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Updated: June 3, 2025
They burned the bridges over the Chickahominy, destroyed three large trains of provisions in the rear of Lee's army, drove in the Rebel pickets to within two miles of Richmond, and have lost only one lieutenant and thirty men, having captured and paroled upwards of three hundred prisoners.
On the 12th, Smith's corps was ordered to the White House, thence to embark to City Point, while the remainder of the army was to cross the Chickahominy far to the right of the rebel position, and march to the James river.
Johnston and Lee knew, however, that McClellan's alarmist detectives swore to a Confederate army three times its actual strength at this time; and there was reason to hope that the consequent moral ascendancy would help the shock of an attack suddenly made on one of McClellan's two wings while the flooded Chickahominy flowed between them and its oozy swamps bewildered his staff.
White Oak Swamp is an extensive morass, similar to that skirting the banks of the Chickahominy, and the passage through it is over narrow, winding, and difficult roads, which furnish the worst possible pathways for wagons, artillery, or even troops. It was necessary, however, to use these highways or none, and General McClellan resolutely entered upon his critical movement.
The Confederates, supposing that their capital was my objective point, were straining every effort to put it in a state of defense, and had collected between four and five thousand irregular troops, under General Bragg, besides bringing up three brigades of infantry from the force confronting General Butler south of the James River, the alarm being intensified by the retreat, after the defeat at Yellow Tavern, of Stuart's cavalry, now under General Fitzhugh Lee, by way of Ashland to Mechanicsville, on the north side of the Chickahominy, for falling back in that direction, left me between them and Richmond.
In carrying the army to the James River the hazardous manoeuvres would be hampered by many obstacles, such as the thick timber, underbrush, and troublesome swamps to be met in crossing the Chickahominy.
Alexander, of Charlotte, N. C., recall to me the scenes of those battle-fields of the Seven Days' battles of McClellan, 1862, when we passed over the ground in June, 1864, on our way to the Chickahominy River.
P. S. On reflection I will send the 18th corps by way of White House. The distance which they will have to march will be enough shorter to enable them to reach you about the same time, and the uncertainty of navigation on the Chickahominy will be avoided. COLD HARBOR, VA., June 11,1864. MAJOR-GENERAL G. G. MEADE, Commanding Army of the Potomac.
Chickahominy, Gaines's Mill, Garnett's and Golding's farms, Peach Orchard, Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Frayser's Farm, Malvern Hill dire echoes of the Seven Days' fighting had thronged into this hospital as into all others, as into the houses of citizens and the public buildings and the streets!
After Merritt had crossed the Chickahominy and reached Mechanicsville, I sent him orders to push on to Gaines's Mills.
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