Nearly 50 years after the fact, the legacy of the Battle of Seven Pines still caused one old Union veteran’s blood to boil. ‘No large body of troops engaged in the Civil War was treated with greater injustice than [Brig. Gen. Silas] Casey’s division of the 4th Army Corps, attached to the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsular campaign…,’ wrote Corporal Luther S. Dickey, who as a member of the 103rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Casey’s division had fought at Seven Pines. ‘No battle of the Civil War has been more misrepresented than the battle of [Seven Pines]…yet, when the final word is written of the battles between the North and the South, the battle which occurred May 31, 1862, will head the list of the decisive contests of the Civil War, and the division which was made the scapegoat for the [fight] will receive credit for doing more to frustrate the plans of the Confederate commander than any other division engaged in the battle.’

As Dickey bemoaned, the Battle of Seven Pines is often viewed as a relatively small affair, fought by only a few thousand troops with no decisive results. That contest, however, was the first great battle between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. No other battle was fought so close to the Confederate capital, and if Casey’s division had not fought as well as it did under the circumstances, or if the Confederate attack plan had not misfired, at least one or two corps of the Army of the Potomac would have been destroyed.

Casey’s division was in Maj. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes’ IV Corps, Army of the Potomac, and consisted of three brigades of infantry and one battalion of artillery. The 1st Brigade, led by Brig. Gen. Henry M. Naglee, consisted of the 52nd and 104th Pennsylvania Infantry, the 56th and 100th New York Infantry regiments and the 11th Maine Infantry. The 2nd Brigade, commanded by Brig. Gen. Henry W. Wessells, contained the 85th, 101st and 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry regiments and the 96th New York. Brigadier General Innis N. Palmer led the regiments of the third and final brigade, the Empire State’s 81st, 85th, 92nd and 98th Infantry regiments. Colonel Guilford D. Bailey, one of the division’s few Regulars, was in charge of Casey’s artillery battalion. Bailey’s charges were four spanking-new New York batteries: A and H, 1st New York Light Artillery, and the 7th and 8th, New York Independent Light Artillery.

The 103rd Pennsylvania was representative of the caliber of troops in the division. In the fall of 1861, the regiment was assembled several miles northeast of Pittsburgh near the hamlet of Kittanning. It consisted of 10 companies of infantry whose men were recruited from mountainous western Pennsylvania counties. Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Lehman of the 62nd Pennsylvania, a unit that had been raised a few months before, became the colonel of the regiment. In late February, the regiment entrained for Harrisburg, the state capital, where it received its numeric designation and its colors, equipment and uniforms. On March 2, the 103rd moved out for Washington and Camp Lloyd, where they received the pitiful remnants of the Army’s weapons, including aged Austrian muskets that proved to be bulky and inaccurate.

Casey was in charge of Camp Lloyd and was one of the most seasoned officers from the Old Army. The 54-year-old Rhode Islander and West Point graduate was a decorated veteran of both the Seminole and Mexican wars, and in 1855 was given command of the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment. When the Civil War broke out, Casey was a colonel and one of the most senior officers in the Army. Yet other officers of lesser experience and ability were promoted before him. When Casey finally did receive his star, on the last day of August 1861, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan delegated to him the Olympian task of establishing several’schools of the soldier’ to train the incoming recruits. Casey had published a well-received infantry drill manual before the war, and he was the logical choice to organize such a system.

Casey’s important work, however, seemed to go unnoticed. When Lincoln chose the four corps commanders for McClellan’s newly constituted Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1862, Casey remained in charge of the training camp that indoctrinated new troops, like the men from the recently arrived 103rd Pennsylvania. It was not until March 13 that General McClellan finally issued orders for the men currently under Casey’s care to be formally organized into a division and be readied for immediate movement to the field. On March 28, the ‘rawest troops of the army,’ as described by Corporal Dickey, marched out of their training camp. They were, according to one veteran, ‘jubilant and light hearted’ as they marched toward Alexandria. Since they started late in the day, it was not until well after midnight that the volunteers reached their prescribed destination. As they bedded down for the night, they had to endure a snowstorm, and many became sick from exposure.

On March 31, the division shipped out for Fortress Monroe, Va., at the eastern tip of the peninsula formed by the York and James rivers, landing on April 3. There it was directed to march west about six miles, a little beyond Newport News, where it established Camp Casey.

On April 16, camp was broken, and the division started its march up the peninsula. After a few days, Confederates dug in along the Warwick River stopped the advance cold. The strong line of earthworks was anchored on Yorktown and was known as the Yorktown Line. Over the next few weeks, as McClellan carefully marshaled his forces to disperse the Southerners, the men of Casey’s division were ordered to dig trenches and cut timber with inadequate tools, practice drill and engage in patrolling activities. In doing so they got into a few scattered skirmishes with the enemy. In a bit of bright news, the men did receive new shelter tents on April 18.

On the night of May 3 the Confederates abandoned the Yorktown Line and fell back toward Richmond. The next day Casey was directed to form up his men with only their arms and minimal equipment and move out in pursuit of the Rebels. The decision to leave the tents behind would soon plague the division. After crossing the abandoned enemy works, Casey’s tentless men, who also lacked overcoats and blankets, pushed on another seven miles and camped in a heavy rain. One veteran of that march, Captain John Donaghy of the 103rd Pennsylvania, remembered the especially harrowing experience: ‘It rained hard all night and the air was cold and the men were without tents, blankets or overcoats. Tired and sleepy as they were, they could only stand and take the rain. They leaned against trees or crowded together in large groups to keep warm. When they stood thus for awhile some would fall asleep supported on their feet by the others. When the majority of them were overcome by sleep the whole mass would lurch over and fall to the ground, only to gather themselves to renew the process.’ The next morning Casey wanted to send back for the packs and equipment, worrying that he had ‘lost a great many…men from that exposure, as they were obliged to lie down in the mud, exposed to the rain, without any protection whatever.’ But Brig. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner of the II Corps, McClellan’s left wing commander, overruled the division commander. Casey’s troops were ordered to continue pursuing the enemy.

On May 5, a rainy overcast day, the Federals bumped into the next Southern line, a series of redoubts east of Williamsburg that were anchored on Fort Magruder. A sharp one-day battle ensued, during which elements of the III and VI corps engaged a Confederate rear guard. Casey’s division, however, remained in reserve.

After the Confederates retreated the evening of May 5, the Union army continued to move up the peninsula, but at a very slow pace while McClellan brought up the forces he believed were needed to totally overwhelm the enemy. In the meantime, Casey’s soggy soldiers continued to suffer increased illness from their lack of shelter.

By the evening of May 17, Casey’s division was camped at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River, a tributary of the York River. There the men were finally reunited with their packs and were able to rest for two days. From White House, Casey’s division, the smallest and greenest of McClellan’s vast arsenal, was inexplicably ordered to lead the army’s advance on Richmond. On May 20, after a small clash with the Confederate rear guard, it reached the Chickahominy River at Bottom’s Bridge. The span had been partially destroyed, but Casey’s soldiers were able to repair it and cross over. Likewise, the Confederates had set afire the upstream railroad bridge, but the flames were extinguished, and some of the bluecoats used that span to cross the rain-swollen river. On May 25 Keyes’ corps advanced several miles along the Williamsburg Stage Road, which led to Richmond, to a defensible position a mile east of a crossroads called Seven Pines and dug in. That same day the two divisions of Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman’s III Corps took up positions two miles west of the Chickahominy and Heintzelman was given command of the Federal troops south of the river. On May 28, McClellan ordered Keyes to advance again, this time to hold Seven Pines in force. In accordance, Casey’s green troops marched to an advance position three-quarters of a mile west of the crossroads, while the IV Corps’ other division, Brig. Gen. Darius N. Couch’s, occupied Seven Pines.

Having established his troops in a large field that surrounded two identical houses, Casey deployed a picket line that covered the Williamsburg Stage Road. The ‘Twin Houses,’ as they were called, were situated 135 yards south of the road, in line with each other. The surrounding land had been under cultivation, and the open space extended west about 800 yards to a swampy forest filled with tangled undergrowth. While Casey’s pickets were posted near the foreboding woods, the Confederates of Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill’s division waited patiently about 200 yards farther west, concealed by the dense growth.

As soon as his brigades reached their assigned positions, Casey ordered fatigue details to begin at once to fortify the exposed position. His exhausted men erected an earthen redoubt, called Fort Casey, flanked by trenches that stretched out into the thick woods. He next had the men slash timber for two rows of abatis, one to their front, running parallel to the western wood line, and the other about 500 yards behind the fort.

Casey, meanwhile, protested his assigned position to Keyes. Five of the enemy’s seven known divisions were just a stone’s throw away, and most of the rest of the Federal army was deployed several miles to the north, safely behind the Chickahominy. The only other Union troops on the south side of the river were Couch’s division and Brig. Gens. Philip Kearny’s and Joseph Hooker’s divisions of the III Corps. If the Confederates attacked, Casey’s brigades, with their flanks in the air, could not possibly stop them.

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