On the 4th of June an order was received carrying everything to the right; and Rosser’s brigade moved out to “Old Church,” near the Pamunky, where they found a force of Yankees behind breastworks, which the General ordered White to charge. The order was promptly obeyed without dismounting, and the Yankees fled precipitately from the rather novel scene of horsemen leaping their works, and using both steel and ball in their curious evolution, and the General’s wild “Hurrah for the Comanches” was re-echoed from the whole brigade who witnessed the operation. On the 8th, an order to prepare three day’s rations, was sent around to the different commands; and many were the rumors of what Sheridan’s cavalry was going to do on the Virginia Central Rail Road. But nothing positive was learned as to the destination or object of the expedition for which Hampton was preparing, but all the Valley brigade concurred in the opinion that anything was better than campaigning in that hateful pine country, where no glimpse of the Blue Ridge could be had. At daylight on the 9th, the command left the camp at Atlee’s Station, and took up the line of How all this information was obtained, nobody could tell, but nearly all the men accepted it as a fair statement of the problem to be worked out, and it will be observed that the success of the whole train of operations depended upon Hampton’s receipt of the prescribed whipping at Gordonsville, of which his “people” were extremely doubtful, for “old Wade” had never been whipped yet, nor did they think Sheridan was the man to do it, even though he had command of all the cavalry in the United States. The night of the 10th Gen. Hampton’s own division, now commanded by Gen. Butler, went into camp near Trevillian Station, on the Rail Road, The United States cavalry was splendidly armed with the improved repeating rifles of Spencer and Henry, besides their revolvers, while the Confederates, as a general thing, carried only the ordinary Sharpe’s carbine and sabre, and many of them had nothing better than the common infantry musket; in fact, Rosser’s brigade was the only one in the division thoroughly armed with revolvers and improved carbines, and these they had captured from the enemy, as the Confederacy was too poor and unskilled in the manufacture of arms to keep pace In view of all this, it was General Hampton’s policy to fight the battle in a position of his own selection, where, in some measure, the superiority of his antagonist could be matched by strategy; and after choosing that position, the next thing was to toll the “blue birds” into his trap, and in order to show how this was done we must go back to Rosser’s brigade, which we left above the junction of the Green Spring Valley road with the Rail Road, while Young’s Brigade lay some distance below. The Yankees crossed the river and came down heavily on Young’s people, capturing a great many and stampeding the remainder with the exception of one regiment which drew up in line some distance from the road and watched the Yankee chase after their comrades. As soon as the attack on Young’s men was known, Rosser started his brigade at a gallop to meet them, and arriving at the Green Spring road, found the Yankees loading their prisoners in captured ambulances while all along the road the victorious blue-jackets were chasing and “gobbling up” the scattered Confederates, and right here among the ambulances the fight commenced; Rosser’s boys going in, as the General said, “very heavy,” the Yankees breaking and trying to In the chase, many of the Yankees broke into the woods on the right of the road and endeavored escape, in consequence of which many of White’s men made a corresponding movement in order to catch them, so that the battalion was soon very much reduced, and on reaching a hill about a mile down the road and finding, as they supposed, a Confederate battery on the right in full play and apparently unsupported, the Colonel resolved to form his men along side of it, as a large number of the enemy were discovered in the wood below him, and a strong force posted behind a brick-kiln to the left, and with this view, he ordered the plank fence on the right of the road to be broken down; at the same time starting Irish Pat, of Company C, up the road in charge of a wagon and team which had been deserted by somebody just at this point. The battery was not more than Marching slowly back over the hill we found the brigade forming in a field to the right, and Chew placing his artillery in position just above them. Farther along, and just where we were to leave the road to join the brigade, lay a wagon that the Yankees had cut down, and out of which a barrel of apple-jack had rolled. Three dismounted men were at work on it trying to fill their canteens, and as the head of White’s column passed it, Captain Myers, who was just at the head, with Lieutenant Marlow on his right, Orderly Sergeant Bennett on his left, Will Edwards and Frank Lee immediately behind him and the bugler just before him, turned to Will Edwards and said, "Will, you’d better get Frank Lee’s canteen and fill it there, hadn’t you?" This was in allusion to Frank’s solemn resolution not to drink any more, caused by some of the boys having fooled him into taking too much a As may be supposed, the calamity caused great excitement for a short time, and it was with difficulty that order was maintained under the incessant fire which now poured in upon them, but pretty soon the battalion formed her line, Major Ferneyhough displaying great coolness, as did all the officers and men who were left. The scene was one of wild confusion, shells and grape-shot whizzing and howling all around, riderless horses dashing frantically over the field, and ambulances rattling past at a gallop with their freight of wounded men screaming in agony, while high above all other sounds boomed and crashed the contending batteries; but amid all this the Major turned to count the men in ranks, and Orderly Sergeant Campbell, of Co. F, who had been severely wounded in the arm by a grape-shot The whole brigade had by this time retired to a more sheltered position beyond the woods, and now the Colonel ordered his battalion to fall back to the woods, which it did very quietly, and just here was the first actual view of flying cannon-shot we had ever enjoyed. A heavy battery beyond the Rail Road was throwing solid shot directly across our line of march, one of which, striking the solid ground the eighth of a mile to the right, bounded with a whirling motion just in our front, and so close to the Colonel’s horse that all who saw it were sure it would strike him, but it did not. After halting awhile near the woods, and being still in range of the grape, we were ordered to retire to the position of the brigade, where the battalion formed in front of the 12th regiment, and here we witnessed another freak of a round-shot which struck in front of the battalion, bounded over it, and striking again, went over the 12th, and from its third strike made another jump, clearing the led horses as it did so. Soon after this the enemy occupied the ground from which Chew had retired, and began to advance cautiously upon the woods where Rosser had his dismounted men, and in the fight which ensued the General was severely wounded in the leg and compelled to leave the field. The command of the brigade now devolved upon Col. Dulaney, of the 7th regiment, and the fighting became stubborn for the possession of the woods; the enemy using artillery sparingly, and the Confederates entirely deprived of the aid of theirs because the situation of the ground would not permit its use without damaging their own men as much as the enemy. The “Comanches” lay at the mouth of the Green Spring road, dismounted, to avoid the storm of bullets that whistled over them, when Col. Chew rode past them a short distance to see if he About 5 o’clock Maj. Ferneyhough took the first squadron on a scout up the Rail Road, and on his return found a battery posted at the forks of the road, which, after our previous artillery experience, we proceeded to inspect closely, and it, too, proved to be a Yankee, so branching off to the right, we gave it as wide a berth as the timber would let us. It was now past sunset, and Sheridan had succeeded, with his whole force, in driving two of Hampton’s brigades from their position, and himself occupying, at dark, the same line they held at daylight; but thus far he was successful, and Gen. Hampton knew that he would follow it up to-morrow. But the two Generals had very different ideas about the day’s work; Sheridan supposing the battle was over, and Hampton knowing that it had not been fought yet. About dark the Confederates retired to their camp on the Green Spring road, and rested securely Shortly after sunrise White’s battalion marched down to the line which Gen. Hampton had fortified, and found the dismounted men quietly lying behind the hastily thrown up piles of rails which stretched along the side of a hill that rose gradually from a creek, both flanks protected by heavy woods with thick undergrowth, and the country in front perfectly clear as far as their rifles would reach. The artillery was posted on the high ground along the road, and could command fully half the circle around them, in fact, it was a splendid position in which to receive an attack; but Sheridan did not seem to be in any hurry to break the glad Sunday quiet of the Valley, and hardly any firing was heard until after 12 o’clock. The Col. White and his people moved up as close to them as the shells would permit, and the Colonel conceived the idea that with four hundred dismounted men he could capture the whole roadfull, but after sending repeatedly to Col. Dulaney for the required force, that officer finally sent him forty-two men, whom White sent back in disgust and gave up the project. By nine o’clock everything was quiet along The literal fact in the case was, that Sheridan had been most splendidly outgeneraled, and most terribly beaten by half his number, and not a solitary infantry soldier was engaged in the fight, nor did he get in sight of Gordonsville, but no one blames him for thinking that he met infantry, because the “new issue” certainly did act infantry up to nature, but they were raw recruits, and had never been under fire but once before, while Sheridan’s were all veteran troops. Pollard, in “The Lost Cause,” makes the same unfounded assertion, that Sheridan was “repulsed by infantry in the rifle-pits,” but it is probable he drew his information from the official report of that General, instead of the one made by General Hampton. During the fight of to-day, Lieut. Nich. Dorsey, of Co. B, who had been a prisoner, closely confined in Fort McHenry for several months, reported to the command for duty, having made his escape by cutting through the slate roof of his prison with a barlow knife, and at once assumed command of his company. On the 16th, Col. White started with a picked party to intercept a courier with an escort of thirty-eight men, taking dispatches from Sheridan to Grant, but failed to catch them, although he had a brush with a party from the 6th Pa. Cavalry, in which he captured several prisoners and horses, and rejoined the battalion on the 19th, near the White House on the Pamunky. |