t wing at Mechanicsville. The
reserves of Gen. McCall were stationed here; they made a wavering
resistance,--wherein four companies of Bucktails were captured
bodily,--and fell back at nightfall upon Porter's Corps, at Gaines's
Mill. Fitz John Porter commanded the brigades of Gens. Sykes and
Morrell,--the former made up solely of regulars. He appeared to have
been ignorant of the strength of the attacking party, and he telegraphed
to McClellan, early on Thursday evening, that he required no
reinforcements, and that he could hold his ground. The next morning he
was attacked in front and flank; Stewart's cavalry fell on his right,
and turned it at Old Church. He formed at noon in new line of battle,
from Gaines's House, along the Mill Road to New Coal Harbor; but
stubbornly persisted in the belief that he could not be beaten. By three
o'clock he had been driven back two miles, and all his energies were
unavailing to recover a foot of ground. He hurled lancers and cavalry
upon the masses of Jackson and the Hills, but the butternut infantry
formed impenetrable squares, hemmed in with rods of steel, and as the
horsemen galloped around them, searching for previous points, they were
swept from their saddles with volleys of musketry. He directed the
terrible fire of his artillery upon them, but though the gray footmen
fell in heaps, they steadily advanced, closing up the gaps, and their
lines were like long stretches of blaze and ball. Their fire never
slackened nor abated. They loaded and moved forward, column on column,
like so many immortals that could not be vanquished. The scene from the
balloon, as Lowe informed me, was awful beyond all comparison,--of
puffing shells and shrieking shrapnel, with volleys that shattered the
hills and filled the air with deathly whispers. Infantry, artillery, and
horse turned the Federal right from time to time, and to preserve their
order of battle the whole line fell back toward Grapevine Bridge. At
five o'clock Slocum's Division of volunteers crossed the creek from the
south side, and made a desperate dash upon the solid columns of the
Confederates. At the same time Toombs's Georgia Brigade charged Smith's
redoubt from the south side, and there was a probability of the whole of
both armies engaging before dark.

My fever of body had so much relinquished to my fever of mind, that at
three o'clock I called for my horse, and determined to cross the bridge,
that I might witness the battle.