Glendale/White Oak Swamp

Battle

On June 30, Lee's plan for a coordinated strike against the entire flank of the retreating Union Army of the Potomac collapsed in execution, a pattern common throughout the Seven Days Battles, where ambitious strategy repeatedly outpaced what his subordinates could actually accomplish together in the field.

Coming from the northwest, Major General Benjamin Huger found his advance stalled by trees that had been felled across the Charles City Road, an obstruction created by pioneers serving under Brigadier General Henry W. Slocum. Instead of clearing the debris, Huger set his men to hacking a fresh road through dense woods, an episode later remembered as the "Battle of the Axes." He never sought an alternate path forward, and worried about a possible counterstrike, he ultimately kept his forces out of the fighting altogether.

Farther south, the green troops of Major General Theophilus Holmes, drawn from his Department of North Carolina command and attached to the Army of Northern Virginia, gained no ground against Porter near Turkey Bridge and Malvern Hill. Artillery fire and the Union gunboats Galena and Aroostook, positioned on the James, drove them back.

By four o'clock that afternoon, Lee had directed Major General John B. Magruder to move toward Holmes along the River Road and strike Malvern Hill on the Union left, only to redirect him soon after to support Longstreet at the center instead. The result was that Magruder's division spent most of the day marching back and forth without engaging.

Major General Thomas Jackson, advancing from the northeast, moved with notable sluggishness and remained north of White Oak Creek for the entire day. His attempts to cross and strike Franklin's VI Corps during what became known as the Battle of White Oak Swamp were half-hearted at best. He instead engaged in an unproductive artillery exchange meant to cover the rebuilding of a destroyed bridge, even though usable fords existed nearby. Despite his remarkable success during the Valley Campaign just prior, whether from the strain of that effort or simple misjudgment, Jackson's performance throughout the Seven Days was consistently hampered by hesitation and questionable decisions. His mere presence, however, prompted Brigadier General John Sedgwick to shift two of his three brigades northward from the Charles City Road to bolster the Union defense at the creek.

Meanwhile, near Glendale, Union forces struggled with their own deployment troubles. On the night of June 29, Brigadier General George A. McCall's Third Division of the V Corps received orders to establish a blocking position in front of the Glendale crossroads to prevent any Confederate breakthrough there. Marching in darkness over poor roads, McCall's brigades lost their bearings and passed beyond the intersection entirely, not discovering the error until the early hours of June 30. After turning back, the division reached the vicinity of Glendale near daybreak, halting there as it awaited fresh instructions before continuing on to rejoin Porter. It was at this point that McCall and his brigade commanders realized, much to their alarm, that the gap left by Sedgwick's departure meant nothing stood between them and the approaching Confederate divisions of Longstreet and Hill advancing from Richmond. McCall's three brigades moved to close this dangerous opening.

Around two in the afternoon, as Longstreet and A. P. Hill listened for signs that Huger had begun his assault, Longstreet mistook the sound of distant, unidentified cannon fire for the agreed signal and launched his own artillery against McCall's position. McCall's guns answered in turn. Nearby, Lee, Longstreet, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who was visiting the front, found themselves under intense artillery fire while conferring on horseback, likely blind shots from the Parrott rifles of McCall's Pennsylvania batteries. Two men were wounded and three horses killed in the barrage. Hill, in command of that part of the line, quickly ordered the president and the senior officers to withdraw to safety.