Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/320

296 Magruder put but part of his men into the battle at Savage station, and so failed to drive away McClellan's rear guard, that there stubbornly held the road; while Holmes failed to reach and head off McClellan at Malvern hill. So the day passed without decisive results to Lee, and McClellan's retreat was continued with but little molestation.

The morning of June 30th found McClellan's entire army and heavy trains, including his hundred heavy siege guns and numerous batteries of field artillery, safely across the White Oak swamp, and by 10 a. m. Richardson's division, his rear guard on the main road, was destroying the swamp bridge. He now had 60,000 men in a naturally strong position, facing northward and westward, covering the roads leading to and from Charles City cross roads, with his flanks protected by swamps, and with the same sort of well-nigh impenetrable defenses covering nearly his entire front. The approaching roadways were all guarded by artillery, and his men had not been slow to everywhere add fallen timber and abatis to the defenses offered by the creeks and swamps. At the southern end of the swamp bridge was Frayser's farm, clear to the north and with forests to the south. There was placed Franklin with 20,000 men and a park of artillery, facing north and constituting the right wing of McClellan's army, ready to contest the passage of White Oak swamp. To the left, covering the roads from Richmond and the important junction of roads at Charles City cross roads, sweeping in an arc westward and southward, were 40,000 men under Sumner and Heintzelman. The position was, naturally, an exceedingly strong defensive one, and the disposition of the Federal troops could not well have been better made. They were now ready for the opening of the contest which is known in history by the names of White Oak Swamp, Frayser's Farm, Charles City Cross-roads, Glendale or Willis' Church; Glendale being the name of a plantation just south of Charles City cross roads, and Willis' church a point a mile in the same direction from the same point on the Quaker road.

By 11 o'clock in the morning, the head of Jackson's column appeared at the northern end of the destroyed White Oak swamp bridge. Franklin at once opened on this with his heavy batteries. Colonel Crutchfield, Jackson's chief of artillery, brought twenty-eight guns