At nine o’clock that evening, the men were ordered to “fall in,” and the Brigade started across a stubble-field, in the rear of the camp, and striking the railroad, marched down the track toward “White House,” halting on a little hill near Savage’s Station. The night was very dark and uncomfortable, a cold, drizzling rain continuing till near daybreak.

On the afternoon of the 28th, companies F and G, Captains Tripp and Richardson, beside one or two other companies of the Brigade, were placed on picket at the right and left of the railroad, in front of Fair Oaks, and were not recalled when the army fell back on the evening of that day. At one o’clock in the morning of the 29th, the field-officer of the day visited the pickets, and informed Captain Tripp that they were to hold the line till daylight and then withdraw down the railroad, if they could do so without the enemy following them too closely. If they found this impossible, they were nevertheless to fall back, but in doing so, make all the resistance in their power, so that our army might be fully alarmed. At four o’clock, A. M., Captain Tripp communicated his instructions to the other officers on his part of the line, and soon after an attempt was made to withdraw the pickets; but the enemy, who were unusually vigilant, immediately advanced, whereupon our pickets were sent back to their posts. When all was quiet again, another attempt was made to call in the pickets; but no sooner had they left their posts, than the enemy began to follow them up. Several other attempts were made to fall back out of the woods, but each time attended with the same results. Finally, one of our officers suggested the plan of going through the ceremony of relieving guard, as a means of deceiving the enemy. Between six and seven o’clock, A. M., the reserves were marched into the woods, and visited every post; but instead of placing a new sentinel on guard, the old picket rose and stealthily left the forest. After passing along the whole line, the reserves also hastened out of the woods, and the entire force at once began to fall back to their old camp at Fair Oaks, where their tents were still standing, barely reaching it before the enemy appeared in sight at the edge of the timber, cautiously advancing in skirmish order. A body of Federal cavalry was drawn up in line of battle just in front of the camp; and when the guards halted there to strike their tents and gather up their personal effects, the commanding officer of the cavalry ordered them to desist, move on at once to the rear, and join their respective regiments; but, to save this property from falling into the hands of the enemy, the tents were immediately burned.

Company G was wholly overlooked by the officer of the day, and received no instructions whatever as to leaving the picket line. Sunday morning, a little before seven o’clock, Captain Richardson and Lieutenant Browne of his company, becoming convinced that there was something wrong in their not having any orders, made a tour of the picket line, and to their surprise found that it was everywhere deserted. Going out of the woods, they met a mounted orderly, who informed Captain R. that all the other pickets had been called in, and said to him, that if he had any men in the woods, he had better get them out as soon as possible. Captain Richardson and Lieutenant Browne hastened back to their lines, and quickly called in their men; but the enemy’s skirmishers were soon in their rear, and followed them till they had nearly reached our cavalry.

Sunday, June 29, broke exceedingly warm and sultry. Early in the morning the Brigade started up the track towards Fair Oaks, and after proceeding less than a mile, moved into a field and halted. Here General Meagher called his regimental commanders together and attempted to explain to them the orders under which he was acting; but neither he nor his colonels seemed to comprehend what was expected, and the result was the Brigade marched deliberately back to the little hill where it had spent the night. General Meagher was, later in the day, placed in arrest by General Richardson, and remained in arrest till the afternoon of the next day. The Brigade remained at this point for a short time, and was then ordered to the railroad bridge, a distance of about two miles from Savage’s Station. This bridge (spanning the Chickahominy at that point) had been burned the day before to prevent the enemy from crossing. They had, however, already effected this purpose higher up the stream, and their cavalry, with a few field-pieces, were now seen moving cautiously down the road, a mile away. A pause of nearly an hour here, and the Twenty-ninth and Sixty-third regiments were ordered to proceed to Savage’s. The enemy had come through the woods at a place called Peach Orchard, near the railroad, where they had attacked a small body of our troops. When the two regiments arrived, the enemy, perceiving the re-enforcements, fell back precipitately into the forest and retired. The march to Peach Orchard was made on a rapid run, and though the distance was not great, it was more fatal in its effects than any of the long, hard marches of the succeeding days; for the sun was now high, and poured its nearly vertical rays down into the deep cut through which the railroad ran, and on which the men were compelled to march. The trees and thick foliage that grew along the sides of the ravine effectually shut out the breeze, rendering the place like a heated furnace. One after another both officers and men, even the stoutest and most hardy, fell fainting and senseless from sunstrokes, and among them Captain Leach and Lieutenant Hathaway of Company C, leaving that command without a single commissioned officer, Lieutenant Whitman having been sick with malarial fever for several weeks, and being then in the hospital. From Peach Orchard the regiments proceeded to Savage’s Station, and shortly after were joined by the Sixty-ninth and Eighty-eighth, and finally by all the other troops of the division and corps.

Savage’s Station was the name of a depot on the Richmond and York River Railroad, deriving its name from the owner of the plantation, near whose grounds it was located, and whose mansion stood on a slight elevation on the northerly side of the track. On the opposite side was a large field, skirted on three sides by a heavy growth of pine timber, along the easterly edge of which ran a road. Mr. Savage’s house, and the grounds about it, had been used as a hospital and hospital camp, and at this time there were lying in the house and the numerous tents about it, several hundred of our wounded and sick. Such of these unfortunate ones as could not walk were later in the day abandoned, and captured by the enemy.

Near this place, as also at Fair Oaks Station, a mile farther towards Richmond, were vast quantities of army supplies, which could not be moved. The work of destroying these stores began about noon. Enormous fires were kindled, and into them were thrown boxes of hard bread, bales of clothing, cases of shoes, blankets, fragments of cars, tents, hospital stores, barrels of whiskey, and turpentine. The whole combined made a fire covering an area of nearly two acres. When the flames, mounting above the tops of the trees, were roaring and crackling with intense fury, the workmen, blackened with smoke and wild with the excitement which a vast conflagration always creates, began to pitch into the burning mass kegs of powder and boxes of ammunition. The latter proved a dangerous experiment, and was not repeated. “This destruction of stores,” says the Count of Paris, “was a sort of holocaust offered to the god of war.” While this was taking place, the troops were hurrying to and fro, taking up the various positions assigned them on the hill and the long plain at its foot, preparing to meet the enemy, who was momentarily expected. The grandeur and awfulness of these scenes cannot be adequately portrayed by language. An army of forty thousand men were mustering for battle; the rumbling of the artillery, as it went from point to point over the field, the excited commands of hundreds of officers, the neighing of horses, the roar of the flames, and the shouts of the men, made up the wildest of all the wild scenes of war. The noise and tumult were, however, of short duration; it was not long before everything had changed. By two o’clock, the lines were formed, the artillery had unlimbered and taken position, and then could have been seen, under the cloudless sky of that June day, the corps of Heintzleman, Franklin, and Sumner, with their numerous starry flags, quietly and calmly waiting for the storm of battle to burst upon them.

Another, and if possible, a stranger and more unusual scene, was to be witnessed before the serious work of fighting was to begin. On the track near Fair Oaks Station stood a train of nearly fifty baggage-cars, with a powerful locomotive attached to it. Into the cars were put hundreds of kegs of powder, shells, cartridges, and other materials of a highly combustible character. By two o’clock the cars were well loaded with their dangerous freight, and when this was done, each car was set on fire, and the engine, with full head of steam, set in motion. In full view of the waiting army, the burning train swept past Savage’s Station with the speed of lightning. The grade from this point to the Chickahominy was descending, greatly increasing the velocity of the train; every revolution of the wheels increased the volume of fire, so that now the form of the cars was scarcely visible. The Rev. Dr. James J. Marks, Chaplain of the Sixty-third Pennsylvania Regiment, who witnessed this event from Savage’s house, where he was piously engaged in caring for our sick, thus describes it: “I could not think of anything as a suitable representation of a scene so grand but that of a thousand thunderbolts chained together and wreathed with lightning, rushing with scathing fury and the roar of the tornado over the trembling earth. In a few seconds the engine, cars, and wheels were nothing but one long chain of fire,—a frightful meteor flashing past us.” The distance from Savage’s Station to the Chickahominy is not far from two and a half miles. When the train had reached the deep forest beyond the station, a deafening explosion burst upon the ears of the troops. The fire had reached the ammunition, and now in quick succession began to burst the shells. The noise thus produced was simply terrific; first the loud, sullen sound of a huge shell rent the air, echoing far and wide through the deep recesses of the forest; now came the explosion of smaller ammunition, sounding like the rattle of musketry. The scene of war seemed transferred for awhile to the upper regions; the shrieking, hissing missiles were coursing in all directions through the clear sky, far above the tops of the tallest trees; columns of white smoke were shooting up in gracefully tapering cones toward the zenith; beautiful circles, well defined, marked the explosion of shells. The rattle and roar of the rushing train were distinctly heard for some minutes, ending at last in a succession of crashing sounds. The cars leaped off the end of the track at the railroad bridge, the engine and tender jumping full twenty feet, and lodging on the top of a tall pier, from which they were afterward taken by the Confederates.

Once more all was quiet. The men, momentarily relieved from excitement, began to think of refreshing themselves with food and water. The Twenty-ninth Regiment was fortunate in being near a well, in the yard of an old farm-house, and though the water was muddy, they managed to slake their thirst with it. True to their soldierly instincts, they embraced this opportunity to make a little coffee; but they had scarcely swallowed it before the booming of a cannon was heard, the sound coming from the direction of Fair Oaks. During the afternoon, several large fuse-shells, fired from this gun, fell about the yard of the house, but none of the men were hurt. As the day waned, the firing of artillery increased. The main body of the Confederates appeared to be advancing from the direction of the Chickahominy, and as they neared our lines, cautiously feeling their way, they opened fire with several field-pieces. This fire was vigorously replied to by our batteries, and continued till five o’clock, when, as if by general consent, it suddenly ceased. A state of almost complete stillness existed for about fifteen minutes, during which a thick cloud of dust was seen rising up among the trees, about a mile in front of our lines, indicating the approach of a large body of troops, for the dust-cloud came nearer and nearer to us every moment. Suddenly the whole mass of the Confederate infantry debouched from the woods on the easterly side of Savage’s house, and sprang forward with wild yells and screams toward the open ground in front of the station, filling the ravine at the foot of the hill on which stood the troops of Sumner and Franklin; for Heintzleman had, from some misunderstanding, retreated toward White Oak Swamp early in the afternoon.

General Sedgwick’s division, being nearest the railroad, was the first to receive the fire of the enemy; but his men met it most valiantly, showing a firm front. Not an inch of ground was yielded to the enemy; and now the foe, ranging themselves along the track in an extended but compact line, began firing over the bank into our equally compact lines. The two armies were now face to face, and only a few yards apart. The enemy must be dislodged at any cost of life, no matter how great; and several brigades, among them the brigade of Vermont troops, were ordered to charge them. The Green Mountain boys started from the brow of the hill on a sharp run; the musketry of the enemy swept their whole line from right to left; they staggered and huddled together, as troops are apt to do when exposed to a dreadful fire, and for an instant they nearly paused, dreading to go on. Looking back, they saw the Sixty-ninth New York and other troops pressing on close behind; their line immediately straightened, and again they dashed toward the ravine from which was issuing a sheet of flame. Passing their left flank, the Sixty-ninth New York, with fixed bayonets, ran straight toward the gorge, and with an impetuosity so characteristic of them, and such as few troops can withstand, rushed directly upon the enemy’s soldiers. The Vermont troops, and others on their right, followed the brave example of the dauntless Irishmen, and in less than three minutes the railroad was ours; the thoroughly-routed enemy were running wildly and in great confusion for the woods in their rear, their flight being hastened by a shower of shells thrown from our batteries stationed on the crest of the hill. While this remarkable charge substantially checked the advance of the enemy, it did not end the battle; for we were contending with the veteran troops of Magruder, themselves trained in all the most daring feats of war, taught by their fearless commander never to quit a fight as long as the slightest hope of victory survived. At the time the fighting on the railroad was in progress, a body of the enemy made their appearance on the track near Fair Oaks, moving down on our left, and following a locomotive which propelled in front of it a flat car on which was mounted a heavy cannon. As soon as this movement was discovered, the left wing of the Twenty-ninth was ordered through the woods to check it. This was done in a very complete manner, a single volley from our men causing an immediate retrograde movement of the enemy. Dislodged from the railroad, the Confederates, who filled the woods on our right, now appeared in force in that quarter, and began a sharp attack on a portion of Franklin’s corps. This, like the first, was of short duration; but it dwindled into an irregular fire of musketry, and lasted till nearly nine o’clock. As it grew dark, the sky became black with storm-clouds. Vivid flashes of lightning shot through the heavens, followed by deep and sullen peals of thunder,—“nature’s artillery.” Presently rain-drops began to patter down upon the dusty field, cooling the parched earth and the smarting wounds of the victims of the battle. The storm that followed was tropical in its character and very severe, ending at once all hostilities. In the midst of the drenching rain, when it was near midnight, the jaded troops of Sumner and Franklin quit their field of victory and entered the dark forest on their route to the James.