In late May 1862 George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, about 105,000 strong, was close enough to Richmond to hear its church bells. Sick with malaria and fed inflated Pinkerton estimates of more than 100,000 Confederates, McClellan planned a siege and left two corps under Erasmus Keyes and Samuel Heintzelman, about 33,000 men, south of the flooding Chickahominy River. Joseph E. Johnston, with roughly 60,000 troops, planned to hit that isolated wing with 22 of his 29 brigades. But he briefed James Longstreet orally, never told other generals Longstreet was in charge, and a thunderstorm on May 30 turned roads to mud. Longstreet took the Williamsburg Road instead of the Nine Mile Road, jamming D.H. Hill’s route.
Hill finally attacked alone at 1 p.m. on May 31 and broke Silas Casey’s division. Two and a half miles away, Johnston heard nothing because of an acoustic shadow and learned of the fight around 4 p.m. Thaddeus Lowe’s balloon Intrepid telegraphed Confederate movements to McClellan, who did not counterattack. Edwin Sumner forced his corps across the floating Grapevine Bridge to steady the line. At dusk Johnston was hit in the shoulder and chest and carried off, and G.W. Smith froze in command. After fighting on June 1 the armies pulled back with over 11,000 combined casualties. Jefferson Davis replaced Smith with Robert E. Lee, who drove McClellan from the Peninsula within 90 days.
- The marching weight of Sumner’s men pressed the bridge’s floating logs into the mud of the riverbed just long enough to cross.
- Colonel John B. Gordon passed his 19-year-old brother Augustus, shot in the chest, and could not stop.
- David Birney, arrested for missing the first day’s fight, rallied his brigade on June 1 and cleared his name.
- Oliver O. Howard lost his right arm to a Minie ball.
- McClellan blamed Casey’s division for the near disaster, and Casey lost his command.
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