TWO DAYS OF BATTLE AT SEVEN PINES.
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ing toward Fair Oaks. . . . Immediately engaged. . . . Here Colonel Rippey and all
his field-officers fell, and in twenty minutes the enemy had passed over the [Nine-mile] roadleading to my center, cutting off the advance at Fair Oaks.”
In reference to this affair General Keyes says:
“ Both regiments were badly cut up. . . . Casualties in Rippey’s amount to 263, and are
heavier than in any other regiment in Couch ’s division.”
He adds that, after Conch was thrown hack, Neill’s regiment “ took partin the hard fighting which closed the day near the Seven Pines,” but Rippey’sregiment “ withdrew in detachments, some of which came again into actionnear my headquarters.”
So far, the fighting done by the Federal troops for the safety of theirsecond line of defense was not so effective as the resistance made by Casey ’sdivision at the first line. After the threeConfederate regiments had fought theirway across the Nine-mile road, not farsouth of Fair Oaks Station, they changeddirection and moved toward Seven Pines.
Leaving them for the present, attentionwill be called to the state of affairs in thevicinity of the redoubt in Casey ’s cap-tured line.
When General Hill ordered the twoSouth Carolina regiments to join the 27t.hGeorgia and “ scour along the railroad andNine-mile road, and thus get in rear ofthe enemy,” he directed General R. H.
Anderson, with the other portion of hisbrigade, to attack the Federals in a woodnorth, and within cannon-range of theredoubt. This wood was then occupied bytwo regiments and some companies of Naglee’s brigade that had been, pre-vious to the commencement of the action, supporting the picket-line. Inreference to the fighting at this point, General Naglee says in his officialreport:
“ The Confederates opened a most destructive cross-fire upon them from the pieces near theredoubt that had not been spiked, and this, with the [musketry] fire from their immediate front,was no longer to be endured, and they [his men] were withdrawn and marched down the Nine-mile road and placed in position in rear of this road, about three hundred yards from the SevenPines.”
Whilst these operations were in progress on Hill’s left, the state of affairsat the second abatis, just in front of Seven Pines, and in the woods southand east of the redoubt had materially changed against the Confederates, whowere first checked at the second abatis, and on the right were forced back tothe redoubt. Previous to this the brigades of Rodes, Garland, and G. B.Anderson were engaged at the second abatis, and General Hill, having“ resolved to drive ” the Federals out of the woods on the south of the road,
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