Outgunned

General Robert E. Lee hoped that a crossfire of Confederate artillery directed against the crest of Malvern Hill might silence the powerful array of Union guns and clear the way for an infantry charge. Generals Longstreet and Jackson established clusters of cannon at two places on opposite ends of the Confederate line, and this ridge was one of those positions. Parts of several Virginia batteries fought here, usually with no more than six cannon in place at any one time, about 950 yards from the line of Federal guns on Malvern Hill. These small groups of artillery proved no match for the more powerful and accurate Union pieces, and by twilight the edge of the field was littered with dead horses and men. The Confederates' failure to mass their artillery at any one place, together with the superior range and precision of the Union guns, ensured the failure of Lee's plan. Capt. Greenlee Davidson of the Letcher Artillery recalled that the battery was saved from utter destruction only by loading the guns low down on the slope and running them up near enough to the crest to fire before recoil carried them back into shelter. The Purcell Battery, composed mostly of men from Richmond and commanded by Willy Pegram, was one of the Virginia units that absorbed terrific punishment here; only days after his twenty-first birthday, Pegram saw three of his four cannon disabled, twenty horses killed, and twenty men injured, and by the end of the battle he was helping operate the one remaining gun himself.

Sandston, Virginia · United States