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| J. Bankhead Magruder. |
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patriotic man, and was willing to serve the cause in any capacity.
He came from the command of the principal rendezvous for Massachusetts troops, at Fort Warren, and entered upon his duties, as the leader of the forces at Camp Hamilton, on the 4th of June.
The forced inaction of the troops at Fortress Monroe, and the threatening aspect of affairs at Newport-Newce, which Greble was rendering impregnable, made the armed insurgents on the Peninsula, who were commanded by Colonel J. Bankhead Magruder1 (who had abandoned his flag), bold, active, and vigilant.
Their principal rendezvous was Yorktown, which they were fortifying, and from which they came down the Peninsula, to impress the slaves of men who had fled from their farms into service on the military works, to force Union residents into their ranks, and on some occasions to attack the Union pickets.
Major Winthrop, Butler's aid and military secretary, whose whole soul was alive with zeal in the cause he had espoused, was continually on the alert, and he soon learned from a “contraband,” named George Scott, that the insurgents had fortified outposts at Great and Little Bethel (the names of two churches), on the road between Yorktown and Hampton, and only a few miles from the latter place.
With Scott as guide, Winthrop reconnoitered these positions, and was satisfied that Magruder was preparing to attempt the seizure of Newport-Newce and Hampton, and confine Butler to Fortress Monroe.
The latter resolved upon a countervailing movement, by an attack upon these outposts by troops moving at midnight in two columns, one from Fortress Monroe and the other from Newport-Newce.
Among Major Winthrop's papers was found a rough draft of the details of the plan, in his own handwriting, which the biographer of Butler says was “the joint production of the General and his Secretary,” and which “was substantially adopted, and orders in accordance therewith were issued.”
2
At noon on Sunday, the 9th of June, General Peirce received a note from General Butler, written with a pencil on the back of an address card, summoning him to Fortress Monroe.
Peirce was too ill to ride on horseback, and was taken by water in a small boat.
There he found a plan minutely arranged for an attack upon the insurgents at the two Bethels, on the Yorktown
1 Magruder, who became a “Confederate general,” was an infamous character. He was a lieutenant-colonel of the artillery in the National Army, and, according to a late writer, professed loyalty until he was ready to abandon his flag. “Mr. Lincoln,” he said to the President, at the White House, at the.middle of April, “every one else may desert you, but I never will.” The President thanked him, and two days afterward, having done all in his power to corrupt the troops in Washington City, he fled and joined the insurgents. See Greeley's American Conflict, i. 506.
2 Parton's Butler in New Orleans, page 142. In that plan Winthrop put down, among other items, the following:--“George Scott to have a shooting-iron.” --“So,” says Parton, “the first suggestion of arming a black man in this war came from Theodore Winthrop. George Scott had a shooting-iron.” In one of his last letters to a friend, Winthrop wrote:--“If I come back safe, I will send you my notes of the plan of attack, J)art made up from the General's hints, part my own fancies.”
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