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.

My instructions required me to cross the trains over the James River on this pontoon-bridge if practicable, and to reach it I should be obliged to march through Charles City Court House, and then by Harrison’s Landing and Malvern Hill, the latter point being held by the enemy.  In fact, he held all the ground between Long Bridge on the Chickahominy and the pontoon-bridge except the Tete de pont at the crossing.  Notwithstanding this I concluded to make the attempt, for all the delays of ferrying the command and trains would be avoided if we got through to the bridge; and with this object in view I moved Torbert’s division out on the Charles City road to conduct the wagons.  Just beyond Charles City Court House Torbert encountered Lomax’s brigade, which he drove across Herring Creek on the road to Westover Church; and reporting the affair to me, I surmised, from the presence of this force in my front, that Hampton would endeavor to penetrate to the long column of wagons, so I ordered them to go into park near Wilcox’s landing, and instructed Gregg, whose division had been marching in the morning along the road leading from Jones’s bridge to St. Mary’s Church for the purpose of covering the exposed flank of the train, to hold fast near the church without fail till all the transportation had passed Charles City Court House.

Meanwhile, General Hampton, who had conjectured that I would try to get the train across the James by the pontoon-bridge at Deep Bottom, began concentrating all his troops except Lomax’s brigade, which was to confront the head of my column on the river road, in the vicinity of Nance’s Shop.  This was discovered by Gregg at an early hour, and divining this purpose he had prepared to meet it by constructing hasty cover for his men before receiving my instructions.  About 4 o’clock in the afternoon Hampton got his force in hand, and with Fitzhugh Lee’s division assailed the whole front of Gregg’s line, and his left flank with Chambliss’s and Geary’s brigades.  For two hours he