about to escape being run over at will by their pursuers."[1]
General Magruder had been ordered not to stop in Williamsburg at all. Gens. G. W. Smith and D. H. Hill were ordered to resume the march at 2 a. m. on the 5th, and Longstreet was to cover the trains. Accordingly, General Smith moved at the hour appointed, and General Hill’s infantry was just filing into the road to follow his trains when he was stopped by the news that a battle was imminent in the rear. His division spent most of the day on the campus of William and Mary college, waiting to see whether Longstreet would need help, for a heavy downpour of rain had fallen on the night of the 4th, flooding the low swampy road, and "part of the trains were stalled on the ground where they stood during the night."[2]
At daylight on the 5th, Anderson, of Longstreet’s corps, seeing the condition of things and believing that a struggle would be necessary to save the wagon trains, re-manned the redoubts on the right of Fort Magruder and as many on the left as the heavy rain permitted him to see. Two redoubts on the left were not seen, and perhaps could not have been occupied if seen, for that long line of works had been designed for an army to hold, not for a rear guard division fighting for time to save its stores.[3] These were the two redoubts afterward seized by Hancock, and were the scene of the Fifth North Carolina regiment s bloody fight.
Hooker attacked Longstreet manfully at 7 o’clock on
the 5th. However, as General Webb of the Federal
army chronicles, "he lost ground until Kearny came up" about 2 o’clock. Subsequently Couch arrived, but the three divisions never gained an inch from Longstreet’s
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