General G. W. Smith, second in command when Johnston fell, had formed his plan of battle, and the new head of the Confederacy, with his high sense of courtesy and justice, permitted his subordinate to direct the conflict for the day.
As the sun rose, red and ominous through the dark pine forest, General Smith quickly advanced his men at Fair Oaks Station, down the railroad, and fell with fury on the men in blue, who crouched behind the embankment. The men were less than fifty yards apart, and muskets blazed in long level sheets of yellow flame. No longer could the ear catch the effect of ripping canvas in the fire of small arms. The roar was endless. For an hour and a half the two blazing lines mowed each other down in their tracks without pause. The grey at last gave way and fell back to the shelter of their woods and gathered reinforcements. The Union lines had been cut to pieces and suddenly ceased firing while their support advanced.
The roaring hell had died into a strange ominous stillness. John Vaughan had just dashed up to the embankment with orders from McClellan to hold this position until Haskin's division arrived. He sprang on the embankment and looked curiously at the long piles of grey bodies lying in an endless row as far as the eye could reach. Over the tree tops, faintly mingling with the low cry of a dying boy of sixteen, came the sweet distant notes of a church bell in Richmond.
"God in heaven—the mockery of it!" he cried.
A great shout swept the blue lines. Hooker's magnificent division of fresh troops swept into view, eager for the fray. They rapidly deployed to the right and left. In front of them lay the open blood-soaked field, and beyond the deep woods bristling with Southern bayonets. The new division leaped into this open field, with a wild shout, their eyes set on the woods. They paused, only to fire, and their double quick became a race.
The Southern batteries followed and tore great holes in their ranks. They closed them with low quick sullen orders sweeping on. They reached the edge of the woods and poured into its friendly shelter. And then above the tops of oak and pine and beech and ash and tangled undergrowth came the soul-piercing roar of two great armies, fearless, daring, scorning death, fighting hand to hand, man to man, for what they believed to be right.
The people in church turned anxious faces toward the sound. Its roar rang above the sob of organ and the chant of choir.
Bayonet clashed on bayonet, as regiment after regiment were locked in close mortal combat. Hour after hour the stubborn unyielding hosts held fast on both sides. The storm weakened and slowly died away. Only the intermittent crack of a rifle here and there broke the stillness.
There was no shout of victory, no sweep of cheering hosts—only silence. The Confederate General in command for the day had lost faith in his battle plan and withdrew his army from the field. The men in blue could move in and camp on the ground they had held the day before if they wished.
But there was something more important to do now than maneuver for position in history. The dead and the dying and wounded crying for water were everywhere—down every sunlit aisle of the forest they lay in heaps. In the open fields they lay faces up, the scorching Southern sun of June beating piteously down in their eyes—the blue and the grey side by side in death as they fought hand to hand in life.