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An absorbing interest in the field of Gaines's Mill, a passionate desire that Victory should wear grey, dominated all other feeling. Half in the seam of the gully, half in the sedge at the top, he made himself as easy as he could and rested a spectator.
It was known that all that remained of the Southern armies would be there: of the armies that fought at Shiloh, and Bull Run, and Fort Republic; at Seven Pines, Gaines's Mill, and Cold Harbor; at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg; at Franklin, Atlanta, Murfreesboro, and Chickamauga, Spottsylvania, the Wilderness, and Petersburg; and the whole South, Union as it is now and ready to fight the nation's battles, gathered to glorify Lee, the old commander, and to see and glorify the survivors of those and other bloody fields in which the volunteer soldiers of the South had held the world at bay, and added to the glorious history of their race.
After Gregg's repulse of the infantry, Custer's success in opening the way across Meadow bridge and Merritt's rout of Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry, the Second and Third divisions remained unmolested for the rest of the day on the ground of the morning's operations, the First division going to Gaines's Mills.
The work on the bridge continued, however, not-withstanding this discomfiture; and when it was finished, Merritt crossed nearly all his division, dismounted, and again attacked the enemy, this time carrying the line, of temporary breastworks, built with logs and rails, and pursuing his broken troops toward Gaines's Mills.
At the same hour, though I could not see it, White House was wrapped in fire, and the last sutler, teamster, and cavalry-man had disappeared from the shores of the Pamunkey. I tossed through another night of fever, in the captain's tent of the Sturgis Rifles, McClellan's body guard. And somehow, again, I dreamed fitfully of the unburied corpses on the field of Gaines's Mill.
Among the tender and true women with whom I have corresponded since the war is the mother of Colonel Robadeaux Wheat, the noble Louisianian who fell at Gaines's Mill. I have several of her letters by me, written in the tremulous hand of one who had passed her seventy-ninth birthday, but glowing with love for the cause, and fondest pride in the sons who died in its defence.
Reserving this, he fought well at Gaines's Mill, Cold Harbor, and Frazier's Farm. Always protecting his selected line of retreat, bringing off his movable stores, and preserving the organization of his army, he restored its spirit and morale by turning at Malvern Hill to inflict a bloody repulse on his enemy.
Two thousand went down in the first few minutes, and the rest at once retreated. Porter fell back on Gaines's Mill, where, after being reinforced, he took up a strong position on the twentyseventh. Again there was failure in combining the attack. Jackson found obstructions that even he could not overcome quickly enough.
I believed that I could do this by cutting across to the Mechanicsville pike and Fair Oaks on the south side of the Chickahominy, but the failure of Wilson's column to get possession of the outwork which commanded the pike necessitated my crossing at Meadow bridge, and then moving by Mechanicsville and Gaines's Mills instead of by the shorter route.
Cannon thundered at Ellison's Mills; shells rained hard on Gaines's Farm; a thousand simultaneous volleys of musketry mingled with the awful uproar of the cannon; uninterrupted sheets of light from the shells brightened the smoke pall like the continuous flare of electricity against a thundercloud. The Confederacy, victorious, was advancing wrapped in flame and smoke.
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