Savage's Station and White Oak Swamp

The illustration is of the so-called Battle of White Oak Swamp, on this date in 1862. A division led by Brigadier-General William F. "Baldy" Smith, was surprised by a Confederate artillery barrage, and then, mostly using its own artillery, helped hold off a half-hearted attack by Confederates under Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. This kept Jackson's troops from joining the simultaneous Battle of Glendale two miles father south. (Three days earlier, on June 27, in another artillery engagement, Smith's division had success at the Battle of Garnett's Hill while the larger Battle of Gaines Mill took place.)

Smith's division was half of the Union rearguard retreating southeast from the Richmond area.

 The previous day, June 29, it had fought fiercely at Savage's Station. According to the National Park Service's account of that battle, one of Smith's regiments, the 5th Vermont, "lost 206 men, more than half its strength, in 20 minutes. Among the fallen were five Cummings brothers, one of their cousins and their brother-in-law. Six of the seven men were killed; only the eldest brother, Henry Cummings, survived."

This was all toward the end of the Seven Days Battles, and of the Peninsula Campaign of Union commander George McClellan. The Union army continued its retreat to Malvern Hill, where it won a defensive victory on July 1. But the retreat continued to Harrison's Landing on the James River, from where the army was evacuated by boat in August. So the Seven Days Battles under the Army of Northern Virginia's new commander, Robert E. Lee, amounted to a strategic victory for the Confederacy. Yet Confederate losses were heavier than Union, which even at this relatively early point in the war the Rebels could ill afford.

Smith's career was still on the upswing then, and would stay that way through the Battle of Antietam. In 1863 he was at first on the outs, then back in action until running into trouble with Grant in 1864.