Never Eat a Dead Man’s Cake, Part 4; Or, “With the Exception of Casey’s Division . . .”

 

In the past several posts, I’ve been exploring the military career of Adjutant Charles E. Pruyn. You might think that, given his earnestness to serve in the War of the Rebellion—even persuading his reluctant mother to allow him to enlist—he would have stayed with his regiment for the full three years. But if you made that guess, you’d be incorrect. In fact, barely three weeks after his first battle, Adjutant Pruyn resigned his commission. A single phrase from one of George McClellan’s telegrams drove him out.

Here’s how it happened.

On the morning of June 2, 1862, the survivors of the 96^th New York returned to the battlefield at Seven Pines. They discovered that little remained of their old encampment. Their tents were riddled with holes from shot and shell and the ground was covered with shell craters and detritus. Nearly all their equipment and personal belongings had been pilfered by the rebels. Luckily, Adjutant Pruyn still had his trunk, which was inside one of the regimental wagons on the other side of Chickahominy River, but his knapsack and all his regimental papers were gone.

In the end, the Confederate attack had been a fizzle. Although the rebels had overrun the position at Casey’s redoubt, reinforcements from the 2^nd and 3^rd Corps had turned the tide. These troops arrived late in the day on May 31 and during the predawn hours of June 1. The Confederates made a series of attacks near Fair Oaks Station on the morning of June 1, but they could not dislodge the new Union line. In addition, the Confederate army commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph Johnston, received a wound from Union artillery near the close of the fighting on May 31. The Confederate army’s interim commander, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith, proved unwilling to continue the engagement after Johnston’s fall. He allowed the morning attacks on June 1, but after that, Smith called off any further offensive moves. With that, the rebels abandoned the ground they had taken on the 31^st. Since the Army of the Potomac had held its position, and also because none of the Confederacy’s tactical plans had been achieved, the Battle of Seven Pines could only be called a Union victory.

Still, that victory had come at high cost. The two-day engagement—which sprawled across Casey’s redoubt, the Seven Pines Crossroads, and Fair Oaks Station—had cost the Army of the Potomac 5,031 casualties. Casey’s division had suffered some of the heaviest losses. It taken over 6,000 men into the fight and it reported a loss of 1,433.

Brig. Gen. Silas Casey

Even though it had formed the Army of the Potomac’s first line, and rightly ought to have been praised for its plucky defense, Casey’s Division suffered a public relations nightmare. Neither the army commander nor the public at large were willing to award Casey’s men any credit for their defense of the Williamsburg Stage Road. It all began with a series of poorly-worded messages issued by the army’s Left Wing commander, Brig. Gen. Samuel Heintzelman. When interpreted broadly, these messages seemed to disparage the fighting qualities of Casey’s troops. On May 31, Heintzelman was the overall commander of the troops on the south side of the Chickahominy, the 3^rd and 4^th Corps. The defense of the Williamsburg Stage Road fell under his jurisdiction. In the evening, after the Confederate attack, Heintzelman sent a series of panicked messages to the army commander, Maj. Gen. George McClellan, complaining that Casey’s troops could not be relied upon to hold the line. At 9:15 P.M., May 31, Heintzelman wrote McClellan that, “I soon met the fugitives of Casey’s Division and I learned that most of them had given way.” Forty-five minutes later, he sent another message, saying that, “Gen. Casey’s Division cannot, however be relied upon for any purpose whatever.”

Surely, Heintzelman intended these messages to inform McClellan that he needed a sizeable number of reinforcements to patch the breach at Seven Pines because, as things stood, he could not rally Casey’s division. It had sustained heavy damage during the afternoon engagement—a point that Heintzelman conveniently forgot to mention in his dispatches. Taken together, Heintzelman’s messages had a subtle effect on McClellan, who took them to mean that Casey’s division was full of poor fighters. Reading between the lines, McClellan believed that Heintzelman was insinuating that Casey’s men had unnecessarily given way. At midnight, after the Union line had been shored up by the 2^nd and 3^rd Corps, McClellan telegraphed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, informing him that, “Casey’s Division was in [the] first line [and] gave way unaccountably & discreditably. This caused a temporary confusion during which some guns & baggage were lost. . . . Our loss is heavy, but that of the enemy must be enormous. With the exception of Casey’s Division our men behaved splendidly.”

McClellan’s message was unfair. Casey’s division had held its position for almost four hours before giving way to superior numbers. To his credit, McClellan retracted his comment after he received the action reports from the 4^th Corps, but that retraction occurred weeks later. Unfortunately, McClellan’s message to Stanton became national news almost immediately. Somehow, the dispatch got leaked to the press. By the end of the week, all the major newspapers across the U.S. were sharing it. There, in big print, the nation learned McClellan’s opinion. Every unit in the Army of the Potomac had behaved well in the recent fight, he said, “with the exception of Casey’s Division.”

Here's an example of the leaked dispatch, reprinted in a Pennsylvania newspaper.

Naturally, the soldiers of Casey’s division took umbrage at McClellan’s ridicule. Adjutant Pruyn was vexed by it. From his perspective, it appeared as if his regiment had fought heroically, against overwhelming odds, and had done so in an exposed position, holding on until it became impossible to defend it any longer. Writing to his mother, Pruyn vented his bitter opinions. Here’s what he said:

But now that it is all over, we are told by Gen. McClellan in his dispatch that ‘the troops all did nobly, except Casey’s Division.’ Or, in other words, because six thousand men did not beat back fifty thousand, they are cowards. This makes us all sick of fighting. To stand in front of such a superior force, and fight as we know we did, and then be branded as cowards, is certainly too much to bear. And then to have it go before the world over McClellan’s signature, of course it will be believed, and we shall be sneered at forever. Why it would have been far better if we had not been in the fight at all, for then nothing would have been said about us. Oh, it does seem to me I can’t get over this! If you see me coming home soon, don’t be surprised. But enough of it. It makes me so indignant I don't want to think of it—if I can help it.

As the month dragged on, the fury of being labeled a coward by General McClellan seemed to have overtaken Pruyn. He could not let go of that phrase: “with the exception of Casey’s Division.” In the middle of June, he wrote to friends in Albany, remarking:

Now every one [in our regiment] is utterly disheartened. How much a few words from one in authority can do. Those words of McClellan’s so unjustly delivered—‘The men all done splendidly except Casey’s Division’—this is what has broken us down. For whatever others have done, the Ninety-sixth New York fought as well as men could fight, and only left the field when the enemy was on three sides of them, and then retired with their faces to the foe, loading and firing as they walked, for they did not run. If the public need proof of what we did, we can give the best of proof—our list of killed and wounded—one man out of every four actually on the field—did any other regiment do this? Our division hardly six thousand strong, held in check more than thirty thousand rebels. Did any other division do this? Oh, is it not hard after all this to be branded as cowards?

In the end, it became too much for him. Pruyn wanted to leave the army as soon as possible. As it happened, he had a legitimate excuse. His father had died only four months earlier, on February 18, leaving his mother widowed. Pruyn felt a deep responsibility to see to her safety and comfort. When he learned of his father’s death, he offered to resign his commission and return home immediately. His mother refused to allow this. She recalled how intent he had been to serve in the army. She would have felt guilty if her son gave up his commission on her account. As Pruyn’s biographer later claimed, “finding her willing to sacrifice every personal consideration to her country’s good, he decided that the claims of his country were paramount.”

Adjutant Charlie Pruyn

But Adjutant Pruyn’s opinion seemed to change after McClellan’s disparagement of Casey’s division hit the press. He could not bring himself to sacrifice his life for a general who did not respect the sacrifice already made by his comrades. Although McClellan eventually retracted his comments, it was too late to keep Pruyn in the field. He approached his regimental commander, Colonel James Fairman, explaining his need to return home to get his family’s affairs in order. With that, Colonel Fairman drafted orders, accepting Pruyn’s resignation. Clearly, Fairman was sorry to see his young adjutant leave:

Camp Ninety-sixth Regiment N. Y. S. Volunteers, Before Richmond, June 17, 1862.

Lieutenant Charles E. Pruyn:

Dear Sir—I herewith transmit your honorable discharge from the service of the United States, and in so doing would express my unfeigned regret at the loss of your companionship and service as a man and officer. I cheerfully give my attestation to your courage and devotion as a soldier of the Union, to which I was witness in the terrific battle of Fair Oaks, before Richmond, May 31^st. And I shall ever remember you with peculiar interest as a soldier, who stood by my side while one out of four was killed or wounded, and one out of three of our regiment was lost in battle. With cordial wishes for your future success, I am truly yours, &c.,

James Fairman, Col. 96^th Reg’t N.Y.S. Vols.

The next day, Pruyn boarded a transport at White House Landing, ready to begin the long journey back to Albany. The ship had barely pulled away from the dock when Pruyn experienced a tinge of regret. Only moments after becoming a civilian, knew he had made a mistake.