Savage’s Station was the name of a depot on the Richmond and York River Railroad, deriving its name from the owner of the plantation, near whose grounds it was located, and whose mansion stood on a slight elevation on the northerly side of the track. On the opposite side was a large field, skirted on three sides by a heavy growth of pine timber, along the easterly edge of which ran a road. Mr. Savage’s house, and the grounds about it, had been used as a hospital and hospital camp, and at this time there were lying in the house and the numerous tents about it, several hundred of our wounded and sick. Such of these unfortunate ones as could not walk were later in the day abandoned, and captured by the enemy.
Near this place, as also at Fair Oaks Station, a mile farther towards Richmond, were vast quantities of army supplies, which could not be moved. The work of destroying these stores began about noon. Enormous fires were kindled, and into them were thrown boxes of hard bread, bales of clothing, cases of shoes, blankets, fragments of cars, tents, hospital stores, barrels of whiskey, and turpentine. The whole combined made a fire covering an area of nearly two acres. When the flames, mounting above the tops of the trees, were roaring and crackling with intense fury, the workmen, blackened with smoke and wild with the excitement which a vast conflagration always creates, began to pitch into the burning mass kegs of powder and boxes of ammunition. The latter proved a dangerous experiment, and was not repeated. “This destruction of stores,” says the Count of Paris, “was a sort of holocaust offered to the god of war.” While this was taking place, the troops were hurrying to and fro, taking up the various positions assigned them on the hill and the long plain at its foot, preparing to meet the enemy, who was momentarily expected. The grandeur and awfulness of these scenes cannot be adequately portrayed by language. An army of forty thousand men were mustering for battle; the rumbling of the artillery, as it went from point to point over the field, the excited commands of hundreds of officers, the neighing of horses, the roar of the flames, and the shouts of the men, made up the wildest of all the wild scenes of war. The noise and tumult were, however, of short duration; it was not long before everything had changed. By two o’clock, the lines were formed, the artillery had unlimbered and taken position, and then could have been seen, under the cloudless sky of that June day, the corps of Heintzleman, Franklin, and Sumner, with their numerous starry flags, quietly and calmly waiting for the storm of battle to burst upon them.