William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[130] up to the time when the Confederate commander assumed the initiative on the 31st, no provision was made for the crossing of the right wing, and the re-enforcement of that wing by the left involved a detour of twenty-three miles,— a distance quite too great for the possibility of re-enforcement in the fierce emergency of battle. Materials for three bridges¹ to be used in the passage of the right wing were indeed prepared, and by the 28th of May² these bridges were all ready to be laid. But, meantime, they were not laid, and the two wings were suffered to remain separated by the Chickahominy, and without adequate means of communication.

The Chickahominy rises in the highlands northwest of Richmond, and enveloping it on the north and east, empties into the James many miles below that city, and after describing around it almost the quadrant of a circle. In itself this river does not form any considerable barrier to the advance of an army; but with its accessories it constitutes one of the most formidable military obstacles imaginable. The stream flows through a belt of heavily timbered swamp. The tops of the trees rise just about to the level of the crests of the highlands bordering the bottom, thus perfectly screening from view the bottom-lands and slopes of the highlands on the enemy's side. Through this belt of swamp the stream flows sometimes in a single channel, more frequently divided into several, and when but a foot or two above its summer level, overspreads the whole swamp. The bottom-lands between the swamp and the highlands, in width from three-quarters of a mile to a mile and a quarter, are little elevated at their margin above the swamp, so that a rise of the stream by a