To secure the crossing at Jones's bridge, Torbert had pushed Devin's
brigade out on the Long Bridge road, on the side of the Chickahominy
where, on the morning of the 23d, he was attacked by Chambliss's
brigade of W. H. F. Lee's division. Devin was driven in some little
distance, but being reinforced by Getty with six companies of colored
troops, he quickly turned the tables on Chambliss and re-established
his picket-posts. From this affair I learned that Chambliss's brigade
was the advance of the Confederate cavalry corps, while Hampton
discovered from it that we were already in possession of the Jones's
bridge crossing of the Chickahominy; and as he was too late to
challenge our passage of the stream at this point he contented
himself with taking up a position that night so as to cover the roads
leading from Long Bridge to Westover, with the purpose of preventing
the trains from following the river road to the pontoon-bridge at
Deep Bottom.
My instructions required me to cross the trains over the James River
on this pontoon-bridge if practicable, and to reach it I should be
obliged to march through Charles City Court House, and then by
Harrison's Landing and Malvern Hill, the latter point being held by
the enemy. In fact, he held all the ground between Long Bridge on
the Chickahominy and the pontoon-bridge except the Tete de pont at
the crossing.
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