A.P.  Hill and Longstreet, recrossing the Chickahominy at New Bridge, were to march by the Darbytown road in the direction of Charles City cross roads, thus turning the head waters of the White Oak Swamp, and threatening the Federal rear.

Jackson, crossing Grapevine Bridge, was to move down the south bank of the Chickahominy, cross the Swamp by the bridge, and force his way to the Long Bridge road.

The Confederate army was thus divided into four columns, moving by four different roads; each column at starting was several miles distant from the others, and a junction was to be made upon the field of battle.  The cavalry, moreover, with the exception of a few squadrons, was far away upon the left, pursuing a large detachment which had been observed on the road to the White House.* (* This detachment, about 3500 strong, consisted of the outposts that had been established north and north-east of Beaver Dam Creek on June 27, of the garrison of the White House, and of troops recently disembarked.)

McClellan had undoubtedly resolved on a most hazardous manoeuvre.  His supply and ammunition train consisted of over five thousand waggons.  He was encumbered with the heavy guns of the siege artillery.  He had with him more than fifty field batteries; his army was still 95,000 strong; and this unwieldy multitude of men, horses, and vehicles, had to be passed over White Oak Swamp, and then to continue its march across the front of a powerful and determined enemy.

But Lee also was embarrassed by the nature of the country.* (* Strange to say, while the Confederates possessed no maps whatever, McClellan was well supplied in this respect.  “Two or three weeks before this,” says General Averell (Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 431), “three officers of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, and others, penetrated the region between the Chickahominy and the James, taking bearings and making notes.  Their fragmentary sketches, when put together, made a map which exhibited all the roadways, fields, forests, bridges, the streams, and houses, so that our commander knew the country to be traversed far better than any Confederate commander.”) If McClellan’s movements were retarded by the woods, swamps, and indifferent roads, the same obstacles would interfere with the combination of the Confederate columns; and the pursuit depended for success on their close co-operation.

June 29.

The first day’s work was hardly promising.  The risks of unconnected manoeuvres received abundant illustration.  Magruder, late in the afternoon, struck the enemy’s rearguard near Savage’s Station, but was heavily repulsed by two Federal army corps.  Huger, called by Magruder to his assistance, turned aside from the road which had been assigned to him, and when he was recalled by an urgent message from Lee, advanced with the timidity which almost invariably besets the commander of an isolated force in the neighbourhood of a large army.  Jackson,