Existing comment:
Fierce Fighting at Glendale:
"Whole teams of horses hitched to the caissons fell dead in their harness. Others, wounded, plunging about in their mad agony, trampled under foot the wounded ... The clash of arms, the sulphurous smoke and fire, the almost unearthly moans of the wounded horses, pleading in their unknown language for mercy at man's hand, the shriek of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the shouts of officers and men... combined to make a hell."
-- Edmund D. Patterson, 9th Alabama Infantry
After a tension-filled day of maneuvering and pursuit, the Battle of Glendale involved only a fraction of the two armies. They fought on both sides of the Long Bridge Road, between 40,000 and 50,000 men struggling across a narrow front that stretched less than a mile. Their collision became memorable for its concentrated intensity.
Surging across the Whitlock and Sykes farms in frontal assaults, Confederate divisions commanded by James Longstreet and A.P. Hill endured enormous losses from a roaring line of Union cannon. Grim men fought hand-to-hand around those guns, killing each other with bayonets. Each side enjoyed brief periods of momentum and success. Nearly 7,000 men fell killed and wounded during the battle.
Although Lee's men captured more than a dozen cannon and controlled the battlefield, they failed to inflict a serious defeat on the Federal army. The primary line of retreat lay open, and McClellan's men marched along it that night, heading toward Malvern Hill and the James River.
Aggressive Confederates finally secured the ground behind the Union cannon. But a second line of artillery, combined with reinforcing infantry and the approach of sunset, prevented them from achieving their goal of seizing the road.
"Men of both armies fell at times together, they lay dead by the side of or across the dead battery horses, or being helplessly wounded were trodden upon by their comrades..."
-- Bates Alexander, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves |