Chapter Eight: The Center
I. Hood's Division
II. The I Corps Arrives
Editor's Note
III. Old Lines
In the early morning Robert E. Lee had some decisions to make. He knew that the Federals were rumored to be landing at Varina’s and he also knew an enemy force of unknown size was north of the Chickahominy River. Lee opted to be aggressive north of the Chickahominy by directing all of Jackson’s Corps to unite and drive back the Federals there and to eventually recross the river at some point to the east behind the Union lines. While this was going on it was decided that Longstreet’s Corps would defend Richmond against anything the overly cautious McClellan threw their way. And so it was in the early hours as Jackson’s two divisions under Taliaferro and Early moved to rebuild the bridges over the Chickahominy, and to support AP Hill coming down from the north, that Longstreet’s men alone moved to defend Richmond. As we have seen the advance of the Federal VI Corps would eventually compel Lee to recall both Early and Taliaferro to defend Richmond’s eastern approaches. Early’s men would arrive just in time to contest the advance of Franklin’s VI Corps but there were still miles of undefended territory between Early’s right and Longstreet’s left.
Hood's Division
In the morning, as the divisions of Richard Anderson and Daniel H. Hill moved further south towards their eventual positions around Battery #17, the division of Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood turned eastward. Hood’s Division would be assigned to hold the left of Longstreet’s line which was anchored at Battery #14 near the intersection of the Williamsburg and Charles City roads. The four brigades of Hood’s Division, numbering 7,141 men, stretched for two miles until it loosely connected with the left of Anderson around the Beveridge House. Hood aligned his four brigades with Anderson’s on the left, then the Texas Brigade, Law’s Brigade, and Benning’s Brigade positioned to their right near Anderson.
The Chickahominy Line
Hood’s men had not been in position for long when the battle to the south of them exploded around Wilcox’s Brigade. As mentioned earlier in Chapter 4 the brigades of Benning and Law were drawn southward into this fighting with Sykes’s Division of the Federal V Corps. Col. Henry Benning’s brigade was the first to engage the Federals and caught them in the flank and rear with a terrific fire. Sensing an opportunity to capture the Federal division en masse Longstreet ordered Hood to advance Brig. Gen. Evander Law’s brigade in support and to throw back the Federal attack. “Hood will be the hammer,” Longstreet wrote Lee before his capture, “and if all goes well, he will strike the enemy rear and turn them with the intention of crushing all Yankees in the vicinity of Dickenson house. They are paying a huge price for their boldness in their attack.” Sykes’s division was repulsed with the assistance of Benning and Law but the eventual objective of reaching the Dickinson House was not possible as Federal artillery and cavalry support blocked the Confederate advance. Remnants from Sykes’s division also contested the advance of Benning and Law and the two sides began a prolonged period of skirmishing between the Darbytown Road and the Charles City Road.
With the capture of Longstreet the corps command fell to DH Hill. Hill continued Longstreet’s strategy of defending with Anderson and his own division while using Hood’s to put pressure on Sykes’s right flank. Hill met with Hood and ordered that his entire division advance “generally eastward to shoot up any stray Yankee units” that he encountered. The Texas Brigade and Anderson’s advanced from their embankments to the east.
Along the Williamsburg Road the advance of Smith’s division of the VI Corps, really just one brigade, had threatened W.H.F. Lee’s Cavalry brigade to the east. Anderson’s men were shifted to resist the Union advance as covered in Chapter Three. Anderson’s men successfully repulsed Smith’s brigade and picketed the road as they began a prolonged skirmish with the Federals. Throughout the next few hours Hood’s men would be continuously engaged with elements of the Union cavalry corps, Smith’s division, and Sykes’s division.
The I Corps Arrives
As the battle around Battery #17 raged all morning the Federal I Corps disembarked at Varina’s Landing. Reynolds rode ahead to meet once more with Hooker and Porter as he had done in the early hours outside of New Market. Much had changed in the past six hours. Hooker’s men were being badly mauled and Porter’s right flank was collapsing under the pressure of Hood’s advance. With too few men to resist them the Federal flank was in jeopardy of being routed and turned. Reynolds was ordered to advance his leading units directly up the Darbytown Road to secure the right flank and drive back the Confederate forces. Simultaneously, the long absent second brigade of William Smith’s VI Corps division was arriving from the east along the Williamsburg Road. These forces would add thousands of additional Union troops to the fighting on Hood’s front and were poised to overwhelm and drive them from the field.
Reynolds advanced the three brigades of Root, Rogers, and Meredith, along the Darbytown Road and struck the Confederate line squarely. Along the Williamsburg Road the VI Corps brigade of Brig. Gen. David Russell joined the other brigade from Smith’s division and drove westward towards Battery #14. Both sides were in a whirling free-for-all as the battling units maneuvered constantly trying to gain any advantage they could on the other. In the end the Federal numbers became too great and Hood’s men began to break away from the contest. Hood wrote to Hill that, “I have begun to withdraw my division back to our original lines. Our left is low on ammo and some of our forces are in danger of being cut off and surrounded unless we consolidate our lines more. We run the risk of being smashed by the new units arriving from the south near the Dickinson house should they decide to head due north and then strike our weak center.”
But Porter and Reynolds were not inclined to risk another full attack at this stage in the fighting. Repulses in front of Battery #17 had greatly weakened the Federal enthusiasm for the offensive and Reynolds’s men represented the last cohesive corps on the southern portion of the battlefield. Aside from pressing Hood back to his original lines the I Corps took no further part in the fighting on this front. By 2:40 PM Hood’s Division had regrouped in their original embankments and were content to watch the Federals fall back rather than press their attack on their weakened and fatigued lines.
Editor's Note
Col. E.T.H. Warren’s Brigade of Taliaferro’s Division arrived at 3 PM to reinforce Hood’s Division and strengthen his left flank. But even with their presence a gap of nearly two miles separated Early’s right and Warren’s left. The lack of any Federal advance here was due to the absence of any good roads to utilize and the failure to properly scout the surrounding area for a weak spot in the Confederate lines.
Had Reynolds’s corps been better used it might have been able to drive north on the Darbytown Road and crush Hood’s Division in short order. Hood had only two weakened brigades along the Darbytown Road by early afternoon. They would have been easily steamrolled by the nearly 15,000 fresh Federals now available to Porter. Hood’s Texas Brigade had been badly used up and the entire division had been fatigued from hours of combat. Hood’s Division was down to 5,728 men by 3 PM from their pre-battle strength of 7,141. The Texans suffered greater than any other unit in the division as they lost over 600 men in the fighting out of the 1,731 they began the day with. Union losses are harder to determine as there were so many units involved in confronting Hood’s men. My best estimate is that Hood’s men gave as good as they received and Federal losses were probably in the 1,500-man range.
Porter’s failure to use Reynolds aggressively is understandable given the heavy losses of the III and V Corps in front of Battery #17. But one must imagine that had Reynolds been ordered to attack he would have been able to breakthrough the Confederate lines along the Darbytown Road and turned DH Hill’s flank. By then turning and sweeping south Reynolds might have been able to uncover the embankments defended by Anderson and Grimes and allowed the III and V Corps to join in the fighting without needing to confront the heavily manned embankments. This would have coincided with the arrival of the three Union gunboats then bombarding the Confederates at close range. These elements all coming together at one time would have likely caused the Confederates to fall back to secondary positions closer to Richmond. The single best opportunity for the Federal army to have turned the tide of the battle was thus squandered here as Reynolds was ordered to hold back and remain in reserve.
Old Lines
After the advance of the VI Corps stalled about 11 AM the fighting continued at longer ranges. Both Early’s Division and Franklin’s corps fought one another with little movement along the lines in a slugging match neither side seemed to want. For the Confederates though there was hope as the division of Brig. Gen. William B. Taliaferro was moving to reinforce them. Taliaferro’s men had spent most of the day marching as they crossed the Chickahominy River to the north only to be recalled to the south of it a short time later in response to the pressure from Franklin’s attack on Early’s men. By early afternoon though Franklin’s force no longer posed a threat to Early and Taliaferro’s arrival now seemed anticlimactic.
But Hood’s Division, to the south, were in need of assistance and it was at this time that Warren’s Brigade was detached from the rest of the Taliaferro’s division to move to his aid. Warren was soon followed by the three remaining regiments of the Stonewall Brigade (the other two were already detached north of the Chickahominy). This left Taliaferro with Jones’s Brigade and the partial Louisiana Tiger Brigade (the other part of the brigade still north of the Chickahominy as well). These units moved along Nine Mile Road and helped regain New Bridge Church and the embankments which the Federals had captured earlier in the morning.
By late afternoon Franklin’s VI Corps had been pushed back to their embankments from which they had began the day’s attacks.