Notes of a Staff Officer

of our

First New Jersey Brigade

on the

Seven Day's Battle on the

Peninsula in 1862

by

E. Burd Grubb

Brevet Brigadier General U. S. Volunteers

Moorestown, N. J.
Moorestown Printing Co.
1910.

The Seven Day's Battle on the Peninsula
as Seen by a Lieutenant on the Staff

Camille Baquet, Esq.,
Historian of First New Jersey Brigade,
Elizabeth, N. J.

Dear Sir:

In accordance with your request I give you herewith my recollections of the Battle of Gaines' Mills. In order to give a minute description of this battle, it may be well to describe where the New Jersey Brigade started from to go into it, and how it came to be where it did start from.

The Brigade had been at the village of Mechanicsville about three and a half miles from Richmond on the northern side of the Chickahominy during the latter part of the month of May. It was moved up from Mechanicsville about a mile and a half west up the Chickahominy near the Meadow Bridge, but was not on picket at that bridge when Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry attacked the picket of the United States Cavalry commanded by Captain Royal and killed a number of his men and desperately wounded that officer. Captain Royal was well known in Burlington, New Jersey, he having married a sister of Admiral John Howell of that city.

The brigade was withdrawn soon after that and moved down the Chickahominy taking the road on top of the northern ridge and stopping near Dr. Gaines' house.

On the 31st of May the brigade was under orders to move at a moment's notice and the Battle of Fair Oaks was in progress on the southern side of the river. Part of it could be seen and a good deal of it heard.

On the morning of the first of June the brigade moved down across the Chickahominy and out on the battle field of Fair Oaks. General Taylor informed me that we had been held in reserve through the morning and were considered the support of the second line. We were not engaged because the fight was practically over before we reached the field, but Captain George Wood, whose mother lived next to my father's house in Burlington and who was captain in a Pennsylvania regiment, was carried by and spoke to me while I was sitting on my horse with General Taylor at the edge of the battle field. Captain Wood was shot through the leg. The brigade was encamped on this battle field along the eastern side of the road running to Richmond, having crossed on what was known as the Grapevine Bridge, across the Chickahominy, and while there I visited the Second Brigade, many of whom, particularly in the Fifth Regiment, came from Burlington. George Burling, afterwards Gen. Burling, commanded a regiment. They had had a very desperate fight and many of them had been killed and wounded. They were camped directly on the spot where they had fought, and for many reasons it was the most disagreeable camp I ever saw, dead men and dead horses having been only covered with perhaps six inches or a foot of earth and the stench and the flies exceeded anything I ever saw before or since. We remained here until the morning of the 27th of June. All through the afternoon of the 26th up to nine o'clock that night there had been a heavy battle raging at and around Mechanicsville and the roar of the guns and the flashes of the shells had been very continuous. Early in the morning of the 27th the brigade was moved down with the rest of Slocum's division near the Grapevine Bridge and over the small hill from which the north side of the Chickahominy River could be very well seen.

It is my recollection that the tents which were of course shelter tents, and the knap-sacks of all the brigade, were left in the camp when we moved out that morning and the reason I think so is because I was in charge of the detail which buried the knap-sacks of the entire Fourth Regiment which were in their camp when we returned late on the night of the 27th after the battle. These knap-sacks were buried on the morning of the 28th of June, 1862, and while I have never been at the place since, although I have visited the battle field of Gaines' Mills twice, I have always thought that I could find this place. If the members of the Fourth Regiment have not already done so, of this I do not know.

About eight o'clock in the morning General Taylor directed me to go over the river and get some idea of the topography of the ground upon which we would probably fight. After crossing the river, riding across, I went to the westward, crossing a field or two, and came to a barn on the top of which were some signal officers, one of whom I knew, he being from my own regiment. He asked me to come up on top of the barn, and I climbed up and from there about half a mile away through a small gap in the woods, I watched a solid column of the enemy passing from left to right, until I was sure that a very heavy body of infantry was making that movement, I then went to the northwestward until I came to our line of battle. The men were lying down along the edge of the pine woods and so far as I saw, there was no rifle pit or attempt of any shelter of that kind, I rode along for certainly the length of the entire division and got a fair idea of the lay of the land, and I saw a place which has considerable to do with my account of this battle. It was a swale or shallow ravine possibly, where it came through the pine woods, about six feet deep and one hundred feet wide. On the northwest side of it there was a peach orchard and high grass and from the configuration of the country, I judged that the swale was formed from the water wash through that orchard towards the Chickahominy. There was no creek or rivulet going through it, but there was quite a deep ditch running along in the fields to the eastward perpendicular to the direction of the swale. Our line of battle was not in the ditch but considerably to the westward of it, say one hundred and fifty yards, I do not remember what troops were there, but I think that at least some of them were Regulars. My reason for thinking so is because I spoke to and saw regular officers whom I knew. The line of battle was not extended across this swale when I saw it in the morning, nor was it in the afternoon when I saw it again. I extended my observations along the line of battle for probably a mile to which this swale was nearly a central point. I made careful observations because I could not tell where our brigade would go in. I made a pencil sketch of the line as it appeared to me and returned to General Taylor with as much information as I could give him together with the sketch. The swale and ditch were marked upon the sketch as was also the barn where the signal officers were, and the general direction and the distance from the bridge head as near as I could give it. I do not know why it occurred to me that the course of the brigade should be to the left after we crossed the bridge, but it was so, and the reason I did think so was because I saw immediately that that was the weakest part of our line of battle.

About two o'clock in the afternoon we had not yet crossed the bridge. It will be remembered that one of the names of this battle of Gaines' Mills, is the "noiseless battle." A four o'clock in the afternoon there were nearly sixty thousand men engaged, having