Seven Pines (Continued)

Judson Cheney
Born: May 11, 1838, Hopkinton, St. Lawrence County, New York
Died: September 29, 1864, Chaffin Farm, Virginia
Relation to Author: 2nd Great Grand Uncle

On the morning of May 22nd, Casey's division, including the 98th Regiment, crossed the Chickahominy River. On the 23rd, General McClellan directed General Keyes to chose a group to move to Seven Pines and hold if "practicable".  Keyes and Nagless selected the 98th NY plus four other regiments. They left on the 24th and for breakfast, lunch and dinner had boiled rice and sugar, corned-beef, and hard bread and coffee. Much of their baggage, rations, and tents were behind on the other side of the river.

They marched on the 24th and approached the position of the enemy at Seven Pines. This was the first time the regiment had been under fire. After being given the order to advance, the enemy opened fire on the 98th and a battery unit.

For more than twenty minutes [the confederates] concentrated his heaviest fire. Shells whistled, whizzed, whirred, and whirled before, behind, and over us. They exploded in the air above us; and the fragments flew about our heads... Many were hit and hurt; many hair-breadth escapes occured; but one man only was killed.

This initial fighting cleared the confederate skirmishers from the woods. Then the Union regiments all lined up and attacked the confederate lines. Union batteries and the infantry attack sent the confederates to retreat. By 3pm they occupied the enemy's ground.

It had rained nearly all day, and the regiment was exhausted. But there was an excellent well of fresh water. They encamped on the edge of the woods they captured and built fires under the pines. Sitting on logs the talked the battle over. They talked about all of the near misses from the artillery and how they exploded nearby or cut down close-by trees.

They were then at the front, and as I said, they had a major battle ahead of them, though they didn't know it. Kreutzer says, "We are at the front all the time, and our duty is severe and constant; still we find leisure to make observations and write up our note-book."

In this skirmish, only 23 union soldiers were killed or wounded.

Sources: 
Notes and Observations Made During Four Years of Service with the 98th NY Volunteers in the War of 1861. Kreutzer, William. Grant, Raires & Rogers, Printers. Philadelphia, 1878.

Seven Pines - A Lot to Catch Up On

Judson Cheney
Born: May 11, 1838, Hopkinton, St. Lawrence County, New York
Died: September 29, 1864, Chaffin Farm, Virginia
Relation to Author: 2nd Great Grand Uncle

On this day 150 years ago, Judson and his regiment were in camp, still recovering from the battle of Seven Pines. I regret that I could not write about this historic battle on the day it happened - May 31st - for Judson's regiment was in the thick of it. The 98th NY regiment had 85 enlisted men and three officers, killed and wounded, out of 385 taken into action. I'll write in detail about this battle soon. There is a lot to write as Kreutzer has a lot of detail and there is good background in the Battlefield Guide. 

But there is a lot to catch up on even before the battle since I last wrote about Judson's whereabouts on May 5th at the battle of Williamsburg. The short story is that since then, his regiment had been marching slowly from Williamsburg to just outside Richmond at Seven Pines. The map below shows very roughly Judson's march during the Penninsula campaign.


View Peninsula to Richmond in a larger map

During this time, Kreutzer talks about a few things as they are in camp and marching. After Williamsburg, his regiment visits the site of the battle.

Two or three hundred of the enemy's dead still lay where they fell. His wounded were collected in a barn and shed near the battle-ground...

Near the middle of the day, with two or three officers, we walked over the battlefield where the burial party was collecting the dead... and there, in the slashing, in the wood, and in the edge of the wood, along the felled timber, the battle was fought. There, the wounded, the dying were thickest. On the brush, among the limbs, against the stumps and trunks, in the mud, in the water, on the wet ground, they lay. In the road, along the road, in the grass, on the leaves, in the slashing, in the ditches, cold and dead they lay, a heart-rending commentary on a nation's quarrel.

In the wood, in an old ditch, which Cornwallis or La Fayette had made [during the Revolutionary War], we counted thirteen dead soldiers from Michigan, lying so close that they touched each other. We saw a North Carolinian sitting with his back against a rail fence; a three inch ball had pierced his breast; his heart hung by a ligament on his waist outside his clothes. He was of the enemy's picket.

This is the first time Judson's regiment really sees dead and wounded. It won't be the last and it isn't even the worst of what they'll see.

Kreutzer also talks about sickness in the camps:

Many of us are neither sick nor actually well. Want of regular food and rest have left their traces upon us all. Our clothes have become worn and soiled; our cheeks, skin and eyes, betray the exposure and irregularity of our lives.

And later he says:

The sick of the regiment were increasing; they walked behind it or rode in the ambulances. While at New Kent... we sent about fifty by boat to Baltimore... From Williamsburg to the Chickahominy, ten days, the regiment lost nearly one hundred men. Those who have neither health nor courage are obtaining the surgeon's excuse.

The last sentence is the beginning of Kreutzer's thoughts on how some soldiers were feigning illness to avoid service. Though it is clear from the previous quote as well as reading about what the troops have been through so far - few nights with real shelter, food, and rest - that many are honestly sick and with good reason. The Disunion blog at the NY Times talks about camp life and includes this description of illness:

Sickness and disease were constant epidemics in Civil War camps. For every soldier killed in combat, two died behind the lines from a veritable avalanche of illnesses: diarrhea, typhoid fever, measles, pneumonia, malaria and yellow fever, among many others. Lack of knowledge about germs and sanitation could cause even a seemingly small scratch to bring death from infection.

One thing to keep in mind is that as I talk about what Judson's regiment was doing we don't know for sure if Judson was actually around for these specific moments. He could have been sick and therefore not participating at any one moment. He might not have been at the battle of Seven Pines. And any one march or any night of bivouacking, he might have been at the "hospital" instead.  Having said that, let's look at Judson's regiments troop movements at they approached and camped at Seven Pines, starting near Williamsburg.

As they set off from Williamsburg, the troops carried, "rifle and equipments, forty rounds of ammunition, three days' cooked rations, a blanket, and a kanpsack, a total burden of not less than sixty pounds." Kreutzer says that when the divisions were marching - with nearly 80,000 men - "they covered all the fields; they fill the woods; in three long, heavy lines they thread the road. The very surface of the ground appears agitated like the surface of the sea; ambulances, artillery, cavalry, infantry, and long, files of army wagons move, rising and falling like the billows."

May 9th: 10 miles
May 10th: 10 miles to Roper's Church
May 13th: 12 miles in 19 hours to New Kent Courthouse
May 17th: 7 miles to Baltimore cross-roads
May 19th: 2 miles to the Chickahominy River

From May 19th through May 31st, the NY 98th will cross the Chickahominy River and move to Seven Pines and await their major battle. More on that in the next post.

References:
The Civil War Battlefield Guide. Kennedy, Francis H., Second Edition, 1998, Mariner Books.

Notes and Observations Made During Four Years of Service with the 98th NY Volunteers in the War of 1861. Kreutzer, William. Grant, Raires & Rogers, Printers. Philadelphia, 1878.