But these batteries, with a single exception, never spoke. Like their predecessors around Washington, they conquered by their mere presence. After all the skill and labor that had been bestowed on their construction, the enemy evacuated Yorktown just as our batteries were about to open. He was at our mercy. General Barnard says that "the enemy's position had become untenable,—that he could not have endured our fire for six hours." We can readily understand how mortifying it must have been to the Commanding General, and particularly to the officers of engineers and artillery who had planned, built, and armed these siege-works, to hear that the enemy had evacuated his fortifications just at the moment when we were prepared to drive him from them by force; and we can appreciate the regrets of General Barnard, when he says, in reviewing the campaign, and pointing out the mistakes that had been committed, that "we should have opened our batteries on the place as fast as they were completed. The effect on the troops would have been inspiring. It would have lightened the siege and shortened our labors; and, besides, we would have had the credit of driving the enemy from Yorktown by force of arms; whereas, as it was, we only induced him to evacuate for prudential considerations." And General Barry says, in his report of the artillery operations at the siege,—"It will always be a source of great professional disappointment to me, that the enemy, by his premature and hasty abandonment of his defensive line, deprived the artillery of the Army of the Potomac of the opportunity of exhibiting the superior power and efficiency of the unusually heavy metal used in this siege, and of reaping the honor and just reward of their unceasing labors, day and night, for nearly one month."
The next serious obstacle to be overcome, after the siege of Yorktown, was the passage of the Chickahominy. Here, says General Barnard, "if possible, the responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were increased." The difficulties of that river, considered as a military obstacle, are given in a few touches; but in the sketch of the opposing heights, and of the intermediate valley, filled up with the stream, the heavily timbered swamp, and the overflowed bottom-lands, we have the Chickahominy brought before us so vividly that we can almost feel the difficulty of crossing it. Well may General Barnard say that "it was one of the most formidable obstacles that could be opposed to the advance of an army,—an obstacle to which an ordinary river, though it be of considerable magnitude, is comparatively slight."
The labors of the engineers in bridging this formidable swamp are detailed with considerable minuteness. Ten bridges, of different characters, were constructed, though some of them were never used, because the enemy held the approaches on his side of the river.
We are glad that General Barnard has elaborated this part of his Report. There is a melancholy interest attaching to the Chickahominy. To it, and to the events connected with it, history will refer the defeat of General McClellan's magnificent army, and the failure of the Peninsular campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods, was to turn the scales!
That mistakes were committed on the Chickahominy the country is prepared to believe. Our army was placed astride of that stream, and in this situation we fought two battles, each time with only a part of our force; thus violating, not only the maxims of war, but the plainest principles of common sense.
The Battle of Fair Oaks began on the thirty-first of May. At that time our army was divided by the Chickahominy. Of the five corps constituting the Army of the Potomac, two were on its right bank, or on the side nearest to Richmond, while the other three were on the left bank. There had been heavy rains, the river was rising, and the swamps and bottom-lands were fast becoming impassable. None of the upper bridges had yet been built. We had then only Bottom's Bridge, the railroad-bridge, and the two bridges built by General Sumner some miles higher up the river. Bottom's Bridge and the railroad-bridge were too distant to be of any service in an emergency such as a battle demands. At the time of the enemy's attack, which was sudden and unexpected, completely overwhelming General Casey's division, our sole reliance to reinforce the left wing was by Sumner's corps, and over his two bridges. It happened to be the fortune of the writer to see "Sumner's upper bridge,"—the only one then passable,—at the moment the head of General Sumner's column reached it. The possibility of crossing was doubted by all present, including General Sumner himself.
The bridge was of rough logs, and mostly afloat, held together and kept from drifting off by the stumps of trees to which it was fastened; the portion over the thread of the stream being suspended from the trunks of large trees, which had been felled across it, by ropes which a single blow with a hatchet would have severed. On this bridge and on these ropes hung the fate of the day at Fair Oaks, and, probably, the fate of the Army of the Potomac too; for, if Sumner had not crossed in time to check the movement of the enemy down the river, the corps of Heintzelman and Keyes would have been taken in flank, and it is fair to suppose that they must have been driven into an impassable river, or captured.
But Sumner crossed, and saved the day. Forever honored be his name!
As the solid column of infantry entered upon the bridge, it swayed to and fro to the angry flood below or the living freight above, settling down and grasping the solid stumps, by which it was made secure as the line advanced. Once filled with men, it was safe until the corps had crossed. It then soon became impassable, and the "railroad-bridge," says General Barnard, "for several days was the only communication between the two wings of the army." Never was an army in a more precarious situation. Fortunately, however, whatever mistakes we made in allowing ourselves to be attacked when the two wings of the army were almost separated, the enemy also committed serious blunders, both as to the point of his attack and the time when his blow was delivered. His true point of attack was on the right flank of our left wing. Had the attack which Sumner met and repulsed been made simultaneously with the assault in front, a single battalion, nay, even a single company, could have seized and destroyed "Sumner's upper bridge," the only one, as before remarked, then passable, Sumner would consequently have been unable to take part in the battle, and our left wing would have been taken in flank, and, in all probability, defeated; or, had the attack been deferred until the next day, or even for several days, as the bridges became impassable during the night of the thirty-first, it would probably have been successful.
It is easy to make such criticisms after the events have happened; their mere statement will carry conviction to the minds of all who were in a position, during these memorable days, to know the facts that decided the movements; and it is right that they should be made, for it is only by pointing out the causes of success or failure in military affairs, as, indeed, in every human undertaking, that we can hope to be successful. But, in doing so, we need not confine ourselves to one side of the question; we may look at our enemies as well as at ourselves. Nor need they be made in a spirit of censoriousness; for the importance of individuals, in speaking of such great events, may safely be overlooked without affecting the lesson we would learn. Neither should it be forgotten that the general who has always fought his battles at the right time, in the right place, with the proper arms, and pursued his victories to their utmost attainable results, has yet to appear. He would, indeed, be an intellectual prodigy.