Sumner, with 30,000 men, had also come up early on the 5th, but had sat quietly down across the Yorktown road, just out of sight and range. Although in command—for McClellan seems to have considered that the position for the general-in-chief on a pursuit was fifteen miles in rear, and had remained below Yorktown[1]—he took no part in what was going on around him; and though importuned for aid by both Hooker and Kearney, who were "almost routed," he declined to part with a man; and when Hancock, finding the empty redoubt on the left, ventured into it, he actually commanded him to return. In fact, he seems to have forgotten that he was in pursuit of what was described as a flying and demoralized enemy, and though himself in command, and holding the van, his chief object on finding the foe seems to have been to let him well alone.
Not so Hancock, one of his subordinates, who was made of sterner stuff, and who had other views of the duties of pursuers of a flying foe; for on the morning of the 5th, between 10 and 11 o'clock, leaving Sumner at Whittaker's, full half a mile or more from the nearest Confederate line, he takes his own brigade and part of Naglee's—five regiments—and ten guns, in all probably over 4,000 men, and learning that one of the redoubts on the extreme left of the Confederate line was unoccupied, he crosses Saunders' pond and marches into it, and then, in the language of the Comte de Paris, "seeing no enemy, he fearlessly proceeded to march into the next." But on approaching it, he perceives Bratton, with part of his Sixth South Carolina, preparing to oppose him, whereupon, although in far greater force, he halts, falls back, and calls for aid. But Sumner seems to have been in no mood to detain the "flying foe," and orders Hancock to retire. The latter, well knowing the lucky prize he had found, determined to stay; so falling back from the "fearless advance," spoken of by the Comte de Paris, to the redoubt he first occupied, he makes his dispositions for a stand, and Bratton, with commendable care, that might well have been imitated that day by others of higher rank, extends a line of pickets from his main body across Hancock's front and into the woods beyond. The latter gets his guns into battery, and occasionally throws a chance shot or shell here and there at a venture, but with but little damage, if any. Thus the day wore on. Towards evening, this artillery fire becoming somewhat annoying to Fort Ma-
- ↑ Evidence of Governor Sprague and others before Congressional Committee on Conduct of War.
