be to the rear, for he was coming back to rally them. We had gone but a few steps when we came to a ditch which I have spoken of previously and my horse, which was the black stallion so well known to our brigade, cleared the ditch easily at one bound, Gen. Taylor's horse balked just on the edge of it and Gen. Taylor very nearly went over his head. Seeing that the horse would not leap, I dismounted, went through the ditch and then led him up on the other side, upon which Gen. Taylor put spurs to his horse and galloped off swinging his sword and calling to his men to rally.

One of the curious incidents of my life happened just here. My horse was very much excited by the noise and confusion, and just as I put one foot in the stirrup he swung around so that I had great difficulty in getting the other leg up, finally I did so and was just starting to rejoin Gen. Taylor when a very tall and handsome young man came to me, and put his hand on the pommel of my saddle, he had in his other hand a National Regimental color. The lower part of his face and his chest was covered with blood. He said to me: "I am hit so hard that I don't think I can go any further, so I turn this over to you." I took the colors, put my horse to full run, went through the crowd of retreating men and found Gen. Taylor, who was forming a line about a quarter of a mile in the rear of where we had been fighting, and found a small patch of the Second Regiment, which was the nucleus around which that Regiment was rallying, and gave the colors to them.

The curious part of this matter is that I do not remember that I ever had occasion to mention this incident in public until the year 1888, when I was Department Commander of the G. A. R. in New Jersey, and at a Camp Fire in Freehold in the Opera House before a very large audience and an attentive one, I related it. Upon stating just as I have now, and saying that I turned those colors over finally to the rallying regiment, a tall, white-haired man with a long, drooping white moustache rising from the centre of the audience said: "That is exactly true, I am the man, and here is the wound," and drawing aside his moustache he showed that his lips had been almost entirely cut off which was the wound of which I have spoken and he was the color bearer of our Second Regiment, who had turned the colors over to me at the Battle of Gaines' Mills. An account of this curious incident was published in the Freehold papers the following day.

As the brigade retreated from the woods we saw a melancholy sight of our guns of the artillery of our division being captured, and we also had a glimpse of the rushing to and fro of a small body of cavalry which is known to be Rush's Lancers, Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry. Twenty-one of those guns were lost right there, and I wish to say that our brigade was not at any time placed in support of these guns directly.