Qualla: Battle of Savage's Station

Battle of Savage's Station: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (book authors). A list of artists and engravers can be found on p. 23 of the PDF., Public domain. Twenty-five hundred wounded Union soldiers lay in the field hospital at Savage's Station on the night of June 29, 1862. Their comrades were leaving them. The Army of the Potomac was in full retreat across the peninsula, and the surgeons knew, the wounded knew, that the wagons could not carry everyone. Clouds of black smoke rose from burning stores. The orders had been simple and terrible: destroy anything you cannot drag with you. When the rear guard finally pulled out at midnight, the wounded were left on their cots and the ground around them, listening to the rain that had begun in the dark, waiting for the Confederate Army that would arrive at first light to take them prisoner.

Image: Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel (book authors). A list of artists and engravers can be found on p. 23 of the PDF. | Public domain

Battle of Savage's Station: A Retreat Without a Captain

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit various, Public domain. After the bloodbath at Gaines's Mill on June 27 and the small fights at Garnett's and Golding's farms on June 27 and 28, George McClellan had decided his army was lost. He ordered a full withdrawal from the Chickahominy toward Harrison's Landing on the James. The bulk of his army...

Image: various | Public domain

Battle of Savage's Station: Lee's Plan Falls Apart

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The British Library, CC BY 2.0. Robert E. Lee had crafted a converging plan to destroy the Army of the Potomac in mid-retreat. Longstreet and A.P. Hill would loop south through Richmond and strike at Glendale. Theophilus Holmes would push toward Malvern Hill. Stonewall Jackson, with his own division and those o...

Image: The British Library | CC BY 2.0

Battle of Savage's Station: The Land Merrimack and the Vermont Brigade

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The British Library, CC BY 2.0. First contact came at 9 a.m. on June 29 in Mr. Allen's orchards two miles west of the station. Two Georgia regiments from George T. Anderson's brigade tangled with two Pennsylvania regiments for two hours; the Confederates lost 28 men and Brigadier General Richard Griffith, kille...

Image: The British Library | CC BY 2.0

Battle of Savage's Station: The Wounded Left Behind

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The British Library, CC BY 2.0. Darkness and thunderstorms ended the fighting in a bloody stalemate, about 1,500 casualties on both sides. Then, in the rain that night, the Army of the Potomac packed up and pulled out for White Oak Swamp. The twenty-five hundred previously wounded men in the field hospital were...

Image: The British Library | CC BY 2.0