The Comanches: A History of White's Battalion, Virginia Cavalry

by Frank M. Myers

This ended the fighting for that evening, with the exception of some slight skirmishing as the brigade retired over the Po river to Shady Grove, where it encamped for the night.

The battalion did not number over one hundred and fifty men in the last charge, about twenty having been killed and wounded, and quite a number (as is usually the case) were reported in the list of “missing in action;” but only one was never heard of afterwards, (John J. Clendenning of Co. C,) and it was supposed that he had fallen into the hands of the enemy after being wounded, and died either in hospital or prison.

The hard work for both men and horses, had told grievously on the little band of “Comanches,” and they all hoped that they would not be called upon to leave their camp the next day, but by sunrise on the morning of the 6th, the bugles were sounding to horse, and very soon the old Ashby brigade was moving on the same Cataupin road towards Todd’s Tavern—names long ago made familiar and famous in the annals of the war.

After crossing again the Po river, on the same crazy, ricketty bridge, over that chocolate-colored stream, which with the “Matt,” “Tay,” and “Nye” rivers, form the now celebrated “Mattapony,” the column turned to the left, leaving the battle-ground of the preceding evening about half a mile to the right, and when the gates, fields and fences of the Chancellor plantation had been cleared, and the brigade was marching easily and freely through the open pine country bordering on the “Wilderness,” General Rosser ordered Col. White to “send his best squadron to the front,” when the Colonel told Capt. Myers to take his company and report to the General. As before remarked, Company A was now the first squadron, it being a large and unusually full company, and the small company (D) which formerly with A composed the squadron having been disbanded, and also, besides thus being the easiest handled, was at the head of the column, causing it to be selected to fill the rather invidious order of the General.

As the Captain rode forward and reported for special duty, the General gave his order, which was, verbatim, "Myers, move your people down this road and run over everything you come to. I’ll send a pilot with you." “The people” moved in lively style along the road, which now bore to the right and more in the direction of the previous day’s fighting, when they commenced to pass evidences of panic on the part of the “boys in blue,” in the shape of gum cloths, blankets, carbines, hats and saddles, and thinking that as Yankee plunder was plenty, the men who left it were out of the way, they moved too fast, and the General sent one of his staff with orders to go slower and not get too far from the brigade.

At length, after crossing a swampy stream and marching quietly along the left of a sedgy old field, in which some Yankees were discovered about a hundred and fifty yards to the right, and who began sending their compliments from Spencer and Sharpe, the squadron found that their road forked at the corner of the field, and not knowing which to take, Myers halted and called for his pilot, but not finding him, Jim Harper, in his peculiar style, reported that "the dam ’scape gallus had picked up a saddle at the branch, and as soon as the first shot was fired in the field had carried it to the rear like the devil."

The men in the field had now stopped firing and gone into the woods, and Myers asked Lieut. Conrad which road he thought they had better take, to which the Lieutenant replied "that it didn’t make much difference, so they got to the Yankees," when the Captain turned the head of the column to the right, and with the command, “Forward, boys; and get ready to fight,” marched down the side of the field about a hundred yards, and looking back saw Col. White, with the battalion, moving quietly from the woods at the branch and turning into the field. Fifty yards further brought the first squadron to a point where the road turned abruptly from the field into the woods, and with a rattling, whizzing blaze of carbines they were received by a squadron of the enemy not twenty steps distant. The fire was instantly returned, and a charge made, when the Yankees broke and as rapidly as possible fell back upon their supporting regiment, which in turn gave way before the dashing charge of the victorious rebels.

Just here the enemy moved forward a heavy line of cavalry, said by prisoners to be two divisions, and Col. White went in with his battalion in his usual “neck or nothing” style, but not being supported, was in a few minutes so roughly handled that it was with great difficulty his people got clear of the swarming masses of Yankees that lined all the space from woods to stream. The Colonel’s horse was killed, the Adjutant’s horse was killed, and in trying to save his papers which were fastened on the saddle, that gallant officer was captured.

Several men were killed and wounded in this desperate charge, and the enemy dashed after the retreating Confederates until met by the 11th Regiment, which only checked them and gave way when the 12th and 7th Regiments were, in detail, met and driven back by the overwhelming forces of the Yankees. But just at this moment the ubiquitous Col. Chew threw his horse artillery into position and poured such a storm of grape and shell into the crowded columns of blue-jackets, that they were in turn forced to retire and let their own artillery come into the fight. The Yankee batteries were posted in a semi-circle, with their right wing thrown forward, and the fiery Capt. Thompson had a red-hot position for his guns, but like the hero he was he held it, and his cannoniers, like smiths at their forges, labored incessantly in the unequal fight, amid the baleful death-fires that surrounded them. There are two expressions in the military vocabulary that describe situations usually fatal to the party occupying them, the first of which is that terrible word “flanked,” and the second “artillery cross-fire,” carries with it almost equal dread, and this second is what tried the metal of the boys of Chew and Thompson that day, but they were proof-steel.

However, it is not with the Stuart Horse Artillery that we have to deal now, and to return to the 35th Battalion. As soon as the artillery had checked the enemy, the Colonel commenced to rally and form his people in rear of the battery as a support to it, but no one thing in the duty of an officer is harder to accomplish than to form broken troops under such a fire as now swept this same old field of sedge. All the regiments of the brigade were trying it, and with about equal success. General Stuart rode back and forth along the road in the rear, his black plume waving on the death-laden morning air, and his beautiful sword laid across his arm, doing his utmost to stop the fugitives from the terrible field, and induce them to return to their duty. He was perfectly cool, and his calm but positive words, "You must go back, boys, the Yankees can’t more than kill you if you fight them—and if you don’t go back I’ll kill you myself—better be shot by the enemy than your own men—go back, boys!" had a fine effect upon some, but the murderous cross-fire had such a demoralizing power that even Gen. Lee himself could not have kept the majority of the runaways on the smoking field; and now, if the enemy had pushed forward one resolute brigade, such as Custer’s was said to be, the artillery could have been captured and the victory won, but they didn’t know it, and in their ignorance, and Chew’s audacity, rested the salvation of Rosser’s brigade.