Next day Gregg’s division crossed the Pamunkey dismounted, and Torbert’s crossed mounted.  As soon as the troops were over, Gregg, supported by Merritt’s brigade, moved out on the road to Tunstall’s Station to attack Hampton, posted an the west side of Black Creek, Custer’s brigade meanwhile moving, mounted, on the road to Cumberland, and Devin’s in like manner on the one to Baltimore crossroads.  This offer of battle was not accepted, however, and Hampton withdrew from my front, retiring behind the Chickahominy, where his communications with Lee would be more secure.

While at the White House I received orders to break up that depot wholly, and also instructions to move the trains which the Army of the Potomac had left there across the peninsula to the pontoon-bridge at Deep Bottom on the James River.  These trains amounted to hundreds of wagons and other vehicles, and knowing full well the dangers which would attend the difficult problem of getting them over to Petersburg, I decided to start them with as little delay as circumstances would permit, and the morning of the 22d sent Torbert’s division ahead to secure Jones’s bridge on the Chickahominy, so that the wagons could be crossed at that point.  The trains followed Torbert, while Gregg’s division marched by a road parallel to the one on which the wagons were moving, and on their right flank, as they needed to be covered and protected in that direction only.

The enemy made no effort to attack us while we were moving the trains that day, and the wagons were all safely parked for the night on the south side of the Chickahominy, guarded by General Getty, who had relieved Abercrombie from command of the infantry fragments before we started off from the White House.

To secure the crossing at Jones’s bridge, Torbert had pushed Devin’s brigade out on the Long Bridge road, on the side of the Chickahominy where, on the morning of the 23d, he was attacked by Chambliss’s brigade of W. H. F. Lee’s division.  Devin was driven in some little distance, but being reinforced by Getty with six companies of colored troops, he quickly turned the tables on Chambliss and re-established his picket-posts.  From this affair I learned that Chambliss’s brigade was the advance of the Confederate cavalry corps, while Hampton discovered from it that we were already in possession of the Jones’s bridge crossing of the Chickahominy; and as he was too late to challenge our passage of the stream at this point he contented himself with taking up a position that night so as to cover the roads leading from Long Bridge to Westover, with the purpose of preventing the trains from following the river road to the pontoon-bridge at Deep Bottom.