The first battle of Malvern was ended; but the curtain was soon to rise on a still more fearful scene of slaughter and one yet more uneven in its character as regarded the losses of the Union army and the rebels.
The main position occupied by McClellan was a splendid one for defence; and, thanks to what De Joinville calls the "happy foresight of the General, who, notwithstanding all the hindrances presented by the nature of the soil to his numerous artillery, had spared no pains to bring it with him"—the preparations for holding that position were magnificently adequate. The extreme right flank was comparatively narrow, and as it was a point liable to a determined attack, strong earth-works had been hastily thrown up entirely across it, and it had been further protected by a thick, impenetrable mass of abattis, the materials for which were so plentifully furnished by the Virginia woods and in the construction of which the quasi-mechanical army was rapidly efficient. The left was protected by the James River and the terror-inspiring gun-boats. In front the hill sloped gently down to the Charles City and Richmond road, and other points by which the enemy must debouch to begin the attack. On this natural plateau not less than three hundred pieces of artillery—a number fabulous in any preceding struggle in the history of the world—were placed in battery; so arranged that they would not interfere With the fire of the infantry along the natural glacis up which the assailants would be obliged to advance unsheltered. In the skirts of the woods lying beyond the foot of the hills, long lines of rifle-pits had been dug—these, and the woods beyond, occupied by a brigade of Maine and Wisconsin infantry and a portion of Berdan's celebrated regiment, to act as sharp-shooters.
The sun was sinking rapidly westward in the direction of Richmond—that coveted capital of Secessia, for the possession of which so much blood and treasure had been unavailingly expended; the trees, which for so many hours had afforded no shelter from the blinding blaze, except immediately beneath their spreading branches and dust-dimmed leaves, began to cast long shadows eastward; and the fervent heat began to be more sensibly tempered by the breeze creeping in from the placid James. Still the Union troops were resting on their arms, weary but undaunted, awaiting the approach of the Confederates, then (at five o'clock) reported as advancing to the attack. The line was formed as follows: the remnants of Porter's and Sumner's corps on the right; Franklin and Heintzelman in the centre; and Couch's division of Keyes' corps on the left. In position, on the left, were two New York batteries, Robertson's United States battery of six pieces, Allen's Massachusetts and Kern's Pennsylvania batteries. Griffin's United States battery, Weeden's Rhode island, and three from New York, held positions in the centre. On the right were Tidball's, Weed's and Carlisle's regular batteries, a German battery of twenty-four pounders, a battery belonging to the Pennsylvania reserve, and one New York battery—in all about eighty pieces.
Within a few minutes of five the signal officers at the various stations waved their telegraphic bunting, announcing the approach of the rebels under Magruder, and immediately afterwards they appeared in sight, in large dense masses reaching apparently quite across the country to the West, North-west and West-south-west,—with cavalry on either flank and artillery thickly scattered at various points, all along their line. Stretching away from the foot of Malvern Hill, in the hostile direction, lay a large open space known as Carter's Field—a field destined that day to be more thickly sown with dead than almost any historic spot on the globe except some portions of the field of Waterloo or that of Grokow. It was a mile long by three quarters of a mile in breadth, enclosed by thick woods on the three distant sides, while that towards the Hill was open. On the two sides flanking the enemy's approach our sharp-shooters were principally concealed. Entirely across Carter's Field stretched the rebel line, while in depth their columns extended so far back that the eye of the signal officer lost them in a wavering line far away in the thick woods extending beyond the scene of the morning's battle.
The Union forces rose up wearily but steadily, and awaited the approach of the Confederate host, known to be at least twice or thrice their own number, and led on by that sanguinary commander otherwise described by a writer who accompanied him through all his battles in the United States service and thoroughly knows his habits of speech and action,[13]—as "the flowery and ever-thirsty John Bankhead Magruder—the pet of Newport and the petter of old wine." The rebels moved forward in good order; slowly at first, and then, as if spurred on irresistibly from behind in all parts of the field, the whole dingy-gray mass broke from the "common time" step into that "dog-trot" known in the tactics of the present day as the "double-quick." At the same moment they broke into those shrieks of horrible dissonance, remarked in the fight of the morning, rising even above the din of the opening artillery, and more resembling the whoops of the copper-skinned warriors of the renegade Albert Pike, than soldiers of what is called a Christian nation, led on by a commander believing himself the very "pink of chivalry."
[13] White—"Mexican War Sketches."
Gallantly, it must be owned by all who saw the movement, did the gray-clads spring forward to the encounter, rushing over the field at an accelerating speed which soon increased to a full run. Then and not till then again burst the deadly storm of defence. From the Federal lines across the hill there belched murderous blasts of grape and canister into their front, and from the rifle-pits and woods went shrieking showers of rifle shots and Minie balls into their flanks, the two terrible influences almost sweeping them away like leaves caught by the gale. They fell by hundreds at a discharge, encumbering the ground and leaving wide gaps in their ranks; yet still their dense columns closed again and dashed resolutely up, until more than two-thirds the distance across Carter's Field was accomplished. Here the carnage, from the combined effects of artillery and small-arms at short range, became absolutely terrible among the rebels—such a spectacle as even loyal soldiers, gazing at it, could not but feel to be a species of wholesale murder for which the cause could no more than give excuse. The bones in the rebel regiments seemed to be crushed like window-glass in a hailstorm; masses of gory pulp that had but a few moments before been men, began to form an absolute coating for the ground; and the fierce yells of attack had become awfully commingled with the shrieks of those mangled beyond endurance and dying in agony. It was too much for human bravery to withstand—probably no troops in the world would have stood longer under that withering fire, than the brave but misguided tools of the secession heresy. Their lines began to waver with a ricketty, swaying motion, to and fro, as if the whole body was one man and he was exhausted and tottering; then there-was a movement to the "right about," and the whole head of the column sought hasty shelter under the friendly woods in the rear, from which they had so lately debouched.
A terrific artillery-duel proper was now commenced, and kept up for more than an hour, the Confederates showing no disposition to renew the attack, and the Federal forces contented to hold them at bay under circumstances in which the balance of damage by artillery must be so largely in their own favor. Then came a sudden lull in the storm, during which the Confederates made preparations to capture the flanking rifle-pits of the Federals, which had annoyed them so severely in the charge. Several desperate attempts were made upon them in quick succession, and they were taken and retaken repeatedly. In the end, however, they were permanently held by the defenders, whose stubborn pluck, aided by the enfilading fire of the advanced batteries, proved more than a match for the determined bravery of the attacking forces.
On the summit of Malvern Hill, and nearly in the middle of the plateau formed by the whole eminence, stands a red brick mansion-house, quaintly built, antique and sombre. The house is of two stories, long and low. Solemn shade-trees surround it; and corn and wheat fields stretch away from the Virginia fences of its spacious yard, down the slope of the hill and across the lowland to the margin of the James. In time of peace, this old house boasted a most charming situation, and the view from the verandah was one of the very finest in the country, taking in at a glance the long line of the winding river for many miles in either direction, and looking up the river, the high range of bluffs on the other side on which has been erected that serious obstacle to an advance on Richmond by water—Fort Darling. At the eastern end of the mansion stand the inevitable "negro-quarters," now empty and deserted, and with nothing about them to remind one of their former dusky denizens, except that unmistakable odor which supplies an obvious parody on Moore's aroma of the roses in the broken vase. Opposite the west end of the house is a deep, roof-covered well; and around this crowds of the wounded and thirsty Union soldiers were continually gathered during the fight, drinking in, as fast as permitted, that sweetest as well as freest of Nature's blessings—water.
On the west gable of this mansion, on the afternoon of the battle, a signal-officer was stationed, with his ten-foot staff and odd-shaped parti-colored yard of muslin, and his field-glass. His view extended far in the direction of Richmond, taking in the various camps of Wise's Legion, Jackson's and Huger's divisions, and others of the rebel forces; while riverwards his eye could easily reach, with the aid of the glass and when the smoke of the field did not arise too thickly, the famed Drury's Bluff and the redoubtable Fort Darling itself, still frowning defiance at the threatening little Monitor.