Passing the fortifications, and traversing a level, scarcely inhabited country, shorn of its forests by the sickle of war, we reached, by a cross-road, the line of the Richmond and York River Railroad. But no railroad was there; the iron of the track having been taken up to be used elsewhere.
Near by was Fair Oaks Station, surrounded by old fields, woods, and tracts of underbrush. Here was formerly a yard, in which stood a group of oaks, the lower trunks of which had been rendered conspicuous, if not beautiful, by whitewash: hence, “fair oaks.”
It was a wild, windy, dusty day. A tempest was roaring through the pines over our heads as we rode on to the scene of General Casey’s disaster. I asked an inhabitant why the place was called “Seven Pines.” “I don’t know, unless it’s because there’s about seven hundred.”
He was living in a little wooden house, close by a negro hut. “The Yankees took me up, and carried me away, and destroyed all I had. My place don’t look like it did before, and never will, I reckon. They come again last October; Old Butler’s devils; all colors; heap of black troops; they didn’t leave me anything.”
He spoke with no more respect of the Confederates. “We had in our own army some of the durn’dest scapegalluses! The difference ’twixt them and the Yankees was, the Yankees would steal before our eyes, and laugh at us; but the Rebels would steal behind our backs.”
On the south, we found the woods on fire, with a furious north wind fanning the flames. The only human being we saw was a man digging sweet potatoes. We rode eastward, along the lines of intrenchments thrown up by our troops after the battle; passed through a low, level tract of woods, on the borders of the Chickahominy swamps; and, pressing northward, struck the Williamsburg Road.
Colonel G——, of our party, was in the Fair Oaks’ fight. He came up with the victorious columns that turned back the tide of defeat.
“I never saw a handsomer sight than Sickles’s brigade advancing up that road, Sunday morning, the second day of the battle. The enemy fired upon them from these woods, but never a man flinched. They came up in column, magnificently, to that house yonder; then formed in line of battle across these fields, and went in with flags flying and bayonets shining, and drove the Rebels. After that we might have walked straight into Richmond, but McClellan had to stop and go to digging.”
We dismounted in a sheltered spot, to examine our maps, then passed through the woods by a cross-road to Savage’s Station, coming out upon a large undulating field. Of Savage’s house only the foundations were left, surrounded by a grove of locust-trees. My companions described to me the scene of McClellan’s retreat from this place,—the hurry, the confusion, the flames of government property abandoned and destroyed. Sutlers forsook their goods. Even the officers’ baggage was devoted to the torch. A single pile of hard tack, measuring forty cubic feet, was set on fire, and burned. Then came the battle of Savage’s Station, in which the corps of Franklin and Sumner, by determined fighting, saved our army from being overwhelmed by the entire Rebel force. This was Sunday again, the twenty-ninth of June: so great had been the change wrought by four short weeks! On that other Sunday the Rebels were routed, and the campaign, as some aver, might have been gloriously ended by the capture of Richmond. Now nothing was left for us but ignominious retreat and failure, which proved all the more humiliating, falling so suddenly upon the hopes with which real or fancied successes had inspired the nation.