Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/300

278 take the road assigned to him. The result was that they did not arrive simultaneously, and instead of one concerted attack, which would have undoubtedly resulted in a decided victory, on the 1st of June, there was a succession of heroic combats, which were at first successful in the center, carrying even the formidable works which the Federals had constructed at Seven Pines; but, being unsupported by movements on the right and the left, this attack was repulsed by the concentration of a superior force by the enemy, after which followed attacks and repulses on the wings and again in the center. The Federals were driven from the south side of the York River railroad, but they took position along the north side, and the Confederate line was extended in a nearly east and west direction to meet this. They still held their right at Fair Oaks station, extended toward the Chickahominy, and so the 31st ended without decided results, except that the enemy had been driven back from his original position at Seven Pines, and had taken up a new line north of the York River railroad, and the Confederates had taken position in front of this and were again ready for a forward movement. McClellan sent reinforcements from his right to his left. Both armies rested, as best they could, in their water and mud soaked bivouacs that night, Johnston having ordered his men, at 7 p. m., to sleep on their lines and be ready to renew operations in the morning. A half hour later he was hit by a rifle ball, and just after that badly wounded and unhorsed by the fragment of a shell, when, disabled for command, he was carried to the rear, and Maj.-Gen. G. W. Smith became for the time the commander in the field.

It took the Confederates some time to sort themselves in the pine forest with its dense underbrush tangled with vines, and to get rationed and arranged for the morning. They built blazing fires from the pine knots scattered all about, to dry their clothing and blankets, but this lighted the enemy in reinforcing their lines north of the railroad. It was nearly midnight when the army was put in order and the killed and wounded were cared for. Longstreet summarizes the forces engaged on the 31st of May, as 18,500 Federals, consisting of Casey's, Couch's and Kearny's divisions under Heintzelman, with Hooker's division at hand but not engaged; and the Confederates