A Thousand Words a Battle: Gaines Mill
Battle of Gaines Mill, The Seven Days
June 27, 1862
Oliver Willcox Norton of Springfield, Pennsylvania, enlisted as a Private in the Erie Regiment, a three-month unit, on April 19, 1861. At the end of its three months, the regiment was reorganized as the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. The following excerpt is from a longer letter written to his family, on July 4, 1862, while in camp near the James River.
The fight on the right began on Thursday, the 26th of June, and we took all on our backs and went out in the afternoon but did no fighting. Friday morning at daylight we fell back to a position on a stream near Gaines’ Mill. The Rebels soon followed, feeling their way along, and at about 2 o’clock the fighting became general along the whole line. Our brigade formed on the left flank of the line and lay nearest the river. The Eighty-third was posted in a deep gully, wooded, and with the stream I mentioned running in front of us. We built a little breastworks of logs and had a good position. On the hill behind us the Forty-fourth and Twelfth New York and the Sixteenth Michigan were posted. When the rebels made the first attack, we could not fire a shot. The hill concealing them from us, and so we lay still while the bullets of two opposing lines whistled over our heads. They were repulsed, but only to pour in new troops with greater vigor than before. Suddenly I saw two men on the bank in front of us gesticulating violently and pointing to our rear, but the roar of the battle drowned their voices. The order was given to face about. We did so and tried to form in line, but while the line was forming, a bullet laid low the head, the stay, the trust of our regiment-our brave colonel, and before we knew what happened the major shared his fate. We were without a field officer, but the boys bore up bravely. They railed round the flag and advanced up the hill to find ourselves alone. It appears that the enemy broke through the lines off on our right, and word was sent to us on the left to fall back. Those in the rear of us received the order but the aide sent to us was shot before he reached us so we got no orders. Henry and Denison were shot about the same time as the colonel. I left them together under a tree. I returned to the fight, and our boys were dropping on all sides of me. I was blazing away at the rascals not ten rods off when a ball struck my gun just above the lower band as I was capping it, and cut it in two. The ball flew in pieces and part went by my head to the right and three pieces struck just below my left collar bone. The deepest one was not over half an inch, and stopping to open my coat I pulled them out and snatched a gun from Ames in Company H as he fell dead. Before I had fired this at all a ball clipped off a piece of the stock, and an instant after, another struck the seam of my canteen and entered my left groin. I pulled it out, and, more maddened than ever, I rushed in again. A few minutes after, another ball took six inches off the muzzle of this gun. I snatched another from a wounded man under a tree, and, as I was kneeling by the side of the road, a ball cut my rammer in two as I was turning it over my head. Another gun was easier got than a rammer so I threw that away and picked up a fourth one. Here in the road a buckshot struck me in the left eyebrow, making the third slight scratch I received in action. It exceeded all I ever dreamed of, it was almost a miracle. Then came the retreat across the river; rebels on three sides of us left no choice but to run or be killed or to be taken prisoners.[1]
The Eighty-Third suffered its greatest loss of the war at Gaines’ Mill, with 61 killed or mortally wounded. Before the war was over, the regiment would lose 282 men killed, or mortally wounded, in battle, the second-highest total of any Union regiment. They were mustered out of service in July 1865.
Norton served with Eighty-third until November 1863, when he was commissioned as a First Lieutenant of the Eighth United States Colored Troops, serving in that capacity until November 1865. His wounds at Gaines’ Mill were the only ones he suffered in the war.
—Terry Rensel
[1] Oliver Willcox Norton, Army Letters, 1861-1865 (Chicago: O.L. Deming), 90-92.
Talk about the wings of angels being draped over him! And such dogged persistence…I’ d have repositioned to the rear a lot sooner!
Agreed. I would have “changed my base” in a heart beat. A great, very descriptive, letter though.
Norton’s brigade was for a time under the command of Dan Butterfield. Norton, while a bugler, is credited with being the first to sound Butterfield’s creation, “Taps.” See https://www.tapsbugler.com/oliver-willcox-norton/.
Terry that’s a great piece, and a remarkable letter. I am researching my many ancestors who fought in the war, and coincidentally am working through their participation in the Seven Days. I wonder if you might have information on the movements of the 1st, 5th, 8th, 10th and 13th Pennsylvania Reserves at Gaines’ Mill. I pretty much know what they did in the battle, but have nothing on the withdrawal and then retreat over the Chickahominy. Thanks!
Eric, I do not. I have Norton’s letters and the 83rd’s Regimental History, which is most of what I know about Gaines’ Mill. I’m originally from Erie, which is one of the things that has sparked my interest in the 83rd.
Thank you anyway, and Happy New Year. My mother’s family – large and extended – are from Clearfield, Centre and Clarion Counties, hence my interest in the regiments that came from there, as well as some who moved to Gaston County, North Carolina and fought for the Confederacy. All told, 25 of them, with 5 killed, most of the others suffering wounds and/or disease, capture, etc. – and they left behind three spectacular diaries by men serving in three different armies. Lucky me.
Wonderful piece: let the eyewitness tell the story, with Terry providing important context.
The veterans will say, if you haven’t been in battle you couldn’t know what its like. I about had an accident reading his description from the middle of battle. And he only called them “rascals.” Thank you for this.