Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 3; Or, the White Flag at Casey’s Redoubt

 

In the last post, I narrated the tale of Adjutant Charlie Pruyn, an Albany-born soldier who convinced his devoutly Christian mother to allow him to enlist. As a member of the 96^th New York, Pruyn found himself accompanying the vanguard of the Army of the Potomac during the opening of the Peninsula Campaign.

Pruyn experienced his first combat on May 31, 1862, at the Battle of Seven Pines. In the last post, we learned that Pruyn possessed a gentle heart. According to his mother, “he will never come down to anything vicious.” At Seven Pines, Pruyn acted somewhat contrary to his mother’s expectations. He did something that some might call vicious. He ordered his men to fire on a white flag.

As it turned out, it was the correct course of action. Here’s how it happened.

At noon, May 31, 1862, Lieutenant Pruyn walked to the headquarters tent of his regimental commander, Colonel James Fairman. Pruyn handed Fairman a pile of reports. Pruyn, who was quite ill (as were a great many Union soldiers at the time), had taken all night to complete them. At the moment, Pruyn’s regiment, the 96^th New York, was bivouacked at Seven Pines Crossroads, a stopping point along the Williamsburg Stage Road named for a distinctive cluster of pine trees. The rest of the division, Brig. Gen. Silas Casey’s 2^nd Division, 4^th Corps, (6,200 aggregate) was congregated in the same area, forming a vast tent city. The previous week, the area had been hit by heavy rains, turning the landscape into a vast mudpit. The 96^th New York was positioned behind an earthwork called “Casey’s Redoubt,” a pentagonal fortification that housed a battery of artillery. Pruyn’s regiment was not far from the famous twin farm houses that became the battlefield’s primary landmarks. The whole area was full of puddles. Many of the Union earthworks and rifle pits had become small ponds, unusable as defensive positions because of the standing water.

This photograph depicts the battlefield of Seven Pines. Casey's Redoubt is in the foreground. The Twin Houses--landmarks of the battlefield--are in the middle distance. The 96th New York's bivouac was located near the Twin Houses, in the right background.

Pruyn and Fairman had just begun to converse when a Confederate shell came whizzing overhead, exploding only fifty paces from Fairman’s tent. Pruyn said, “If it had been a little lower, . . .” Then, another enemy shot came whirring past, striking a little nearer, interrupting Pruyn mid-sentence. (These were undoubtedly the famous “signal shots” fired by the Confederates, shells meant to indicate the beginning of their attack.) Pruyn’s brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Henry W. Wessells, whose tent was nearby, came over. Yelling at Fairman and Pruyn, he said, “This will never do, if we don’t get out of this some of these boys will get hit!” Fearing a Confederate infantry attack was on its way, Wessells told Pruyn to form the regiment near the road. As more artillery fire came crashing in, splashing the men with mud, the drummers of the 96^th New York beat the long roll. Everywhere, frantic Union soldiers grabbed their weapons from the stacks and formed into line-of-battle. Soon, Casey’s division stretched across the Williamsburg Stage Road, the infantrymen manning the muddy earthworks as best they could. The 96^th New York held a position immediately to the south and on the outside of the pentagonal redoubt. Another regiment, the 81^st New York, joined on the 96^th New York’s left. As Casey’s line took shape, Pruyn could hear the popping of rifle fire coming from the west. The division’s skirmishers were engaging!

Colonel James Fairman commanded the 96th New York at Seven Pines.

Brigade commander Wessells was correct. A massive Confederate attack was on its way. This was part of Maj. Gen. Joseph Johnston’s plan to drive the Army of the Potomac from the gates of Richmond. Four Confederate divisions were concentrating on Brig. Gen. Erasmus Keyes’s 4^th Corps, of which the 96^th New York formed a part. The vanguard of the Confederate attack, Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill’s division, was making its way toward Seven Pines, where thirteen untested regiments of Brig. Gen. Casey’s division were posted. The 96^th New York was about to face its first test of battle.

After Pruyn’s regiment stood at attention, a hail of small arms fire sailed in from overhead, hitting the men as they stood in formation. One soldier fell dead. Colonel Fairman decided to move the regiment to cover. The only protection that could be seen was a tree line to the southwest. Fairman assumed the division’s skirmishers were there, so he decided to go to their support. But when the regiment got halfway across the field, the men saw puffs of smoke. Suspecting they belonged to the oncoming Confederates, and not to the Union skirmishers, Colonel Fairman halted his regiment.

This Google Earth view depicts the location of the Battle of Seven Pines, which is essentially erased by the development of Sandston, Virginia, and the Richmond Airport. The light blue line depicts the Union earthworks. (Take note of the bulge formed by Casey's Redoubt.) The green line depicts the edge of the wartime tree line. At that tree line, the men of the 96th New York encountered the phony white flag.

Nearby, some of the New Yorkers saw a white flag being raised behind a fence. They cried out, “Don’t shoot!” Pruyn’s instincts kicked in. He smelled a rat. Without hesitating, he countermanded the order. As he wrote, “But I remembered the treachery of the rascals, and shouted, ‘It’s them, but they are trying to deceive you, take good aim and let them have it!’”

Apparently, the men of the 96^th New York responded to their adjutant’s orders, delivering their first volley of the war. Pruyn narrated what happened next:

If you could have heard the volley that followed this order of mine you would have heard something. As soon as our boys opened on them they rose up, and then we saw what an escape we had had. There were several thousand men there, and if we had gone down where we were ordered, it is not possible that [any] one [of us] could have escaped alive.

Pruyn’s decision to fire on the phony white flag had flushed out an enemy brigade, the one commanded by Brig. Gen. Robert Rodes, which was coming up from the south in an attempt to flank Casey’s line. Caught in the open, the 96^th New York and the 81^st New York, which came up on its left, returned fire, trying to hold back the Confederate attack. Pruyn recalled, “Oh! how they opened on us. It is a miracle that any of us came off alive. Our boys dropped like sheep, but still they did not flinch. They stood right up to it till the regiment which joined on to us gave way, then our boys fell back to the rifle pits.”

As Pruyn wrote, the two New York regiments beat a retreat back to the muddy earthworks adjoining Casey’s redoubt. Unfortunately, there was not much that could be done to defend this portion of the line. D. H. Hill’s division fell upon the Union earthworks like an avalanche, and two brigades—the one under Rodes and another under Brig. Gen. Gabriel Rains—flanked Casey’s line to the south. Unable to stay at the earthworks, Pruyn and his comrades found themselves having to defend their bivouac. He wrote:

Here [at the earthworks] we only staid a short time, for we found the enemy had what is called a ‘raking fire’ on us, which swept down the ditch in such a manner that one shot would wound or kill several. Here it was that we lost the most, so we fell back to our former position [at the bivouac] and made our last stand. Our men fought nobly, bravely; never flinched under a murderous fire. I was proud of them. The man next to me was shot down dead with the colors in his hand. The Colonel caught them and looked around for some one to take them. I sprang forward and took and held them till a sergeant came and relieved me.

The color bearer who fell dead was Sergeant William Henry Trombly, age twenty, of Plattsburgh. Apparently, in the past few months, Pruyn had become quite attached to him. As Pruyn related to his mother, “The color bearer who was killed, was one that I had always taken a great interest in, for the reason that I had promised his father, in Plattsburgh, that I would exercise a care over him. He did not belong to my company, but that made no difference. Poor fellow, he died nobly, but how I pity his poor father!”

Sergeant William H. Trombly

The whole experienced was shocking, to say the least, but Pruyn was able to manage his fear. He told his mother this:

Perhaps it was caused by excitement, but I really knew no fear; and although the bullets flew around me thick as hail, I thought no more of them than of so many pebble stones. You may think I want to brag, but it is not so; and this is not my case only. If a man is going to show fear, he will do it before the fight. Once in it, and there is no time to think of self. How long we were here I know not. I was busy exhorting the men to stand up to it, ‘give it to them,’ ‘pop them down, boys,’ ‘take good aim and bring down one of the rascals;’ until, finally, on looking around, I saw that, with the exception of the Colonel, two or three officers, and about a dozen men, we were alone.

The Confederate attack against Casey’s division reached its climax at 3:30 P.M. At that moment, the whole of D. H. Hill’s division overran the Union bivouac, seizing the area around the twin houses. Dislodged from the redoubt and the adjoining earthworks, the bulk of Casey’s division fled eastward, heading for a line of abatis near the cluster of seven pine trees. There, Keyes’s other division—the one under Brig. Gen. Darius Couch—was arriving as reinforcements. Pruyn, who had stayed at the bivouac for a bit too long, now had to make a difficult decision. Should he surrender to the Confederates or run for safety? He narrated his thoughts:

I looked across the open ground, and thought that my chance of getting over it safely was out of the question. Actually, at that moment, I would not have given two cents for my life. Thus I soliloquized: ‘Pruyn, my boy, it’s impossible for you to get over there in safety. You haven’t one chance in ten thousand; but then you know, my boy, the rebels don’t give quarter, and they will be in here in less than two minutes; so, if you don't get there, you’re done for anyway. So here goes.’ I started; I did not run, mother—I never will do that; but I walked, and it did seem to me I never should reach the woods.

But he did reach them—and without a scratch. As the rebels took possession of the bivouac, they began looting it. This might explain why no Confederate soldier attempted to kill or capture Pruyn as he made his slow-paced retreat. As Couch’s division took up the fight at the abatis, Pruyn went looking for his comrades. Not many could be found. The retreat from Casey’s redoubt had happened so messily that none of the regiments in the division could be reformed that night. Pruyn wrote, “Our regiment was all gone in—broken and scattered. I met all that was left of it that night; fragments that the Colonel had collected together and marched about two miles to the rear.” Total losses in the 96^th New York amounted to fifty-eight: eleven enlisted men killed or mortally wounded, twenty-seven officers and men wounded, and twenty officers and enlisted men missing or captured.

This illustration depicts the Confederate attack against Casey's Redoubt. This view is from the Confederate line, looking east. The redoubt and twin houses are visible in the left middle-distance. The woods where the white flag appeared are in the right background. The woods where Lt. Pruyn walked in retreat are in the far background.

Pruyn survived the Battle of Seven Pines without a scratch, even though he had been in the thick of it. To me, it seems as if his fate had been determined by two assumptions he held concerning the nature of his enemy: 1) he believed the rebels were known for their dirty tricks, and 2) he believed the rebels didn’t take prisoners. The former conjecture caused Pruyn to order his men to fire on the white flag and the latter conjecture convinced Pruyn not to surrender.

It’s not really the purpose of this post to analyze from where these assumptions came. It’s enough to say that more men in his regiment would have fallen if Pruyn hadn’t ordered them to fire on that white flag. Clearly, Pruyn had good instincts in combat, enough to convince him to cast aside his soft-heartedness and be a little more vicious than his mother would have wanted him to be.