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His right leg had been amputated above his knee, and he was lying motionless and apparently breathless, and as white as snow. I bent over him and put my fingers on his wrist, and discovered to my surprise the faint trembling of a pulse. I immediately said to my attendant:

"Why, the child is alive!'

"Yes, sir,' said he, opening his eyes, 'I am alive; will you not send me to my mother?"

“And where is your mother?' said I, 'my child?' "In Sumpterville, South Carolina,' he replied.

"Oh! yes, my son, we will certainly send you to your mother.'

“Well, well,' said he, 'that is kind; I will go to sleep now.""

CHAPTER XV.

FAIR OAKS.

Positions Occupied by the Contending Forces.-General Hooker Commences the Action.-Advance of Sickles, Grover, and Robinson.General Kearney and Colonel Hicks Protect the Flanks.—Both Armies Enveloped in a Cloud of Smoke.-The Engagement Becomes General.-Defeat of the Rebels.-They Fly to Their Entrenchments.-McClellan Orders a Cessation of Hostilities.-Renewal of the Battle.-Rout and Final Defeat of the Enemy.

THE battle of Fair Oaks was the first of a grand

and never-to-be-forgotten series of engagements known as "The Seven Days' Battles." On the twentyfifth of June, 1862, McClellan instructed General Heintzelman, then in command of the left wing of his army, to advance his entire front towards the enemy. For many days previous to this movement, the army had anticipated the order to advance, as everything seemed in readiness for a renewed demontration against Richmond.

It was determined as a first step in the programme to attack and drive the enemy from his rifle pits and earthworks and establish our lines where his then were. The accomplishment of this design was committed to General Hooker, a brave and sagacious officer who had already been tried in several of the most sanguinary battles of the Peninsular Campaign.

In front of Hooker's lines was a thick undergrowth of scrub-oaks, vines, and ragged bushes skirting a multitude of ponds and marshes. This swampy wilderness was from four to six hundred yards wide, and beyond stretched an open field of eighty rods in width. In this clearing were located the rifle-pits, earthworks and redoubts of the enemy.

The assaulting column was comprised of the brig ades of Sickles, Grover, and Robinson.

General Kearney was directed to protect the left flank, and Colonel Hicks with the Nineteenth Massachusetts Infantry was commanded to advance to and cover the right.

All necessary appointments having been made, the three brigades, led by General Hooker, advanced cautiously but firmly into the forest, and after having proceeded about two hundred yards, encountered and pushed back the Rebel pickets to their main reserves. This demonstration was quickly followed by a spirited skirmish which soon resulted in rapid and incessant firing along the entire line. In a few moments the forest was a scene of furious contest and the ominous quiet was succeeded by the terrible din and clash of arms and the roar of cannon and musketry.

Both armies were, for a time, enveloped in a cloud of smoke, which rising up and twisting itself among the trees, hung over the contending forces as a pall of darkness and then streams of fire like angry lightnings shot athwart the sky; and anon, a courier would dash out from the gloom, covered with blood and dust, bearing dispatches or hastening for orders.

In less than half an hour after driving in the pickets,

the divisions of Hooker and Kearney were involved in the liveliest action. The arrival of fresh troops on both sides was an evidence that a decisive battle was courted by the contestants.

The Federal troops pushed steadily forward routing the Confederates, and driving them from the forest into the open field beyond, over which they fled and sought protection in their intrenchments.

Our men now raised a shout of triumph which was caught up by regiment after regiment and borne through the army.

General Grover was about ordering an assault against the Rebels in their defences when he received an order from General McClellan to halt his brigade. From an erroneous impression concerning the actual condition of the forces engaged he ordered General Hooker to retire from the field of victory, and return to the position occupied before the battle; but when McClellan subsequently came upon the field, he ordered our troops to advance and re-occupy the woods and fields they had taken, and before night the Confederates were driven out of their rifle-pits and from the fields, and we had gained a victory which cost us nearly a thousand of our best men in killed and wounded.

The Rebels smarting under the punishment they had received in the afternoon, came out in force at six o'clock in the evening and re-opened the battle by attacking General Robinson's brigade.

This last onset was the closing scene in the battle of Fair Oaks, and was a bitter, earnest struggle for the fruits of conflict. The Confederates made a very de

termined charge led by a very brave regiment of Georgians, but they were met by men equally brave and determined, and receiving a check at the points of our bayonets were speedily repulsed and driven back leaving four hundred of their number dead on the field. The Federal troops were under arms the entire night following this engagement, with instructions to be prepared to advance at a moment's notice. Every now and then there was an attack upon some portion of our lines, the Confederates seemingly determined to regain by surprise or strategy what they had lost during the day; but it was subsequently ascertained that these apparently futile assaults were only feints intended to occupy our attention and to prevent McClellan sending reinforcements to the right wing of his army.

When McClellan on the twenty-fifth ordered an advance upon the Confederate works, our army was full of hope, believing that we were then taking the initiatory step in a series of actions which would in a few days place us in possession of Richmond. We were successful at Fair Oaks and confident that the next day would enable us to overcome half of the obstacles that disputed our march to the Rebel capitol. At an early hour on the morning of Thursday, the twentysixth, the roar of battle was heard along the Chickahominy.

This was the hotly contested battle of Mechanicsville, the second of the Seven Days' Battles which was successively followed with varying fortune, by Gains' Mills, Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Glendale, and Malvern Hill.

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