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                             [Illustration]




                        Notes of a Staff Officer
                                 of our
                        First New Jersey Brigade
                                 on the
                       Seven Day's Battle on the
                           Peninsula in 1862


                                   by
                             E. Burd Grubb
                Brevet Brigadier General U. S. Volunteers


                           MOORESTOWN, N. J.
                        MOORESTOWN PRINTING CO.
                                 1910.




                The Seven Day's Battle on the Peninsula
                 as Seen by a Lieutenant on the Staff


Camille Baquet, Esq.,
    Historian of First New Jersey Brigade,
        Elizabeth, N. J.

DEAR SIR:

In accordance with your request I give you herewith my recollections of
the Battle of Gaines' Mills. In order to give a minute description of
this battle, it may be well to describe where the New Jersey Brigade
started from to go into it, and how it came to be where it did start
from.

The Brigade had been at the village of Mechanicsville about three and a
half miles from Richmond on the northern side of the Chickahominy during
the latter part of the month of May. It was moved up from Mechanicsville
about a mile and a half west up the Chickahominy near the Meadow Bridge,
but was not on picket at that bridge when Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry
attacked the picket of the United States Cavalry commanded by Captain
Royal and killed a number of his men and desperately wounded that
officer. Captain Royal was well known in Burlington, New Jersey, he
having married a sister of Admiral John Howell of that city.

The brigade was withdrawn soon after that and moved down the
Chickahominy taking the road on top of the northern ridge and stopping
near Dr. Gaines' house.

On the 31st of May the brigade was under orders to move at a moment's
notice and the Battle of Fair Oaks was in progress on the southern side
of the river. Part of it could be seen and a good deal of it heard.

On the morning of the first of June the brigade moved down across the
Chickahominy and out on the battle field of Fair Oaks. General Taylor
informed me that we had been held in reserve through the morning and
were considered the support of the second line. We were not engaged
because the fight was practically over before we reached the field, but
Captain George Wood, whose mother lived next to my father's house in
Burlington and who was captain in a Pennsylvania regiment, was carried
by and spoke to me while I was sitting on my horse with General Taylor
at the edge of the battle field. Captain Wood was shot through the leg.
The brigade was encamped on this battle field along the eastern side of
the road running to Richmond, having crossed on what was known as the
Grapevine Bridge, across the Chickahominy, and while there I visited the
Second Brigade, many of whom, particularly in the Fifth Regiment, came
from Burlington. George Burling, afterwards Gen. Burling, commanded a
regiment. They had had a very desperate fight and many of them had been
killed and wounded. They were camped directly on the spot where they had
fought, and for many reasons it was the most disagreeable camp I ever
saw, dead men and dead horses having been only covered with perhaps six
inches or a foot of earth and the stench and the flies exceeded anything
I ever saw before or since. We remained here until the morning of the
27th of June. All through the afternoon of the 26th up to nine o'clock
that night there had been a heavy battle raging at and around
Mechanicsville and the roar of the guns and the flashes of the shells
had been very continuous. Early in the morning of the 27th the brigade
was moved down with the rest of Slocum's division near the Grapevine
Bridge and over the small hill from which the north side of the
Chickahominy River could be very well seen.

It is my recollection that the tents which were of course shelter tents,
and the knap-sacks of all the brigade, were left in the camp when we
moved out that morning and the reason I think so is because I was in
charge of the detail which buried the knap-sacks of the entire Fourth
Regiment which were in their camp when we returned late on the night of
the 27th after the battle. These knap-sacks