Stonewall Jackson fell asleep under a large oak tree. Three miles to the south, the Battle of Glendale was at full pitch, Confederate divisions slamming into the retreating Army of the Potomac. Across the swamp directly in front of Jackson, the last Union rear guard was still vulnerable. Forty pieces of artillery roared back and forth across the water. And Jackson, the most famous soldier in the Confederacy, the man who had just run circles around three Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley, was unconscious for over an hour. Edward Porter Alexander, the brilliant Confederate artillerist, would write later: "When one thinks of the great chances in General Lee's grasp that one summer afternoon, it is enough to make one cry... to think that our Stonewall Jackson lost them."
By dawn on June 30, the Army of the Potomac was strung out across the peninsula like beads on a wire. Most units had crossed White Oak Swamp Creek by noon. About a third had reached the James River. The remainder were still on the road between Glendale and the swamp, vulnerable, bottlenecked, the kind of target a commander prays for. Lee saw it. He ordered his Army of Northern Virginia to converge. Jackson, with three divisions, would press the Union rear guard at the White Oak Swamp crossing and pin them. The largest force, some 45,000 men under Longstreet, A.P. Hill, and others, would smash into the Federal column at Glendale, two miles southwest, and split it in two. If it worked, the Peninsula Campaign ended that afternoon.
Jackson had built his legend in the Valley. He had then ridden east to join Lee, and from the moment he arrived for the Seven Days, something was off. He arrived late at Mechanicsville and, hearing the battle within easy earshot, ordered his men to bivouac for the night. He was late and disoriented at Gaines's Mill. He was late again at Savage's Station. Modern historians often blame exhaustion, the cumulative toll of weeks of forced marches and travel from the Valley. Whatever it was, his commander-in-chief was no longer dealing with the Stonewall of two months earlier. On the morning of June 30, Lee met Jackson privately at Savage's Station and gave orders that, while not recorded verbatim, clearly directed Jackson to press the rear guard at White Oak Swamp hard enough to prevent reinforcements from reaching Glendale. The target was William B. Franklin's VI Corps, with the divisions of "Baldy" Smith and Israel B. Richardson.
Jackson's engineers tried to rebuild the bridge across the swamp. Colonel Thomas T. Munford led the 2nd Virginia Cavalry through belly-deep water and floating debris to a position on the south bank. Jackson and D.H. Hill rode across themselves to reconnoiter, and a Union shell exploded a few feet from their horses without touching them. Jackson could see clearly that the Union artillery and infantry were reinforcing the position, and that Federal sharpshooters would tear his engineers off the bridge as fast as they could lay timbers. He decided he could not make an opposed crossing here. Munford reported a usable ford a quarter mile downstream (Fisher's Ford). Wade Hampton found a closer spot to build a simple infantry footbridge and Jackson ordered him to build it. But the moment of decision came and went. Jackson would not commit infantry across the swamp without his artillery, and the artillery could not get across. So while forty guns boomed across the water, while the men at Glendale died two miles away, Jackson sat down under the oak and slept.
Franklin, finding himself unmolested, peeled off units in the late afternoon to reinforce the Union troops at Glendale. The attack there ground to a bloody stalemate. The Union army survived. Jackson never told Lee what was happening, and Lee did not send anyone to find Jackson until it was too late to matter. The action at White Oak Swamp consumed tens of thousands of men in theory but produced almost no infantry action in fact: an artillery duel and very little else. Three Confederate artillerymen were killed and twelve wounded. Union losses are not exactly recorded; historian Brian K. Burton estimates as many as 100. The 5th New Hampshire had 5 killed and 9 wounded. Lee, characteristically, never publicly criticized Jackson's performance. Privately, however, the assessment was different. The next day at Malvern Hill, the Confederates would launch a final, costly assault into Union artillery, and the Army of the Potomac would slip away to Harrison's Landing. Richmond was saved, but the chance Lee had built across the entire Seven Days, the chance to destroy McClellan's army outright, had been lost in the shade of one tree.
The White Oak Swamp battlefield lies at 37.47 N, 77.21 W in southeastern Henrico County, where the meandering White Oak Swamp Creek drains southeast toward the Chickahominy. The area today is partly preserved farmland and forest in the suburban edge east of Richmond. From cruising altitude, look for the broad green corridor of swamp and floodplain running roughly east-west between the Chickahominy to the north and the James River to the south. The Glendale battlefield sits just two miles south. Nearest fields are Richmond International (KRIC) about 12 nm northwest, Hanover County (KOFP) 22 nm northwest, and Newport News/Williamsburg International (KPHF) 38 nm east. Best viewed at 2,500-4,000 feet AGL with clear visibility.