Bones, rusty gun barrels: 1881 tour of Seven Days battlefields

Remains of soldiers on Gaines' Mill battlefield in 1865. Sixteen years later, soldier remains still were found
on the Seven Days battlefields. (Library of Congress | CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

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In the summer of 1881, Philadelphia Times correspondent George Morgan toured the Seven Days battlefields near Richmond. Nineteen years after Robert E. Lee chased George McClellan's Army of the Potomac from the gates of the Confederate capital, evidence of war was not hard to find.

Rusty gun barrels, old canteens, traces of earthworks, unexploded artillery shells and the outlines of parapets were easily found. In his Page 1 account, Morgan also told of a farmer who discovered human remains while digging post holes for a fence.

"He felt his spade grate against something hard and a moment later he cast up a skull," Morgan wrote. "With more of a twitching of his fingers than Hamlet's first grave-digger felt, Swiffer stooped, scratched away the sand and disclosed a complete skeleton, which, from bits of blue and brass buttons about it, was pronounced to be that of a Federal soldier."

The farmer placed the bones and skull in a barrel for re-burial at Cold Harbor National Cemetery, "where the forgotten brave was given decent though not 'Christian burial' among his unknown fellows."

Here's the account of Morgan's trip through Virginia, published in the Philadelphia Times on July 25, 1881:

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Special Correspondence of The Times 

RICHMOND, July 22

Present-day view of Gaines' Mill (Va.) battlefield visited by reporter George Morgan in 1881.

Shortly after sunrise on Monday morning I was searching among some shell-shattered fragments of a wall at Gaines' Mill when a man with an empty sleeve crawled out of a cart that had just come in from the New Cold Harbor road. He was a hearty fellow of forty, or thereabouts, and as he limped towards the blacksmith shop I saw that with his one arm he was swinging a handful of gun-barrels as though they had been so many sticks of reed.

"Hello, there!" he said gruffly to the man at the forge, "want ye to make me some shoes for my hoss."

"What out'n?" asked the busy blacksmith, whose quick-falling strokes upon a red-hot rod gave out thud upon thud and shook the shop in which he was beginning his toilsome day.

"Yankee guns," said the newcomer.

" Hist!" whispered the blacksmith; "here's a Northern man lookin' at the battle-ground."

But Storekeeper Tucker, with a quickness of perception noticeable in both Federal and Confederate veterans, felt that no Northerner in his senses would care a snap whether he should be called "Yankee" or " Union man," and, shaking hands, he cheerily explained the incident of the guns. They had been picked up from various parts of the battle-field and brought to him at his New Cold Harbor store, a half mile to the east. He had long ago learned that the rusty barrels could be turned by heat and hammering into what he called "horse shoes of the best kind" and time and again had he shod his fat roadster with iron once used in the death grapple in the Chickahominy hollows.

In his business since the war he has dealt not only in old guns, but he has bought and sold lead, leather and brass, gathered from the woods by little darkeys in search of dimes. I found him to be full of war stories and though not exactly full to the chin with war relics he yet carried a minie bail in his pelvis and a piece of shell in his foot. He was one of [George] Pickett's men who beat against the stone wall at Gettysburg, and in the charge. almost at the same moment, his arm was torn off by a round shot, his body pierced by a ball and his heel ripped open by a third missile. He dropped for dead upon the carpet of clover, with most of his regiment around him, but to his own astonishment he was restored to robust health.

In search of the Chickahominy

Military bridge over Chickahominy River in June 1862. (Library of Congress)

At daybreak on that day I had come out from Richmond on the New Bridge road, with the idea of leaving behind the sands and swamps ot the Chickahominy before the sun should become troublesome. In the course of the ride I had just begun to wonder where in the world the Chickahominy could be when a bit of a log hut, brown from a coating of clay, presented itself by the roadside, not a dozen steps from the buggy. A number of pickaninnies in free-and- easy garb were playing in front of the door, and when I asked how much longer it would be before I should strike the Chickahominy a little wool-top stuck his fist in his mouth and grunted: "Do'an kno' sah."

"You don't know how far it is to the Chickahominy!"

"No, sah, do'an kno'; fibe mile, spec."

But a few turns of the wheels down a ravine brought me to a bridge under which ran a thin stream. The bed of the stream was wide and swampy. A score of steps beyond the first bridge was a second and so a little ways further was a third, all alike, narrow, sand-covered and each arching a rivulet. Damp air came from the grass below, but arrows of sunshine were darting among the treetops overhead. An old darkey was crossing the third bridge and to him I addressed the query: "How much further to the Chickahominy?"

"How much fudder ter de Chikkyhomny? Bess yo' soul, honey, dis am de Chikkyhomny? Bess yo' soul, honey, dis am de Chikkyhomny 'neef our berry feet. Axed de chillun up dar, did yo? Oh, dey's my chillun, but dey take arter dere mam en do'an kno' nuffin. Dey calls dis do 'Chick' fur sho't en all de homny day kno' bout am de homny dey git frum de pot, sho' now."

And the old fellow chuckled while I whipped up the sand hill, jogged along the edge of a field of peanuts and came to Duane's branch, on the eastern bank of which nestles the hamlet of Gaines' Mill.

A sandy battle-ground

The place is made up of a grist mill, a blacksmith and wheelwright shop and a few houses. It is at the foot of a bluff that holds an oak woods up towards the east and shelters the few people there, not only from the eastern storms, but from the summer's heat. The heavy wooden water-wheel turns all day long, casting white spray into the air, and above its roar comes the rasping sound of the carpenter's saw and the ring of the blacksmith's hammer. The one-armed rebel explained that the ruined wall once enclosed the mill and that it was knocked to pieces during the cannonading from Robertson's position. Just here there are no other marks of battle, but when we crossed several sandy, poor-looking fields and approached a ridge on the northern bank of the Chickahominy we saw rotting trees, in some of which there were unexploded shells, and here and there in the woods we kicked over old canteens.

The Federal soldier's remains the farmer found
in 1881 were re-buried at the national cemetery
at Cold Harbor, Va. Here is the grave
of an unknown Union soldier there.

Slight traces of [George] Morrell's fortifications, on the Federal left, may be seen a half mile south of the mill. It was against those fortifications, which are on a crest, that [Stonewall] Jackson hurled [William] Whiting's division. The space across which that division charged with yells that were caught by [Fitz John] Porter's ear is now grown up in pines, at the roots of which are many bones. In removing the bodies for interment in the Richmond cemeteries after the war the work was roughly done, cadavers being thrust into carts much as a baggage -- man would toss a trunk, and in this way the small finger-bones and bones of the feet were left scattered in the ruts.

One day last week Farmer Swiffer was digging post-holes in a tract of land near where [Henry] Slocum held the Union right. He felt his spade grate against something hard and a moment later he cast up a skull. With more of a twitching of his fingers than Hamlet's first grave-digger felt, Swiffer stooped, scratched away the sand and disclosed a complete skeleton, which, from bits of blue and brass buttons about it, was pronounced to be that of a Federal soldier. The farmer got a barrel from his house and jamming the mouldering thing in took it to the Cold Harbor Cemetery, where the forgotten brave was given decent though not "Christian burial" among his unknown fellows.

What a strong-armed Sumner left

Federal wounded at Savage's Station, Va., on June 30, 1862. (Library of Congress)

We passed an hour in search of marks of [Edwin] Sumner's upper bridge across the Chickahominy and at last were able to locate it by marks in the oaks nearby and by some debris that was floated during a flood into the forks of a huge oak. A by-road took me thence out of the Chickahominy lowland to Sumner's road, between the lower bridge and Savage's Station. This battlefield, where Sumner held the enemy in check until the rest of the army of 120,000 men had slipped through White Oak Swamp on the bloody march to Malvern, now shows more positively than any other Peninsular point yet visited the hand of the progressive land-owner.

What was then the hotly-contested Whitesides' farm is now in a high state of cultivation and the Allen brothers have grafted their enterprise upon the growing community. Considerable business is done at the station on the Richmond and York Railroad and things appear to be brisk enough roundabout. The outlines of a parapet, with embrasures clearly marked, may be seen among some cedars back of the Allen house and several rifle pits containing the bodies of Confederate soldiers are pointed out to the visitor. Stopping at a store on the Quaker road I began to ask the proprietor questions about the country roundabout, adding "You've lots of history down this way." The storekeeper said that very often every battle-field in the vicinity happened to be represented at the same time by purchasers in the store.

"Maybe it's so out on the porch now," he said, leading the way to a group of a dozen men who were eating apples in the shade.

"McCarthy," said the storekeeper to a lad whose boot-heels were armed with spurs, "where are you from ?"

"Seven Pines," replied the boy."

And you, Johnson?"

"Malvern Hill," said a tall man with freckled nose and long goatee.

"And you, Bill?"

" Frazier's Farm, and you know it."

"Yes, but I was seeing how many battle-fields we have represented here. Your place is at Savage's, isn't it, Mr. Farra"

"Savage's," assented Mr. Farra.

"And yours, Abram?"

"I'so from Colo Habo'h, boss," said the darkey modestly, from his seat in the corner.

Federal soldiers at the Seven Pines (Va.) battlefield in June 1862. (Library of Congress)

An incident like this, which could have happened only at noon or in the evening when the people around come to the store for various articles, puts it more forcibly to the visitor than anything else can that he is upon ground every inch of which was fought over in those desperate seven days from the 25th of June to the 1st of July, nineteen years ago. Holding myself especially fortunate that I should be able to clink glasses at once with men from Malvern, from Savage's, from Seven Pines, from Cold Harbor and from Frazier's Farm, I kept on down the road through White Oak Swamp to the last-named field. The narrow defile through the swamp is bordered by oaks, pines, gum trees and chinkapin bushes, frequently canopied with grapevines and the climbing creepers of wet woods. Being here, it is no longer hard to understand why, with all his dash and vim, Jackson couldn't get at McClellan's rear, and it is easy also to fancy how the man of the valley chafed inwardly until his heartstrings were sore.

 And, moreover, while Jackson's feet were tangled in the swamp there came from the high land beyond such sounds of strife that Lee, new in command himself, fretted at the delay. Over beyond the tops of the white oaks [George] McCall's Pennsylvanians were gun to gun with [James] Longstreet's Alabama troops and bayonets were locked fiercely in the struggle. "I saw skulls crushed by the heavy blow of the butt of the musket," said McCall, and there is no doubt that in this pine thicket through which I have just passed are bodies dear to mothers on the Susquehanna and the Delaware. This thicket and the surrounding fields of corn make up the battle-ground of Frazier's Farm, or Glendale, or New Market road, but there is little except memory to busy the mind with and I push on towards the James, now winding between its bluffs in sight to the south.

A climb up Malvern Hill

On July 1, 1862, Confederates never got close to expertly placed Union artillery at Malvern Hill.

The afternoon sun is scorching hot and therefore Malvern Hill, always inviting, now looks doubly so as it lifts its forest crown in the distance. What a welcome thing it was to the marching thousands, whose backs were towards a foe eager to smite, the veterans of that hard campaign no doubt recall. As I approached there came to mind that bit of verse made of the other Malvern in Worcestershire in the time when Charles, the first English King of the name, still kept his head between his shoulders:

Great Malvern!
When western winds do rock 
Both corn and country.
Thy hill doth break: the shock --
They cannot hurt thee;
When waters great abound, 
And many a country's drowned,
Thou standest safe and sound,
Oh, praise the Lord!

                      PANORAMA: Confederate's view of Malvern Hill battlefield. 
                                         (Click at upper right for full-screen view.)

The road leading up the plateau to Mrs. Alexander's house, which may be seen when one is ten miles away, is gravelly and hard to climb. The farming land on the plateau stretches tor a mile and a half along the James, commanding that river, but it is poorly cultivated. Many places that were cleared at the time of the battle are now in scrub pine, which is particularly thick on the slope up which D. H. Hill hurled his lines and down which leaden missiles flew so fast that he left five thousand men dead and dying in his path.

The ravines running from the plateau to the thick woods towards the north and east sometimes after heavy rains give up skeletons, and the woods below contain many evidences of the desperate assault. A year or so ago, some oak timber was cut from this Malvern slope and hauled to a sawmill on Turkey Island creek. One day the saw struck a shell and there wasn't any more need of the keen-toothed steel for that log. Saw, sawyer, log and mill roof went off in various directions much in the same way as the things about the Brandywine powder mills are in the habit of doing.

While Frederick Betz was hunting in the thick timber last fall he came upon three guns resting against a large oak tree. The stocks were rotten and the bark of the tree had grown around the barrels, but there they stood, silent sentries of Malvern -- [George] McClellan's refuge and the Grand Army's steadfast rock.

--  G.M.

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Virginia road trip: Prom photos, vultures and a 'horrible hole'

 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion Private James Tompkins "returned" to Gaines' Mill battlefield, 
where he  was mortally wounded. (CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

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Nearly 155 years after scores of young people died near the Watt House on the Gaines' Mill battlefield, teenagers and their parents gathered on the same ground for an American tradition: prom photos.

Just steps away, I photographed an albumen of 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion Private James Tompkins next to an old (and dirty), black-and-gray painted historical sign that briefly explained what happened at Gaines' Mill on June 27, 1862. A "bright and promising boy," Tompkins, wounded in the leg, lay on the Gaines' Mill battlefield for hours until he was carried to a makeshift field hospital, where he died that night.

His life cut short at 20, James was"just budding into manhood," a post-war account noted, "when, with so many of his generation, he was called from the school room to the battlefield; called to exchange his books for the haversack, the promise of a bright future for almost certain death at the hands of a countless, overwhelming foe."

It was a strange experience during a three-day road trip through Virginia that also included visits to the battlefields of Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, North Anna River and elsewhere in the Civil War-torn state.

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Deep in the woods of Cold Harbor, a South Carolina reenactor poses by a torch during 
a 153rd anniversary commemoration candleight walk.

A well-preserved Confederate trench near the visitors' center at Cold Harbor.

COLD HARBOR:  As I stared into the deep-blue sky Saturday afternoon, the 153rd anniversary of the slaughter that took place at this most eerie of battlefields, a turkey vulture circled, circled, circled over ground still pockmarked by trenches dug by soldiers on both sides. For me, it was just another reminder of the morning of June 3, 1864, and Ulysses Grant's infamous charge across a seven-mile front.

"Black against the pale, hot sky," author Ernest B. Furgurson wrote of the birds that circled above the Cold Harbor battlefield  in early June 1864, "they drifted into sight by ones and twos, floating high above the overgrown creek bottoms and zigzag trenches. Gradually there were dozens of them, wheeling, banking, slowly spiraling lower, slipping down toward the fields so thickly dotted with Union blue."

The black vultures had come to feast on the wounded and dead.

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Carmel Baptist Church was used as a Union headquarters. The Civil War-era church burned in 1874.

A painting that hangs in a Carmel Baptist Church side building shows what the church may 
have looked like during the Civil War.

Ulysses Grant and George Meade plotted strategy at the church during the Overland Campaign in 1864.

CARMEL BAPTIST CHURCH: On historic Route 1, the old Telegraph Road, history lurks around every bend. After failing to solve the mysteries of the Battle of North Anna River, a stop at this church in rural Ruther Glen proved revealing. In late May 1864, Grant and George Meade hatched plans for the rest of the Overland Campaign at Carmel Church, just north of the North Anna River. (The Civil War-era church burned down in 1874; it was replaced by the red-brick building on the site today.) Theodore Lyman, an aide to Meade, described the scene:

"If you want a horrible hole for a halt, just pick out a Virginia church, at a Virginia cross-roads, after the bulk of an army has passed, on a hot, dusty Virginia day! There was something rather funny, too. For in the broad aisle they had laid across some boards and made a table, round which sat Meade, Grant, General [Seth] Williams, etc., writing on little slips of paper. It looked precisely like a town-hall, where people are coming to vote, only the people had unaccountably put on very dusty uniforms."

During a brief visit, Gerald Castlebury, the 65-year-old pastor who's originally from Louisiana, gave me a tour of the small interior of his church. On a good Sunday, he said, Carmel Church draws 100 or so faithful to a service. (The church was known as Mount Carmel Church during the Civil War.)

On display in a side building, Castlebury pointed out a small box of Civil War relics found in the immediate area as well as an old set of Carmel Church bibles in a large, glass case. According to local lore, Caroline County was so devastated by the war that residents would pick corn kernels from the manure of horses used by Union soldiers in the hope the seeds would reap rewards during harvest season.

SOURCE: Lyman, Theodore, With Grant and Meade From the Wilderness to Appomattox, George R. Agassiz, editor, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922.

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Historic Blanford Church, a Confederate memorial, survived the Siege of Petersburg.

Grave of George Guy Johnson, a Petersburg Reserves adjutant who originally was from Connecticut.

PETERSBURG: Throughout sprawling Blandford Cemetery, Confederate flags are planted next to the graves of those who served in the Southern army. Among them is the ornate gravestone for George Guy Johnson, a 59-year-old adjutant in the Petersburg Reserves and a native of Stamford, Conn.  Johnson is one of 30,000 Confederates buried in the ancient cemetery who died during the Siege of Petersburg. A tobacconist, Johnson was wounded at the Battle of  Rive's Farm on June 9, 1864; he died the next day from "effects of wounds received in defence of his adopted city," according to words carved into his marker.

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      PANORAMA: Of 1,192 Union soldiers buried at Glendale Cemetery, 234 are known.
                                      (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

Gravestone for three unknowns at Cold Harbor National Cemetery.

      PANORAMA: Poplar Grove Cemetery, near Petersburg battlefield (Western Front).
                                          (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

BIVOUACS OF THE DEAD: No one else was around as I examined pearl-white gravestones at Cold Harbor, Glendale and Poplar Grove national cemeteries. At Cold Harbor, pennies -- Lincoln side up -- had been placed atop markers toward the back of the cemetery. Before I left there Saturday afternoon, I photographed the grave of John Coakley of the 16th Maine, hoping to find out a little more about him later.

An immigrant from Ireland, Coakley, a 22-year-old day laborer from Rockland, originally enlisted in the 4th Maine in 1861. He was transferred to 38th New York, but was discharged after he was wounded in battle. He couldn't escape the war for long, however. On Aug. 7, 1863, the unmarried son of Catherine Coakley was drafted into the 16th Maine.

Gravestone for 16th Maine Private John Coakley, 
an Irish immigrant, at Cold Harbor National Cemetery.

Before he left home, John gave his hometown's mayor $140 from his bounty to help take care of his widowed mother. Catherine's husband, John, had died in Ireland in the late 1840s; she and her son John journeyed to America about 1852.

After John's "instant death" by gunshot at Cold Harbor on June 2, 1864, Catherine filed for a dependent pension. She had nine other children, "some of whom are dead," according to a document in her pension application. The "whereabouts of others, if any, she knows nothing, not having heard from them in many years; they having married and settled in distant parts of the country and unable to write."

Catherine was "entirely dependent" on financial support from John, who frequently sent money home to his mother while he was in the army.

"I knew his mother to have been unable to do but little work herself," Rockland Mayor George Wiggins noted in Coakley's claim for government assistance, "and [was] entirely without means or income of her own and no other children to render her any aid."  After John joined the army, the town of Rockland allocated Catherine $3 a month for her support. Coakley's pension claim was approved, providing her $8 a month from the U.S. government.

Whether Catherine Coakley ever visited her son's grave in far-off Virginia is unknown.

SOURCE: John Coakley pension file, National Archives & Records Service, Washington, D.C., via fold3.com.

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Lost and (finally) found: Marker for Alabama private

The marker for 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion Private James Tompkins in rural South Carolina.
(Photo: Wayne Jones)

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After nearly three months' detective work, Wayne Jones received the big payoff Sunday. I did, too.

In a remote section of 100-acre site near Parksville, S.C. — "in the middle of nowhere," according to Jones — he and a friend found the marker for James M. Tompkins, a 20-year-old private in the 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion, who suffered a mortal wound at the Battle of Gaines' Mill on June 27, 1862. Whether Tompkins was actually buried there is unknown.

Just before Christmas, I purchased an albumen of Tompkins in a Gettysburg antiques shop. After my return to Connecticut, I dived into my own heavy-duty research — yes, I used Google — with an aim to find out more about the young man with curly hair and serious expression. A quick search revealed Tompkins suffered a leg wound at Gaines' Mill and died later that night, one of 8,700 Confederate casualties in the battle near Richmond.

 Tompkins, 20, was mortally wounded
 at Gaines' Mill (Va.)

James was the youngest son of Mary and Major John Tompkins, a wealthy plantation owner from Edgefield, S.C., who served a term in the state's legislature before he moved his family to Sumter County in Alabama in 1851. Two of James' brothers also served in the Confederate Army.

"He was a bright and promising boy,"  according to a post-war account, "just budding into manhood when, with so many of his generation, he was called from the school room to the battlefield; called to exchange his books for the haversack, the promise of a bright future for almost certain death at the hands of a countless, overwhelming foe."

After finding out the basics about Tompkins, I was eager to find out more — especially his burial site. Find-A-Grave indicated his marker was in a family plot in South Carolina, but the site didn't have an image of his grave or an exact location. A quick call to the local newspaper led to another call, which led to the e-mail address of Jones, a North Augusta, S.C., resident who's a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Jones took on the challenge, spending hours studying old maps and walking the area with his wife and his friend, Tom Plowden, to find the soldier's marker. Less than an hour into their search Sunday, Jones and Plowden finally found James' final resting place among several graves, probably for other Tompkins family members, on South Carolina Forestry Service land. 

Field stone lay everywhere, said Jones, who added that the search required "some dirty grunt work." On the marker, the stone carver spelled Tompkins' name without the "p," possibly the reason the search proved tedious, and the elements and more had worn away most of the "J" in James.

Jones wants to find out more about Tompkins. I do, too. We'll keep you posted.

 James Tompkins was one of 8,700 Rebel casualties at the Battle of Gaines' Mill.

Reverse of the image of Private James M. Tompkins.

Close-up of period tag on the back of the Tompkins image notes he "fell in the
 Battle of Gaines Mill before Richmond."

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5th Alabama Batallion's 'bright and promising boy'

A private in the 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion, James M. Tompkins was mortally wounded at the 
Battle of Gaines Mill. (Image from blogger's collection)

James M. Tompkins, a 20-year-old private in the 5th Alabama Infantry Batallion, lay on the field for hours, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood caused by a bullet that had sliced open the femoral artery in his leg. Earlier on the afternoon of June 27, 1862, Tompkins and his regiment had pushed within 50 feet of the Federal lines during the Battle of Gaines' Mill (Va.) before they were beaten back. Finally taken to the rear, the young man died later that night, one of 8,700 Rebel casualties during their crucial, and bloody, victory seven miles northeast of Richmond.

James was the youngest son of Mary and Major John Tompkins, a wealthy plantation owner from Edgefield, S.C., who served a term in the state's legislature before he moved his family to Sumter County in Alabama in 1851. Two of James' brothers also joined the Confederate army: John R., a Yale-educated lawyer, politician and newspaper editor, served in the Confederate ordnance department and as adjutant on General G.D. Ramsay's staff; and DeWitt, who was wounded at Gaines' Mill, was a captain in the 14th South Carolina. Military service was embedded in the DNA of the Tompkins family, whose ancestors served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

James Tompkins' body was recovered from the battlefield and buried next to his mother, who had died in 1843, in a family plot in Edgefield.  "He was a bright and promising boy,"  according to a post-war account, "just budding into manhood when, with so many of his generation, he was called from the school room to the battlefield; called to exchange his books for the haversack, the promise of a bright future for almost certain death at the hands of a countless, overwhelming foe."

 James Tompkins died of a leg wound suffered at the Battle of Gaines' Mill.

Reverse of the image of Private James M. Tompkins.

Close-up of period tag on the back of the Tompkins image notes he "fell in the
 Battle of Gaines Mill before Richmond."

Gaines' Mill panoramas: 'Like a swarm of angry bumblebees'

                                             Union perspective at Battle of Gaines' Mill.
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When Rebels charged from these woods during the latter stages of the Battle of Gaines' Mill (Va.) on June 27, 1862, they were hot on the heels of Federal troops, preventing nearby Yankee artillery from immediately blasting away with canister.

Lieutenant Charles Phillips witnessed the
rout of the Union Army at Gaines' Mill.

 "The woods were full of smoke and bullets buzzed round our heads like a swarm of angry bumblebees," Lieutenant Charles Phillips of the 5th Massachusetts Light Artillery wrote after the battle. "... My horse had a bullet in the flank and one sergeant's horse lay dead on the ground. As yet no men were hit, but louder and louder roared the musketry, and thicker and thicker buzzed the bullets, and suddenly out poured our infantry in disorder, frightened and reckless -- they made an attempt to rally, rushing out right in front of the muzzles of our guns, which were right in front of the trees, but broke and retreated."

The Confederates' attack was so overwhelming that Phillips was forced to abandon his cannon, galloping away on his wounded horse. When the animal was struck in the leg by an enemy volley, he tumbled to the ground and was stunned to see a Rebel flag planted on his cannon.

"By this time," Phillips wrote, "all was confusion, the road was filled with fugitives, the officers in vain trying to rally their men, and the thunder of artillery and musketry incessant."

Phillips, a 21-year-old Harvard law school graduate, left behind his pocket testament, bridle, saddle, and blanket. It could have been worse. In its defeat at Gaines Mill, the largest of the Seven Days' battles near Richmond, the Union Army suffered 6,800 casualties.

                        Another view of Gaines' Mill battlefield from Union perspective.