Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864

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98 From Seven Pines to the Seven Days

the skill used in constructing the Jamestown Island defenses. He called the

Square Redoubt ‘‘one of the neatest pieces of work I most ever saw.’’

∏

Until work was pushed forward on the three defense lines on the Penin-

sula and at Drewry’s Bluff, Jamestown Island was the key to the James River

defenses. By the end of the summer of 1861, it had half the heavy artillery

available southeast of Richmond. Magruder’s works on the Peninsula and

McClellan’s campaign toward Yorktown focused Confederate resources away

from the island. By the time Johnston decided to abandon the Peninsula, the

defenses at Jamestown Island had become irrelevant.

The river battery at Drewry’s Bluff, however, remained important for the

rest of the war. It was constructed long after work on the lower James River

sites had started. In fact, before the winter of 1861–62, there were no major

batteries upstream from Jamestown Island. When efforts to fortify the river

close to Richmond began in February, Augustus H. Drewry led Confederate

engineers to his farm at a bend in the river eight miles from the capital. Here

a bluff that was 80 to 110 feet above water offered a magniﬁcent site for

heavy guns. Work began on March 17, after Johnston evacuated Manassas

Junction, but proceeded slowly. An inspection report of April 28 warned that

the fortiﬁcations would not be ready until August, so a concentrated effort to

push the work was mounted. A company of sappers and miners, a battalion

of artillerymen, some infantrymen, marines, and sailors from the Confed-

erate navy were rushed to the site. They managed to get the defenses ready

by mid-May.

A map drawn by Rebel gunner Horace Mann in 1914 shows Fort Darling,

the main earthwork, to have been a bastioned work with a large magazine

and a bombproof. It mounted six guns arrayed along two sides; one faced the

river, and the other aimed downstream. The latter face also had four large

traverses, with one end of the magazine acting as a ﬁfth traverse because it

extended all the way to the interior slope of the parapet. The complex at

Drewry’s Bluff was large enough for a barracks and additional batteries

for six guns outside the fort. One of those outlying emplacements was a

casemate.

Obstructions were placed in the river to delay Federal boats within range

of the fort’s guns, but work crews made slow progress, contributing to the

growing anxiety of concerned citizens. Thomas H. Wynne, chief engineer of

the city of Richmond, complained to Secretary of War George W. Randolph

after he and several other citizens inspected the obstructions on April 29.

Randolph ordered engineer chief Rives to push forward the work as quickly

as possible.

The works at Drewry’s Bluff were tested on May 15, two weeks after

From Seven Pines to the Seven Days 99

Johnston evacuated the Warwick Line on the Peninsula. Five Union gun-

boats, led by the ironclads USS Galena and USS Monitor, steamed into view

and bombarded the site. The artillery exchange lasted four hours and re-

sulted in a decisive repulse. The hastily constructed battery emplacements

proved their worth, not only by stopping the Federal advance, but by se-

verely damaging the Galena. The ship was hit ﬁfty times, and more than half

of these rounds penetrated its armor.

Following this battle, additional gun emplacements were built at Fort

Darling. Four raised platforms for ﬁeld artillery were placed on the land face

in June 1862, and a tunnel was dug under the middle of the land face to allow

men to safely enter and exit the fort. But the works at Drewry’s Bluff were

not challenged again until May 1864 when the Union Army of the James

approached them from the land side.

∫

Defenses of Richmond

Authorities at several levels of government had been wrestling with the

problem of fortifying the capital since the war began, but they had not made

a great deal of progress by the time McClellan’s army arrived. The initial line,

too close to the city and inadequately supplied with artillery, was nearly

complete, but scant work had been done to build better lines. The Confed-

erate House of Representatives passed a resolution on February 24, a couple

of weeks before Johnston evacuated Manassas Junction, asking for infor-

mation on the state of the capital’s defenses. Alfred L. Rives waited until

March 12 to write a report. By then, McClellan was well advanced in his plans

to approach the city from the Yorktown Peninsula.

Rives detailed the defenses by dividing them into two categories. First,

there were the James River defenses. Second, there were the land defenses

just outside the city. Col. Danville Leadbetter, former chief of the Engineer

Bureau, had already decided that the Inner Line was too near Richmond, but

he declined to abandon it because so much work had already been done.

Before Leadbetter left for other duties in Tennessee, he directed Rives to

follow through with its completion according to the plans already laid down

by Virginia state engineer ofﬁcers under Andrew Talcott. Rives did the best

he could, enclosing the open rear of some of the batteries and draining

ﬂooded magazines. He did not press forward with ﬁlling the empty gun

emplacements because he believed it was unwise to concentrate ‘‘so many

pieces on a contracted local defense.’’ Rives also thought it injudicious at this

time, before the Federals had fully developed their offensive plans, to begin

building a new line farther forward of the existing, ﬂawed position. That

could be done quickly by the troops as necessity demanded.

100 From Seven Pines to the Seven Days

Congress had also wondered about the feasibility of using the Chicka-

hominy River as a line of defense, but Rives felt unable to offer an opinion on

that issue. Andrew Talcott had already told Rives that he thought little of the

scheme. Yet Rives suggested that a series of dams and protecting earthworks,

similar to the system soon to be built along the Warwick River on the Penin-

sula, might be useful.

Ω

Jefferson Davis forwarded Rives’s report to the House and added a lengthy

report of his own. The president, a West Point graduate with experience in the

Mexican War, demonstrated in this report a remarkably ﬁrm grasp of the

details and doctrine of fortiﬁcations. He was able to make intelligent and

useful points about the river batteries on the lower James. Davis admitted

that the Inner Line was too close to the city but noted that it was put there to

minimize the amount of labor to build it and the number of troops to defend

it. Davis discounted its weaknesses, however, by noting that the heavy guns

would keep the enemy at bay.

Davis waxed eloquent when he argued against the need to build addi-

tional lines outside the city. Like Rives, the president wanted to wait until the

Federals neared Richmond; then more digging could be done insofar as it

was needed. Davis wanted to ﬁght the enemy in the open rather than rely on

heavy earthworks to save the capital. ‘‘Any system of fortiﬁcation which

could be constructed during the war for the defense of this city would only

serve to gain time,’’ he argued. ‘‘An army which allows itself to be shut up in a

fortiﬁed city must ﬁnally yield to an enemy superior in numbers and muni-

tions of war.’’ In short, if an army cannot prevent itself from being trapped

inside the city it is defending, it is doomed to lose the campaign anyway.

Rives further developed his views on Richmond’s defense in letters to his

engineer ofﬁcers in the ﬁeld. He was convinced by the battle between the

USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia on March 9, 1862, that the Federal iron-

clads were too powerful to be stopped by the water batteries on the lower

James River. He also thought that a well-handled ﬁeld army needed only a

few small ﬁeldworks, open to the rear and ‘‘with a simple embankment’’ as a

parapet, to defend the capital.

∞≠

True to their strategy, Davis and Rives pushed forward work on the Inter-

mediate Line in late March only as McClellan showed signs of moving toward

Richmond. The city council voted to release the city engineer from all other

duties so he could help state authorities work on the fortiﬁcations. Addi-

tional batteries were built along the James River below Drewry’s Bluff at a

place called Chafﬁn’s Bluff. The Confederate government took control of the

city’s defenses that spring and conﬁrmed the opinion of the state engineers

From Seven Pines to the Seven Days 101

about the Inner and Intermediate Lines. The former was pushed to comple-

tion and the latter was hurried along.

∞∞

A third line of defense would be initiated by Robert E. Lee after he took

command of the Confederate army defending Richmond in June. But until

that time, the citadel of the Confederacy was protected by only two imper-

fect lines of defense, neither satisfactory to any engineer who passed judg-

ment on them. It was time to put Davis’s strategy of an active defense of the

city to the test.

Seven Pines

The units of Johnston’s Army of Northern Virginia stumbled through the

mud to the vicinity of Richmond by mid-May. They were tired, sick, and

hungry, but no orders were issued to dig in outside the city. Magruder’s staff

ofﬁcer, Joseph L. Brent, recalled that the men were quite happy about that

omission. After digging so extensively at Centreville, Manassas Junction, and

Yorktown, only to retreat from those places without a ﬁght, they ‘‘seemed

falsely impressed with the idea that the use of the spade was mere labor

lost.’’ Rumor had it that Johnston himself ‘‘sympathized with this idea.’’ This

was not exactly true, but Johnston nevertheless laid no plans to build earth-

works beyond those that were already under way through the efforts of state

and Confederate authorities. He positioned his units in the open ﬁeld to

cover the approaches to the capital, well in front of the lines of earthworks

that were being built. The men received supplies from the Richmond depots,

rested, and were soon in ﬁne trim.

∞≤

McClellan approached the city cautiously, faced with the daunting task of

crossing the Chickahominy River with its wide, alluvial bottomland. This

stream, which presented either a swampy morass or a raging torrent, de-

pending on how much rain fell, was Johnston’s best hope to catch the Fed-

erals off guard. It would be a tedious and dangerous process to move the

Army of the Potomac across and to build suitable bridges to supply the

troops. The Confederates would have an opportunity to strike at isolated

units on the Richmond side and defeat McClellan in detail. The Young Napo-

leon started this process in late May by carefully moving Maj. Gen. Darius

Keyes’s Fourth Corps and Maj. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman’s Third Corps

across the river while keeping the rest of the army east of it as long as pos-

sible. He was motivated partly by a desire to make contact with Maj. Gen.

Irvin McDowell’s First Corps, which had been held back in the vicinity of Ma-

nassas Junction and Fredericksburg thus far during the campaign. McClellan

had been calling for McDowell’s men to reinforce him ever since and so far

102 From Seven Pines to the Seven Days

was having little luck convincing Lincoln or Stanton of the wisdom of this

transfer. Additionally, he needed to protect his principal supply base and the

Richmond and York River Railroad, both of which were located east of the

river. McClellan advanced his most trusted subordinate, Fitz John Porter,

and the Fifth Corps to Mechanicsville, eight miles northeast of Richmond, to

anchor his right ﬂank. Thus, he unwittingly played into Johnston’s hands by

leaving some 36,000 men west and south of the Chickahominy and retaining

roughly 70,000 east and north of it.

∞≥

Federal engineers worked hard to build secure links between the two

wings. They rebuilt the line of the Richmond and York River Railroad, in-

cluding its bridges, from the York River to Savage’s Station, three miles west

of the Chickahominy. More work was undertaken by the infantry of Maj.

Gen. Edwin V. Sumner’s Second Corps. The 1st Minnesota, 5th New Hamp-

shire, and 64th New York built two wagon bridges over the river, cutting

timber, ﬂoating beams to the bridge sites, raising piers and stringers, and

building corduroyed causeways over the wide bottomland to connect the

bridges with dry land. Although the channel was only forty feet wide, the

bridges were one-quarter of a mile long. The upper span, called the Grape-

vine Bridge, had a causeway whose rough log ﬂooring was softened by a

layer of dirt. The building of these spans involved an enormous amount of

labor, but they were ﬁnished by May 29.

∞∂

The transportation links across the river were ﬁnally opened when John-

ston launched his attack against the left wing of the Army of the Potomac on

May 31. He planned to hit Keyes and Heintzelman with twenty-one brigades

totaling 55,000 men, giving him a decisive numerical advantage if he could

throw all of the troops into a coordinated assault. But the inexperience of

the Army of Northern Virginia at all levels of command hampered the at-

tack so badly that only nine of the twenty-one brigades, about 14,000 men,

were heavily engaged. A combination of poor maps, bad staff work, and

poorly written orders robbed Johnston of an opportunity to drive the Fed-

erals away.

∞∑

The Army of the Potomac was deployed in a line that stretched for twelve

miles, from Porter’s Fifth Corps position at Mechanicsville through Maj.

Gen. William B. Franklin’s Sixth Corps and Sumner’s Second Corps positions

north and east of the Chickahominy. South and west of the river, Keyes’s

Fourth Corps held a forward position in the vicinity of Seven Pines, an

important road junction eight miles from the center of Richmond. Brig. Gen.

Silas Casey’s division was located in front, west of Seven Pines, with Brig.

Gen. Darius N. Couch’s division positioned around the junction and along

Nine Mile Road northward to Fair Oaks Station on the Richmond and York

From Seven Pines to the Seven Days 103

Approach to Grapevine Bridge, Chickahominy River. Taken by Brig. Gen. Daniel P.

Woodbury, this photograph depicts men of the 5th New Hampshire and 64th New York

putting down a layer of dirt on the wooden causeway leading to one of the bridges

spanning the Chickahominy River in June 1862. (Massachusetts Commandery, Mili-

tary Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History Institute)

River Railroad. Heintzelman, who was given overall charge of the troops

west of the river, had his Third Corps positioned ﬁve miles to Keyes’s rear.

Casey and Couch were partially fortiﬁed. McClellan had ordered Barnard

to lay out a defensive line at Seven Pines, which was done a half-mile west

of the crossroads on May 28. Barnard ordered the construction of an en-

closed work with connecting trenches, and Lt. Miles McAlester designed

what would be called Casey’s Redoubt, a prominent feature in the battle.

Digging started on May 29 or 30, but McAlester could not get enough men to

work on it. As a result, the redoubt was ‘‘quite incomplete’’ when Johnston

struck on May 31. Casey placed his division line on the east side of a cleared

ﬁeld and cut a considerable amount of timber on the west side to create a

dense slashing. The redoubt was positioned near the center of his division

line. Casey advanced his picket line into the belt of trees on the far side of the

ﬁeld, beyond the forty-yard-wide slashing. The pickets, hidden in another

104 From Seven Pines to the Seven Days

belt of trees, were separated from the Confederate position by an open ﬁeld

that was 500 yards wide. East of Casey’s position, Couch dug in at a clearing

near Seven Pines and built a third line one and a half miles east of the

junction. The infantry works of Couch’s position originated as a breastwork,

made by piling logs on top of the earth, and then a ditch was dug in front.

The dirt was thrown over the pile to make a parapet four feet thick at the top.

Heintzelman later recalled that persistent rain slowed the work of fortify-

ing and ﬁlled the ditches with water by the time Johnston attacked on May

31. Several details from Casey’s division were out slashing more timber that

morning when signs of enemy activity led ofﬁcers to recall them to their

units. One battery occupied Casey’s Redoubt, two infantry regiments were

north of the fort in a connecting line, and three were south of it, but Casey

poorly disposed of the rest of his division. He put a forward line in front of his

works in the open ﬁeld, 200 yards from the slashing. Not only was this line

exposed, but the obstructions should have been within close musket range to

be effective. He also separated units from two of his three brigades, making it

difﬁcult for brigade leaders to control their troops under ﬁre. The fortiﬁca-

tions constituted Casey’s second line.

∞∏

Johnston’s attack was greatly impeded by the terrain of the battleﬁeld.

The landscape is ﬂat, or as Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith put it, ‘‘slightly

undulating,’’ and lies at about 160 feet elevation. The sandy soil quickly

became ‘‘soft and spongy’’ when soaked with rain, while the woods tended to

have thick underbrush ‘‘matted with tangled vines, and the luxuriant foliage,

in the full bloom of spring, rendered it in many places impossible to dis-

tinguish objects ten paces distant.’’ When a heavy rain set in at 5:00 p.m. on

the evening of May 30, ‘‘the face of the country was literally ﬂooded.’’ The

rain stopped the next day, but the Chickahominy began to rise between

McClellan’s two wings. Pools of standing water, some more than knee deep,

pockmarked the landscape. The attacking Rebels had to struggle across this

terrain and then contend with the wide belts of slashing, ‘‘hundreds of tree-

tops with the ends of limbs pointed and sharpened,’’ as Henry C. Wall of the

23rd North Carolina put it.

∞π

Daniel Harvey Hill hit Casey’s 6,200 men with 9,000 screaming Confeder-

ates and, after tough ﬁghting, drove them away, capturing Casey’s Redoubt

and its artillery at 3:00 p.m. Then Hill hit Couch and was stopped. He worked

units around Couch’s right ﬂank and gained the rear, forcing the second

Union line to evacuate under ﬁre, but the third line held on. Fugitives from

the ﬁrst two positions took shelter in this unﬁnished trench one and a half

miles east of Seven Pines until the Rebel attacks ended at dusk. Farther

From Seven Pines to the Seven Days 105

north, Brig. Gen. William H. C. Whiting’s division struck the Fair Oaks sec-

tion of the Union line, but the Federals held ﬁrm without earthworks. The

Confederates launched a series of disjointed attacks on Union positions to

the north and east of Nine Mile Road, none of which succeeded in driving the

Yankees. The only thing accomplished by either Confederate wing was Hill’s

success in bending the extreme Union left back like a ﬁsh hook with Fair Oaks

Station as the anchor. Further Confederate assaults on June 1 failed to ac-

complish any more. The Rebels retired, nursing more than 6,100 casualties

while the Federals suffered 5,000 losses. The highest-ranking casualty was

Johnston himself, who was hit by shell ﬁre on May 31. Gustavus W. Smith

took charge of the army for the useless attacks the next day and for the

retreat.

∞∫

Johnston’s plan, to attack while the Federals were struggling across the

Chickahominy, was ruined by poor handling, by the terrain and weather, and

by the Federal fortiﬁcations. The works were modest in size and strength

and failed to stop the Rebels, but the extensive slashing disrupted their

formations and robbed them of momentum. The Confederates should have

learned that enthusiasm would not necessarily compensate for terrain difﬁ-

culties and that there was no substitute for efﬁcient control and detailed,

thorough planning. Rebel survivors of the battle of Seven Pines, also known

as the battle of Fair Oaks, did not brag about capturing two lines of Yankee

earthworks. They more often moaned about the difﬁculties of the terrain

and occasionally about stiff Union resistance. Johnston was now out of the

picture, and Robert E. Lee was named his permanent replacement.

McClellan began shifting the bulk of his army across the Chickahominy in

June as the Federals dug in more extensively to defend their forward posi-

tion. Soon a continuous line of infantry trench, studded with several forts,

took shape to defend Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. McClellan was preparing

for a repeat of Johnston’s attack; the works were primarily defensive in

nature, although they could be used as the base for a continued advance

toward Richmond.

Soon after the battle, Barnard instructed McAlester to ﬁnish Casey’s Re-

doubt and ‘‘extend the defensive line to the right, to embrace Fair Oaks, and

to the left, to connect with the White Oak Swamp.’’ The line started as little

more than a row of breastwork, to be later transformed into a proper parapet

by dirt thrown up from the digging of a trench. Initially there was a shortage

of axes and shovels, but work picked up as necessary tools became available.

On June 7, Barnard laid out a large fort on the right ﬂank near the river,

on Golding’s Farm, which became Redoubt No. 6. Intermediate works—

106 From Seven Pines to the Seven Days

Federal Fort Sumner, Fair Oaks. Several of the redoubts on Barnard’s line seem to have

been given other names as well. While these are not listed in the ofﬁcial reports, it is

likely that Fort Sumner was Redoubt No. 4. Note the use of timber and sandbags to

make the revetment and the yet-unused sandbags lying around. (Massachusetts Com-

mandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion and the U.S. Army Military History

Institute)

Redoubts No. 4 and 5—arose between it and Casey’s position. McAlester,

Cyrus B. Comstock, and Lt. Francis U. Farquhar completed the connecting

lines between the forts. South of Casey’s position, Redoubts No. 1 and 2

extended the line to White Oak Swamp.

The completed line was more than three miles long. A total of forty em-

brasures graced the parapets that were twelve feet thick, fronted by a deep,

wide ditch. Most of the six works were open to the rear; Nos. 3, 4, and 5 had

ﬁve sides, while No. 6 was square and No. 2 was triangular. From left to right,

Barnard identiﬁed Redoubt No. 1 as a lunette with eight guns; Redoubt No. 2

as a redan with six guns located south of Seven Pines; Redoubt No. 3 (Casey’s

Redoubt on May 31) as an ‘‘irregular pentagon’’ with ﬁve guns a few hundred

yards south of Williamsburg Road; Redoubt No. 4 as having nine guns north

From Seven Pines to the Seven Days 107

Federal artillery position at Fair Oaks. Identiﬁed as Battery C, 1st Pennsylvania Light

Artillery, the location of this view is uncertain. The conﬁguration of the works matches

that of the large artillery emplacement at Robert Courteny’s, but the only battery to

occupy those works was Capt. J. Howard Carlisle’s Battery E, 2nd U.S. Artillery,

and only on June 28. The location of Battery C, 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery, is

unknown. Note, however, the raised timber platforms, the neatly dug parapets and

ditches, and the gunners’ tents stretched between the artillery pieces. (National Library

of Medicine)

of Williamsburg Road and south of the Richmond and York River Railroad,

due west of Fair Oaks Station; Redoubt No. 5 as containing six guns north of

the railroad; and Redoubt No. 6 as mounting six guns on the right.

A photograph of No. 5, taken by James F. Gibson, shows a large, commu-

nal gun platform at the natural level of the earth. It has a border made of logs

and a ditch around the sides and back of the platform, in which the ammuni-

tion chests could be safely placed. The parapet had a post-and-plank revet-

ment reaching to about waist high, with a layer of sandbags several feet on

top of that for ease in forming embrasures. Some of the redoubts also were

ﬁxed with magazines.

While the Seven Pines Line was taking shape, Capt. James C. Duane of the

U.S. Engineer Battalion constructed four batteries on the east side of the

Chickahominy River to defend the bridges that McClellan relied on to keep