The battle was fought by Sickles’s Federal Third Corps, that heroically contested every inch of the ground.
It was at the close of the battle that General Hancock distinguished himself by holding his position in and about the forts with five regiments and two batteries against the assault of the Fifth North Carolina and Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiments, and it was on this field that he won the title of “The Superb,” given to him by McClellan in his report.
The object of the battle on the part of the Confederates was to gain time to haul their trains to places of safety. The effect besides was to call two of the Federal divisions from their flanking move to support the battle, thereby greatly crippling their expedition.
General McClellan was at Yorktown during most of the day to see several of the divisions of his army aboard the transports for his proposed flanking and rear move up York River. Upon receiving advice that the Williamsburg engagement was serious and unsatisfactory, he hastened to the battle with the divisions of Sedgwick and Richardson, which he had expected to send up the river.
There were about nine thousand Confederates and twelve thousand Union troops engaged. The Confederate casualties were 1565; the Federal casualties, 2288. Johnston had anticipated McClellan’s move up the York River, and considered it very important to cripple or break it up. Therein he used the divisions of Longstreet, Magruder, D. R. Jones, McLaws, G. W. Smith, and D. H. Hill.
There was a tremendous downpour of rain the night before the battle, flooding thoroughfares, by-ways, woodlands, and fields so that many of the Confederate trains were unable next day to move out of the bogs that were developed during the night.
General Hooker’s division of the Third Corps, on the Federal side, came to the open on the Hampton road, and engaged by regiments,--the First Massachusetts on the left, the Second New Hampshire on the right. After the advance of his infantry in the slashes, General Hooker, with the Eleventh Massachusetts and Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania, cleared the way for communication with the troops on the Yorktown road and ordered Webber’s six-gun battery into action. As it burst from the woods through which it had come, the Confederate infantry and every gun in reach opened upon it a fire so destructive that it was unmanned before it came into practice. New Federal troops immediately came to the rescue, and the guns reopened fire. Osborn’s and Bramhall’s batteries joined in, and the two poured an unceasing fire into the Confederate troops about the fort and redoubts. The Fifth New Jersey Regiment was added to the battery guard, and the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth were deployed on the left in the woodland. The brigades of R. H. Anderson, Wilcox, Pryor, A. P. Hill, and Pickett were taking care of the Confederate side.