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[67]
After about an hour's halt in the woods, the regiment marched back to its camp, where the men bivouacked for the night.
General McClellan at once dispatched all his cavalry and horse artillery in pursuit of the enemy, supporting them by a considerable body of infantry, and he ordered the fleet of gun boats up the York River.
‘I shall push the enemy to the wall,’ he declared in his official despatch, and acting in accordance with these energetic words, he rapidly embarked Franklin's Division of the Corps and other troops on transport and sent them up the York River to West Point, with a view of flanking the enemy on their retreat toward Richmond, and thus co-operating with the immediately pursuing force, already sent by land.
The defences the enemy had evacuated were reported by the engineers as ‘being very strong’ and the confusion that prevailed appeared to indicate a hasty retreat on the part of some of the troops, although the main body had begun to retire several days before the rear guard.
The fugitives left behind them fifty-two pieces of artillery, after spiking them, and a considerable amount of ammunition, camp equipage and stores of all kinds.
They also left behind torpedoes which had been, with a savage perversion of the rules of warfare, ingeniously constructed and so hidden on the roads, in the fortifications, in the houses, tents and streets, among the tempting baggage abandoned, as to explode on the touch of the unwary.
A telegraph operator stepped on one and was instantly killed; a man took a pitcher from a table in a house and a torpedo wrecked it and injured him; several others met death through that means.
Within a compass of ten square rods, 30 of these torpedoes were found.
They were 11-inch round shells, filled with powder of different grades, mixed.
Each had a quill fuse and above it a plunger, with a knob so constructed that a person walking along and stepping upon it brought the plunger down with sufficient force upon a cap beneath to cause it to explode.
The Confederate prisoners were set to work unearthing these diabolical machines and further injury was prevented.
On Monday at 9.00 A. M. the regiment began the march to
Salem Press. Co., Salem, Ma., 1906.
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