Notes of a staff officer of our First New Jersey Brigade on the Seven Day's Battle on the peninsula in 1862

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Historian of First New Jersey Brigade,
Elizabeth, N. J.

Dear Sir:

In accordance with your request I give you herewith my recollections of the Battle of Gaines' Mills. In order to give a minute description of this battle, it may be well to describe where the New Jersey Brigade started from to go into it, and how it came to be where it did start from.

The Brigade had been at the village of Mechanicsville about three and a half miles from Richmond on the northern side of the Chickahominy during the latter part of the month of May. It was moved up from Mechanicsville about a mile and a half west up the Chickahominy near the Meadow Bridge, but was not on picket at that bridge when Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry attacked the picket of the United States Cavalry commanded by Captain Royal and killed a number of his men and desperately wounded that officer. Captain Royal was well known in Burlington, New Jersey, he having married a sister of Admiral John Howell of that city.

The brigade was withdrawn soon after that and moved down the Chickahominy taking the road on top of the northern ridge and stopping near Dr. Gaines' house.

On the 31st of May the brigade was under orders to move at a moment's notice and the Battle of Fair Oaks was in progress on the southern side of the river. Part of it could be seen and a good deal of it heard.

On the morning of the first of June the brigade moved down across the Chickahominy and out on the battle field of Fair Oaks. General Taylor informed me that we had been held in reserve through the morning and were considered the support of the second line. We were not engaged because the fight was practically over before we reached the field, but Captain George Wood, whose mother lived next to my father's house in Burlington and who was captain in a Pennsylvania regiment, was carried by and spoke to me while I was sitting on my horse with General Taylor at the edge of the battle field. Captain Wood was shot through the leg. The brigade was encamped on this battle field along the eastern side of the road running to Richmond, having crossed on what was known as the Grapevine Bridge, across the Chickahominy, and while there I visited the Second Brigade, many of whom, particularly in the Fifth Regiment, came from Burlington. George Burling, afterwards Gen. Burling, commanded a regiment. They had had a very desperate fight and many of them had been killed and wounded. They were camped directly on the spot where they had fought, and for many reasons it was the most disagreeable camp I ever saw, dead men and dead horses having been only covered with perhaps six inches or a foot of earth and the stench and the flies exceeded anything I ever saw before or since. We remained here until the morning of the 27th of June. All through the afternoon of the 26th up to nine o'clock that night there had been a heavy battle raging at and around Mechanicsville and the roar of the guns and the flashes of the shells had been very continuous. Early in the morning of the 27th the brigade was moved down with the rest of Slocum's division near the Grapevine Bridge and over the small hill from which the north side of the Chickahominy River could be very well seen....