The Confederates had discovered that we were falling back, by means of a balloon, of home manufacture,—the first they had been able to employ during the entire war. They appeared at our entrenchments on Sunday morning, and finding them deserted, commenced an irregular pursuit, whereby, they received terrible volleys of musketry from ambuscaded regiments, and retired, in disorder, to the ramparts. This was the battle of "Peach Orchard," and was disastrous to the Southerners. In the afternoon, they again essayed to advance, but more cautiously. The Federals, meantime, lay in order of battle upon Savage's, Dudley's, and Crouch's farms, their right resting on the Chickahominy, their centre on the railroad, and their left beyond the Williamsburg turnpike. For a time, an artillery contest ensued, and the hospitals at Savage's, where the wounded lay, were thrice fired upon. The Confederates finally penetrated the dense woods that belted this country, and the battle, at nightfall, became fervid and sanguinary. The Federals held their ground obstinately, and fell back, covered by artillery, at midnight. The woods were set on fire, in the darkness, and conflagration painted fiery terrors on the sky. The dead, littered all the fields and woods. The retreating army had marked its route with corpses. This was the battle of "Savage's," and neither party has called it a victory.
During the rest of the night the weary fugitives were crossing White Oak Creek and Swamp. Toward daybreak, the last battery had accomplished the passage; the bridge was destroyed; and preparations were made to dispute the pursuit in the morning.
I noted these particulars and added to my lists of dead and captured. At dusk I was about to sleep, supperless, upon the bare ground, when my patron, Colonel Murphy, again came in sight, and invited me to occupy a shelter-tent, on the brow of the hill at White Oak. To my great joy, he was able to offer me some stewed beef, bread and butter, and hot coffee. I ate voraciously, seizing the food in my naked fingers, and rending it like a beast.
The regiment of Colonel Murphy was composed of laborers, and artificers of every possible description. There were blacksmiths, moulders, masons, carpenters, boat-builders, joiners, miners, machinists, riggers, and rope-makers. They could have bridged the Mississippi, rebuilt the Tredegar works, finished the Tower of Babel, drained the Chesapeake, constructed the Great Eastern, paved Broadway, replaced the Grand Trunk railroad, or tunnelled the Straits of Dover. I have often thought that the real greatness of the Northern army lay in its ingenuity and industry, not in its military qualifications.
Our conversation turned upon these matters, as we sat before the Colonel's tent in the evening, and a Chaplain represented the feelings of the North in this manner: "We must whip them. We have got more money, more men, more ships, more ingenuity. They are bound to knuckle at last. If we have to lose man for man with them, their host will die out before ours. And we wont give up the Union,—not a piece of it big enough for a bird or a bee to cover,—though we reduce these thirty millions one half, and leave only the women and children to inherit the land." The heart of the army was now cast down, though a large portion of the soldiers did not know why we were falling back. I heard moody, despondent, accusing mutterings, around the camp-fires, and my own mind was full of grief and bitterness. It seemed that our old flag had descended to a degenerate people. It was not now, as formerly, a proud recollection that I was an American. If I survived the retreat, it would become my mission to herald the evil tidings through the length and breadth of the land. If I fainted in their pursuit, a loathsome prison, or a grave in the trenches, were to be my awards. When I lay down in a shelter-tent, rolling from side to side, I remembered that this was the Sabbath day. A battle Sabbath! How this din and slaughter contrasted with my dear old Lord's days in the prayerful parsonage! The chimes in the white spire, where the pigeons cooed in the hush of the singing, were changed to cannon peals; and the boys that dozed in the "Amen corner," were asleep forever in the trampled grain-fields. The good parson, whose clauses were not less truthful, because spoken through his nose, now blew the loud trumpet for the babes he had baptized, to join the Captains of fifties and thousands; and while the feeble old women in the side pews made tremulous responses to the prayer for "thy soldiers fighting in thy cause," the banners of the Republic were craped, dusty, and bloody, and the scattered regiments were resting upon their arms for the shock of the coming dawn.
Thus I thought, tossing and talking through the long watches, and toward morning, when sleep brought fever-dreams, a monstrous something leered at me from the blackness, saying, in a sort of music—