At Williamsburg, about twelve miles from Yorktown, General Magruder, as has been mentioned, had constructed a line of detached works. The largest of these, Fort Magruder, was constructed at a point a short distance beyond where the Lee's Mill and Yorktown roads united, and where the enemy in his pursuit first encountered our retiring forces, and were promptly repulsed. General Magruder, whose arduous service and long exposure on the Peninsula has been noticed, was compelled by illness to leave his division. His absence at this moment was the more to be regretted, as it appears that the positions of the redoubts he had constructed were not all known to the commanding General, and some of them being unoccupied were seized by the enemy, and held subsequently to our disadvantage. General McClellan, in his official report from "bivouac in front of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862," says, "General Hancock has taken two redoubts and repulsed Early's rebel brigade by a real charge of the bayonet, taking one colonel and one hundred and fifty other prisoners," etc. As this is selected for the brilliant event in the affair before Williamsburg, I will extract fully from General Early's report:
"LYNCHBURG, June 9, 1862.
"In accordance with orders received the evening before, my brigade was in readiness to take up the line of march from its camp west of Williamsburg toward Richmond on the 5th of May. . . . I was directed by Major-General D. H. Hill not to move my infantry, and in a short time I was ordered by him to march back, and report with my regiments to Major-General Longstreet at Williamsburg. . . . Between three and four o'clock, P.M., I was ordered by General Longstreet to move to the support of Brigadier-General Anderson of his division, at or near Fort Magruder. . . . Before my command had proceeded far toward its destination, I received an order from General Longstreet to send him two regiments. . . . With the remainder of my command, being my brigade proper, I proceeded, as near as practicable, to the position designated by General Longstreet on the left and rear of Fort Magruder. . . . In a short time Major-General Hill arrived, and, having ascertained that the enemy had a battery in front of us, he informed me that he wished me to attack and capture the battery with my brigade, but before doing so he must see General Longstreet on the subject. . . . General Hill being on the right and accompanying the brigade, I placed myself on the left with the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment for the purpose of directing its movements, as I was satisfied from the sound of the enemy's guns that this regiment would come directly on the battery. . . . In an open field, in view of Fort Magruder, at the end farthest from the fort, the enemy had taken position with a battery of six pieces . . . supported by a brigade of infantry under the command of Brigadier-General Hancock. In this field were two or three redoubts, previously built by our troops, of one, at least, of which the enemy had possession, his artillery being posted in front of it, near some farmhouses, and supported by a body of infantry, the balance of the infantry being in the redoubt, and in the edge of the woods close by. The Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment, as I had anticipated, came directly upon the battery. . . . This regiment, without pausing or wavering, charged upon the enemy under a heavy fire, and drove back his guns and the infantry supporting them to the cover of the redoubt. … I sent orders to the other regiments to advance; these orders were anticipated by Colonel McRae of the Fifth North Carolina Regiment, who was on the extreme right of my brigade, and marched down to the support of the Twenty-fourth, traversing the whole front that should have been occupied by the other two regiments."
General Early, having received a severe wound, soon after the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment charged the battery, was compelled by exhaustion from loss of blood and intense pain to leave the field just as the Fifth North Carolina Regiment, led by its gallant colonel, charged on the enemy's artillery and infantry. Of that charge General Early writes:
"This North Carolina Regiment, in conjunction with the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment, made an attack upon the vastly superior forces of the enemy, which for its gallantry is unsurpassed in the annals of warfare: their conduct was such as to elicit from the enemy himself the highest praise."
This refers to the chivalric remark made by General Hancock to Dr. Cullen, left in charge of our wounded, viz., "The Fifth North Carolina and Twenty-fourth Virginia deserve to have the word immortal inscribed on their banners." Colonel McRae, who succeeded to the command after General Early retired, states in his report that he sent to General Hill for reënforcements in order to advance, and in reply received an order to retire: that his men were holding the enemy to his shelter in such way that they were not at all suffering, but, when he commenced retiring, the enemy rose and fired upon his men, doing the greatest damage that was done. Some of them obliqued too far to the right in going back, and met a regiment of the enemy concealed in the woods, and were thus captured. General Early writes: "The two regiments that united in the assault were not repulsed at all. They drove the enemy to the cover of the redoubt and the shelter of the woods near it, where he was held at bay by my two regiments, which had suffered comparatively little at that time." He confidently expresses the opinion that, had his attack been supported promptly and vigorously, the enemy's force there engaged must have been captured, as it had crossed over to that point on a narrow mill-dam, and had only that way to escape.
The claim of the enemy to have achieved a victory at Williamsburg is refuted by the fact that our troops remained in possession of the field during the night, and retired the next morning to follow up the retreat, which was only interrupted by the necessity of checking the enemy until our trains could proceed far enough to be out of danger. The fact of our wounded being left at Williamsburg was only due to our want of ambulances in which to remove them.
Though General McClellan at this time estimated our force as "probably greater a good deal" than his own, the fact is, it was numerically less than half the number he had for duty. Severe exposure and fatigue must, by sickness, have diminished our force more than it was increased by absentees returning to duty after the middle of April, so that at the end of the month the number was probably less than fifty thousand present for duty. General McClellan's report on the 30th of April, 1862, as shown by the certified statement, gives the aggregate present for duty at one hundred and twelve thousand three hundred and ninety-two.[29]
When the Confederates evacuated Yorktown, General Franklin's division had just been disembarked from the transports. It was reembarked, and started on the morning of the 6th up the York River.[30]
After the battle of Williamsburg our army continued its retreat up the Peninsula. Here, for the first time, sub-terra shells were employed to check a marching column. The event is thus described by General Rains, the inventor: