During all these days the rations were scanty, and hard in both senses of the word, but what the commissary department furnished was all that the troops could get, for the country was so impoverished, and the people so naturally shiftless, that they did not live better than the soldiers, and plentiful as were the negroes, none of them made enough to live on without stealing the corn and potatoes of the few white people who did try their best to make a sufficient quantity of provisions to subsist their families.
On the 28th of May the battalion marched with the division in the direction of Mechanicsville, and on arriving near Hawes’ Shop, came in contact with a division of the enemy’s cavalry. Here Chew’s artillery took position on an open field about two hundred yards in front of a heavy pine forest, while the battalion, as usual, formed squadrons in the rear, to support the battery.
Just as this arrangement was completed, Gen. Hampton passed along, and saluting Col. White, exclaimed, "Good morning, Colonel, we’ve got the Yankees where we want them now;" but in about fifteen minutes the battalion concluded that the boot was on the other foot, for the Yankees certainly had them where they didn’t want to be. The storm of shot and shell that howled madly over and around them was terrific, and very soon two splendid men, Lieut. Strickler, Co. E, and Jack Howard, Co. A, were wounded, the Lieutenant in the knee, and Howard in the face with the big end of an exploded shell, which came bounding along the field. Several horses were also struck, among them that ridden by Capt. Dowdell, and which had been the property of Lieut. Tom White, was killed. Here the “new issue,” a brigade of new recruits from South Carolina and Georgia, which was commanded by the veteran Gen. Butler, of South Carolina, was put, for the first time, under fire, and although their horses were stampeded and their queer bundles of clothes scattered through the pines in every direction, yet the men, fighting on foot with their long guns, stood bravely up to their work and whipped the enemy’s cavalry fairly, but when the 6th Corps of Yankee infantry came against them Gen. Hampton was compelled to withdraw them from the position they had held.
The battle had lasted two hours, and when the Confederates withdrew before the heavy lines of infantry the enemy did not follow, clearly showing that they had no taste for Hampton’s mode of handling cavalry.
Up to this time the Cavalry Corps had not learned the style of their new commander, but now they discovered a vast difference between the old and the new, for while General Stuart would attempt his work with whatever force he had at hand, and often seemed to try to accomplish a given result with the smallest possible number of men, Gen. Hampton always endeavored to carry every available man to his point of operation, and the larger his force the better he liked it.
The advantage of this style of generalship was soon apparent, for while under Stuart stampedes were frequent, with Hampton they were unknown, and the men of his corps soon had the same unwavering confidence in him that the “Stonewall Brigade” entertained for their General.
This was the last battle for the month, and the battalion now went on picket until the 1st of June, engaged in frequent skirmishes with the enemy’s line of vedettes, but no casualties occurred except the occasional wounding of a horse, which always caused the loss of one man for duty, for no sooner was a horse disabled than his rider applied for and received a detail to go and supply himself with another, and besides the wounded men, the number on horse-detail, as it was called, so reduced the fighting men that the whole battalion now scarcely numbered more than Co. A did at the beginning of the campaign, and officers were scarce in proportion, but on the 1st of June Lieut. Marlow, Co. A, who had been absent since February, reported for duty.
CHAPTER XVII.
On the 4th of June an order was received carrying everything to the right; and Rosser’s brigade moved out to “Old Church,” near the Pamunky, where they found a force of Yankees behind breastworks, which the General ordered White to charge. The order was promptly obeyed without dismounting, and the Yankees fled precipitately from the rather novel scene of horsemen leaping their works, and using both steel and ball in their curious evolution, and the General’s wild “Hurrah for the Comanches” was re-echoed from the whole brigade who witnessed the operation.
On the 8th, an order to prepare three day’s rations, was sent around to the different commands; and many were the rumors of what Sheridan’s cavalry was going to do on the Virginia Central Rail Road. But nothing positive was learned as to the destination or object of the expedition for which Hampton was preparing, but all the Valley brigade concurred in the opinion that anything was better than campaigning in that hateful pine country, where no glimpse of the Blue Ridge could be had.