A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg, Volume One: From the Crossing of the James to the Crater 1469638576, 9781469638577

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A CAMPAIGN OF

GIANTS The BATTLE for PETERSBURG

CIVIL WAR AMERICA Peter S. Carmichael, Caroline E. Janney, and Aaron Sheehan-­Dean, editors This landmark series interprets broadly the history and culture of the Civil War era through the long nineteenth century and beyond. Drawing on diverse approaches and methods, the series publishes historical works that explore all aspects of the war, biographies of leading commanders, and tactical and campaign studies, along with select editions of primary sources. Together, these books shed new light on an era that remains central to our understanding of American and world history.

A CAMPAIGN OF

GIANTS The BATTLE for PETERSBURG

VOLUME ONE

From the Crossing of the James to the Crater

A. WILSON GREENE The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill

© 2018 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Designed by Jamison Cockerham Set in Arno, Brothers, Fell DW Pica, Ashwood Extra Bold, Scala Sans by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Cover photographs: Petersburg, Virginia, ca. 1863 (background); Gen. Robert E. Lee, 1864 (left); Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, ca. 1865 (right), all courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection, Washington, D.C. Library of Congress Cataloging-­i n-­Publication Data Names: Greene, A. Wilson, author. Title: A campaign of giants : the battle for Petersburg / A. Wilson Greene. Other titles: Battle for Petersburg | Civil War America (Series) Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2018]– | Series: Civil War America Contents: Volume 1. From the crossing of the James to the Crater | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017053873| ISBN 9781469638577 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469638584 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Petersburg (Va.)—History—Siege, 1864–1865. | Petersburg Crater, Battle of, Va., 1864. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865— Campaigns. | Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. Classification: LCC E476.93 .G73 2018 | DDC 973.7/37—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053873

For Cornelia Hoffman, Donald Chapman, James P. Jones, T. Harry Williams, and especially William J. Cooper Jr., my teachers

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Contents

Foreword by Gary W. Gallagher xi Preface xiii

1 War at Our Own Doors 1



2 Our Hearts Were Filled with New Hope: Movement to Combat 42



3 My Best Achievement: June 15, 1864 82



4 More Hard Fighting and Many More Lives Must Be Lost: June 16–17, 1864 124



5 We Have Done All That It Is Possible for Men to Do and Must Be Resigned to the Result: June 18, 1864 170



6 Our Work Here Progresses Slowly: Grant’s Second Offensive 213



7 We Were Fortunate to Get Back at All: From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station 257



8 The Most Disagreeable Human Habitation Left upon This Sin-­Stricken Earth: Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864 304



9 Strangled in Dust and Scorched in the Sun: Army Operations, Late June to Mid-­July 332



10 I Have Accomplished One of the Great Things of This War: Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom 373



11 This Day Was the Jubilee of Fiends in Human Shape, and without Souls: The Union Attacks on July 30 419



12 A Perfect Hell of Blood: The Confederates Regain the Crater 467

Acknowledgments 517 Notes 521 Bibliography 629 Index 679

Maps

Battle of Old Men and Young Boys, June 9, 1864 3 Bermuda Hundred Campaign 8 Overland Campaign 17 City of Petersburg 34 March to the James 47 Battle of Baylor’s Farm, June 15, 1864 87 Smith’s Attack, June 15, 1864 102 Bermuda Hundred, June 16, 1864 127 Evening Combat, June 16, 1864 140 Potter’s Attack, Morning, June 17, 1864 150 Willcox’s Attack, Afternoon, June 17, 1864 159 Ledlie’s Attack, Evening, June 17, 1864 165 Morning Offensive, June 18, 1864 179 Fifth Corps Attack, Afternoon, June 18, 1864 193 Attack of the First Maine Heavy Artillery, June 18, 1864 203 Ninth Corps Attack, Evening, June 18, 1864 207 Corps Movements, June 21, 1864 231 Jerusalem Plank Road, June 22, 1864 237 Grant’s Second Offensive, June 23, 1864 251

Union Cavalry Actions, June 13–25, 1864 260 Cavalry Actions North of the James, June 20–25, 1864 264 Wilson-­Kautz Raid 276 Battle of the Grove, June 23, 1864 279 Battle of Staunton River Bridge, June 25, 1864 286 Wilson-­Kautz Raid, June 28–29, 1864 293 Pegram’s Salient and Potter’s Horseshoe 376 First Deep Bottom, July 26–27, 1864 403 First Deep Bottom, July 28, 1864 410 The Federal Attack Plan, July 30, 1864 427 The Crater, Positions Prior to Attack, July 30, 1864 430 The Crater, First Attack, July 30, 1864 440 The Crater, Second Attack, July 30, 1864 458 First Confederate Counterattacks, 9:00–11:​​00 a.m., July 30, 1864 472 Second Confederate Counterattack, Afternoon, July 30, 1864 497

Foreword

The Petersburg Campaign extended from the early summer of 1864 into the spring of 1865. By far the longest and most complex military operation of the Civil War, it featured each side’s most famous and accomplished general, produced scores of thousands of casualties, closed with the premier Confederate army in full retreat and the Rebel capital under Union control, and set up the climactic surrender at Appomattox just a week later. Most often treated as an example of two armies locked in a grinding siege (some authors argue that it anticipated the stalemate on the Western Front in World War I), the campaign in fact featured complex maneuvering and a number of individual battles as well as the creation of the most sophisticated systems of fieldworks and fortifications to that point in United States history. Among all major operations of the Civil War, only Petersburg has lacked a modern, comprehensive scholarly study. Indeed, campaigns such as Antietam, Vicksburg, Shiloh, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and Chancellorsville continue to inspire numerous expansive treatments—never mind Gettysburg, which has spawned a literature of several thousand items that offers detailed discussions of almost every phase of the fighting and every officer of any significance. Why has Petersburg remained relatively understudied? The obvious answer, and almost certainly the correct one, is that scholars have been intimidated by the daunting prospect of doing justice to an event that extended across nearly 300 days, involved four armies, and included ancillary cavalry operations that ranged far from the besieged city. Various historians have examined parts of the overall story, but none has undertaken a full operational treatment. The existing titles, which include a number of very fine ones, thus help readers understand pieces of the campaign but collectively do not convey a clear picture of the whole. Many general histories of the Civil War avoid any serious discussion of Petersburg altogether, leaving readers with a nebulous sense of military stasis between the forces of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee while operations overseen by William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, and other xi

Union generals played out in Georgia, Tennessee, the Shenandoah Valley, and the Carolinas between July 1864 and March 1865. A. Wilson Greene’s impressive analytical narrative, A Campaign of Giants, will fill this glaring gap in the military literature on the Civil War. This volume, the first of three projected in the study, takes readers through the end of July 1864, when the Union failure at the battle of the Crater foreclosed the possibility of a quick end to the drama at Petersburg. Greene’s mastery of the subject is abundantly evident, as is his ability, in the course of describing maneuvering and combat, to analyze commanders, engage long-­held interpretive conventions, and bring into the picture experiences of both common soldiers and civilians in Petersburg. Greene’s text, based on a thorough canvass of primary sources and an admirable command of secondary works, serves as a model of informed, evenhanded analysis of numerous topics that have prompted lively disagreement in the literature. Was Lee fooled by Grant’s movement across the James River during the second week of June? Who was responsible for the failed Union assaults against very badly outnumbered Confederates on June 15? How did Benjamin F. Butler retain command of the Army of the James despite obvious shortcomings? Did the decision not to use African American units in the first wave of attackers at the Crater make a difference? Greene’s arguments may not persuade all readers, but they are so well crafted, and based on such immersion in the sources, that they demand serious consideration. In addition to the quality of his research and analysis, Greene writes in a fashion accessible to both scholars and nonspecialists. This element of his work fits especially well with the Civil War America series’s goal of bringing fine scholarship to the broadest possible audience. Greene joins a distinguished group of historians—among them Harry W. Pfanz, Robert K. Krick, Earl J. Hess, and Peter Cozzens—who have contributed operational and tactical studies to the series. This volume and the two that follow will invite contemplation not only of the soldiers and officers who confronted one another at Petersburg but also, by extension, of the two societies that sent them into action and dealt with the uncertainty and cost of protracted military conflict. Gary W. Gallagher

xiiForeword

Preface

I spent twenty-­five years working and living on Petersburg’s battlefields, first with the National Park Service and then as the executive director of Pamplin Historical Park, scene of the campaign’s climactic attack. During that quarter century, I learned that even the most dedicated students of the American Civil War had an imperfect understanding of those 292 days during which the war’s best-­known armies grappled over possession of Virginia’s second largest city. I frequently encouraged my professional colleagues to undertake a comprehensive study of the Petersburg story. They all agreed that such an endeavor was needed, but no one agreed to tackle the job. I watched approvingly as Noah Andre Trudeau (The Last Citadel) and Earl J. Hess (In the Trenches at Petersburg) produced excellent one-­volume overviews of the campaign. Professionally executed monographs by Thomas J. Howe, Hess, John Horn, Hampton Newsome, and John J. Fox III joined Richard Sommers’s magisterial Richmond Redeemed in addressing individual aspects of the campaign. I tried to contribute to that effort with books on the campaign’s final week and a study of wartime Petersburg. Yet the field still lacked an operational history of the military events between June 1864 and April 1865 that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy. This volume, the first of three, is the down payment on filling that void. I am under no illusion that my work is definitive. Such an undertaking would require many more than three volumes. Four armies fought around Petersburg for more than nine months. The campaign spanned both sides of the James and Appomattox Rivers and included cavalry raids that strayed miles from the Cockade City. Conventional wisdom tallies some 70,000 casualties in the battles for Petersburg, not to mention the impact—fatal and otherwise— on the 18,000 residents of the Confederacy’s seventh largest metropolis. Military engineering reached its Civil War zenith around Petersburg, soldiers on both sides endured unprecedented living conditions, and the United States conducted an election campaign that levied an enormous impact on the conduct of military operations. xiii

A Campaign of Giants attempts to strike a balance between providing enough tactical detail to satisfy demanding consumers of military history, while never losing sight of the campaign’s overall context. The perspective of the common soldier finds voice in these pages even as I address and analyze command decisions at the armies’ highest echelons. The first six weeks of the Petersburg Campaign feature a number of controversies that have intrigued scholars and readers for generations. Issues such as Robert E. Lee’s measured response to the Union army’s crossing of the James River, the failure of the Federals to exploit their success on June 15, 1864, the futility of Grant’s First Offensive despite the Federals’ overwhelming numerical superiority, and the preparation for and conduct of the battle of the Crater receive my attention. I have tried to pre­sent the evidence surrounding these episodes and others and render conclusions based on my reading of the sources. I hope and expect that those conclusions will generate further discussion. Because the Union armies maintained the operational initiative around Petersburg in June and July, I spend considerable time dissecting their inner workings. I have attempted to unravel the relationships among the ranking Federal commanders—Grant, George Meade, and Benjamin Butler. Grant held the most important position in this saga, but his performance, in many respects, proved disappointing. Readers may be as surprised as I was to discover the many shortcomings in Grant’s leadership once his troops crossed the James. The Federals undertook three distinct offensives between June 15 and July 30. The first, June 15–18, resulted in the capture of a large portion of the original Confederate defense line, but failed to conquer the city. The Second Offensive, June 22–24, proved to be a tactical disaster for the bluecoats, whose effort to cut the railroads leading into Petersburg from the south and the west fell short. It also included a massive cavalry raid that, despite damaging much of the Confederate transportation network leading into Petersburg, ended in defeat. The Third Offensive, July 26–30, saw a major initiative north of the James River come to naught and featured the campaign’s most spectacular combat: the infamous battle of the Crater. In addition to these significant military initiatives, the cavalry engaged in a number of minor actions, particularly east of Richmond, while the armies around Petersburg sparred in lesser-­known actions. African American troops engaged in significant combat for the first time in the eastern theater during the first six weeks of the Petersburg Campaign. I have focused considerable attention on their performance and the attitudes toward black troops among Confederates, white Federals, and civilians. The experience of Petersburg’s residents during the summer of 1864 warrants its own chapter. xivPreface

A CAMPAIGN OF

GIANTS The BATTLE for PETERSBURG

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War at Our Own Doors

Teenaged Anne Banister watched in dread as a wagon carrying the lifeless body of her father approached her Petersburg, Virginia, home. “My precious mother stood like one dazed but in a few seconds she was kneeling by my father in such grief as I had never seen before,” she remembered. Throughout the city, similar vehicles brought dead or mangled men to their distraught families and friends. “Night closed in, and we sat down face to face with our woe,” wrote one Petersburg resident, “some to watch the dying, others to keep vigil beside the dead; while numberless hearts agonized in prayer for loved ones torn from home, and now on their way to pine, and perhaps die, in some Northern prison.”1 Bessie Meade Callender, the wife of a local cotton mill manager and part-­ time militiaman, remembered Friday, June 10, 1864, as “the saddest day that ever dawned on Petersburg.” Seventy-­eight citizens, most of them outside the military age limits, had been killed, wounded, or captured the previous day, including fifty-­nine-­year-­old William Banister, one of fifteen Petersburg residents who died. The funerals began that morning in most of the city’s churches and some private homes and continued into the next day. “It was a day of mourning for all,” recalled Mrs. Callender.2 The latest in a series of offensives orchestrated by Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler provided the source of Petersburg’s salvation and sadness on June 9. Nurtured by ambition and operational success in seemingly equal proportion, Butler, the commander of the Union’s Army of the James, targeted Petersburg’s military resources. He particularly eyed the railroad bridge that spanned the 1

Appomattox River and provided the final link connecting the Confederate capital at Richmond with Virginia’s second city, twenty-­three miles to the south. Butler assembled a force of infantry and cavalry numbering roughly 4,600 men, calculating that “the advantage [of a destructive raid on Petersburg] would be cheaply purchased at 500, and not too dearly with the sacrifice of 1,000 men in killed and wounded.” Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore would lead two columns of infantry on parallel paths against Petersburg’s eastern defenses while Brig. Gen. August V. Kautz directed 1,300 cavalry around to the city’s southeastern portal along Jerusalem Plank Road. Butler understood that the Petersburg fortifications were weak and only thinly defended. One of the few first-­class Confederate soldiers stationed in Petersburg confirmed that the trenches “were so low that a man would have to get down on his knees in them, to cover his head. . . . A thousand men could have eaten us up almost.”3 Gillmore’s march started slowly on the morning of June 9, affording Petersburg’s uniformed defenders sufficient warning to summon the militia. The city’s firebells “broke out into chorus with so vigorous a peal and a clangor so resonant, as to suggest to the uninitiated a general conflagration,” wrote attorney and state legislator Anthony Keiley, who well understood the import of the metallic cacophony. The Reserve units, buttressed by 500 soldiers of the Forty-­Sixth Virginia, manned the eastern perimeter so Keiley and about 125 others of the “non-­conscribable population” headed for the Timothy Rives farm south of town. Here, the eroded fortifications, penetrated by Jerusalem Plank Road, offered scant protection to the ersatz warriors. Brig. Gen. Raleigh Colston, a veteran of the Army of Northern Virginia without current portfolio, assumed local command while Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise, Petersburg’s official commanding officer, rushed northward to seek reinforcements.4 Gillmore’s twin columns encountered rifle and cannon fire from the determined if grossly outnumbered defenders that halted the tentative Federal advance. The Confederate fortifications formed a projection, or salient, that divided one of Gillmore’s columns from contact and cooperation with the other. Reports filtered back to Gillmore’s rear-­echelon headquarters that the position and strength of the enemy would be difficult to conquer and the Union commander suspended his attack. “As soon as the nature of the works in our front was ascertained,” he explained, “I was convinced that an assault upon them would in all probability fail, and I ordered the two positions to be maintained, expecting every moment to hear of General Kautz.” His men had suffered fifteen casualties out of some 3,300 he brought to the field, a tiny fraction of the human value Butler had placed on destruction of the railroad bridge. A few days later, in noting that Confederate press accounts failed to mention the pres2

War at Our Own Doors

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ence of the Federal infantry, Butler wrote one of Gillmore’s subordinates that “I hope the next town we attack we shall get near enough for the enemy to know we are there.” The focus then shifted to the Union cavalry south of the city.5 Kautz commanded the cavalry division in Butler’s army but on June 9 his two brigades of two regiments each were badly understrength. Two guns of the Eighth New York Independent Light Artillery and a handful of mountain howitzers constituted all of Kautz’s ordnance. Butler assumed that Kautz would face only token resistance, and that his breakthrough would be the signal for Gillmore to rush the eastern fortifications. The ride around to the southern outskirts of Petersburg consumed most of the morning—longer than the Union high command anticipated. By 11:​30 a.m. War at Our Own Doors

3

the vanguard of Kautz’s force arrived opposite the works, now manned by about 160 citizen militia under Maj. Fletcher Archer, a Petersburg lawyer who commanded the Third Battalion, Virginia Reserves. “What a line it was!” recalled Archer. “In number scarcely more than sufficient to constitute a single company. . . . In dress nothing to distinguish them in appearance from citizens pursuing the ordinary avocations of life. In age many of them with heads silvered o’er with the frosts of advancing years, while others could barely boast of the down upon the cheek. . . . In arms and accouterments such as an impoverished government could afford them.” Archer’s militia occupied both sides of Jerusalem Plank Road, stretching more than a third of a mile and facing south. The bulk of the men huddled just west of the highway, which had been blocked by an overturned wagon and crude fence rail barriers. Despite the relative weakness of Kautz’s nominal division, it still outnumbered its opponents more than eight to one. Armed primarily with smoothbore muskets, the militia was, in the words of Anthony Keiley, “compelled . . . to watch the preparations for our capture or slaughter, much after the fashion that a rational turtle may be presumed to contemplate the preliminaries of a civic dinner in London.”6 Union brigade commander Col. Samuel Spear impetuously called for a squadron of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry to charge the Confederate works. “Every one saw that this was a party we could easily manage,” reported Keiley, “and we possessed, therefore, our souls in great patience, till we could see the chevrons on the arm of the non-­commissioned officer who led them.” A ragged volley erupted from the Rebel line, dropping a handful of bluecoats and sending the rest streaming back to the cover of woods. Kautz soon arrived on the scene, condemning the results of Spear’s charge as “the fate of his stupidity.” He then proceeded to err in the opposite extreme. Kautz and Spear reconnoitered, dismounted most of their force, and carefully aligned the troopers so that they overlapped both flanks of Archer’s little band. By then, a single cannon had arrived to bolster the Confederate defenses, causing Kautz to unlimber his own guns and engage in an artillery exchange, further delaying the inevitable.7 The Federals enjoyed a clear advantage in firepower, but Kautz used this interlude to work his troopers gradually around the eastern flank of Archer’s line. The time expended, however, had allowed word to reach the Confederate department commander, Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, of the developing crisis in Petersburg. By midmorning, on Beauregard’s authority, the Fourth North Carolina Cavalry and Capt. Edward Graham’s Petersburg Battery, under the overall command of Brig. Gen. James Dearing, began a frantic ride from their camps seven miles north of the city. Crossing the Appomattox River and careening 4

War at Our Own Doors

through the streets of town—Graham shouting, “Damn the women! Run them over if they don’t get out of the way!”—these welcome reinforcements headed for the heights at the south end of the city.8 By this time Kautz’s overcautious tactics had succeeded in gaining the flank and rear of Archer’s weary volunteers. “We fought them . . . till we were so surrounded, that the two nearest men to me were shot in the back while facing the line of original approach,” Keiley lamented. “One by one, my comrades . . . fell around me,” he observed, before joining a number of other militia as captives. “The enemy trooped over the earthwork behind me, and the foremost, presenting his loaded carbine, demanded my surrender with an unrepeatable violence of language that suggested bloodshed. All avenue of escape being cut off, I yielded with what grace I could to my fate, captive to the bow and spear of a hatchet-­faced member of the First District Cavalry, greatly enamored of this honorable opportunity of going to the rear.”9 Archer’s losses exceeded 50 percent, but the two hours he stymied the Union cavalry bought Dearing and Graham time to deploy behind the city reservoir, on high ground overlooking the Union route of approach. The Yankees dawdled even longer interrogating prisoners, looting the Confederate camps, and burning the Rives house, but eventually Kautz sent his men northward on Jerusalem Plank Road. When they reached the intersection with New Road, most of the troopers turned northwest toward the reservoir, while others continued due north, aiming for the heights called Wells Hill, on which stood the ruins of Blandford Church. Both columns faced Confederate fire, and Spear mistook the walls of the reservoir for a strong stockade. Presented with additional resistance and hearing nothing from the Union infantry—in fact, Gillmore had ordered a retreat by then—Kautz considered discretion the better part of valor and directed his troopers to fall back and return to their camps. Petersburg had been spared.10 The drama of June 9 merely marked the most recent in a stream of threats that had imperiled Petersburg for five weeks. The chief architect of that menace, Benjamin Butler, left a distinct impression on everyone who encountered him. A Massachusetts Democrat of enormous influence, Butler’s staunch support of the Union war effort earned him early military prominence. His timely arrival in Annapolis, Maryland, during the war’s opening days, his subsequent declaration at Virginia’s Fort Monroe that runaway slaves should be considered “contraband of war,” and his role in 1862 as conqueror of New Orleans, the Confederacy’s largest metropolis, kept him in the headlines, a place Butler coveted. Controversy about the ethics of his administration of occupied New Orleans sidelined his military career for nearly a year, but in November War at Our Own Doors

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1863 Butler assumed command of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina, something of a backwater assignment with responsibility for the Union-­ controlled coastal regions of those two states.11 Butler’s appearance, as much as his accomplishments, arrested people’s attention. “Short, fat, shapeless; no neck, squinting, and very bald-­headed” was how one Union officer sized him up. Another pronounced the general a “queer-­looking man,” admitting “his beauty won’t kill him.” No one painted a more vivid picture than prisoner of war Anthony Keiley, who was brought to Butler for questioning following the fighting on June 9. Upon his first glimpse of the Union commander, Keiley felt “profound gratitude to God, who creates no mortal enemy to man without clothing it with features that excite the instant and instinctive aversion of the entire human race. . . . To Benjamin F. Butler’s face scarce an element is wanting of absolute repulsiveness. Rapacity finds appropriate expression in his vulture nose—sensuality in his heavy pendant jaws—despotism in his lowering eyebrow; and to these facial charms is added an optical derangement which permits him to scrutinize you with his left eye—the one he seems to place the most dependence on—while the right, revolving in a different plane . . . wanders away in another field of vision. Add to this a cool complacency of speech and gesture, which assures you he is on best of terms with his portly self; and I fancy you will have a description which . . . will . . . convince you that Nature has hung out the sign of villain in every lineament of the Brute’s physiognomy.”12 By the spring of 1864 Butler controlled a field army nearly 40,000 strong, including infantry corps under Maj. Gens. William F. “Baldy” Smith and Gillmore, along with Kautz’s cavalry. He met with the new Union general-­in-­chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, in early April and received orders to participate in a three-­pronged offensive in Virginia. Butler’s job would be to steam up the James River from his base at Fort Monroe, land at City Point (the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers, eight miles northeast of Petersburg) and on the Bermuda Hundred peninsula between those two tidal waterways, and cooperate with Grant in operations against the Confederate capital. “Richmond is to be your objective point,” Grant explained. “This indicates the necessity of your holding close to the south bank of the James River as you advance.” Nowhere in these instructions did Grant mention Petersburg.13 Butler’s fleet left Hampton Roads at the mouth of the James on May 5 and by late afternoon began disgorging thousands of soldiers less than a day’s march from Petersburg. The local Confederate commander, Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett, had been warning the War Department in Richmond of the potential threat posed by Butler’s massive army, but Pickett’s penchant for crying wolf 6

War at Our Own Doors

had undermined his credibility. Fortunately, his immediate superior, General Beauregard, gave Pickett’s pleas some credence. Beauregard promptly began forwarding reinforcements from North Carolina, where he maintained the headquarters of his Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia, which included a district composed of Petersburg and the land north to the James River. Until these troops arrived, Pickett would have only 500 veterans and a few local militiamen to defend both Petersburg and the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad that connected the two cities.14 Butler’s forces began disembarking at 4:00 p.m. without opposition, but on the advice of his corps commanders Butler failed to move toward the railroad, only several miles to the west. The next afternoon, Butler cautiously advanced westward with a single brigade under Brig. Gen. Charles Heckman. Heckman encountered newly arrived Confederates near a small rail intersection called Port Walthall Junction, and despite enjoying numerical superiority of more than four to one, he sustained sixty-­eight casualties and called it a day. Butler fumed, blaming General Gillmore for timidity and disobedience of orders, and immediately employed his political connections to thwart Senate confirmation of Gillmore’s major generalcy.15 While the Federal infantry dithered at Bermuda Hundred, General Kautz targeted the Petersburg Railroad, the line that connected Petersburg with Weldon, North Carolina—and ultimately with the critical Confederate port at Wilmington, North Carolina. The Union raiders destroyed two important bridges along that line on May 7 and 8 and then headed for City Point, having successfully compromised Petersburg’s southern line of supply and reinforcement. Pickett, his force growing from almost hourly accretions, then sacrificed his northern communications when, on the night of May 7, despite having turned back another Federal probe near Port Walthall Junction, he withdrew south across Swift Creek, a major tributary of the Appomattox River. The Federals had snipped the telegraph line between Richmond and Petersburg and damaged a small section of the railroad during their May 7 offensive. The overstressed Confederate commander, on the brink of an emotional breakdown, felt that Petersburg now faced peril from the north, south, and east, and sought to consolidate his strength closer to the city.16 Thanks to the speed with which Beauregard had dispatched his brigades from the Carolinas and despite Kautz’s depredations, Pickett had assembled about 5,000 infantry and eighteen cannon on the south bank of Swift Creek by the morning of May 8. Butler still enjoyed a huge numerical advantage but opted to spend the day improving his fortified camp on Bermuda Hundred while allowing Grant more time to fight his way toward Richmond. That eveWar at Our Own Doors

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Drewry’s Deep Bottom Drewry’s Bluff May 16, 1864

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ning, Butler gave orders to renew offensive operations. “The enemy are in our front with cavalry, 5,000 men, and it is a disgrace that we are cooped up here,” Butler admonished General Gillmore, his favorite whipping boy. The Union commander would commit all but three of his brigades in an attempt to destroy the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad, while a portion of his force demonstrated against Pickett’s defenses along Swift Creek to prevent the Confederates from interfering.17 The May 9 operations against the railroad succeeded splendidly. The Yan­ kees lifted significant sections of rails, particularly near Chester Station, midway between Richmond and Petersburg, and placed them in piles over the ties before setting them ablaze, warping the iron beyond repair. As the rest of But8

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ler’s men approached the Swift Creek line, elements of Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood’s South Carolina brigade imprudently crossed the creek and attacked the Union vanguard at a cost of nearly 140 casualties. Confederates on the south bank repulsed the half-­hearted Union pursuit of Hagood’s routed regiments. That evening, Butler boasted of his achievements during the first four days of his campaign to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. “We have landed here, intrenched ourselves, destroyed many miles of railroad, and got a position which, with proper supplies, we can hold out against the whole of Lee’s army,” Butler explained. “Beauregard, with a large portion of his command, was left south by the cutting of the railroads by Kautz. That portion which reached Petersburg . . . I have whipped to-­day, killing and wounding many, and taking many prisoners, after a severe and well-­contested fight. General Grant will not be troubled with any further re-­enforcements to Lee from Beauregard’s force.”18 Late that afternoon Butler met with Smith and Gillmore to discuss options for the next day. Because they had no information suggesting that a rendezvous with Grant along the James was imminent, the trio agreed to move against Petersburg. The railroad bridges over Swift Creek and the Appomattox River attracted their special attention. U.S. Colored Troops under Brig. Gen. Edward Hinks—the force that had occupied City Point since May 5—would cooperate by moving southwest toward Petersburg’s eastern defenses. That evening, Gillmore and Smith undermined their already shaky relationship with Butler by suggesting an entirely different plan for attacking Petersburg, but in the end the Army of the James would abandon any notion of menacing the city. A series of messages from Stanton advised Butler that Grant had gained a substantial victory and was en route to the planned convergence along the James. “General Grant . . . is on the march with his whole army to form a junction with you,” reported the jubilant secretary of war.19 Stanton’s information would prove grossly inaccurate as Grant—traveling with Maj. Gen. George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac—was at that moment stalled in front of Spotsylvania Court House, some fifty miles northwest of Richmond. Butler knew nothing of that, of course, and immediately canceled his plans to attack Pickett, again withdrawing into Bermuda Hundred. There he planned to return to the original strategy that called for him to approach Richmond from the south. The next morning, May 10, General Beauregard finally arrived in Petersburg from Weldon and relieved the enervated Pickett, who retired to the care of his teenaged wife. “We are still in the midst of the hurly burly produced by the descent of the Yankees upon City Point and Bermuda Hundred,” reported the Petersburg Daily Express. “For the last six days we have had the war at our War at Our Own Doors

9

own doors, and our people know what it is to be troubled by the proximity of a vandal enemy.” Little did they realize how close they had come to disaster. It is highly doubtful that the outnumbered Confederates could have successfully resisted a concerted attempt by Butler to take their city on May 10.20 Grant’s immediate threat to Richmond was illusory, but Federal cavalry under Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan posed a more tangible danger to the Confederate capital. Leaving the Spotsylvania area on May 9, Sheridan led some 10,000 troopers south, spreading panic in underdefended Richmond. “This city is in hot danger,” reported Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon. “It should be defended with all our resources to the sacrifice of minor considerations,” which included, apparently, the defense of Petersburg. Seddon ordered Beauregard to move his troops north to unite with the small Richmond garrison, in position to either repulse the Union raiders or block a northward thrust by Butler.21 Beauregard shifted most of two makeshift divisions north—right past Butler, who remained inactive within Bermuda Hundred—to the Confederate strongpoint at Drewry’s Bluff, a mere eight road miles below Richmond, while additional troops arrived in Petersburg from North Carolina. Butler moved in Beauregard’s wake, marching north toward the Confederate defenders. The grayclad commander, always a visionary in matters of military strategy, wanted to combine with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, which was still locked in combat with the Army of the Potomac at Spotsylvania, to defeat Butler and Grant seriatim. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who conferred with Beauregard at Drewry’s Bluff, vetoed this patently impractical plan. The Creole general did not completely abandon his offensive instincts, however. He choreographed a twin assault for May 16: while his troops struck the Yankees in front, a force from Petersburg under Maj. Gen. William H. C. Whiting would assault the Federals in their rear. Together, Beauregard and Whiting would destroy the Army of the James. In the event, Whiting lost his nerve and halted well short of the Federals, while Beauregard’s determined if uncoordinated assaults succeeded in driving Butler away from Drewry’s Bluff, but into safety at his fortified camp on Bermuda Hundred. Beauregard followed and on May 20 near Ware Bottom Church succeeded in establishing a compact defensive line east of the turnpike and railroad connecting Richmond and Petersburg, blocking Butler from moving west. Although the Federals still enjoyed free access to their naval transportation along the James, and could cross the Appomattox River at will on pontoon bridges eventually built at Point of Rocks and Broadway Land-

10

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ing downstream from Petersburg, the threats he had posed to Richmond and Petersburg since May 5 had been temporarily neutralized.22 Though repulsed, Butler had not abandoned offensive inclinations. On May 27 he developed plans to send Smith with 11,000 men across the Appomattox, link with Hinks’s African American forces, and dash into Petersburg’s eastern precincts. Beauregard’s army had been depleted by detachments summoned by Lee to replace losses sustained in the bloody combat north of Richmond, lending promise to the Federals’ initiative. Butler set May 29 as the day for his assault. Grant, however, also needed fresh levies to make good his battle casualties, and on May 28 transports arrived to ferry Smith’s corps to the Army of the Potomac, northeast of Richmond. “I grieve much that this weakness of the Army of the Potomac has called the troops away,” groused Butler, “just as we were taking the offensive, and that the attack on Petersburg . . . must be abandoned.”23 Butler plotted against Petersburg yet again a few days later, this time intending to employ Kautz and Hinks to raid the city, burning the bridges and destroying public buildings. Beauregard postponed those plans by launching an energetic reconnaissance against Butler’s defenses at Bermuda Hundred on June 2, distracting the Federal commander until June 9, when Butler did conduct the raid he intended to make a week earlier. The shameful lack of initiative by Gillmore, and Kautz’s lethargic offensive south of town against Petersburg’s “old men and young boys” brought an end to Butler’s independent campaigning south of the James. George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Army of the Potomac now entered the picture.24 George Gordon Meade had commanded the primary Union army in the eastern theater since late June 1863. Within days of his promotion, Meade turned back Lee’s raid into Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, but in the eyes of his political enemies, much of the press, and President Abraham Lincoln, his dilatory pursuit allowed Lee to escape to Virginia without further damage. For the remainder of the year, Meade conducted a relatively bloodless dance with Lee in Virginia’s northern Piedmont, including an aborted offensive in late November along a tributary of the Rapidan River called Mine Run. Widespread opprobrium for not striking the Confederates a fatal blow marked only one of the handicaps with which Meade would enter the spring campaign. The general possessed a personality that seemed to alienate everyone, including those subordinates most critical to his army’s success. “I have long known Meade to be a man of the worst possible temper, especially toward his subordinates,” wrote a civilian official with the War Department. “I do not

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think he has a friend in the army.” A staff officer declared Meade to be “a very mean man” and one of his aides considered him “severe, but manly,” while admitting “it is praise not to be pitched into by the Great Peppery.”25 When Congress resurrected the rank of lieutenant general and bestowed it on Grant in March 1864, Meade’s status at the head of the nation’s most important army seemed in doubt. The Pennsylvanian offered to step aside, but Grant retained him, impressed by his willingness to give way to someone of Grant’s own choosing and by his successful track record at various levels of command. “General Meade was an officer of great merit, with drawbacks to his usefulness that were beyond his control,” remembered Grant. “He was brave and conscientious, and commanded the respect of all who knew him. He was unfortunately of a temper that would get beyond his control, at times, and make him speak to officers of high rank in the most offensive manner.” Meade fully appreciated Grant’s confidence, but privately expressed disappointment that future triumphs would now be credited to another man. How well these two leaders would cooperate in such close proximity remained a major question on the eve of the spring campaign.26 Grant’s decision to make his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac would assuage the president’s concerns about Meade’s lack of aggressiveness and at the same time remove the new general-­in-­chief from the distraction of Washington politics. Grant and Lincoln had established almost instant rapport and a mutual trust that would prove essential in the coming months. The new general-­in-­chief would direct the primary May initiative by the Army of the Potomac, Butler’s offensive up the James, and a third thrust through the Shenandoah Valley aimed at the Virginia Central Railroad and that bucolic region’s agricultural fecundity.27 Grant came to Virginia as the most celebrated soldier in the land. His victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga the previous year had eliminated one Confederate army and scattered another. Earlier in the war he had earned the nom de guerre “Unconditional Surrender” Grant in winning the first important Union victory at Fort Donelson, Tennessee. His tenacity and unflappable demeanor in battle had shone in April 1862, when he endured a pounding during the first day’s engagement at the battle of Shiloh only to calmly regain all the lost ground the next day in a series of determined counterattacks. But the Army of the Potomac presented a new challenge. It harbored intense affection for its former commander, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, and had learned to be skeptical of heroes from the West, such as Maj. Gen. John Pope, who led portions of the army to defeat in August 1862, at the second battle of Manassas. Artillery colonel Charles S. Wainwright found Grant to be 12

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“stumpy, unmilitary, slouchy, and western-­looking; very ordinary in fact.” Although Grant possessed “none of what is often called in the army ‘fuss and feathers,’” the opinionated Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman of Meade’s staff thought him to be “the concentration of all that is American.” Lt. Col. Charles Cummings of the Seventeenth Vermont told his wife that Grant “is a sandy complexioned, hard, wiry looking man with a short stiff beard and if physiognomy is good for anything is as obstinate as he is represented.”28 Grant arrived at Meade’s headquarters near Brandy Station along the Orange & Alexandria Railroad on March 10. He soon established his own command post in nearby Culpeper, hard by the sprawling camps of Meade’s army north of the Rapidan River, and gradually developed his operational plan for the spring campaign. In addition to the tripartite offensive in Virginia, Grant directed his successor in the western theater, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, to operate against the Confederate army under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in northwest Georgia. Meade would receive similar orders to target Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. “Lee’s army will be your objective point,” Grant wrote on April 9. “Wherever Lee goes there you will go also.”29 For three years Union commanders in Virginia had focused on the capture of the Confederate capital, as if the conquest of Richmond equaled ultimate victory. Grant changed that strategic calculus. He hoped to catch Lee in the open well north of the Virginia metropolis and win the decisive victory that the Northern public craved. However, Grant pragmatically thought it more likely that the armies would eventually confront one another around Richmond. “I shall aim to fight Lee between here and Richmond if he will stand,” Grant told Butler, but “should Lee . . . fall back into Richmond I will follow up and make a junction with your army on the James River.” Grant understood that the campaign might degenerate into a stalemate and corresponded with Meade in mid-­April about that eventuality. One historian described Grant’s impending operation as “an essay in improvisation,” but nothing in Grant’s orders reflected a desire to engage in a war of attrition, as that grim game of arithmetic would not necessarily redound in the Union’s favor.30 Although the Army of the Potomac counted 76,629 infantry, 12,864 cavalry, and 7,780 artillery “present for duty equipped” at the end of April, many of those men anticipated the expiration of their enlistment terms during the campaign season. Counting the independent Ninth Corps, which would travel with Meade’s army but report to Grant as a separate force, the Federals could boast nearly 117,000 combatants. Of that number, however, barely half were veterans, and many of the rest new conscripts or bounty men whose motivations for serving and lack of field experience gave their officers pause. Grant’s War at Our Own Doors

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Goliath did not match the common perception of overwhelming strength, and certainly did not suggest that trading two lives for one would win the war.31 On paper, to be sure, the Union forces in Virginia vastly outnumbered their opponents. The Army of Northern Virginia had wintered south of the Rapidan River in Orange County, and by April had welcomed the return of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s First Corps from its fall foray into Tennessee. Lee could count on perhaps 64,000 men. His infantry was divided into three corps under Longstreet and Lt. Gens. Richard S. Ewell and Ambrose Powell Hill. Maj. Gen. James Ewell Brown Stuart led Lee’s cavalry, and the artillery could put 213 guns into battery, one-­third fewer than the Federals. Although Stuart retained Lee’s confidence, all of Lee’s infantry chieftains inspired doubt. Ewell in charge of the Second Corps and Hill at the head of the Third Corps had both disappointed Lee since their elevation the previous summer. Longstreet had failed miserably in independent command after being banished from the Army of Tennessee by the irascible Gen. Braxton Bragg, and had shown evidence of petulance at Gettysburg.32 While Grant counted on men of dubious quality to swell his ranks, the South had all but exhausted its available manpower by the spring of 1864. Lee worried not about the expiration of enlistments, as a recent law ensured that Confederate soldiers would serve for the duration of the war, but he could expect few replacements for battle casualties or the attrition of disease. Beauregard’s scattered army guarded his southern flank from the James River to Cape Fear. A force of roughly 6,600 men under Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge occupied the upper Shenandoah Valley, and about 7,100 artillerists and second-­tier Reserves and militia constituted Richmond’s immediate garrison.33 Disparity of numbers represented only one of Lee’s handicaps on the eve of the campaign. A crippling scarcity of supplies for man and beast tempered Lee’s natural instinct to assume the offensive. The Confederate commander had been forced to scatter his horses to pastures far removed from the army’s encampments in order to find them adequate sustenance. More worrisome still, as the winter gave way to spring, provisions for Lee’s troops continued to shrink. Lee had informed the secretary of war in January that “short rations are having a bad effect upon the men, both morally and physically. . . . The men cannot continue healthy and vigorous if confined to this spare diet for any length of time.” Nearly three months later the situation had not materially improved. “I cannot see how we can operate with our present supplies,” Lee warned Jefferson Davis on April 12. Privations led to a steady stream of desertions throughout the winter, causing Lee to prophesy that, “unless there is a change, I fear the army cannot be kept effective, and probably cannot be kept together.”34 14

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Despite the impediments of slim numbers and inadequate supplies, morale in the Army of Northern Virginia remained surprisingly high during the spring of 1864. The persona of the army commander accounted for the lion’s share of that optimism. “General Robt. E. Lee is regarded by his army as nearest approaching the character of the great & good Washington than any man living,” testified Georgia brigadier Clement A. Evans. “He is the only man living in whom they would unreservedly trust all power for the preservation of their independence.” Moreover, the Southern press echoed the feeling shared within the ranks that Grant would be no match for the indomitable “Marse Robert.” “The Yankees call him ‘unconditional surrender Grant’” admitted one confident Confederate, “our men already have given him a name; ‘Up the spout, Grant.’” The soldiers showed Lee their unmistakable devotion when the army commander attended an April review of Longstreet’s corps. “You never saw such cheering in your life,” marveled one Rebel. The troops pressed around Lee, seeking to touch his horse or better yet, brush the general’s leg in passing. “A wave of sentiment . . . seemed to sweep over the field,” remembered an artillery officer. “All felt the bond which held them together. There was no speaking, but the effect was as of a military sacrament.” One Confederate stated the matter with perfect clarity: “Every man in that army believed that Robert E. Lee was the greatest man alive.”35 Longstreet’s return to Lee’s army ended Confederate flirtations with complicated strategies targeting Kentucky or Middle Tennessee with some combination of Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, Longstreet’s detached corps, and the Army of Northern Virginia. The question now revolved around where Lee would make his stand against an anticipated Union offensive across the Rapidan, since supply problems eliminated any hope for an early Southern offensive in the Old Dominion. “We have got to whip them, we must whip them,” Lee advised his aide, Lt. Col. Walter H. Taylor, a month before Grant moved south.36 Lee enjoyed at least two defensive options that would exploit river barriers passable only at fords or bridges. The North Anna River flowed across Grant’s probable line of march toward Richmond, midway between the Confederate capital and Fredericksburg. The south bank of that stream dominated the ground, and there Lee could protect a compact supply line while Grant’s communications would extend nearly seventy-­five miles from northern Virginia; the proximity to Richmond would also allow better coordination between Beauregard’s forces and Lee’s. Lee rejected a movement south, however, preferring to defend the Rapidan, which had been the de facto border between the armies since early December. The Confederates had erected fortifications War at Our Own Doors

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south of the river and remaining there would permit Lee room to maneuver— and potentially shorten the distance required to carry the war across the Potomac once again, or at least into northern Virginia. He could always retreat to the North Anna if circumstances so required. Just as at Fredericksburg the previous winter, when the Rappahannock River divided blue from gray, Lee dispersed his forces along more than twenty miles of riverfront. Ewell and Hill remained vigilant opposite the fords where Union pickets lounged on the Rapidan’s north shore, while Stuart’s cavalry patrolled flanks upstream and down from the infantry. Longstreet’s corps remained in reserve near Gordonsville, in a position to react to a Federal threat to the Shenandoah Valley, Richmond, or the Rapidan frontier. Lee assembled a unique conclave of his corps and division commanders on May 2 atop Clark’s Mountain, a rounded outlier of the Blue Ridge that afforded a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. The officers scanned the Federal camps and clearly discerned evidence of an impending move. The question remained—as it had the previous year—where would the Federals attempt a crossing? After due consideration, Lee predicted that the enemy would move toward the Confederate right, utilizing Germanna and Ely’s Fords downstream from the Southern camps. He could not be absolutely certain of Grant’s intentions, but he ordered Ewell and Hill to prepare to march east at the first evidence of Grant’s anticipated line of march.37 Lee judged correctly. Once Grant had developed his concept of simultaneous advances in Georgia, the Shenandoah Valley, up the James River, and against Lee, he still wondered where to initiate Meade’s portion of the work. Attempting a crossing into the teeth of Lee’s river defenses made no sense, so the choice was reduced to which flank—upstream or down—the Federals would attempt to turn. Although a movement to the Federal right, upstream on the Rapidan, promised ready mobility through “a more open and cultivated country,” the matter of supply dictated the other option. As Meade’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys, explained later, “in moving by our left flank we should abandon our line of supply by the Alexandria Railroad, and at once open short routes of communication from our protected flank, the left, to navigable waters connected with Washington and other depots of supply. No protecting force would be necessary to cover these short land routes.” Humphreys drafted the orders for the advance and Grant designated midnight of May 3–4 as the beginning of the offensive.38 As the blue legions began their march for the Rapidan crossings, Grant knew full well that he would be subjecting Meade’s army to a grueling experience. “The campaign now begun was destined to result in heavier losses, to 16

War at Our Own Doors

0

N

10

Miles

Brandy Station Culpeper

R.

. R. .&P R.F Germanna Ely’s Ford Ford

Rapidan Ri ver

Potomac River

Rappahanno ck River

un Mine R

The Wilderness

Fredericksburg

May 5–6, 1864

Spotsylvania May 8–21, 1864

ke npi Tur nge Ora Plank Road nge Ora

Harris

Spotsylvania C.H.

Ni R iver Po River Matta River

Milford Station

To the Shenandoah Valley Virgin ia

No rth Centr

al R a ilroad

An na Riv er

Ma ttap oni Riv er

Ox Ford

North Anna May 23–26, 1864

Hanover Junction

Nelson’s Crossing

South Ann a River

Pam unk Hanovertown ey

Haw’s Shop

Yellow Tavern

r James Rive

Richmond

Riv er

reek oy C tom opo t o T Bethesda Church Old Cold Harbor

Cold Harbor June 1–3, 1864

Ch ick ah om iny Riv er To Petersburg

Campaign Map 3 -Overland Overland Campaign

both armies, in a given time, than any previously suffered,” thought Grant. The Union general-­in-­chief understood that winning the war necessitated destroying Lee’s army (and Sherman doing the same to Johnston’s in Georgia) and such annihilation would require hard fighting over a sustained period. He also realized that the reduction of Richmond would likely be the result, not the cause, of defeating Lee’s army. Lee would be obliged to defend that logistical, industrial, and political hub just as Johnston would be compelled to protect Atlanta. “To get possession of Lee’s army was the first great object,” wrote Grant. “With the capture of his army Richmond would necessarily follow.”39 Federal cavalry encountered only token resistance from mounted videttes at the designated fords, and by midmorning May 4 swarms of Union soldiers streamed into Orange County and the forbidding terrain known locally as the Wilderness. This region of second-­and-­third growth scrub forest had been mined for iron for a century and a half and soil that yielded ore offered limited productivity to farmers. Consequently, few roads penetrated the Wilderness, which hosted only scattered clearings cultivated primarily by hardscrabble residents. Humphreys’s plan called for a quick dash through this inhospitable terrain, where Grant’s preponderance of artillery and infantry would matter less than on more open ground. But Meade worried about the security of his huge wagon train, on which the army depended until a new waterborne base of supply could be established. Thus the army’s pace conformed to the slow crawl of hundreds of vehicles. By day’s end on May 4, most of the Union army had bivouacked in the heart of the Wilderness, stopping hours before sunset to allow the wagons to catch up. Meade compounded this error by reducing the cavalry reconnaissance from three divisions to one, while the remaining horsemen guarded the supplies from phantom Rebel raiders. The Army of the Potomac was thus rendered partially blind and to make matters worse, the commander of the reconnoitering division, Brig. Gen. James Harrison Wilson, had only administrative experience with the mounted arm and had never commanded troops in combat. Lee’s eyes, on the other hand, were wide open. Information from watchful pickets, observations from Clark’s Mountain, and garrulous Union deserters all confirmed that the Federal army was on the move toward Germanna and Ely’s Fords. Lee ordered Ewell to march east along the Orange Turnpike to intercept the Yankees, while Hill proceeded on the parallel Orange Plank Road a few miles to the south. Lee hedged his bet by detaching one of Ewell’s brigades and an entire division of Hill’s corps to keep an eye on the upper Rapidan, just in case Grant and Meade had some sort of double envelopment up their sleeves. 18

War at Our Own Doors

Longstreet began the approach of his two available First Corps divisions on a third road, even farther south, hoping to slice in below the Union army and pin the invaders in the Wilderness. It would take Longstreet an extra day to cover the ground from his distant starting point near Gordonsville, so Lee admonished Ewell and Hill to avoid initiating a general engagement until Longstreet arrived.40 Events soon confounded the intentions of both commanders. The Union Fifth Corps stumbled into Ewell’s divisions along the Turnpike on the morning of May 5. Grant, consistent with his philosophy of attacking the Confederates wherever he found them, ordered the Fifth Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, to drive through the Rebels, signaling the beginning of the battle of the Wilderness. Fighting raged for two days along the parallel Turnpike and Plank Road, with both armies trading attacks and counterattacks that swept across roadside clearings into dense forest. When the sun set on May 6, some 30,000 soldiers had been shot or captured, including Longstreet, wounded by his own men at the peak of a successful flanking maneuver on May 6, under circumstances eerily reminiscent of the accident that befell Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson not five miles to the northeast, almost exactly one year earlier.41 Both armies expected the fighting to continue on May 7, but except for minor skirmishing, Lee and Meade were content to reorganize their shattered brigades, treat their wounded, and bury their dead. Grant, however, dictated the next chapter in the series of battles that would be known as the Overland Campaign. He recognized three options on the morning of May 7, in addition to the profitless course of remaining static behind his Wilderness works. He might retreat, as his predecessors had done after their engagements with Lee on the south side of the Rappahannock-­Rapidan frontier, but he gave this choice no consideration. Instead, he pondered forward movements, either east to Fredericksburg or south toward the crossroads county seat village of Spotsylvania Court House. A movement to Fredericksburg would reestablish his supply line via the Potomac River. Lee no doubt would shift accordingly, placing the Army of Northern Virginia between Grant and Richmond. A swift dash toward Spotsylvania, however, might put the Federals closer to Richmond than Lee, compelling Lee to attack in the open where Grant liked his odds, or fall back closer to the Confederate capital, passively sacrificing miles of Virginia real estate. By 6:30 on the morning of the 7th, Grant had made his decision. He sent orders to Meade to undertake a night march toward Spotsylvania on a series of roads designed to expedite the ten-­mile trek. He also directed Maj. Gen. War at Our Own Doors

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Ambrose E. Burnside to cooperate with Meade’s advance. Burnside commanded the Ninth Corps, but because he outranked Meade the bewhiskered Rhode Islander remained under Grant’s immediate control—a clumsy arrangement that would be corrected within a fortnight by incorporating the Ninth Corps into the Army of the Potomac, with Burnside’s cheerful concurrence. Grant wished to keep the pressure on Lee, partly because that was his operational bias, but also because he had heard of Butler’s landing at Bermuda Hundred and wanted to dissuade Lee from detaching troops to confront the Army of the James.42 Lee’s huge losses and the Federals’ strong position compelled the Confederates to remain in a reactive posture on May 7. The Yankees had taken the initiative and there was little Lee could do about it. He spent part of the day selecting Longstreet’s successor, settling on Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson of South Carolina. Anderson had compiled a frankly mediocre record as a division commander, first under Longstreet and most recently in Hill’s Third Corps, but his familiarity with the commanders and culture of the First Corps recommended his promotion.43 Lee simultaneously wrestled with divining Grant’s next move. A reconnaissance toward Germanna Ford informed him that the Federals had abandoned their primary connection to the Rapidan, suggesting that a Union retreat was not imminent and that Grant would require a new line of communications. Either Fredericksburg or Spotsylvania would serve that purpose. Some sources assert that Lee predicted with immediate certainty that the Federals would aim for Spotsylvania. Lee did order his artillery commander, Brig. Gen. William Nelson Pendleton, to supervise the clearing of a road that led from the army’s right flank southward toward Spotsylvania Court House, but that proves no particular prescience. Lee simply understood that whether the Federals marched for Fredericksburg or Spotsylvania, he would do well to occupy the hamlet in a position to respond to whichever course the Unionists might follow. He issued orders early that evening for Anderson to shift his corps toward Spotsylvania as soon as darkness could shield his withdrawal.44 Meade’s movement to Spotsylvania began on schedule that night, but narrow roads and stubborn Confederate cavalry reduced Federal progress to a crawl. Anderson enjoyed the best performance of his military career as he directed his two divisions southward with sufficient persistence and speed to beat the Yankees to their destination by mere moments. Vicious fighting ensued as both armies deployed along parallel lines in a semicircle north and west of Spotsylvania Court House. The stage was now set for nearly two weeks of

20

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maneuver and mayhem along the well-­settled plateau between the Po and Ni Rivers. The Army of the Potomac lost two of its corps commanders on May 9— one to a fatal wound. That morning, a sharpshooter’s bullet cut down Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, the beloved leader of the Sixth Corps. Brig. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, a division commander and brilliant engineer with a limited combat record, replaced “Uncle John.” In the meantime, Phil Sheridan and the bulk of his cavalry corps trotted out of Spotsylvania County, bound for Richmond. Sheridan had come east with Grant that spring, and he enjoyed the complete confidence of the general-­in-­chief. When the diminutive Irishman clashed insubordinately with crusty George Meade over the proper use of the cavalry, Grant ignored military protocol and sided with Sheridan—and with his protégé’s preference to strike out on his own. It was this initiative that had so worried the Richmond authorities for the safety of their capital.45 Lee’s losses at the highest level of command exceeded those of the Federals. In addition to Longstreet’s wound, which would require more than five months to heal, on the morning of May 8 A. P. Hill reported himself too ill to continue in the field. Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early, a division commander under Ewell, temporarily filled his place. Ewell’s own health—psychological as much as physical—deteriorated as the pressure on his corps mounted, particularly on May 12. That morning a massive Federal assault on a salient the soldiers called the Mule Shoe resulted in stunning casualties in the Second Corps, including the capture of one of Ewell’s divisions almost whole. By the 19th, Ewell appeared unequal to his position and Lee would diplomatically relieve him in due course, consigning the one-­legged Virginian to a less stressful billet. Then Jeb Stuart fell. Sheridan’s primary accomplishment during his giant raid toward the Confederate capital was to inflict a mortal wound on Lee’s cavalry commander near a roadside inn called Yellow Tavern, a few miles north of Richmond. Stuart died at the Richmond home of his brother-­in-­law on May 12. Between May 8 and 21 Grant would launch attacks against Lee’s left and center, and attempt to twist around his right, all for naught. The carnage at Spotsylvania proved every bit as horrendous as that in the Wilderness. The Federals suffered in excess of 18,000 losses while whittling Lee’s army down by about 12,000. In little more than two weeks, combat had reduced the armies by nearly 60,000 men. Grant remained undaunted. “I . . . propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,” he told Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, the army’s Washington-­based chief of staff. Grant apparently did not anticipate that his campaign against Lee would extend beyond August or September.46

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The outnumbered Army of Northern Virginia had taken maximum advantage of massive field fortifications built with haste and skill to shield itself from Grant’s hammer blows. The Union commander now turned to subterfuge to lure Lee into the open. On the night of May 20, the Second Corps, under the competent leadership of Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, slipped out of the trenches at Spotsylvania heading south. Hancock’s 20,000 men would serve as bait, tempting Lee to rush after these isolated Federals and strike them a blow. Doing so would expose the Confederates to attack from Warren’s men, perhaps joined by Burnside’s and Wright’s corps, at last bringing Lee to bay away from the equalizing embankments of dirt and logs that had proven so effective at Spotsylvania. Hancock’s brigades played their game flawlessly, taking a strong position near Milford Station on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, temptingly separated from the rest of the army, but Lee refused to cooperate. He quickly detected Hancock’s departure, but rather than chasing after him Lee made for the North Anna River, about twenty-­three miles south of Spotsylvania. By May 22 the Confederates were camped safely on the south bank of the river, confident in the belief that both armies would relish the opportunity to rest and refit. In this Lee was badly mistaken. Grant and Meade rushed their army south and on May 23 crossed the North Anna beyond Lee’s left flank, at the same time driving a small Confederate outpost on the north shore across the river in abject defeat. Lee chastised the recently returned A. P. Hill for allowing the Federals to breach the river barrier and then conducted a council of war to determine the best course of action. The plan that emerged is widely considered one of the most brilliant of the war. That night the Confederates fell back from the river, out of sight of their enemy except for holding commanding ground overlooking a crossing point called Ox Ford. Lee anchored both his flanks on watercourses and waited for the Federals to advance. Grant would oblige. Finding the Confederates gone and apparently in retreat on the morning of the 24th, the Federal commander ordered his corps to pursue—the Fifth and Sixth on his right, already across the river, the Second to push across the North Anna on the left, and Burnside’s men to span the stream at Ox Ford in the Union center. Grant had no idea that Lee waited expectantly behind his defenses, the so-­called “Inverted V Line,” to strike the Federals as they waltzed into his trap. Burnside would be stymied at Ox Ford, while Hancock would be alone on the eastern side of the field subject to assault by a combination of Confederate forces utilizing interior lines. If all went according to plan, Lee would strike a crippling blow to a fraction of Meade’s army, separated from potential reinforcement by one or two river 22

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crossings. “He now had one of those opportunities that occur but rarely in war,” commented one of Grant’s aides, “but which, in the grasp of a master, make or mar the fortunes of armies and decide the result of campaigns.”47 The attack never occurred. For a few tantalizing hours Hancock’s reinforced divisions of about 24,000 faced a possible combination of 30,000 Confederates, but the Army of Northern Virginia failed to move. Severe dysentery confined Lee to his headquarters tent where he repeatedly advised, “We must strike them a blow—we must never let them pass us again—we must strike them a blow.” None of Lee’s corps commanders—the recently promoted Anderson, the enfeebled Hill, or the overwrought Ewell—displayed the necessary skill and energy to act in Lee’s place. The day’s action would be defined only by sharp skirmishing on the Confederate right and a foolish and unauthorized brigade-­sized assault against Lee’s left led by a drunken brigadier named James H. Ledlie. Soon enough, Grant realized the predicament Lee had created and moved quickly to escape the peril. Action along the North Anna would not demand a butcher’s bill commensurate with those paid at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, but the combat continued sporadically and indecisively for another forty-­eight hours, adding 2,000 names to Confederate casualty rolls and about 2,500 to the Federals’.48 Some of those losses had been made good by accretions to both armies. During the Spotsylvania operations, Grant had called on Halleck to “send . . . all the infantry you can rake and scrape. With the present position of the armies 10,000 troops can be spared from the defenses of Washington.” Most of these men served in heavy artillery regiments, specially trained units that manned the large guns emplaced in the forts surrounding the capital. Thousands of these “bandbox soldiers” tramped into the infantry ranks at Spotsylvania, completely ignorant of battlefield tactics, where they received a rude—albeit successful— introduction to combat, particularly on May 19 near the Harris farm east of Spotsylvania Court House.49 On the Confederate side of the ledger, some 2,600 of Breckinridge’s men from the Shenandoah Valley joined Lee at the North Anna. Breckinridge had defeated the Union thrust up the Shenandoah Valley at New Market on May 15. Once that incursion had been vanquished, he boarded cars on the Virginia Central Railroad and traveled the 100 miles to Hanover Junction, which served as Lee’s intermediate supply depot during the Spotsylvania and North Anna operations. At the same time, a reinvigorated George Pickett arrived with his division to rejoin the army from which he had been separated since the previous summer. The Federals still enjoyed numerical superiority, but in roughly the same proportion as three weeks earlier. However, events along the North War at Our Own Doors

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Anna demonstrated that while the Army of Northern Virginia remained a dangerous defensive weapon, its ability to dictate events on the battlefield had been weakened in the bloody woods and fields of Orange and Spotsylvania ­Counties.50 Grant discerned as much. “Lee’s army is really whipped,” he told Halleck on May 26. “The prisoners we now take show it, and the action of his army shows it unmistakably. A battle with them outside of intrenchments cannot be had.” Meade agreed, as he wrote his wife: “We undoubtedly have the morale over them, and will, eventually, I think, compel them to go into Richmond.” Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana expressed the most sanguine of these optimistic assessments in his May 26 dispatch to Edwin Stanton: “Rebels have lost all confidence, and are already morally defeated. This army has learned to believe that it is sure of victory. Even our officers have ceased to regard Lee as an invincible military genius. . . . Rely upon it the end is near as well as sure.” Lesser personages throughout the army echoed these sentiments.51 Although events would prove such judgments premature, Grant indisputably maintained the initiative and, as at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, planned a movement around Lee’s right that would bring him closer to the Confederate capital. “I determined . . . to draw out of our present position and make one more effort to get between him and Richmond,” remembered Grant. “I had no expectation now, however, of succeeding in this; but I did expect to hold him far enough west to enable me to reach the James high up.” Grant employed substantial selective memory in making this statement, as the campaign’s most sanguinary sixty minutes lay nine days in the future, suggesting that Grant in fact hoped to achieve his goals before reaching the James.52 The Federals continued their habit of shifting to their left—south and east—aiming this time for the Pamunkey River. Grant chose this route for two reasons. First, he would avoid multiple river crossings by spanning the Pamunkey, a stream northeast of Richmond that collected the North Anna, South Anna, and smaller waterways that would course across Grant’s route to the southwest. Second, and even more critically, the navigable Pamunkey offered Grant a secure waterborne supply base, a critical determinate for all his movements since crossing the Rapidan. Sheridan had returned from his Richmond raid by this time, so the cavalry would be available to screen the movement and feint toward Lee’s left to pin the Confederates in place. The army started after dark on May 26, and two days later the Federals were south of the Pamunkey, negotiating the river at Hanovertown and Nelson’s Crossing. In addition to considerations of supply and logistics, an advance across the Pamunkey would allow Grant to utilize the Army of the James, which had been 24

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essentially somnolent since Butler’s retreat into the Bermuda Hundred fortifications on May 16. Grant ordered Halleck to dispatch as many of Butler’s men as could be spared, consistent with maintaining a viable defense at Bermuda Hundred and City Point. Baldy Smith would lead these troops, and Butler dispatched two divisions of Smith’s Eighteenth Corps, augmented by units from the Tenth Corps, to travel by water down the James and up the Pamunkey to join the Army of the Potomac, in the process frustrating Butler’s plans to attack Petersburg.53 Grant’s deception froze Lee in place on May 26. “From present indications he seems to contemplate a movement on our left flank,” Lee erroneously reported to the secretary of war. Soon enough, however, Lee discovered the enemy’s true course of action and hastened to shift his divisions to confront Grant south of the Pamunkey. Both commanders dispatched their cavalry to obtain concrete information about their enemy’s intentions, resulting in a sharp clash at Haw’s Shop on May 28. Now aware of Grant’s position and general direction, Lee chose to deploy behind a steep-­sloped rivulet called Totopotomoy Creek. His troops erected fortifications and, once again, blocked the shortest approach to the Confederate capital. They did so, however, without the services of the Second Corps commander. Ewell reported himself so ill with an intestinal malady on the 27th that Lee was compelled to replace him with Early. Although a few days later Ewell would pronounce himself well enough to return to active duty, Lee would reassign him to command the Department of Richmond, where he would serve for the next ten months. Longstreet was wounded, Ewell incapacitated, Stuart dead, and Hill periodically prostrate: the campaign had been hard on the Army of Northern Virginia’s high command.54 The armies sparred across Totopotomoy Creek on May 29. The next day Lee ordered Early to test the Federal left flank near a country meeting house called Bethesda Church. “Old Jube’s” first action as Second Corps commander earned him low marks. His assaults proceeded without adequate reconnaissance or coordination with other forces, and the Federals easily repulsed him. During the day various reports indicated that substantial reinforcements were steaming toward Grant’s army. Lee deduced that the road network converging at an intersection known as Old Cold Harbor would likely attract the attention of these Federals, as highways there led straight toward Richmond, a dozen miles to the west. Lee ordered a cavalry division to hold this key location until fresh troops—Maj. Gen. Robert F. Hoke’s Division, pried away from a reluctant Beauregard—could arrive from south of the James. This time, Lee’s analysis proved accurate. Grant told Sheridan to occupy Old Cold Harbor until Smith’s arrival, while the rest of the army shifted to the south. The unassumWar at Our Own Doors

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ing intersection of five roads, which had been the scene of fierce fighting two years earlier during the battle of Gaines’ Mill, would once again ring with furious combat.55 After some confusion, Sheridan solidified his occupation of Old Cold Harbor on June 1. Wright’s Sixth Corps was en route to bolster the cavalry, and Smith would have already appeared had inexplicably incompetent staff work not misdirected him from the army’s developing supply depot at White House Landing on the Pamunkey. Until the infantry arrived, Sheridan would have to dismount his troopers and defend Cold Harbor alone. Lee had also arranged for a concentration at Old Cold Harbor. In addition to Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry division and Hoke’s four brigades of veteran foot soldiers, Maj. Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s Division of the First Corps would sidle down from the north and complement Hoke’s approach from the west. As it turned out, the Confederate assaults were even more wretched than those that had failed at Bethesda Church two days earlier. Kershaw’s lead brigade went into battle under an untested commander, who marched his men into the heart of the Federal resistance. This assault failed within five minutes. None of the rest of Kershaw’s troops tested Sheridan’s mettle, and Hoke’s men remained strangely unengaged. The Sixth Corps began to arrive at 10:​​00 a.m. and with them the immediate danger to Old Cold Harbor passed. Smith’s exhausted men eventually turned up while Grant had the entire Army of the Potomac sidestepping south. The Confederates spent the rest of the day constructing earthworks west of the road intersection, carelessly leaving a 350-­yard gap between Hoke’s and Kershaw’s Divisions. A brigade of the Sixth Corps struck that weak point when elements of Wright’s and Smith’s commands launched a large-­scale assault about 5:00 p.m. For a few moments the Federals found themselves behind Confederate lines, but determined counterattacks, abetted by tepid Federal pressure elsewhere, restored the Rebel position by dark. Federal casualties piled up, and clearly the Unionists had squandered a golden opportunity to drive Lee’s vanguard into the interior Richmond defenses.56 Grant regretted the lost opportunity and ordered Hancock to march overnight to Cold Harbor and renew the assaults the next morning, before Lee had the chance to perfect his defenses. “The night was so dark, the heat and dust so excessive and the roads so intricate and hard to keep,” wrote Grant, that Hancock did not arrive until after dawn. Grant postponed the assault until 1:30 p.m. and then until 5:00 p.m., but still the Second Corps seemed too spent to mount an attack. Citing “the heat and want of energy among the men from moving during the night,” Grant reluctantly rescheduled the oft-­deferred offensive for 26

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dawn, June 3. Lee had improved the time by emplacing his army along a seven-­ mile line, anchoring his right firmly on the swampy margins of the Chickahominy River to the south. Artillery bristled from the raw dirt and fresh-­cut logs that popped up along the Confederate front, but even with the additions of Breckinridge, Pickett, and Hoke, Lee’s ranks were too thin to provide reserves except in one place near the right end of his line.57 Fog blanketed the opposing forces at first light on June 3. Grant, confident in his army’s superior strength and morale, hoped that the twenty-­four-­ hour delay would not cripple his offensive’s chances. In this he would be disastrously disappointed. The assaults evinced little coordination between the various corps, and in fact only Smith and Hancock charged with sufficient determination to reach the Confederate lines. Two Second Corps divisions tested Breckinridge’s defenses, and one of them punched through a salient manned by Virginia infantry and artillery. This breakthrough, as luck would have it, occurred at the only place on Lee’s entire line where a reserve force stood poised to repair any damage. That inevitable counterattack repelled the penetration, restoring the integrity of Lee’s right. On the Eighteenth Corps’ sector, Smith’s divisions challenged the First Corps’ works, which formed a reentrant angle that promised unwary attackers flank fire as well as resistance from the front. The soldiers from the Army of the James plunged directly into this death trap. “A heavy line of blue was seen emerging from the timber,” recalled an Alabama soldier. “On they came until within musket range of General Anderson’s front, when a murderous fire was opened by his entire brigade. Then our brigade and the artillery joined in with a right flank fire, causing the front column to hesitate, thus throwing the rear lines forward in a confused mass.”58 One of Wright’s Sixth Corps brigades also engaged the Confederates, but what Grant had envisioned as a massive, simultaneous assault deteriorated into the charge of only eleven of fifty-­one infantry brigades. Grant suffered 3,500 casualties in about an hour—far fewer than what is popularly described, but bad enough. Perhaps 700 Confederates fell in Lee’s most lopsided victory since the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. Confederate artillerist Brig. Gen. Edward Porter Alexander pronounced the victory as “our last, & perhaps our highest tide.”59 Serious combat ceased before noon. Grant toured the battle lines, having delegated tactical control of the assaults to Meade, and concluded after consulting with the corps commanders that nothing more could be gained by resuming the attacks. Grant directed Meade to suspend the offensive and hold the ground gained during the spasmodic advance. In keeping with his responWar at Our Own Doors

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sibilities for the entire Virginia theater of operations, the general-­in-­chief now focused on detaining Lee at Cold Harbor. Doing so would allow the Federal army in the Shenandoah Valley, now commanded by Maj. Gen. David Hunter, to deal with the diminished Confederate force in its front, then march over the Blue Ridge to approach Richmond from the west.60 Lee’s triumph on June 3 generated relief in Richmond. “Such is the confidence of the people in Lee and his noble army, that you hear them talking not only of driving the enemy back, but gobbling him up,” wrote one resident. The joy derived from such an easy victory was tempered in the Confederate ranks by the horrors of the postapocalyptic scene that greeted them in the afternoon. “The spectacle in front of our line was simply sickening,” shuddered a Virginia cannoneer. “The horrible heaps of dead lay so ghastly, and the wounded were so thickly strewn all over the field.” Pvt. David Holt of the Sixteenth Mississippi pitied the dead and dying Yankees and “wished that they had had sense enough to stay at home.” That night the graves of those who had been killed two years earlier at the battle of Gaines’ Mill shone, claimed Holt, “with a phosphorescent light most spooky and weird, while on the surface of the ground, above the ghastly glimmering dead, lay thousands of dead that could not be buried.” The early summer heat bloated corpses and filled the air with a nauseating miasma.61 Lee dispatched a report to James Seddon that night, informing the secretary of war, “Our loss to-­day has been small, and our success, under the blessing of God, all that we could expect.” Sporadic and indecisive combat along the lines raised the casualty toll in the Army of Northern Virginia to about 1,500 on June 3. Grant’s losses approached 7,000 all day. Casualties between May 26, when the armies disengaged at the North Anna, and June 2 had numbered about 5,000 each. The human toll since the Federals crossed the Rapidan had been enormous: Northern losses exceeded 50,000 men, while more than 30,000 of Lee’s soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. These figures suggest that the Overland Campaign deprived the opponents of manpower in about equal proportions. Lee’s diminished ability to assume the tactical initiative on the battlefield had been amply demonstrated during the second half of the campaign, and Grant’s would be evident shortly.62 Many of the wounded perished because military protocol stood in the way of compassion. Union troops had, according to General Humphreys, “made extraordinary efforts by night” to recover the wounded after sunset, but untold numbers remained baking in the summer sun beside the rotting dead. Hancock approached Meade on June 5 inquiring if something could not be done to relieve the suffering of these maimed wretches. Meade wrote Grant that after28

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noon explaining that, because the Confederates did not “recognize me as in command whilst you are present,” the general-­in-­chief would have to make the request.63 Grant dutifully addressed a note to General Lee acknowledging the presence of the suffering wounded from both armies between the lines and citing humanity as the rationale for “some provision [to] be made to provide against such hardships.” Grant suggested that during lulls in the skirmishing that had been pervasive since the termination of concerted Union assaults, “either party [would] be authorized to send to any point between the pickets or skirmish lines, unarmed men bearing litters to pick up their dead or wounded without being fired upon by either party.” Lee replied that this awkward and ambiguous arrangement bore potential for “misunderstanding and difficulty” and proposed that a flag of truce be sent between the lines to facilitate succor by either army.64 Another night passed and more men perished in agony. Grant received Lee’s reply on June 6 and suggested that both armies collect their dead and wounded between noon and 3:00 p.m. that afternoon. Lee callously, if with technical propriety, noted that Grant had failed to ask specifically for a flag of truce, which in military usage connoted admission of defeat, and so declined to accept Grant’s proposal. The frustrated Federal commander replied with a formal request for suspension of hostilities, but more time passed in the transmission of these messages. Lee at last agreed to these terms and wrote at 7:00 p.m. that the Federals might retrieve their dead and wounded between 8:00 p.m. and 10:​​00 p.m. that night. But this message arrived at Grant’s headquarters after the designated time had expired. Not until another exchange of letters on June 7 did the commanding generals settle on a truce between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. that evening, more than 100 hours after the casualties had been inflicted. Predictably, there were few wounded left for the surgeons, but much more work for the burial details.65 Meanwhile, Grant had reached a momentous conclusion that would define the war in Virginia for the next—and final—ten months. Lee’s reliance on maintaining the defensive behind earthworks, and the limited real estate available to accommodate another shift around Lee’s right—much of it dominated by the swamps of the Chickahominy lowlands—compelled Grant to attempt a crossing of the mighty James River. “My idea from the start has been to beat Lee’s army, if possible, north of Richmond, then after destroying his lines of communication north of the James River, to transfer the army to the south side and besiege Lee in Richmond, or follow him south if he should retreat,” Grant reminded Halleck on June 5. “Without a greater sacrifice of human life War at Our Own Doors

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than I am willing to make, all cannot be accomplished that I had designed outside of the city.”66 Grant understood that this scheme involved great peril. The Federal leviathan must secretly disengage from the Army of Northern Virginia, which in most places lay within conversational range of Union front lines. Men, horses, wagons, and other vehicles would have to traverse some fifty miles of roads sufficiently removed from the Cold Harbor works to be beyond Confederate eyes and ears, cross the bridgeless Chickahominy, and span the imposing tidal James, all before Lee could react. If the enemy detected his true intentions, they might attack him astride either river, move against Butler via interior lines before Grant could reinforce the Army of the James, or even shift west and pounce on Hunter as that officer and his small army approached the rail junction at Lynchburg. In order to obviate that final possibility, Grant ordered Sheridan, with two of his three cavalry divisions, to execute a sweeping movement northwest, targeting the Virginia Central Railroad, Lee’s link from Richmond to the Shenandoah Valley. He also directed Hunter to cross the mountains, destroy the railroad and canal system at Lynchburg and beyond, and unite with Sheridan, with whom he would eventually join Meade. Doing this would eliminate Lee’s communications to the west and force the Confederates to rely solely on the rail lines to the south to maintain their armies and a large civilian population. The destruction of these arteries—the Petersburg, South Side, and Richmond & Danville Railroads—would be the ultimate object of Grant’s movement to Southside Virginia. Sheridan left on June 7.67 Several days earlier Hunter had defeated a small Confederate army at Piedmont in the upper Shenandoah Valley and then seized the important city of Staunton on the Virginia Central Railroad. Lee responded to that setback by returning Breckinridge and his 2,100 infantry to the west to counter Hunter’s threat on either side of the Blue Ridge as circumstances dictated. Lee quickly learned of Sheridan’s departure, divined his intentions, and dispatched 4,700 troopers under Maj. Gens. Wade Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee “in the direction of Hanover Junction and thence . . . along the Central R.R., keeping the enemy on their right, and [shaping] their course according to his.” This left only Maj. Gen. William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney” Lee’s small division of horsemen and a cavalry brigade of the Richmond garrison under Col. Martin W. Gary to provide Lee reconnaissance. This paucity of enemy cavalry would aid Grant’s clandestine withdrawal.68 While Sheridan and Hunter worked their way toward a rendezvous along

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the Virginia Central Railroad, Grant began the complex preliminaries for his movement to the James. He took steps ranging from ordering Meade to erect fortifications to cover the army’s departure to directing railroad iron to be removed from the Richmond and York River line and placed on boats to be shipped to City Point or Washington. Grant arranged for troops arriving from the north at White House Landing to be held for transfer to City Point. Most importantly, he set in motion the search for an appropriate crossing point on the James and ordered the proper engineering materials to be available to erect a temporary bridge. He also requisitioned “six or more ferry boats of the largest class” as either a supplement to or replacement for a bridge crossing.69 In the midst of all these logistical and operational activities, Butler made his aborted attack on Petersburg on June 9. Although Beauregard saw the portents of an ominous initiative in the action that day, Lee declined to consider Butler’s spasm anything more than a failed reconnaissance, conducted exclusively by the Army of the James. “No troops have left General Grant’s army,” Lee reassured the nervous Creole, “and none could have crossed James River without being perceived. I think it very improbable, under present circumstances, that Grant would diminish his forces.” Still, Lee shifted two brigades, those of Brig. Gens. Matthew Ransom and Archibald Gracie, to the pontoon crossing at Drewry’s Bluff, about midway between Richmond and Petersburg, in better position to reinforce Beauregard should circumstances so require. Lee was not insensible to the very real possibility that Grant might shift the campaign to the south side of the James. Beauregard certainly thought as much, and many in Richmond believed it as an article of faith. But Lee could not be so sure. Grant might still hammer him from the Cold Harbor lines or move south of the Chickahominy and approach Richmond between that stream and the James, as the Army of the Potomac had done in 1862. In conjunction with Butler, Grant might also simultaneously menace Richmond from both sides of the James. The protection of Richmond was simply too critical to gamble that Grant would undertake the only one of his many options that would require Lee to remove troops from the capital’s defense.70 Three events on June 11 would have profound effects on military affairs. First, Hampton and Fitz Lee intercepted Sheridan along the Virginia Central Railroad at Trevilian Station, in Louisa County. The swirling battle extended into the following day, involving some 12,500 troopers, making it one of the largest cavalry engagements of the entire Civil War. Although the Confederates suffered 1,000 casualties compared to fewer than 800 for Sheridan, the Union commander had little choice but to abandon his mission of destroying the rail-

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road and combining forces with Hunter. Hampton, more than Fitz Lee, performed admirably in command, which boded well for the South Carolinian’s future career.71 General Hunter, known pejoratively as “Black Dave,” justified his reputation by entering Lexington on June 11 and promptly putting the torch to the Virginia Military Institute barracks, the home of former Virginia governor John Letcher, and many lesser structures. Hunter’s victory at Piedmont, occupation of Staunton, and destruction of Lexington suggested that his only remaining course of action, now that the Shenandoah Valley had been placed at his total mercy, was to move east over the Blue Ridge, probably toward Lynchburg. Actuated by the same motive that prompted him to dispatch Breckinridge, Lee opted to deal decisively with Hunter. “Finding that it would be necessary to detach some troops to repel the force under General Hunter . . . I resolved to send one that would be adequate to accomplish that purpose and, if possible, strike a decisive blow,” Lee explained. That blow would entail the defeat of Hunter followed by a march down the Shenandoah Valley and across the Potomac River. “It was hoped that by threatening Washington and Baltimore, General Grant would be compelled to either weaken himself so much for their protection as to afford us an opportunity to attack him, or that he might be induced to attack us.” Orders reached Jubal Early on June 12 to prepare to move, and the next day the Second Corps, reduced to 8,000 veteran muskets, headed west. Combined with his earlier detachment of Breckinridge, Lee had now diminished his infantry by 25 percent from its post–­Cold Harbor strength. Lee ultimately thought the potential gains were worth the risks, and events would prove him right. Early’s campaigns against Hunter in Lynchburg and subsequently in the Shenandoah Valley, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, would vex Federal authorities for the next four months.72 While Sheridan, Hampton, and Fitz Lee traded sabre blows and Hunter made war on Virginia civilians, Grant communicated with Butler and Meade. The army would move the next day, June 12, while the Eighteenth Corps returned to Butler via the same rivers that had brought it north. Meade would see to the disengagement of his four infantry corps from the lines at Cold Harbor. The target would be Petersburg—railroad nexus, supply center, and the logistical key to Lee’s survival—assuming Hunter and Sheridan could render the Virginia Central Railroad useless. “The capture of Petersburg would leave but one railroad in the hands of the Confederates,” wrote General Humphreys. And at that moment, Petersburg was ripe for the taking. The contest, according to one Union soldier, would be “a campaign of giants.”73

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Grant’s new target had overlooked the south bank of the Appomattox River for more than two hundred years. Petersburg’s origins dated to 1645, when English authorities established a frontier military post called Fort Henry on the fall line of the Appomattox. One of the installation’s commanders, Maj. Peter Jones, created a trading center in the neighborhood to carry on peaceful commerce with the occasionally troublesome native population. Jones lent his Christian name to the village that grew up around his establishment. By 1784 two other little settlements—Pocahontas and Blandford—merged with Petersburg to form an incorporated town. Petersburg gained status as a city in March 1850, and according to the 1860 census, the community on the Appomattox had grown to be the second largest city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, numbering 18,266 souls.74 Petersburg could boast of a distinguished military heritage. On April 25, 1781, a British army 2,500 strong approached the town, intent on destroying tobacco and seizing public stores. A makeshift force of about 1,000 Virginia militia offered valiant resistance before retreating safely across the Appomattox, destroying the bridge and preventing pursuit. During the War of 1812 the Petersburg Volunteers, a militia company of about 103 local men, fought bravely in the old Northwest, particularly at Fort Meigs near what is now Toledo, Ohio. The Virginians went into battle with flashy cockades on their headgear, and when a grateful President James Madison reviewed these veterans, he pronounced their hometown “the Cockade City of the Union.” The name stuck.75 Petersburg’s growth and prosperity relied on its transportation assets. Poised at the head of navigation on the tidal Appomattox, Petersburg served as a busy port. The federal government erected a handsome new customs house on Union Street in 1858 in recognition of the city’s flourishing commerce. The Upper Appomattox Canal penetrated Petersburg’s upriver hinterlands and provided reliable waterborne shipping for some fifty miles upstream. A large turning basin on the western margin of town accommodated numerous bateaux that floated myriad varieties of commodities—but especially tobacco—for shipment or processing in Petersburg.76 By the third decade of the nineteenth century, railroads began to compete with canals and rivers in America as the most favored means of transportation. Petersburg’s local governing body, the common council, incorporated the Petersburg Railroad in 1830, and three years later trains connected the Cockade City with Weldon, North Carolina, sixty miles to the south. In order to avoid interruptions caused by the constant silting of the ship channel in the lower Appomattox, the City Point Railroad began operation in 1838. This eight-­mile

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City of Petersburg

line provided a reliable connection between Petersburg and the deep water of the James River. The inconsequential village of City Point, at the scenic confluence of the James and Appomattox, contributed its name to the enterprise. About the same time, rails connected Petersburg to Richmond. Then, in the mid-­1850s, the South Side Railroad began operations to Lynchburg, 124 miles west of the Cockade City. Petersburg viewed the last of its five antebellum railroads, the Norfolk & Petersburg line, with mixed emotions. The local business community considered Norfolk a commercial rival and feared that once the iron horse ran from central Virginia to Hampton Roads, Norfolk would capture business previously belonging to Petersburg. Each of the four trunk lines maintained its own depot, and none of their tracks connected. This ensured that Petersburg hotels, restaurants, and hacks would enjoy a lively business. A number of highways supplemented rails and water, including Jerusalem Plank Road heading southeast and Boydton Plank Road, coursing southwest from the city. Halifax Road paralleled the Petersburg (Weldon) Railroad, and Cox Road ran beside the South Side Railroad to the west.77 In addition to its transportation network, Petersburg enjoyed an exalted status among the manufacturing centers of the South, ranking forty-­ninth of all American cities in industrial production in 1860. Tobacco reigned supreme in the Cockade City. Petersburg was the second largest tobacco town in the world, trailing only Richmond. Twenty factories sold 23 percent of the state’s tobacco in 1860. Because tobacco processing required no water power, the city’s factories tended to locate well south of the riverfront, clustered along Washington Street—the main east-­west artery through town—and a handful of cross streets. Rising two and three stories and built of brick, the tobacco factories resembled tidy apartment buildings. Workers enjoyed running water fed by reservoirs on the south end of town, central heat, and gas lighting supplied by the municipal gas works on Lombard Street, although no one could argue that labor in these facilities was anything but arduous. Tobacco that arrived on wagons, in bateaux, or by rail was stored awaiting final disposition in one of several official tobacco warehouses.78 Tobacco dominated the local business community, but Petersburg sustained three other vibrant industries. The area’s surprisingly mild climate marked it as the northernmost American city to both grow and process cotton. Four cotton mills operated in or near Petersburg on the eve of the Civil War, three of which were run by local businessmen Benjamin Lynch and David Callender. They depended on the water power generated by a system of dams and canals on the Appomattox River, which fell 100 feet in the five miles above the fall line. Two of the factories were located just west of the city on the river’s left War at Our Own Doors

35

bank, surrounded by the little mill villages of Matoaca and Ettrick. Approximately one-­third of Virginia’s cotton processing occurred in Petersburg.79 Three flour mills, also driven by water power, lined the riverfront. The city also counted five iron foundries that forged everything from steam engine parts to ornamental decorations. One-­third of the state’s iron production came from Petersburg, and only Richmond outstripped it in the production of flour. Iron workers earned the highest salaries among Petersburg’s laboring class, followed by the millers and the cotton operatives. African Americans, both enslaved and free, dominated the work force in tobacco factories.80 Petersburg had always enjoyed a large free black population, and by the outbreak of the Civil War some of Petersburg’s African Americans led a relatively comfortable lifestyle. In 1860, 3,244 of the 8,924 blacks in Petersburg were free, amounting to 26 percent of the city’s entire free population and the highest such proportion in any Southern city. In spite of laws that made manumission difficult and discouraged the relocation of free blacks to Petersburg, their community continued to grow and thrive throughout the 1850s. Free black men and women found employment in the tobacco factories, some men toiled in the iron foundries, and others worked as blacksmiths, coopers, wheelwrights, and brick masons. African Americans operated boats on the Appomattox River and drove hacks and drays transporting goods and passengers to and from the railroad depots. Vibrant cultural institutions served free blacks in Petersburg including the Beneficial Society of Free Men of Color, the Petersburg African Church, and Gillfield Baptist Church. About one in three free black families owned real estate, and a handful owned slaves. Slaveholding in Petersburg followed typical urban patterns. White families and businesses held slaves, who either served as domestics or labored in the tobacco factories. Most Petersburg slaveholders owned just one or two enslaved people. Nearby farmers and planters controlled a much larger proportion of the local slave population, but as agriculture in the area evolved from a monolithic tobacco culture to mixed production, including grain crops that required a smaller labor force, owners leased their slaves to Petersburg industries or sold them at great profit to planters in the cotton states.81 Nearly nine out of ten white Petersburg residents owned no real property, suggesting that a relatively small number of prosperous families amassed most of the city’s wealth. Commission merchants led the list of the Petersburg well-­to-­do, but they were joined by business owners, railroad officials, and professionals. These men sent their children to one of about two dozen private schools in the city, attended lectures at the elegant Library Hall, enjoyed dramatic and musical performances at expansive Phoenix Hall, and indulged 36

War at Our Own Doors

a passion for horseracing at the New Market track east of town. A variety of daily and weekly newspapers appealed to nearly all viewpoints on the political spectrum. Beautiful homes lined High Street and South Market Street and surrounded the city’s municipal park, Poplar Lawn. The Petersburg elite attended St. Paul’s Episcopal Church or Tabb Street Presbyterian, as most of the white population claimed English or Scots heritage. Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and Jews patronized their own houses of worship.82 Petersburg politics mirrored those of other Southern commercial cities. Although heightened sectional tensions in the late 1850s stimulated enlistment in militia units, as it did across Virginia, Petersburg voters did not embrace the fire-­eating sentiments of its most famous secession advocates—agriculturalist Edmund Ruffin and newspaper editor Roger A. Pryor. Most residents favored the Constitutional Unionist candidate, John Bell, in the 1860 presidential canvass and sent fifty-­eight-­year-­old Thomas Branch to the state convention in February 1861 on a pro-­Union platform. Branch accepted the legality of secession, but rejected the argument that the election of Abraham Lincoln alone justified leaving the Union. “I was elected on a moderate platform. I am now a moderate man, and whilst I go against coercion . . . still I feel it to be the duty of Virginia to cling to the Union as long as she can,” Branch explained on the floor of the convention.83 The firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in April 1861 and President Lincoln’s subsequent call for a quota of militia from each state to suppress the rebellion changed the political calculus in the state convention—and in Petersburg. Branch voted with the majority on April 17 to take Virginia out of the Union, making Petersburg the seventh largest city in the Confederate States of America. The white population in Petersburg celebrated as robustly as anyone in the emerging nation. Six companies of Petersburg militia boarded trains for the seat of war. New volunteers rushed to join the army. A substantial number of the free black men of military age enthusiastically expressed their desire to serve the Confederacy, either as soldiers or laborers. “We are willing to aid Virginia’s cause to the utmost extent of our ability,” intoned Charles Tinsley, a bricklayer and spokesman for more than 300 African Americans who gathered on Petersburg’s courthouse steps on April 25. Although Virginia was not about to arm black men, the state welcomed the volunteers as laborers and the city provided them with a patriotic send-­off as they boarded trains for Norfolk. Within three months, Petersburg contributed ten companies of infantry, two companies of cavalry, and three artillery batteries to the Confederate cause. These 1,200 men represented some 53 percent of the city’s white, military-­aged males.84 War at Our Own Doors

37

Beginning on April 24, 1861, and continuing without respite for more than four years, Petersburg played host to visiting soldiers. A South Carolina infantry regiment was the first to arrive in the Cockade City, en route from its muster to join the gathering Confederate army in Richmond and northern Virginia. Local residents opened their doors, their purses, and their hearts to these dashing allies from the Deep South. The novelty of arriving soldiers ran its course soon enough, and the informal charity of residents gave way to established institutions to serve the needs of troops in transit. A soldiers’ shelter sprang up at Poplar Lawn to accommodate the 1,500 Confederate troops who daily passed through Petersburg on their way north. Restaurants, saloons, and other businesses that catered to the needs of the flesh did a rousing business. Pressure from General Lee in Richmond during the summer of 1861 resulted in the temporary interconnection of the city’s through-­rail lines, although the common council made clear its intention to dismantle those links once military matters no longer required them.85 Domestic life in Petersburg changed drastically during the first year of the war, but not until the summer of 1862 did the specter of Union occupation loom over the Cockade City. While George McClellan’s army menaced Richmond from the east, the Federal navy moved against Petersburg. Cdr. John Rodgers led a flotilla of ten vessels up the Appomattox River, including the ironclad Monitor, intent on destroying the bridges across the river that had facilitated the rapid reinforcement of Lee’s Richmond defenders. On the night of June 26, Rodgers learned the perils of navigating the Appomattox at low tide. Two of his ships, the Port Royal and the Island Belle, ran aground in the shallow channel, while Confederate shore batteries pounded the fleet. Eventually, Rodgers freed his flagship, but he had to strip the Island Belle and abandon her, along with his effort to reach Petersburg.86 A few days later Lee completed his offensive against McClellan by driving the Union commander into a fortified camp along the James River. McClellan expressed the desire to continue his campaign against the Confederate capital by ferrying his men across the James, seizing Petersburg, and entrenching there, forcing Lee to defend his southern communications. “Little Mac’s” credibility in Washington had eroded so badly, however, that Halleck, the new general-­in-­chief, refused to allow McClellan to execute this plan. As in May 1864, Petersburg escaped certain capture due solely to the whims of Union strategic decisions.87 Petersburg’s local commander, Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill, unleashed an artillery attack against the Union camps on August 1 from Coggins Point,

38

War at Our Own Doors

on the south bank of the James. Old Edmund Ruffin received permission to pull the first lanyard. Forty-­one Confederate cannon erupted shortly after midnight, “a sound,” wrote one enthralled witness, “whose grandeur and power words cannot describe and which cannot be imagined by anyone who has never heard the like . . . shaking the very ground and rolling, echoing and reechoing through the woods and ravines on the riverbank.” Startled Union tars rushed to their gun positions and returned fire. After expending about 1,000 rounds and killing or wounding twenty-­two Federals, Hill’s forces ceased fire, removed their guns, and returned to Petersburg. Although this assault only irritated the Federals, later that month McClellan’s army returned to northern Virginia.88 McClellan’s proximity also spurred Hill to begin to fortify Petersburg. In March 1862, the common council had appointed a committee “to inquire as to the propriety of putting the city in a state of defence & report what, if anything, is necessary for that purpose.” This initiative aided the preparation of the shore defenses along the Appomattox that turned back the Union navy in June, but virtually nothing had been accomplished that would thwart an approach overland from the east, south, or west. Hill gathered several regiments—first the Forty-­Eighth North Carolina and then the Thirtieth Virginia and the Second, Twenty-­Seventh, and Forty-­Sixth North Carolina—at the Charles Friend farm east of the city and ordered them to begin digging fortifications. He also impressed the labor of local slaves, causing no little distress to their masters. Lee then dispatched a skilled engineer officer to Petersburg, Lt. Col. Walter H. Stevens, to assist Hill in laying out a professional defensive network for the Cockade City. Col. Jeremy F. Gilmer, Lee’s chief engineer, also contributed his talents.89 Stevens and Gilmer delegated responsibility for overseeing their plan to a young engineer officer, Capt. Charles H. Dimmock. Dimmock had been in town since May and had superintended construction of the works along the river. His new task would be enormous. Stevens and Gilmer had designed a ten-­mile line south of the Appomattox River consisting of fifty-­five artillery batteries anchored on that river at both ends and numbered consecutively from the downstream fort around the east, south, and west sides of Petersburg. These redans, open in the rear, would mount various numbers of guns depending on their location, the strongest batteries located adjacent to the roads and railroads that entered town. Infantry curtains would connect each of these emplacements. Dimmock went to work using a combination of soldiers and slaves from as far away as North Carolina and Virginia’s Eastern Shore. He made considerable progress, but when McClellan’s threat evaporated and the war shifted

War at Our Own Doors

39

back to northern Virginia, the number of troops available for fatigue details diminished accordingly. Dimmock kept blacks at work on the line that soon bore his name, but progress languished due to a chronic labor shortage.90 Hill’s successor in Petersburg, Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French, addressed the Petersburg Common Council on December 12, 1862, complaining about the city’s lack of active cooperation in securing civilian workers to complete the Dimmock Line, which ended then at Jerusalem Plank Road. “The early completion of the defensive works around your city must be a matter of paramount interest to yourselves,” French implored the local lawmakers. “It has been found impossible to secure an immediate and adequate force to meet the demands for labor.” French called on the council to provide a gang of two hundred African American workers to toil from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. each day. “With this force for two or three weeks more could be accomplished than in as many months of the rapidly approaching bad weather.”91 Municipal leaders heeded French’s plea and advertised for slaves and free blacks to work on the defenses for two dollars per day, with rations provided by the Confederate government. No laborer would be detained on the trenches more than twenty days and all would work until 4:00 p.m. when they would be released to return home. Samuel Lecture, a builder and member of the common council, would supervise the workers. Despite these relatively lenient conditions, construction of the Dimmock Line would continue well into 1863 before the trenches and batteries stretched unbroken to the river upstream from town.92 In the meantime, Confederate authorities turned Petersburg into one of the South’s largest military hospital centers. Wounded soldiers began arriving in Petersburg following the fighting at Manassas Junction in July 1861. The common council turned exhibition buildings at the city fairgrounds into hospital wards, local hotels opened their doors, and citizens offered their own dwellings as temporary expedients. By August the Confederate government assumed responsibility for medical facilities in town. Soon the Fair Grounds Hospital boasted new structures built specifically to house thirty to forty patients each. The Cameron Tobacco Factory, left idle by its inability to ship its products to a dwindling domestic market, breathed new life as the North Carolina Hospital, run by authorities from the Old North State. Soon other tobacco factories underwent similar transformations, often with the aim of treating patients from specific states. The Ladies Hospital at Second and Bollingbrook Streets operated by private subscription under the leadership of Miss Nora F. Davidson. By July 1862, seven substantial military hospitals functioned in town. These mod-

40

War at Our Own Doors

ern and efficient operations treated nearly 2,500 of Lee’s casualties from the Seven Days battles around Richmond. In addition to medical facilities, the Confederate government established a powder mill, lead works, copper and zinc factories for the production of percussion caps, and a naval ropewalk in Petersburg. Some two dozen slaves tended niter beds to produce potassium nitrate for making gunpowder. Petersburg never became a prison center, although thousands of Union captives traveled through town on their way south and from time to time Confederate authorities held Union prisoners in warehouses or on islands in the Appomattox River for a day or two. A large number of paroled Confederate prisoners were, however, detained west of town at the Model Farm awaiting exchange.93 The twin scourges of rampant monetary inflation and severe shortages of most necessities and all luxuries sorely complicated life for Petersburg residents during the first three years of the war. The arrival of Butler’s army in early May 1864 brought even harsher times for the city’s remaining population—which by then was heavily burdened with poor, elderly, and women refugees from Prince George and Chesterfield Counties who had fled to the city before the Union advance. Butler’s imminent threat inspired bravado and genuine determination to defy the Yankee invaders. “Better to subsist on dry bread, than be ruled by the most detestable race of human beings that ever libeled humanity,” declared Petersburg’s medical director, Dr. John H. Claiborne. “I have never seen so much enthusiasm amongst the troops as now. There is no way to whip them but to kill them all.”94 Beauregard’s victory at Drewry’s Bluff on May 16, Butler’s retreat behind his Bermuda Hundred defenses, and the transfer of Smith’s corps to Cold Harbor tempered the crisis atmosphere in the Cockade City. Soon enough, the attack on June 9 reminded city residents that they faced “war at our own doors.” Hoke’s departure left Beauregard with a paper-­thin defense, stretching from Drewry’s Bluff across the Appomattox, and ending at Jerusalem Plank Road. “Grant . . . doubtless intends operations against Richmond along the James River, probably on the south side,” warned Beauregard on June 7. “Petersburg being nearly defenseless would be captured before it could be reinforced.” Along the Union lines at Cold Harbor, that is exactly what Ulysses S. Grant had in mind.95

War at Our Own Doors

41

two

Our Hearts Were Filled with New Hope

Movement to Combat Targeting Petersburg seemed logical to both Union and Confederate strategists. “A brilliant and distinguished graduate of West Point . . . put his finger on the map, at Petersburg, and said, ‘There is Richmond,’” remembered Gen. William F. Smith. “The more the map of Virginia and the campaigns in Virginia are studied, the brighter will the truth of that remark shine out.” A Southern officer agreed: “If Petersburg were captured, Richmond could no longer be held, more than a few days at the utmost.”1 Although Grant’s June 5 message to Halleck stated that a movement against Petersburg constituted part of his original campaign plan, historian Brian Holden Reid persuasively argues that “there is perhaps a degree of retrospective justification” in Grant’s assertion. Clearly, Grant’s persistent offensives from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor bespoke ambition for decisive results, and, as historian T. Harry Williams writes, “He was at the end of the line he had said he would fight it out on if it took all summer. His plan had failed.” Grant’s new course would suspend attempts to reach Richmond through maneuver or by destroying the Army of Northern Virginia in battle. Instead, he would concentrate on severing Lee’s supply lines from the south and west. In conjunction with Philip Sheridan’s and David Hunter’s strikes against the Virginia Central Railroad and James River Canal, Grant’s shift across the James might compel Lee to forsake his fortifications and come out to fight for his communications. That could lead to the ultimate showdown on open ground that Grant had failed to achieve throughout the spring.2 42

Whether or not the shift against Petersburg had been integral to Grant’s original strategy, the effort would require substantial planning beyond whatever conceptual framework the Union commander had previously developed. In addition to the conundrum of how to transport his army to Southside Virginia, Grant worried about Benjamin Butler’s security during the operation, and about the potential threat posed by the small Confederate navy poised on the James below Richmond. Still, the overarching challenge remained how and where to cross that imposing tidal river swiftly and secretly. The “Mighty James” is navigable for more than 108 miles from its mouth at Hampton Roads to the fall line at Richmond. Federals such as Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry thought the James “majestic. . . . Such an enormous mass of water is it that it seems a ponderous flood.” From the Virginia capital downstream for twenty miles the James is relatively narrow and difficult to navigate with an average depth of seven feet. But below the mouth of the Appomattox at City Point, the river widens substantially to between 1,000 and 4,000 yards except at a few select spots. The narrows between old Fort Powhatan on the south bank and the Weyanoke Peninsula to the north, thirty-­four river miles below Richmond and fourteen miles downriver from City Point, is the first such location. The channel here was more than eighty feet deep and had a tidal fluctuation of about four feet with a swift current. Passing an army across such an obstacle in the presence of the enemy would pose a logistical nightmare.3 Grant’s strategy for conquering the James evolved over a week beginning on June 5 when he informed Halleck of his intention to “move the army to the south side of James River, either by crossing the Chickahominy and marching near City Point, or by going to the mouth of the Chickahominy on the north side and crossing there.” The general-­in-­chief thought the latter option more promising, which prompted his request for ferry vessels. Halleck responded on the 7th, pledging to provide as many boats of all descriptions as possible from the motley fleet based at Fort Monroe. “Everything will be sent forward as soon as you direct,” replied Halleck, who was known in army circles with a mixture of respect and derision as “Old Brains.”4 On the afternoon of June 6 Grant summoned a senior aide, Col. Cyrus B. Comstock, and his junior colleague, Lt. Col. Horace Porter, to his headquarters tent. Grant’s planning had matured overnight, as he informed the staff officers. He had decided to “send Smith’s corps by a forced night march to Cole’s Landing on the Chickahominy, there to take boats and be transferred to Butler’s position at Bermuda Hundred.” The Army of the Potomac would “by rapid marches reach the James River and prepare to cross.” Comstock and Porter were to “explain the contemplated movement fully to General Butler, and see Movement to Combat

43

that the necessary preparations are made by him to render his position secure against any attack from Lee’s forces while the Army of the Potomac is making its movement.” A second mission required them to “select the best point on the river for the crossing, taking into consideration the necessity of choosing a place which will give the Army of the Potomac as short a line of march as practicable, and which will . . . be far enough down-­stream to allow for a sufficient distance between it and the present position of Lee’s army to prevent the chances of our being attacked successfully while in the act of crossing.” Grant emphasized that their recommendations should be guided by “considerations of the width of the river at the point of crossing, and of the character of the country by which it will have to be approached.” Porter and Comstock boarded a steamer at White House Landing the next day bound for Bermuda Hundred via Fort Monroe, which they reached that night. Grant by then had notified Butler of the impending arrival and purpose of his emissaries. Comstock and Porter arrived at Butler’s headquarters at 5:00  p.m. on June 8. En route they examined the banks of the James for likely places at which to build a pontoon bridge and identified both the narrows at Fort Powhatan as well as Butler’s existing facilities at Bermuda Hundred. After visiting with Butler and receiving his assurance that once Smith arrived with the Eighteenth Corps he could hold his lines against Lee’s entire army, Grant’s staffers headed back downriver on June 10. Leaving Fort Monroe on the 11th, they arrived at White House Landing at 9:00 p.m. and then made the overland trek back to Grant’s Cold Harbor headquarters. They would report their recommendations to the general-­in-­chief the following morning.5 While Grant waited for his aides to return, he busied himself with other issues incident to the withdrawal of his troops. On the evening of June 8 he directed Meade to construct a defensive line “from the present right to left” to be occupied by two divisions of the Fifth Corps in order to cover the disengagement of the rest of the army. He assigned Brig. Gen. John G. Barnard, newly arrived chief engineer of the armies in the field, to instruct Meade’s chief engineer, Maj. James Duane, on where to locate these works. Duane—described by Meade’s staffer, Lieutenant Colonel Lyman, as “a railroad looking man with a long beard, whose clothes would be improved by a brush”—used the next forty-­eight hours to complete a line running almost directly in front of Old Cold Harbor from Elder Swamp northward to Allen’s millpond; he finished the work on the morning of June 11.6 Although Grant did not formally communicate his final plans to his principal commanders until June 11, he had discussed them with Meade and antici44

Movement to Combat

pated their execution the previous day. In evident response to these briefings, at 7:30 p.m. on June 10 Meade ordered General Warren to shift the divisions of Brig. Gens. Romeyn B. Ayres and Samuel W. Crawford to the south in preparation for moving his entire corps across the Chickahominy River at Long Bridge, then advancing to the Glendale intersection at Riddell’s Shop to assume his blocking position. “The order for the movement of the army will be sent to you in due time,” added Meade, admonishing Warren to consider the instructions confidential.7 “Due time” proved to be the next day, when Grant explicitly informed both Meade and Butler of his concept for the movement south, which would begin on the evening of June 12. He admitted that without the report from Comstock and Porter as to the recommended crossing point he could not provide “instructions as definite as I would wish,” but that an unspecified timetable dictated that the operation should commence promptly. No doubt Grant anticipated that he would hear from his staff officers shortly and then identify the army’s precise destination in ample time to make all the necessary arrangements.8 Grant provided succinct, general guidance to Meade, relying on the Pennsylvanian to sort out the details consistent with Meade’s role as army commander. The Fifth Corps would bear responsibility for screening the army’s departure by crossing the Chickahominy at Long Bridge and then marching west on Long Bridge Road “to its junction with the Quaker road, or until stopped by the enemy.” The army’s remaining three corps would follow as Meade determined, one crossing behind Warren at Long Bridge and the other two negotiating the Chickahominy six miles downstream at Jones Bridge. The Eighteenth Corps, on loan from the Army of the James, would march to the army’s supply base at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River, board transports, and make its way back to Butler via the York and James Rivers. The wagon trains and artillery of Smith’s corps along with those of the Army of the Potomac would follow a separate route, crossing the Chickahominy downstream from Jones Bridge. The general direction of Meade’s forces and the trains would be a point on the James opposite Fort Powhatan and near the shire village of Charles City Court House.9 Meade, with substantial input from his chief of staff, Andrew Humphreys, translated these concepts—and whatever conversations he had with Grant prior to receiving his written instructions on the 11th—into a comprehensive fifteen-­part order addressing each constituent component of his command. The cavalry drew Meade’s initial attention. Only James H. Wilson’s Third Division remained with the army after Sheridan’s departure for the Virginia CenMovement to Combat

45

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0 8 Miles B. - Berkeley Plantation B.B. - Bottom’s Bridge B.L. - Broadway Landing C.C.C.H. - Charles City Court House C.P. - City Point D.H. - Douthat House D.S. - Dispatch Station G. - Glendale (Riddell’s Shop) H.C. - Herring Creek H.L. - Harrison’s Landing L.B. - Long Bridge O.C.H. - Old Cold Harbor P.B. - Pontoon Bridge P.R. - Point of Rocks S.F. - Sherwood Forest S.S. - Savage Station T.S. - Tunstall’s Station W.L. - Wilcox’s Landing W.H.L. - White House Landing We.P. - Weyanoke Peninsula Wi.P. - Windmill Point

Old Church Wagons

IX

P.B. Fort Powhatan James River

XVIII

March to the James

tral Railroad and his rendezvous with Hunter. Wilson had assigned his two brigades to patrol the respective flanks of the infantry line, with the five regiments of Col. George H. Chapman’s Second Brigade on the left picketing along the Chickahominy. Meade called for Chapman to lead the way across that swampy stream in the vicinity of the ruined Long Bridge, and push westward toward the Glendale intersection, clearing the road for the Fifth Corps. Warren’s four divisions remained divided on the night of June 11. Ayres and Crawford had shifted south that day to a position several miles north of Long Bridge, in accordance with their orders, while Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin’s First Division and Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler’s Fourth Division extended along the northern margins of the Chickahominy lowlands to the northwest, occupying the army’s far left. Meade’s orders called for all four of Warren’s divisions to march after dark on the 12th toward Long Bridge, cross the river in Chapman’s wake, and assume a blocking position covering the bridge over White Oak Swamp and the road network that converged at Glendale—both logical routes by which the Confederates could interdict the designated Union corridors. Warren’s advance might yield the additional benefit of persuading the Confederates that his men were the vanguard of an offensive aimed directly at Richmond between the James and the Chickahominy, thus buying additional time for the army to reach the James unhindered. Once the rest of the army neared that river, Warren was to follow in the footsteps of the Second Corps. Hancock would disengage from his position on the southern end of the Cold Harbor defenses and proceed to Long Bridge. From there the Second Corps would make its way toward Charles City Court House, just north of the James. The next corps in line, Horatio Wright’s Sixth, would disengage and occupy Duane’s new entrenched line behind Old Cold Harbor along with Hancock until their routes were clear of traffic. Wright would then trek toward the Chickahominy and a crossing at the site of Jones Bridge. Ambrose Burnside’s Ninth Corps, on the army’s far right, would follow different roads east and then south to Jones Bridge and a rendezvous with the Sixth Corps about three miles north of the Chickahominy; the corps reaching this point first would henceforth take the lead. Smith’s Eighteenth Corps would follow a unique course eastward to White House Landing, enjoying the right of way should they cross paths with the Ninth Corps en route. At White House the men would board transports for their journey back to Bermuda Hundred. A fourth route would lead the army’s wagons (and Smith’s artillery and trains) on roads farthest east toward a crossing near the head of navigation on the Chickahominy called Windsor Shades, four miles below Jones Bridge. Brig. Gen. Edward Ferrero and his Fourth DiviMovement to Combat

47

sion of the Ninth Corps, comprising the corps’ U.S. Colored Troops, would accompany the wagon train as guards. Col. John B. McIntosh’s brigade of Wilson’s cavalry division would cover the army’s rear. The bridges at all three crossing points had been demolished, so Meade’s orders specified how engineer troops would employ canvas and wooden pontoons assigned to the Fifth and Sixth Corps to construct temporary spans. The orders concluded by directing the army’s base of supplies to be transferred to the James, and the existing depot at White House Landing to be dismantled by Hunter and Sheridan when they returned from their forays against the Virginia Central Railroad.10 Grant’s message to Butler informed him both of the arrangements to ferry Smith’s corps back to Bermuda Hundred and the general direction of the Army of the Potomac, which would “strike the [James] river at the most practicable crossing below City Point.” The general-­in-­chief assured Butler that Smith would arrive before Lee could possibly mount an attack against the Army of the James, and that Meade would be available “not more than one day” later. Grant would rely on Butler to accumulate the means to cross the Army of the Potomac and, in the absence of recommendations from Comstock and Porter, authorized him to build a pontoon bridge across the James somewhere below City Point. Buried oddly within the paragraph authorizing the construction of a pontoon bridge was Grant’s permission for Butler to attempt to “seize and hold Petersburg” if he felt that Smith’s arrival gave him enough force to attack the city with “a reasonable degree of confidence of success.” Despite this apparent afterthought, Grant clearly focused at this time on secretly extricating his army from Cold Harbor, transferring it safely across the James, and ensuring that Butler would not be menaced while the Army of the Potomac was in transit. Detailed plans for coordinated operations in Southside Virginia would, presumably, await a later day.11 On the morning of June 12 Comstock and Porter met with Grant and made their recommendation that the army cross near Fort Powhatan. They based their judgment on the narrowness of the river there and the practicability of building approach roads. Porter noticed Grant’s unusually nervous manner during their interview, concluding that “it was evident that he was wrought up to an intensity of thought and action which he seldom displayed.” Grant concluded the meeting by informing his staffers that the army would begin the move that night.12 In the meantime, Butler’s chief engineer, Brig. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel, dispatched a regular engineer officer, Lt. Peter S. Michie, to investigate specific 48

Movement to Combat

crossing points in the vicinity of Fort Powhatan. Michie reported that at three places on the Weyanoke Peninsula—a protrusion into the left bank of the James aiming at Fort Powhatan—the river measured less than 2,000 feet across. The shortest two of these points, however, needed extensive work to prepare approaches on the river’s north shore. The third location, one-­half mile upstream from Weyanoke Point at the tip of the peninsula, would require a much shorter corduroy road across the marsh, although access to the south shore here would demand additional preparation. Weitzel apprised Comstock of the results of Michie’s reconnaissance, but independently decided that the third option, where the river measured 1,992 feet, made the most sense. While waiting for Grant’s authorization, Weitzel began preparations for construction of the approaches. Grant approved Weitzel’s decision the next afternoon and work began in earnest. Grant had already dispatched Lt. Col. Frederick Dent (his brother-­in-­law) to Fort Monroe and then on to Bermuda Hundred to see to the assemblage of pontoon materials and ferry boats at the proposed crossing point; he reiterated the need for all such vessels and equipment in a message to the Eighteenth Corps’ chief quartermaster on June 12. At the same time, Meade’s chief quartermaster, Brig. Gen. Rufus Ingalls, issued instructions to assemble a fleet at White House Landing for use by Smith’s corps.13 “The operation now contemplated by Grant transcended in difficulty and danger any that he had attempted during the campaign,” thought a member of his staff. “He was to withdraw an army from within forty yards of the enemy’s line, and to march through the difficult swamps of the Chickahominy bottom, to positions where that stream could be crossed without interruption from the rebels; then, to advance to the James, a great and tidal river, at a point seven hundred yards across; to effect a passage with all the munitions and supplies of a hundred thousand soldiers, changing his base . . . from White House to City Point, a hundred and fifty [river] miles apart; to effect a combination of Meade’s force with that on the James.” Edward Porter Alexander considered Grant’s plan “the most brilliant stroke in all the Federal campaigns of the whole war.” Bold it was, but it remained to be seen if the Union high command could execute and then exploit their logistical success to achieve their ultimate goal: control of Petersburg’s railroad nexus. “To-­day we commence a flank march, to unite with Butler on the James,” Meade informed his wife on June 12. “If it is successful, as I think it will be, it will bring us to the last act of the Richmond drama . . . and will end fortunately and victoriously for us.”14 The success of the movement depended intrinsically on secrecy. Horace Porter lavished praise on Grant’s ability to keep his own counsel, calling him Movement to Combat

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“Ulysses the Silent” and the “Great Unspeakable,” providing anecdotal evidence that even officers of exalted rank were unaware of the commander’s full intentions. The Fifth Corps artillerist, Col. Charles Wainwright, expressed a different opinion. “We are bound for the James River, south side,” read Wainwright’s diary on June 11. “At least so says rumour . . . for the information comes tolerably direct, though not through authorized channels.” Wainwright complained that, “while every precaution is being taken at the front to prevent the enemy suspecting what is up, the exact point of our destination is freely spoken of by the quartermaster’s department, and as a matter of course comes up by every teamster, who tells it to all the men he knows; and officers, even generals of divisions, first learn the plan of campaign through their enlisted men.” In an environment where rumors circulated cheaply and with great frequency, however, a distinction remained on both sides of the Cold Harbor lines between news from the grapevine and credible intelligence.15 Regardless of their degree of knowledge about the proposed shift to the south, Union soldiers in the lines at Cold Harbor found their current circumstances almost intolerable. A New Jersey chaplain recalled: “The space of ground occupied by the works before Cold Harbor was becoming exceedingly offensive, and there was fear of its breeding infection if the stay was continued much longer. Shallow graves received the dead within our lines . . . though by scores they lay in full sight for days, bloated and blackened. Dead horses, swelled to bursting, were left where they had been shot down, objects of aversion to sight and smell. . . . We hailed, almost with acclamations, the announcement of our withdrawal from that awful place. No words can adequately describe the horrors of the twelve days we had spent there, and the sufferings we had endured.”16 Those announcements of impending movements, albeit without mention of specific destinations, circulated among the troops at various times on June 12. The army would disengage after dark to conceal its departure while a skeleton force made a show of continued occupation. Soldiers built a road to expedite the movement of Hancock’s corps, and preliminary adjustments proceeded throughout the day out of sight of watchful Confederates. “Every man had his tin cup tied fast and his tin plate, if he was rich enough to have one, safely stowed in his haversack,” wrote one Federal, “so when the movement was begun there was not a rattle or a jingle to be heard.”17 Although Smith’s rear-­echelon units set off toward White House in the afternoon, the bulk of his three divisions began withdrawing from their positions at Cold Harbor after sunset. Smith assigned Col. Guy V. Henry, a brigade commander in Brig. Gen. William T. H. Brooks’s division, to organize 50

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the corps’ departure. Henry’s father had been a friend of Smith’s in the old army, and the Eighteenth Corps commander considered the twenty-­five-­year-­ old Henry an “energetic, intelligent, and ambitious” officer. The troops of Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames’s Tenth Corps division (serving under Smith since their transfer across the James in late May) led the way about 8:00 p.m., followed by Brooks’s men, and then the division of Brig. Gen. John H. Martindale. Henry masked their movement by ordering regimental bands to play long and loudly, while keeping about 250 men of the Twenty-­First Connecticut and Fifty-­Eighth Pennsylvania of his brigade on the picket line, making their presence known to their vigilant Confederate counterparts. Between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., once the rest of the infantry had moved out, Henry guided these rearguard soldiers out of their lines without detection.18 Smith’s troops had the shortest march to their destination—only eighteen miles—but not necessarily the easiest. A huge knot of supply wagons from the Army of the Potomac impeded Smith’s progress near Tunstall’s Station on the Richmond & York River Railroad, and the exhausting pace along roads so dusty as to be “almost suffocating” tested the soldiers’ endurance. The first of Smith’s men reached White House Landing in midmorning, June 13. Smith received instructions from Grant’s headquarters to “Send forward your troops to Bermuda Hundred as fast as they embark without waiting for divisions, the object being to get them to Bermuda Hundred at the earliest possible moment.” This was Smith’s first hint of the urgency attending the shift back to the James, although the need for that urgency remained unarticulated. He immediately saw to the loading of Brooks’s division and told Ames to oversee the embarkation of the rest of the corps, leaving the Tenth Corps men the last to depart. Smith then boarded the steamer Metamora for the trip down the Pamunkey and York and up the James. Martindale’s division boarded its transports during the afternoon and was underway by 4:00 p.m. It would be the next morning before all of Ames’s men left White House Landing.19 While Smith marched to White House Landing, Warren and Wilson headed for the Chickahominy. Chapman’s cavalry led the way and reached the crossing point at Long Bridge shortly after dark, expecting to find a pontoon bridge already in place. The engineers responsible for constructing the span had been there for some time, but, stymied by fire from Confederate sharpshooters on the south bank, they had not yet started their work. “The officer in charge of the pontoons [Maj. George W. Ford of the Fiftieth New York Engineers] seemed somewhat timid,” sneered Wilson.20 The Chickahominy River here, as elsewhere along much of its course, consisted of two narrow channels. At the Long Bridge site the northern branch Movement to Combat

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measured 100 feet in width and the southern 60 feet, the two divided by an island some 250 feet across. “The banks of the river are more swamps containing a black covering of water which reflects all the foliage & umbrageous covering in images of the sombrest nature,” wrote Lewis Steiner, an official with the U.S. Sanitary Commission. “The soil is a rich muck which would contribute to the fertilization of the land if it were applied by the enterprising agriculturalist.” Theodore Lyman described the Chickahominy as “a wide ditch, partly choked with rotten logs, and full of brown, tepid sickly-­looking water” with “banks of dark mould” surrounded by “a black and luxuriant vegetation” characterized by the “peculiar smell of decaying leaves and stagnant water.”21 A handful of pickets belonging to Brig. Gen. Rufus Barringer’s North Carolina cavalry brigade provided the source of Ford’s timidity, firing at the defenseless engineers from small rifle pits on the south bank they had occupied for several days. As Chapman and Wilson studied a way to end the impasse, Warren, according to Wilson, expressed his frustration by admonishing a courier from cavalry headquarters to “tell General Wilson if he can’t lay that bridge to get out of the way with his damned cavalry and I’ll lay it.”22 Chapman’s brigade sprang into action about 10:​​00  p.m., although it is doubtful that Warren’s vitriol had much to do with it. The Twenty-­Second New York Cavalry dismounted, bushwhacked up the swampy left bank for fifty yards, and tiptoed across the Chickahominy’s soggy morass on fallen logs, grasping overhanging limbs for balance. Portions of the Third Indiana Cavalry clambered aboard one of Ford’s pontoon boats and propelled themselves to the island under fire from Barringer’s Tar Heels. From there the Hoosiers engaged the Confederates, and, assisted by the Twenty-­Second New York Cavalry on the Rebels’ left, pushed across the second channel and secured the south bank. The engineers immediately began constructing their bridge, losing one man while completing the span over the north channel. It took them two and a half hours to finish their work. Wilson reported the loss of several troopers during the operation and informed Meade’s headquarters that the bridge would be ready around midnight. About 1:00 a.m. on June 13, the remainder of Chapman’s five regiments, accompanied by two batteries of horse artillery, rumbled across the span and advanced up Long Bridge Road to clear the way for Warren’s infantry.23 The Fifth Corps began its march between 6:00 p.m. and dark on the 12th, winding its way along the shadowy roads toward Long Bridge until after midnight. The infantry moved off the roadway to allow Colonel Wainwright’s artillery the right of way. “I rode most of the way with General Warren, who was in a good humour today and quite conversable,” reported the artillerist. “The 52

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air had something exhilarating in it so that everyone moved along cheerfully.” Come the dawn, Crawford’s division, followed by Griffin’s, moved across the pontoons at Long Bridge and trekked up the slope onto high ground near a home owned by one Mrs. Maddox. Warren reported at 5:00 a.m. on the 13th that his headquarters were near the Maddox place, a mile and a half from the Chickahominy, with his two divisions camped nearby. Cutler’s division, and then Ayres’s negotiated the pontoons after sunrise.24 In the meantime, orders arrived for the Second Corps to disengage at Cold Harbor after dark. A Massachusetts cannoneer recalled, “Our march presented the usual chapter of halts, miring of caissons, taking of wrong road . . . etc., together conspiring to bring this particular night up to the standard of all such, in the respect of being disagreeable.” Unlike the Fifth Corps before them, Hancock’s men tramped past Dispatch Station toward Long Bridge without a significant stop until dawn on the 13th. General Hancock, whose wound sustained at the battle of Gettysburg nearly a year earlier continued to plague him, rode along with the column until about 1:00 a.m., when a surgeon insisted that he dismount and seek rest in an ambulance. “The light of day at last began to creep up from the east and dispel the drowsiness which always persisted most obstinately just before the dawn,” remembered a soldier. The column halted for breakfast before resuming the march toward Long Bridge.25 As planned, the Sixth Corps glided into the reserve trenches after dark on June 12, maintaining the same sort of noisy presence with their regimental musicians as Henry had ordered in the Eighteenth Corps, before they began their journey south. “It was a bright, moonlight night, just right for marching,” conditions that may have influenced Pvt. Almeron W. Stillwell of the Fifth Wisconsin to wax optimistic in his diary: “With all the opposition we have met with at home and abroad by northern Copperheads and threatened foreign intervention,” he wrote, “our credit, our home resources have not failed us and we are yet strong in wealth and power to wield the scepter of justice and strike at the throat of any attempt to dissolve this union either at home or abroad.” Soon, however, the men experienced the suffocating dust that “rose in a cloud thicker than the thickest fog,” making it almost impossible for the men to breathe. Wright’s soldiers marched all night with only an occasional rest break until shortly after dawn when the column halted for breakfast. By midafternoon on the 13th, the head of the Sixth Corps approached the Chickahominy north of Jones Bridge, where an engineer contingent busily hammered together two pontoon bridges, one each for the north and south channels. Unlike the situation the previous evening at Long Bridge, “a strong earthwork” on the south bank was unmanned and the engineers completed their work without interMovement to Combat

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ference. “I propose crossing to-­night,” reported General Wright, whose leading brigades gained the south shore just before sundown and made camp a few miles beyond the bridge, having covered about twenty-­two miles since leaving Cold Harbor. “I don’t know exactly how far we marched,” confessed a Vermont soldier, “but the choking dust and heat and the many crooked turns we made, made the march doubly difficult. . . . Those last miles were doled out in suffering by inches.”26 Burnside’s troops experienced a similar situation. “All was bustle and confusion” in the Ninth Corps’ Cold Harbor camps on June 12, remembered a soldier in the Twenty-­Seventh Michigan, as fast-­riding orderlies delivered and received orders throughout the day, “showing that we were on the eve of some great event.” The nature of that event became evident when shortly after dark orders arrived for Burnside’s soldiers on the army’s far right to strike their tents and move out, prompting some “croakers” in the corps to pronounce Grant’s campaign a failure. Burnside’s men disguised their departure so well that the Confederates continued to fire on one of the corps’ battery positions for more than an hour after the lines had been abandoned.27 Burnside’s column reached Tunstall’s Station about dawn to find that immense traffic jam caused by the army’s wagon trains—the same snarl that had earlier annoyed Baldy Smith. A clearly frustrated Burnside reported to Meade that the trains had taken the wrong roads and indulged the luxury of “a good night’s rest,” ensuring that they would not clear the intersection before the Ninth Corps’ arrival. “The road is very narrow and completely blocked, so that my command cannot pass until they are out of the way,” griped Burnside. The infantry did not entirely clear the roadblock until 2:00 p.m., putting them well behind Wright’s corps en route to Jones Bridge. The Sixth Corps commander informed Burnside at 5:45 that afternoon that his men were crossing the Chickahominy, and he expected to have everyone on the south bank by dark. “At 4 a.m. tomorrow this corps will resume its march for Charles City . . . and as you take the same road as myself you can decide when to start so as not to be delayed by me,” Wright added. The Ninth Corps’ three white divisions halted about three miles north of the bridge and went into camp approximately twenty marching miles from their Cold Harbor trenches, where the Twenty-­Seventh Michigan traded their Springfield rifles for Spencer repeaters. Burnside distributed a circular before midnight specifying that Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Willcox’s Third Division would lead the corps across the bridge at 4:00 a.m. on the 14th, followed by James H. Ledlie’s First Division, with Brig. Gen. Robert B. Potter’s Second Division bringing up the rear.28 The missing element of Burnside’s corps, Ferrero’s all-­black Fourth Divi54

Movement to Combat

sion, accompanied the army’s wagon trains, ambulances, and most of its cattle herd. They also left their camps near Old Church at dusk on June 12 and marched until between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., when they halted for a rest, causing the clogged roadway at Tunstall’s Station that so infuriated Burnside. An episode transpired here that illustrated the inexperience of the black soldiers, few of whom had seen combat. Just as the column began to lag with exhaustion a cry reverberated through the ranks, “Ghos! Ghos! Look out, dar!” Out of the inky blackness came a terrible crashing sound that led one of the division’s white officers to believe that they had come under attack from Confederate cavalry. As this man peered through the gloom to evaluate the situation, he believed that the entire Fourth Division—some 4,500 men—had vanished entirely. It took an hour to reassemble them after it became known that the “Ghos” was merely a runaway pack mule belonging to division headquarters.29 Order restored, Ferrero’s troops resumed their march eastbound on June 13. Their destination would be Windsor Shades in New Kent County. Lt. Col. Ira Spaulding of the Fiftieth New York Engineers, the officer responsible for building the bridges across the Chickahominy, rode ahead to the designated point and, to his surprise and annoyance, found it unfavorable. “Deep marshes and swamps on the southwest side [of the river] were extensive, and could only be crossed by crib bridges and corduroy roads requiring a vast amount of labor,” he explained. A glance at his map suggested that Coles Landing (also called Coles Ferry), eight miles downstream from Windsor Shades, promised an easier crossing point. This would, of course, entail a longer march for Ferrero and his wagons, and the engineers would soon discover the source of an even longer delay.30 Thus on the morning of June 13, Grant arrived near Long Bridge to establish army headquarters, while Chapman’s cavalry brigade and two divisions of Warren’s Fifth Corps stood nearby on the south bank of the Chickahominy, about to move west to control the Glendale intersection; Hancock’s corps prepared to cross the river in Warren’s wake; Wright was en route to Jones Bridge, while Burnside attempted to untangle the traffic jam at Tunstall’s Station; Smith began boarding transports at White House Landing; Ferrero and the trains wound their way east toward an uncertain crossing of the Chickahominy; and McIntosh’s cavalry brigade guarded the army’s rear. With the exception of the minor skirmishing between Chapman and Barringer at Long Bridge, the Confederates had not impeded this massive shift of Grant’s forces—in fact, they were not even aware of it.31 That is not to say that voices in Richmond and Petersburg had not predicted just such an operation. No one surpassed General Beauregard in warnMovement to Combat

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ing of the Federals’ likely shift to the Southside. “The present movements of Grant’s army have a significance which cannot have escaped your observation,” wrote Beauregard to General Bragg on June 9, with his familiar tone of condescension. “He clearly seeks to move around Lee’s forces . . . in the direction of James River . . . and in case of his meeting with no adequate resistance to plant himself on both sides . . . and attack by concentrating his whole army on the south side.” However, Beauregard’s crystal ball proved cloudy, telling Bragg that Grant’s crossing would be “as close to Chaffin’s Bluff as circumstances may permit” and “using the fortified position at Bermuda Hundred as a base for his operations.” Others in gray, such as cavalry officer Charles Minor Blackford, expressed a more accurate—if entirely speculative—vision of the enemy’s plans. “We have news,—authentic,—that Grant is crossing the James River below the mouth of the Appomattox and is pushing a heavy force towards Petersburg for the purpose of cutting our southern railroads,” wrote Blackford on the 9th, although he discounted the rumor the following day.32 Lee initially rejected the notion that Grant had shifted troops south of the James or that he was liable to do so, although within forty-­eight hours the Confederate commander began to modify his analysis. Information arrived from cavalry scouts that the Federals betrayed signs of evacuating their base at White House—an increase of transport boats had appeared there, and reinforcements had ceased pouring into that location. This information prompted Lee to write President Davis on June 11 that Grant might “withdraw a portion of his force, and . . . move to the James River.” Lee’s mind, however, was occupied with other weighty matters, including the decision to send Jubal Early toward Lynchburg and the assignment of General Ewell to command the defenses of Richmond, and he took no action to address Grant’s potential initiative.33 At daylight on June 13 Confederate troops discovered that the enemy had disappeared from its Cold Harbor fortifications. “We went all over their battle field and picked up some guns and perused their works,” wrote a Georgian, “and about 8 a.m. we started marching.” Other than losing a few stragglers, the Federals had made a clean getaway, spawning rumors that General Lee “was in a furious passion.” Orders circulated to Richard Anderson’s and Powell Hill’s corps to move south, cross the Chickahominy River, and make for the Glendale intersection and Malvern Hill, a mile farther south, in position to block Union access to Richmond via the road network made famous two years earlier.34 Maj. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox’s Division led Hill’s column south, followed by Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s troops, and then Brig. Gen. William Mahone’s. Anderson’s First Corps left later, in the order of Joseph Kershaw’s, George Pickett’s, and Maj. Gen. Charles W. Field’s Divisions. Robert Hoke’s Division, 56

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still on loan from Beauregard’s army, brought up the rear. Fewer than 40,000 infantrymen in these seven divisions were in motion. A soldier in the Fourth Texas wrote home that “we crossed the Chickahominy on one of the bridges erected by the ‘Young Napoleon,’ while he invested Richmond; passed by what, two years ago, were his headquarters, crossed the York River railroad near Savage Station [and] marched over the battle-­field of Seven Pines.” A South Carolinian remembered that “the day was intensely hot, so that it required unusual vigilance in officers, and unusual exertion in the men, to execute the frequently repeated order to close up and keep in four ranks.”35 Until the infantry arrived, Barringer’s cavalry and some stray artillery provided the only opposition to the Federal incursion across the Chickahominy at Long Bridge. Rebel troopers dropped barricades in the road, forcing Wilson’s horsemen to clear a path and fight their way forward in fits and starts. Wilson’s immediate goal was the bridge over White Oak Swamp, the road from which intersected Long Bridge Road a short distance from that span and just east of Glendale. After about an hour, Wilson’s men reached the intersection with White Oak Swamp Road and turned north, pushing the stubborn North Carolinians before them. As Barringer’s men retreated to the far side of White Oak Swamp, cannon fire erupted in support of the retiring Southerners. Wilson’s cavalry consequently halted on the high ground south of the stream and called for assistance from Crawford’s infantry.36 Col. James Lawrence Bates, a New England leather merchant and former commander of the Twelfth Massachusetts, led the Second Brigade of Crawford’s division up the road toward White Oak Bridge around 8:00 a.m., followed by Col. Peter Lyle’s First Brigade. Two Fifth Corps batteries accompanied the foot soldiers. Quickly unlimbering, the cannoneers exchanged fire with the Confederate artillery across the swamp. Within thirty minutes, the combat had confined itself to relatively harmless shelling, allowing Wilson to withdraw his troopers and leave Crawford’s men to seal off the White Oak Bridge access to the Union line of march.37 Colonel Chapman now resumed his advance west on Long Bridge Road toward the Glendale intersection, where byways from the northwest, west, and south converged. Late that morning Chapman encountered a Confederate force deployed in a belt of woods just east of the crossroads. These graycoats— three regiments of cavalry under Martin W. Gary—had learned of Wilson’s approach from alert pickets and hurried from their camps near Malvern Hill to assume a blocking position. After an obstinate resistance, Gary’s dismounted troopers withdrew west of the intersection, leaving a few dead and wounded where they had fallen. Chapman advanced so that his brigade controlled the Movement to Combat

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road junction, sent out patrols to keep watch for potential Confederate threats, and fortified his critical position with fence rails. Thus far, the Union cavalry had accomplished everything that had been asked of it, aided now by the last of Crawford’s brigades, the remnant of the Pennsylvania Reserves under Col. James J. Carle.38 Union dominance at the crossroads was about to be challenged. Couriers from Gary’s command found Wilcox’s Division marching south and informed these comrades of the predicament at Glendale. Wilcox, a dark-­eyed, swarthy, forty-­year-­old North Carolinian, who had worked his way up from colonel to major general with quiet competence, reached Charles City Road several miles northwest of Glendale and rushed his four brigades forward until they reached Gary’s picket lines. Advancing his sharpshooter battalions as skirmishers, Wilcox deployed Brig. Gen. James Conner’s South Carolina brigade on the right of Charles City Road and Brig. Gen. Alfred M. Scales’s North Carolinians on the left. Wilcox was in position by 2:00 p.m.39 Within an hour the Confederate infantry advanced and drove Chapman’s horsemen back through the Glendale crossroads, wrapping around the Federal left while placing direct pressure along the axis of Charles City Road. An Indiana trooper thought the clash to be “the hardest fight we have had for a long time.” Chapman’s men rallied around their reserve position at the edge of the woods east of the intersection, while the Confederates consolidated their gains by constructing works. “The way our men build fortifications beats the world,” thought General Conner. “In three hours we had a capital line of works.”40 Meanwhile, Heth’s Division arrived in support of Barringer’s troopers on the north side of White Oak Swamp. Crawford responded by shifting Lyle’s brigade to strengthen Bates’s position, drawing immediate fire from across the stream. Around 4:00  p.m. Heth and Barringer ventured an advance toward the bridge, which the Federals promptly repulsed, an engagement described as “hot and sharp” by a Maryland Confederate. A second foray proved equally unsuccessful, and the situation along White Oak Swamp once again degenerated into a desultory exchange of cannon fire.41 Between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., the last combat of the day erupted near Glendale. Wilcox renewed his advance against Chapman’s cavalry and Carle’s supporting infantry, during which the Twenty-­Second North Carolina of Scales’s Brigade received particularly heavy fire. The Union troopers fell back through the ranks of the Pennsylvania Reserves, creating momentary confusion. However, the Federal withdrawal proceeded with reasonable order, and stubborn rearguard firing combined with the gathering darkness terminated

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Wilcox’s pursuit. He returned to the crossroads and, joined by Mahone’s Division and much of Anderson’s corps, completed a long line of works extending from White Oak Swamp to Malvern Hill. Before midnight, Confederate infantry blocked all the primary roads leading to Richmond between the Chickahominy and the James.42 By then Chapman and Crawford had quietly abandoned their fallback positions and started their march to rejoin the rest of the army. These units had discharged their mission splendidly, at the cost of perhaps 100 men killed, wounded, and captured. Not only had they kept the enemy distant from the army’s march toward the James, but their aggressive advance to White Oak Swamp and beyond Glendale planted a seed of uncertainty in the Confederate psyche that all but paralyzed Southern operations for twenty-­four hours. Wilcox estimated his June 13 losses at about 100. Heth, Barringer, and Gary probably combined for similarly modest casualties. Lee submitted his report of the day’s activities at 10:​​00 p.m.: “At daylight this morning it was discovered that the army of General Grant had left our front . . . the army was moved to conform to the route taken by him. He advanced a body of cavalry and some infantry from Long Bridge to Riddell’s Shop, which were driven back this evening nearly two miles, after some sharp skirmishing.” The Confederate commander offered no information regarding the rest of the enemy’s whereabouts, activities, or objectives.43 While the contest at Glendale unfolded, Hancock’s men rested for much of the morning on June 13, following their all-­night march, but took to the road again around noon. By 3:15 p.m. the Second Corps and McIntosh’s cavalry completed their crossings of the Chickahominy, allowing the engineers to dismantle the pontoons at Long Bridge. Hancock’s column stretched out along the dusty byways, despite the efforts of Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow’s divisional provost guard, who relentlessly pressed stragglers to keep pace with their units. A soldier in the Seventh New York Heavy Artillery saw hundreds of “travelworn men and boys strewn along the road in various stages of exhaustion . . . faces begrimed and features pinched, clothes stained with sweat and dust and feet swollen and blistered.” Drinking water proved scarce, and the troops would stop to partake of “some vile, stagnant pool of warm water” wherever they found it, notwithstanding the efforts of their officers to keep the column moving. Although Hancock’s rank and file had no explicit knowledge of their destination, most intuitively believed they were heading for the James— a notion validated when, late in the afternoon, they came within sight of that impressive river. “To appreciate such a spectacle, you must pass five weeks in

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an almost unbroken wilderness, with no sights but weary, dusty troops, endless wagon-­trains, convoys of poor wounded men, and hot, uncomfortable camps,” explained Colonel Lyman.44 Warren’s corps, less Crawford and Chapman’s cavalry busy at White Oak Swamp and Glendale, watched as Hancock’s men disappeared south from Long Bridge, marking time in position to come to Crawford’s aid should their assistance be required. Eventually, these Fifth Corps units resumed their march with Cutler’s division in the lead, followed by Ayres’s three brigades, then Griffin’s First Division. Crawford trailed behind after disengaging from the skirmishing with Heth and Wilcox. Following roads parallel to those used by Hancock’s men, Warren’s advance halted at Samaria Church (often misnamed St. Mary’s Church in Union accounts) about midnight, three or four hours’ march short of the James. Warren and his aide, Maj. Washington A. Roebling, blamed Wilson’s cavalry for their disappointing progress, reflecting the bad blood that had erupted the previous night at Long Bridge.45 General-­in-­Chief Grant and army commander Meade met with no such delays. The two rode together on June 13, Meade reminding one observer of “a helmeted knight of old, gaunt, tall, grizzled, with a large Roman nose of will and power, and wearing a slouched hat, the wide brim bent down all round, but not concealing the lightning glance of eyes that are terrible in anger.” Grant mounted his splendid warhorse, Cincinnati, that day, “all-­absorbed, all-­observant, silent, inscrutable, he controls and moves armies as he does his horse.” The commanders advanced from Providence Church to camps near the north bank of the James, reaching there by late afternoon. Placed in signal communication with Butler and dispatching Lt. Col. Orville E. Babcock as his personal courier, Grant apprised Butler of the army’s arrival and his intention to begin crossing the river at 10:​​00 a.m. the next day. “Communicate with me if infantry can be transferred rapidly from Wilcox’s Wharf,” Grant instructed. Butler replied that the wharves might require a little time to repair but that he would have “barges, landing material, and water transportation” available in a timely fashion. Grant also ordered Meade to explore a crossing point upstream, telling him that he would assign all of Butler’s men and material to Meade’s engineers “to be used under their direction until the army is crossed.” The general-­in-­chief also notified Halleck of the day’s progress. Finally, Grant told Butler to obstruct the upper James with a fleet of sunken vessels “as high up the river as we could guard them,” in order to ensure that the potentially troublesome Confederate navy could not steam downriver and disrupt the crossing operations—although such a waterborne offensive by the Southern tars seemed unlikely.46 60

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Smith’s three divisions continued to board transports at White House throughout June 13. The corps commander, who suffered from a lack of sleep caused by spending recent days and nights on the shell-­torn front lines, occupied the lead vessel. He also complained about “the swamp water we had been obliged to drink at Cold Harbor,” which, according to Smith, caused in him “great fever and weakness.” The voyages proceeded uneventfully, although a cattle barge named Salvor carrying the 115th New York became mired in the mud along the Pamunkey. Rations were scarce and some boats were so crowded that soldiers struggled to find standing room. Many of the vessels reached Fort Monroe during the predawn hours of June 14. Smith stepped ashore and, despite his self-­proclaimed maladies, found time to visit with Mrs. Benjamin Butler. Sarah Butler reported that Smith—consistent with his reputation—spared no criticism of the campaign conducted that spring, calling it “desperate butchery” and blaming Meade for the army’s excessive casualties. “I would rather be a toad, and feed upon the vapors of a dungeon,” stated Mrs. Butler, “than in Meade’s place now.”47 Smith’s motley fleet completed its journey throughout the day and into the evening of the 14th. Some of the boats began docking at Bermuda Hundred at noon, while others continued up the Appomattox to Point of Rocks and Broadway Landing, where Butler’s army maintained a pontoon bridge. The arrival and disembarkation of Smith’s three divisions followed no particular pattern. During their passage of Fort Powhatan, his soldiers caught glimpses of a spectacular engineering feat taking shape: the much-­celebrated pontoon bridge across the James.48 The engineers amassed the enormous volume of material required to construct such an elaborate bridge and its associated approach routes. Conquering the Chickahominy in three places required Meade’s entire pontoon train, hence Grant’s reliance on Butler for assistance. The Army of the James had received substantial quantities of bridge-­building gear from Fort Monroe earlier in the month to facilitate an offensive across the Appomattox. Butler, however, had ordered these goods returned on June 10, when plans changed and they no longer seemed necessary. Some 3,100 feet of bridging components and 155 pontoon boats thus made the trip back downriver to Hampton Roads. It is difficult to understand why Butler dispatched this equipment after consulting with Comstock and Porter about Grant’s intention to cross the James. Common sense suggested that the army retain it closer to Grant’s potential crossing points near Fort Powhatan. Meade’s headquarters and, presumably, Grant’s, had been kept apprised of the location of the pontoons, but neither Comstock nor anyone from Meade’s camp thought to remind Butler of their relevance to Movement to Combat

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Grant’s operation. The materials arrived at Fort Monroe on June 12. It is tempting to speculate how events might have changed had the bridging components been available sooner.49 Grant consequently ordered that all the bridging gear at Fort Monroe and any still remaining at Bermuda Hundred be forwarded to the Fort Powhatan area on June 12 and 13. He sent Colonel Dent to both places to expedite the process and communicated directly with Butler and Lt. Col. Herman Biggs, chief quartermaster of the Eighteenth Corps, to the same end. Brig. Gen. Henry W. Benham, commander of the Volunteer Engineer Brigade of Meade’s army, consisting of the Fifteenth New York Engineers and Fiftieth New York Engineers, received Grant’s instructions at Fort Monroe. At 9:00 a.m. on the 13th, Benham notified both Butler and Meade that he was preparing the pontoon train for transport back up the river under the direct command of Capt. Timothy Lubey of the Fifteenth New York and Capt. James L. Robbins of the Fiftieth New York. Quartermaster Biggs informed Butler that he had arranged for spikes, rope, and lumber—supplies necessary for bridge building—to accompany the boats and expected to forward 200,000 board-­feet during the day.50 Sixty river miles separated Fort Monroe from Fort Powhatan, but the pontoons did not arrive at the bridge site until noon on June 14. From 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on the 13th, Benham prepared them for transport with reasonable expediency, but what accounts for the twenty-­two hours required to traverse a distance that might have been covered in less than half that time? General Weitzel ascribed it to “inexcusable tardiness” and “neglect of duty” on the part of Captain Robbins. Weitzel reached this conclusion when the boat he had dispatched downstream looking for the equipment discovered the pontoons at anchor below Jamestown Island, with Captain Robbins asleep. As incriminating as this appeared, no evidence exists that either Robbins or Lubey had been apprised of the urgency of their mission. As this was the pontoons’ third trip up or down the James in recent days, they may have viewed the journey as routine. It is also plausible that the strong current in the James interfered sufficiently with the voyage upriver that the two officers moored their vessels until they could run with the tide. In any event, by the time the pontoons appeared, Weitzel had already accomplished the necessary work on the land approaches on both banks, no insignificant achievement.51 No one can question the initiative and energy of General Weitzel, “an intelligent, Saxon looking man with light eyes and beard,” thought Lyman, and endowed with a “big head, set on a long neck, atop a long body, swung along by pendulum legs,” according to a war correspondent. Even before explicit autho-

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rization arrived to utilize his recommended bridge site, stretching from below the Douthat house on the north shore to Windmill Point, Weitzel ordered Lieutenant Michie to begin cutting the timber required to build the long approach across the marsh on the left bank. Motivated by a 3:00 p.m. June 13 message from Grant that the army would arrive ready to cross by 10:​​00 a.m. the next day, Weitzel dispatched scouts to the south shore to disperse any Confederate pickets, followed by work parties. He employed some 150 axmen on the north bank to fell huge cypress trees more than three feet in diameter, and prepared 1,200 feet of lumber in twenty-­foot lengths to navigate the swampy ground leading to the bridgehead. Those on the opposite shore worked to construct the ramp required to connect the bridge with the local road network. The soldiers floated an additional 3,000 feet of timber down a creek upstream from Fort Powhatan and rafted it across the James. Engineer troops labored alongside infantrymen from the Second Corps throughout the night. Weitzel completed the culminating portion at 9:45 a.m. on the 14th, an elevated pier 150 feet long over ground too wet for a corduroy road. Now, both approaches were ready to accommodate Grant’s crossing. All that remained was to build the bridge.52 For more than two hours the engineers and their officers looked anxiously downriver for signs of the pontoon fleet. Finally, about noon, the steamer hauling the equipment hove into view, and as fast as the boats could be removed from their towlines they were positioned on either side of the river so that the bridge could be built simultaneously from both shores.53 Earlier that day Major Duane had arrived with two companies of the regular engineer battalion under the command of Capt. George H. Mendell. General Weitzel waived his seniority and Duane assumed responsibility for the operation, although Mendell closely supervised the actual construction. Once the pontoons arrived, Duane and Mendell tackled the first issues: construction of an abutment of some 150 to 200 feet in length extending from the end of the pier on the north bank out into the water, and the arrangement of the pontoon boats that “were scattered in confusion over the low marshy ground along the shore.” The regulars noticed disapprovingly that some of the volunteers—­ identified as the First New York Engineers, the engineer detachment assigned to the Army of the James—refused to jump into the mud and slime near the bank to position the boats properly. The regulars filled the breach, leaping into water up to their necks and arranging the pontoons. Within an hour, they had finished the abutment. These tasks completed, Mendell’s men shifted to the south shore to assemble the

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bridge from there, while the volunteer regiments from Meade’s army took responsibility for extending the pontoons from the north bank into the main channel. The work began in earnest at 4:00 p.m.54 While Duane and Mendell oversaw construction of the bridge, General Benham, who had departed Fort Monroe at 11:​​00 a.m. with three fresh companies of engineers and additional construction material, arrived at the bridge site late in the day. Theodore Lyman thought Benham, “an old red faced, stampeded porpoise,” and Cpl. Gilbert Thompson of the U.S. Engineer Battalion held Benham in contempt as well: “The great event was when the John A. Warner came steaming up along and a stentorian voice roared out, ‘Halloa there! Send a pontoon to take General Benham ashore.’ Had a Punch & Judy been suddenly revealed a general laugh could not have been quicker started. Soon he came along pleased and fat, with ‘Hard at it boys’ and the old laugh in a fine little comical sketch could be made of the effect the news produced among the semi-­amphibious crowd on the other side when some of us crossed over and gave them the news ‘Old Benham’s come.’” Lyman snidely commented that Benham arrived “too late to seriously impede the work.”55 Anchoring the pontoons in the middle of the channel, where the swift current threatened the structure’s stability, posed the engineers’ most daunting challenge. General Butler contributed to the solution by requisitioning a number of sutlers’ schooners from anchorage at City Point. The engineers used these heavy boats as stabilizers connected to the pontoons with hawsers and securely anchored above and below the span. The bridge proceeded across water that measured more than eighty feet deep at the heart of the channel. The engineers also created a one-­hundred-­foot removable section to allow the passage of essential river traffic in support of operations upstream. When General Meade questioned Benham at 9:30 p.m. regarding the progress in “throwing the bridge,” the paunchy engineer replied a little more than an hour later that “the bridge has now the last boat in position and the raft is ready to close the gap. . . . The bridge can be completed in fifteen minutes if you so order it.” Meade authorized immediate completion, instructions Benham received at 12:45 a.m. on June 15. In a matter of moments, the engineers finished their work.56 Thus in about eight hours, a floating bridge nearly 2,000 feet long, 10 feet wide, and consisting of 101 pontoons stretched across the magnificent James. “In civil life, if a bridge of this length were to be built over a river with a swift current and having a maximum depth of eighty-­five feet, they would allow two or three months for the making of plans . . . then not less than a year to build it,” marveled Colonel Lyman. Porter Alexander considered this engineering mar64

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vel “the greatest bridge which the world has seen since the days of Xerxes,” while a newspaper correspondent considered a view of the bridge “with vessels and transports of every description, loaded with army supplies, float[ing] idly on the placid bosom of the James so far downward as the eye could reach” among the “most imposing I ever witnessed.” At least one Federal soldier, however, found fault with the pace of the construction. Sgt. John H. Westervelt of the First New York Engineers thought their rivals in the Fifteenth New York Engineers took “twice as long as it would have taken us though they have done five times the pontooning we have.”57 Enemy interference with the bridge building and subsequent river crossing might have emanated from either Lee’s pursuing army or the undersized Confederate navy prowling the James below Richmond, but Grant took steps to neutralize both possibilities. Maj. Nathaniel Michler of the engineers began designing a defensive line on the 13th to cover the bridgehead. These works eventually extended from Herring Creek on the left, past Charles City Court House, and across the upper portion of the Weyanoke Peninsula. Although orders to construct the line were suspended during the night, by the next morning “there was a handsome breastwork” extending behind the camps.58 General Butler had in late May prepared several hulks as river obstructions as a means of protecting his position at Bermuda Hundred from naval fire. He hesitated to scuttle them in the channel because Rear Adm. Samuel Phillips Lee, commander of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, considered such an expedient unnecessary and a slur on the navy’s ability to control the river. Grant, however, ordered Butler to sink these stone boats on June 13 and, with the hearty cooperation of Admiral Lee, within forty-­eight hours’ navigation of the James along Trent’s Reach—above the zone of Union naval patrols and nearly opposite the right flank of Butler’s lines on Bermuda Hundred—became virtually impossible.59 Butler had also responded to Grant’s orders to “commence at once the collection of all the means . . . for crossing the army on its arrival.” Ferry boats, dispatch boats, mail boats, and practically any other vessel capable of transporting troops converged near Fort Powhatan from Fort Monroe and Bermuda Hundred. Although much of the army and all its vehicles would rely on the pontoon bridge to reach the south shore, Hancock’s men would ferry across the James while the engineers completed work on their bridge.60 At 8:30 a.m. on June 14, Meade issued Hancock’s orders to cross the river, designating “Wilcox’s Wharf ” as the point of embarkation. The Second Corps would “encamp upon suitable ground after crossing the river.”61 The orders began to filter down within an hour. Col. Henry J. Madill of Movement to Combat

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the 141st Pennsylvania ceased work on the bridgehead fortifications and told his troops to pack up and prepare to board the transports. Madill’s regiment was a part of Col. Thomas W. Egan’s brigade of Maj. Gen. David B. Birney’s Third Division, and was among the first Federal units to complete the voyage to Windmill Point on the south shore, aboard the river steamer Thomas Powell. Their sister regiment, the Seventeenth Maine, boarded the Eliza Hancox for its trip across the river. The troops began boarding shortly before 11:​​00 a.m. and two hours later commenced disembarking, marching as far as a mile and a half before establishing a bivouac. Sgt. Thomas D. Marbaker of the Eleventh New Jersey remembered the exhilaration felt by many of the Federals as they enjoyed the fresh breeze blowing across the open waters of the James: “As we steamed across the beautiful river our hearts were filled with new hope, for we had bidden farewell to the swamp and miasmata of the Chickahominy, to the long line of graves that stretched not only across the peninsula, but across the hills, and valleys, and streams, and through the fertile fields and tangled swamps of Virginia up to the Rapidan. We were bidding farewell to the old battlefields and entering upon a new field of operations.”62 Maj. Gen. John Gibbon’s division followed Birney’s, and Barlow’s brigades departed last. As the soldiers went ashore in Prince George County, many took advantage of the opportunity to bathe in the river or simply enjoy a recreational “swash in the wet.” Some of the troops did laundry on the riverbank, while others shamelessly harvested vegetables from nearby gardens, tearing down an outbuilding to provide cooking fires. The most entertaining diversion that afternoon arrived courtesy of the drovers and butchers of one of the cattle herds that accompanied the army. These men steered their charges into the James, boarding small craft and encouraging the reluctant bovines with all the means at their disposal to swim to the south bank. Suddenly, a number of the herdsmen had to row for their lives as some of the cattle panicked and began returning to the left bank, bearing down on the screaming drovers. “The cattle rushed for the boats trying to get their forefeet into the boats to save themselves,” wrote one enthralled witness. “Some of the boats were upset but no lives were lost except perhaps some of the cattle.”63 Birney’s division finished crossing between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., Gibbon’s men completed their landings after dark, and the last of Barlow’s brigades arrived by 5:00 a.m. on June 15. “It was slow and tedious work conveying the troops across,” wrote a Second Corps artillerist, “the facilities were very inadequate, and the landing places, wharves, and roads were incomplete.” Many of Hancock’s soldiers saw the transports carrying Smith’s troops pass on their way upriver, while most witnessed the engineers at work on the bridge. The 66

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soldiers were pleased to find comfortable sleeping arrangements at their new south bank bivouacs on the Wilcox farm. “We are encamped in as splendid a field as I ever saw,” wrote Pvt. William E. Endicott of the Tenth Massachusetts Battery, “a mile sure in length and all of three quarters of a mile wide . . . clover in full bloom and knee deep in wheat and oats three feet high.” The First Minnesota of Gibbon’s division bedded down in a mixed forest, using a generous accumulation of pine needles and leaves to enjoy what one Minnesotan called the most pleasant night’s bivouac “in all my army experience.” The line officers and soldiers knew nothing specific about the operation of which they were a part, but suspected that Grant was conducting another flanking movement on a grand scale. “The Rebels call it ‘elbowing’ them,” noted Col. Robert McAllister of the Eleventh New Jersey.64 Hancock remained on the north bank while his troops crossed the James, communicating with the south shore by means of signal flags. He informed Meade that he had three days’ rations on hand, contradicting a report that his corps would be out of food by the next night. After dark, he ordered repairs to the upper wharf at the landing to expedite the movement of his artillery and wagons during the predawn hours of the 15th. Hancock’s frequent correspondence throughout the night and into the next morning suggests that the ailing corps commander enjoyed little if any sleep. Meade also issued and received communications throughout the day from his headquarters near the home of former President John Tyler, called Sherwood Forest, and then rode to Wilcox’s Landing to watch the Second Corps clamber aboard the transports. Later, the army commander visited the bridgehead to observe the engineers’ progress.65 While the Second Corps ferried across the James and the engineers prepared their bridge, Grant boarded a steamer bound upriver to meet with Butler at Bermuda Hundred and, at last, convey specific plans for the impending offensive against Petersburg. By 8:00 p.m. on June 14, Grant had returned to his headquarters near Charles City Court House and dispatched written orders to Butler, presumably confirming his earlier discussion at Bermuda Hundred. Grant’s instructions assigned the Army of the James sole responsibility for capturing the Cockade City and considered Hancock’s forces as merely potential reinforcements. He informed Butler that in order for the Second Corps to take the field effectively they would need to be reprovisioned, and with Meade’s wagons stalled on the far side of the Chickahominy, Butler’s staff must do the work. Apparently, Hancock’s earlier message to Meade refuting his purported shortage of rations had not reached Grant. “To have this corps ready for service you will please direct your commissary to send down by boat to Wind-­Mill Point to-­night 60,000 rations,” Grant instructed Butler. “Without Movement to Combat

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this precaution the services of this corps cannot be had for an emergency to-­ morrow.” Grant’s reference to Hancock’s role in an “emergency” underscored the general-­in-­chief’s reliance on Butler’s troops to carry the day. It is uncertain when Butler received Grant’s order, but at 2:30 a.m. on June 15, Butler instructed Lt. Col. Michael R. Morgan, chief commissary of subsistence in his department, to forward the ordered rations to Hancock. “Great promptness is required,” advised Butler.66 Grant evidently informed Meade of Butler’s supply mission because at 10:00 p.m. on the 14th, while Hancock remained in the process of crossing the river, Meade told Hancock that as soon as the rations arrived and were distributed, the Second Corps was to move “by the most direct route to Petersburg, taking up a position where the City Point railroad crosses Harrison’s Creek,” citing a map illustrating the intended destination. There is no record of Meade objecting to the need to reprovision Hancock, or of Hancock reminding his superior of their earlier correspondence on the matter. Thus the commencement of Hancock’s march toward Petersburg would be determined by the arrival of rations that he, by his own admission, did not require.67 Hancock clearly understood that his advance on June 15 would be dictated by the waterborne arrival of Butler’s supplies. He ordered preparations made at the wharf to receive and distribute the food and maintained a steady correspondence with Meade during the predawn hours, reporting with regularity that nothing had been heard regarding the rations. At 7:15 a.m., however, Hancock informed Meade that “the rations for my corps have arrived at the landing.” That message had not yet reached army headquarters at 7:30 a.m. when Meade began a message instructing Hancock to wait no longer for the food, but to commence immediately on the march toward his designated destination. An officer would be assigned to redirect the supply ship back to City Point, wrote Meade, where the edibles would be off-­loaded and forwarded to Hancock in due course. Before Meade’s message could be sent, however, the army commander received Hancock’s 7:15 a.m. transmission. Meade acknowledged receipt of this report and, dispatching his original order, told the corps commander to “exercise your judgment as to which will be best—to issue rations now or send them as directed in the foregoing.”68 Hancock opted to receive and distribute the food, an illogical choice given his existing supply situation only if he believed that a rapid march toward Petersburg was a priority—an understanding he clearly did not possess. He relied on his chief of staff, Lt. Col. Charles H. Morgan, to arrange the details for the receipt of Butler’s rations. Morgan, who remained at corps headquarters on the north shore, assigned Col. Joseph S. Smith, chief commissary officer in the 68

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Second Corps, and Capt. Charles S. McEntee, a Second Corps quartermaster officer, responsibility for managing the arrival, off-­loading, and distribution of the food. Shortly after sunrise, Maj. Wesley Brainerd, the engineer in charge of physically preparing the wharf where the supply vessel would dock, ferried across the river and met with Colonel Morgan. What transpired between the two remains controversial. Brainerd would testify that Lt. Col. Richard N. Batchelder, chief quartermaster of the Second Corps, had asked him to tell Morgan that a vessel from Bermuda Hundred had come into view and that he assumed it carried the anticipated rations. Brainerd found Morgan at corps headquarters and together they saw the ship that Batchelder had referenced. Signals were sent to the Second Corps to suspend its impending departure. However, Brainerd recorded that in less than ten minutes the vessel continued downriver past Windmill Point without stopping. “It was now evident that this was not the steamer with the expected rations and the Corps was at once signaled to advance, the delay occasioned by the whole operation did not occupy 15 minutes,” wrote Brainerd. Morgan told a different story, insisting that Brainerd told him that the transport containing the rations had just arrived. Morgan claimed to have seen a ship docked at the wharf and “after watching it for a length of time sufficient to allow of its being unloaded it disappeared.” Accordingly, Morgan told Hancock that the rations had at last appeared, prompting the corps commander to pass this information up the ladder to Meade.69 It is difficult to determine which version of these events is accurate. Brainerd’s testimony emerged after the war and referenced the public culpability he suffered for Hancock’s delay, while Morgan wrote his report within ten days of the event. Morgan, however, mistimed Brainerd’s arrival by at least an hour and does parenthetically modify his story: “(It is proper to state that Major Brainerd now says that he stated only to me his impression that the rations had arrived. It was conveyed to me in so positive a manner, indeed as a message from the commissary, that I had no doubt of the fact).” The boat Morgan allegedly saw lingering at the wharf appears in no other account. On the other hand, what downriver mission would animate the vessel Brainerd claims to have seen, one that might have required the newly completed pontoon bridge to be opened to allow it passage? Considering the critical impact of this misapprehension, both men had reason after the fact to prepare stories that would deflect blame to the other.70 At 8:45 a.m. Maj. William G. Mitchell, an aide on Hancock’s staff, sent word across the river that the rations had in fact not arrived. Less than an hour later, Hancock told Meade that he had been “deceived” about the food Movement to Combat

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and that he had ordered the corps to commence its march. “I shall wait here a few minutes to see if you have any reply and orders, and then I shall cross the river.” Meade’s headquarters immediately confirmed that Hancock should start at once, without waiting for his wagons and artillery, which had experienced delays in navigating the river crossing. “When your wagons come up you will unload the ammunition wagons and send them to City Point for rations,” Meade advised. Some three hours had now been squandered due to the confusion over the disposition of Butler’s supplies.71 Confusion over the whereabouts of the provisions proved to be only the most significant of the impediments to Hancock’s rapid departure for Petersburg that morning. The corps commander ordered his troops to begin their march, conveying his instructions by the “signal telegraph” and dispatching Colonel Morgan to the south shore to see to their rapid implementation. Somehow the telegraph message miscarried and the boat that transported Morgan grounded at low tide. These mishaps delayed General Birney’s departure from his camps until 10:​​30 a.m.72 Some six hours thus transpired between the time the Second Corps united on the south bank and the start of its march toward Petersburg—hours that might have changed history. Through the 14th of June the planning and execution of Grant’s shift to the James had been brilliant, marred only by an unnecessary delay in the appearance of the pontoon matériel at the designated crossing points. Then communications collapsed. Hancock informed Meade that he had plenty of rations to sustain a march to Petersburg, but Meade failed to clarify this to Grant, who predicated Hancock’s departure on the arrival of unneeded supplies. Grant told Butler that Hancock would be available to support him, but this information never reached Meade or Hancock, who remained blissfully unaware of the Second Corps’ role in the pending offensive. Confusion about the phantom arrival of the rations and then unfortunate logistical issues delayed the corps’ eventual departure. While all of this unfolded, Grant stood anxiously on the north bank of the James in deep contemplation, unaware of the lapses that even then undermined his plans.73 These troubling events along the James remained unknown to the rest of the Union army as three infantry corps, two cavalry brigades, and the wagon train with its escort of U.S. Colored Troops continued their march on the night of June 13–14. Wilson’s troopers united that night, and after four hours’ rest and a hasty breakfast, they rode to Charles City Court House on the morning of the 14th. The county seat consisted only of “the chimneys of some seven or eight dwellings, a curious old Court House and a nondescript jail” that was “more like a pig pen than anything else.” New York trooper Sgt. Nathaniel M. Talmage 70

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thought that, “while resting here, by the crumbling walls and chimneys of once opulent and tasty dwellings, we read in the scorched trees and in the general desolation, a few pages of the Rebellion’s record of sorrow.” After enjoying a hearty midday meal and grazing their horses, Colonel McIntosh’s Yankees remounted about 2:00  p.m. Skirmishing with probing Confederate cavalry, the troopers backtracked toward their bivouac the previous night at Samaria Church, where they again made camp between 10:​​30 p.m. and 11:​​00 p.m., “so near to the pickets of the enemy,” wrote one soldier, “that we were ordered not to build any fires, and the boys ate their supper without the usual coffee.” Only minor picket firing disturbed their night’s rest. Chapman’s brigade covered the roads leading downriver near Harrison’s Landing on the 14th, sealing the routes Lee might use to reach the infantry camps.74 After disengaging from their brush with A. P. Hill at Glendale, Crawford’s brigades embarked on a halting trek that continued through the night. The rest of Warren’s troops endured a similarly frustrating nocturnal march that one soldier called “steady by jerks, wearisome and painful,” covering only seven miles by 3:00 a.m. This tiring tramp, by way of Samaria Church, resumed before dawn. The corps trickled into the Charles City Court House area between early morning and early afternoon on the 14th. The village impressed Warren’s infantry as it had Wilson’s cavalry—badly. One soldier thought the town “a queer old looking village by the way of deserted houses, an ancient courthouse and a dilapidated jail nobody living in the town but niggers and they are starving.” The corps continued down to Wilcox’s Landing, where the men had a good view of Hancock’s crossing operation from their camps around the Wilcox house. “Where we bivouacked was a most delightful part of Virginia, almost a garden, and the most fertile and luxuriant we had yet seen,” thought a soldier in the Twenty-­Second Massachusetts. Colonel Wainwright approved of the Wilcox mansion on the north bank, located half a mile from the riverfront and occupied by Dr. Wilcox’s married daughter, whom Wainwright heard was a “very agreeable” lady. The men drew rations that evening and enjoyed their first decent night’s rest in three days.75 Wright’s soldiers covered the ground to their new bivouacs near the James during the morning hours. The Sixth Corps men approved of their new surroundings: emerging from the trenches at Cold Harbor and the swamps of the Chickahominy onto the “grassy plains, fields of standing grain, [and] lovely flowers” seemed to one soldier “like a translation from Hades to Paradise.”76 These men improved their idle afternoon with various pastimes. Many commented on the discovery of a brick enclosure that they identified variously as containing the grave of Pocahontas or the tree under which the Indian prinMovement to Combat

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cess saved the life of Capt. John Smith. “There is no sham about it,” enthused a credulous soldier of the 138th Pennsylvania, sending his wife a piece of wood from the alleged sacred tree, joining many other similar souvenir hunters. Others engaged in less benign sightseeing, including the vandalizing of President Tyler’s home. Connecting Tyler to Virginia’s secession, the Federals left “a scene of destruction” with books and sheet music littering the floor and various small relics such as tea cups and documents finding their way into pockets, knapsacks, and haversacks as personal keepsakes.77 That night the Sixth Corps found comfortable bedding in the fields overlooking the James, lulled to sleep by the distant sounds of regimental bands playing evening serenades. Thoughts of what might happen when they joined the Second Corps on the south side of the river prompted some men to attend prayer meetings after dark. At least one of Wright’s soldiers viewed the situation with “gloomy despondence,” interpreting the army’s shift to the James as a forced evacuation of the Cold Harbor defenses. “We, as a regiment, have almost ceased to exist,” wrote Surg. Daniel M. Holt of the 121st New York, “and if the next six months prove as disastrous to us as the last six weeks have, not a soul will be left to recite the wholesale slaughter which has taken place on the sacred soil of Virginia.”78 June 14 brought Burnside’s Ninth Corps troops no comforts and little sleep. Reveille sounded as early as 3:00 a.m. and the men hit the road between 4:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. after consuming a quick repast. The head of the column reached the Chickahominy at Jones Bridge shortly after 7:00 a.m., and after waiting for the last of the Sixth Corps column to clear the road, Burnside’s soldiers tramped across “that mired river,” halting for a brief rest above the south bank. Many Ninth Corps veterans remembered the remainder of June 14 as among the more miserable of their marching careers. “The air was hot and sultry, and the dust was thick and suffocating,” complained a Maine soldier. “The lack of any opportunity to relieve the strained and aching muscles, even by a brief halt, made the discomfort seem even greater than usual.” When the corps finally filed into their camps near the James that evening, one exhausted Federal was too tired even to boil coffee. “It was so hot and so dusty and the swarms of insects were so abundant and so vicious that sleep was out of the question.”79 While the rank and file drew rations, made camp, and foraged for wild game ranging from quail to box turtles, Burnside and his staff made their way to the substantial home of Judge Clopton, near Sherwood Forest, President Tyler’s ransacked mansion. The judge at that moment resided in a prison cell at Fort Monroe, but his wife greeted the officers “with all the dignity and elegance 72

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of a high born lady,” according to staff officer Capt. Daniel Read Larned. Tyler’s niece also occupied the Clopton home and begged Burnside to use Sherwood Forest as his headquarters in order to prevent further depredations, which she blamed on Edward Hinks’s U.S. Colored Troops, who had passed through the area in May. Burnside placed Tyler’s home under guard and moved a few miles upstream to make his headquarters near Wilcox’s Landing at North Bend plantation. The troops constructed fortifications that evening to protect their rear from cavalry incursions.80 The looting that Miss Tyler ascribed to earlier visits from black soldiers continued as the army gathered along the James. “I found the 6’ Corps ravaging the whole Country & killing Cattle Sheep, etc. with perfect abandon, while the houses are burning with the 5’ Corps Head Quarters in hailing distance,” lamented the army’s top policeman, Brig. Gen. Marsena R. Patrick. “We don’t spare any garden we come to,” wrote Fifth Corps telegraph operator Samuel H. Edwards. “We go right in and help ourselves.” Soldiers chopped off entire limbs from cherry trees as shortcuts to gathering the fruit, and chickens and swine constituted fair game at every homestead.81 When frightened residents abandoned their dwellings the contents became trophies for undisciplined Federals. “You can’t imagine how the folks leave their things in the houses when they skedaddle down here,” wrote Edwards. “I got a very nice mahogany table for office use and also to eat off of.” Dr. John G. Perry, an assistant surgeon in the Twentieth Massachusetts, found himself serving as guardian for one aggrieved household of helpless women. “The men rushed in and attempted to search the house,” related Perry, “and it was only by standing on the stairs with pistol drawn that I could prevent their doing so.” The grateful matron rewarded her protector with “a fine lunch” served by two of the household’s lovely young daughters, whose brother in the Confederate army had been Perry’s Harvard classmate. While some officers turned a blind eye to the spoliation, others enforced order to the point of shooting transgressors. But the army tempered its sympathies toward local civilians with the knowledge that “they got such a hatred against us they imagine everything bad.” The prospect of being visited by black troops proved to be the most terrifying for the resident whites.82 The blacks assigned to the Ninth Corps and the wagons they guarded remained the sole element of the army still distant from the James on June 14. The shift from Windsor Shades to Coles Ferry extended the mileage Ferrero’s men would have to march to reach their new crossing point on the Chickahominy, but much more than an additional four-­hour hike complicated Ferrero’s progress. Coles Ferry stood close enough to the river’s mouth to swell the slugMovement to Combat

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gish stream into a 1,200-­foot-­wide obstacle. Moreover, causeways and corduroy roads would be required to span the marshlands on either side of the river. Much to the chagrin of Colonel Spaulding, the pontoon material at hand proved inadequate. The engineers spent all day shifting equipment from the other Chickahominy bridges to Coles Landing, frantically assembling a span that eventually measured 1,240 feet. The bridge and its approaches were completed just before dawn on the 15th, the wagons taking the better part of the day to gain the south bank of the river. Ferrero’s men would complete their crossing on June 16.83 The delay caused worse consequences than merely postponing the arrival of the wagon train and its African American guards. The failure to recognize the impracticability of Windsor Shades as a crossing point and the additional pontoons required to cross at Cole’s Ferry meant that equipment slated to construct a second pontoon bridge across the James would not be available. “Our army lost a day by that,” wrote Major Roebling. “In other words, rather than run the very remote risk of losing a wagon train, they run the very positive risk of losing Petersburg, as the success of the whole movement depended on one day.” The army’s high command once again betrayed its limitations for logistical planning.84 Nevertheless, the general-­in-­chief remained pleased with his army’s progress. On the morning of the 14th, he authorized Meade to utilize the little fleet that had gathered near Wilcox’s Wharf to cross the Army of the Potomac “as you deem best,” and the Second Corps was well on its way across the James. He had admonished Meade to leave one corps on the north bank until the wagons and artillery—then stymied at Coles Ferry—had completed their journey to the south side.85 Grant’s June 14 plans for the actual movement against Petersburg, discussed with Butler at Bermuda Hundred and confirmed that evening in writing, stipulated that Smith would lead the advance, reinforced by whatever additional forces Butler could spare from his Bermuda Hundred defenses. The movement would begin that night and Smith would launch the assault “as soon as he could after daylight.” The general-­in-­chief confirmed to Butler that the latest intelligence located Lee’s infantry between Malvern Hill and White Oak Swamp, which boded well for “the success of your attack on Petersburg to-­ night.” As for Hancock, Grant assured Butler that the Second Corps would reach the south shore “before daylight” and would start its march toward Petersburg once it received its provisions. Hancock would stop “on the road nearest City

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Point,” but if Smith found that he needed help “by sending back to General Hancock he will push forward.” By thus couching the Second Corps’ role in the impending attack on Petersburg, it seems clear that the general-­in-­chief assumed that Butler’s forces alone would be sufficient to wrest Petersburg from its outmanned defenders on the morning of June 15 without Hancock’s immediate presence or assistance. Given Grant’s timetable, Smith’s morning attack should have commenced roughly about the same time Hancock would receive his rations on the lower James River. The Second Corps would then advance and be in position should Smith require assistance in holding Petersburg later in the day. “I will have Petersburg secured, if possible, before [Lee’s army] get[s] there in much force,” Grant assured Halleck on the afternoon of the 14th. The chief of staff passed along Grant’s optimistic communication to the president, who replied early the next morning: “I have just recd. your dispatch. . . . I begin to see it. You will succeed. God bless you all.”86 Such success rested squarely on the shoulders of the Army of the James. Baldy Smith’s Cold Harbor veterans—two Eighteenth Corps divisions and two Tenth Corps brigades—would bear responsibility for capturing Petersburg on the morning of June 15. Butler augmented Smith’s command with Hinks’s African American division—some 3,700 men, then encamped near City Point and officially a part of the Eighteenth Corps—and with the army’s cavalry, consisting of 2,500 troopers under General Kautz. Butler ordered Hinks to report to Smith at Broadway Landing on the south bank of the Appomattox River at 2:00 a.m. on the 15th, in position “to be ready to move with General Smith just before daybreak.”87 Considerable controversy still swirls around when Smith learned of his responsibility. Smith claimed to have no knowledge of the intent to attack Petersburg, or of his pivotal role in such an offensive, until he arrived at Bermuda Hundred late on the 14th. “This was a mistake,” wrote Smith with obvious understatement, “for my plans could all have been formed and I should have requested an order to be sent to Butler to have certain troops ready to march at once upon my arrival.” Had he known of his corps’ critical responsibility, Smith would have “arranged my troops in steamers so that the best commanders would have followed me closely and have debarked rapidly on arrival at Bermuda Hundred.” When Butler sprang the news that the Eighteenth Corps was to march immediately against the Cockade City, Smith stated that his superior provided no guidance as to how to accomplish the mission.88 Conversely, Kautz recalled that Butler sent for him on June 13 “and in-

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formed me of his new plan for the capture of Petersburg, in which . . . I was not expected to do more than to make a demonstration, and try to make the enemy believe that I contemplated going in as we did on the ninth.” Butler summoned Kautz to his headquarters again on the morning of the 14th, where he arrived as Grant and Butler were conducting their meeting. “Plans were perfected for Smith’s attack on Petersburg,” Kautz recalled, and “Petersburg must fall into our possession if all reports are correct.” According to Kautz, Grant was fully apprised of the operational plan to capture Petersburg “as proposed by Butler, and the expedition was made with his full knowledge and concurrence,” suggesting that the general-­in-­chief merely approved an operation that Butler had conceived. Butler instructed Kautz to report directly to him during the offensive without going through Smith.89 It is possible that Butler anticipated Grant’s desire to attack Petersburg and developed plans to do so, conveyed them to Kautz on June 13, confirmed them during Grant’s June 14 visit, and failed to bring Smith into the loop until that officer landed at Bermuda Hundred late in the day. Certainly, Smith’s accusation that Butler had developed no specific plans for the assault stands in contrast to Kautz’s detailed explanation of Butler’s articulated mission for the cavalry and Grant’s alleged approbation. Still, the record yields no specific documentation that Butler or Grant explained Smith’s role for the impending offensive to him prior to his arrival at Bermuda Hundred, late on June 14. Such a communications lapse would have made Smith’s compliance with the timing anticipated for the crossing of the Appomattox, the rendezvous with Hinks, and the daylight attack against Beauregard’s Petersburg works practically impossible, as the troops expected to make the attack only completed their disembarkation during the evening. When added to the confusion surrounding the timing, direction, and intent of Hancock’s march from his bivouacs on the south side of the James, these problems seriously compromised the planning for the initial Union offensive against Petersburg. Poor communication between the general-­in-­chief, his two army commanders, and their two corps commanders promised significant mischief.90 The Union high command enjoyed no monopoly on confusion on June 14. Both Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard corresponded liberally that Tuesday, speculating as to the whereabouts and intentions of the Federals and illustrating their imperfect understanding of their opponents’ movements and destination. General Lee wrote Jefferson Davis shortly after noon, responding to correspondence received from the president the previous evening. “I think the

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enemy must be preparing to move south of James River,” wrote Lee with seeming assurance. Yet he quickly explained that such a conclusion was mere speculation, based on scouting reports that placed the Federal army on roads toward the Chickahominy. The Yankees he had fought around Glendale the previous day had disappeared and, based on prisoner accounts, had probably decamped for Harrison’s Landing on the north shore of the James. From there, continued Lee, the enemy might offer a “strong defence” or resupply and transfer to the south side of the river, without fear of interference from the Confederate army. Lee also revealed that scouts reported seeing large numbers of Union soldiers boarding boats at White House Landing. The Confederate commander could not determine whether these troops were on their way north to be discharged, or headed for the James. “We ought therefore to be extremely watchful & guarded.” Alertness, however, did not translate into action. Lee recommended only that Hoke’s Division sidle to the vicinity of the pontoon bridge near Drewry’s Bluff, remaining on the north side but in position to cross quickly if circumstances required.91 General Lee confirmed his instincts some three hours later. He stated more positively that Grant had moved to the James, both at Westover and at Wilcox’s Landing, and “as his facilities for crossing the river and taking possession of Petersburg are great, and as I think it will more probably be his plan, I have sent Genl Hoke with his command to a point above Drewry’s Bluff in easy distance of the first pontoon bridge above that place.” He reiterated these thoughts in a subsequent message to presidential military advisor Braxton Bragg. “I think it is probable that [Grant] will cross James River,” wrote Lee.92 Although Lee thus predicted the Federal shift across the James and collaterally expressed doubt that Grant had any intention of launching an attack north of that river, his response to the fragmentary reports and imprecise intelligence on which he based his conclusion certainly erred on the side of caution. Shifting just one of his seven available infantry divisions to a point on the north bank convenient to a pontoon bridge that stood more than a dozen miles north of Petersburg hardly reflected confidence in his analysis. Lee either maintained more doubts about Grant’s location and destination than he revealed to the Richmond officials, or he felt sure that once he received positive evidence of a Union crossing, he could shift his units south faster than Grant could threaten Petersburg. Lee’s response seems overly conservative given the information Beauregard provided throughout the day. The Louisiana general deduced that reports of an enemy fleet steaming up the James meant Federal reinforcements were en route to his depart-

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ment. Learning of Grant’s apparent crossing of the Chickahominy, Beauregard reached the same conclusion as Lee: Grant was headed for Petersburg. Deeming his situation along the Howlett Line—the fortifications opposite Butler at Bermuda Hundred—and on the eastern defenses of Petersburg “critical,” Beauregard beseeched Bragg to order Lee to send him Hoke’s Division—troops that, after all, formally belonged to Beauregard’s command. “With my present force,” Beauregard warned Bragg, “I cannot answer for consequences” should some combination of Grant and Butler target his department. The Creole recommended that Hoke’s men relieve the troops defending Bermuda Hundred so those regiments could reinforce his thin lines at Petersburg.93 About 10:​​00 p.m. that night, Beauregard took matters into his own hands. He sent orders directly to Hoke “to move at once, as rapidly as possible, with your division, to Petersburg, leaving one brigade at Walthall Junction.” Beauregard based these orders on Bragg’s report sent at 9:10 p.m. that Lee had sent Hoke to Drewry’s Bluff “with a view to re-­enforce you in case Petersburg is threatened.” The Louisianan considered such a threat imminent and acted accordingly.94 Beauregard then dispatched a staff officer, Col. Samuel B. Paul, with instructions to inform Lee that a large and growing body of the enemy had arrived on the south side and threatened Petersburg with an immediate attack—an offensive his weak forces could not resist without help. Paul timed his meeting with Beauregard as the morning of June 14, but at that hour his department commander could have only speculated about an accretion of Federal forces in his front. The pontoon bridge had not been built, the bulk of Smith’s corps had not arrived, and Hancock had not begun crossing the James. In fact, much of what Beauregard conveyed was speculative, and given that visionary officer’s penchant for the fantastic, it is little wonder that the War Department and General Lee hesitated to act solely on his unsubstantiated warnings.95 Citizens in Richmond and the army’s rank and file followed events with great interest and optimistic interpretations. John B. Jones, a War Department clerk, acknowledged Grant’s movement to the James, but considered “the campaign, if not the war, pretty nearly at an end, and Richmond safe! Grant has failed, after doing his utmost to take Richmond. He has shattered a great army to no purpose; while Lee’s army is as strong as ever.” Pvt. James T. Perry of the Seventeenth Virginia recorded in his diary on June 14 that the Union army was at Westover Plantation on the James, “whence McClellan made his famous hegira. Alas! Where is the ‘all summer’ line near I wonder. Or is it like Ulyssses’ conscience and Stanton’s bulletin [,] elastic and made to stretch all over cre-

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ation?” The Richmond Daily Dispatch felt just as positive, referring to the Union general-­in-­chief as Unfortunate Strategist Grant. Soldiers such as Sgt. James Adger Smyth of the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina expressed unbounded confidence in General Lee, even if he could not predict the direction of the fluid military situation: “None of us know where we are going or what risks we are running & yet we go on without a murmur because Genl Lee orders it.”96 Most of the Army of Northern Virginia spent a quiet day north of the James on June 14, defending their line from White Oak Swamp to Malvern Hill and probing for evidence of Federal soldiers. Many troops commented on the numerous skeletons visible all around them, victims of the fighting almost two years earlier at the battle of Frayser’s Farm (Glendale) during the Seven Days battles. The fields were “covered with the bones of Yankees and horses,” reported Capt. Joseph Banks Lyle of the Fifth South Carolina. At least one Confederate, a chaplain in Kershaw’s Division, used the remains for scientific inquiry. “On every side of us lie the bleaching bones of those who fell in that battle & I have studied phrenology on at least one skull, which I hope was a Yankee’s,” admitted William Porcher DuBose. “A dentist might make a valuable collection of teeth; I have seen one beautiful set.” Some Confederates participated in an even more unsavory pastime. “Saw a sight I never want to see again,” wrote a Louisiana artillerist, “thieves digging up Yankee bodies to search them.” Other graycoats took the opportunity to plunder what was left of Union camps. Recent victories in Mississippi at Brice’s Cross Roads and at Trevilian Station elicited comment, as did the prospects for Early’s foray west toward Lynchburg to confront Hunter’s marauding army. But clearly as night settled north of the James on June 14, the Confederates remained in a state of watchful waiting, as Confederate artillery chief William Nelson Pendleton explained in a letter home from near Malvern Hill: “We came near here hunting Grant early yesterday,” wrote Pendleton. “He is now in McClellan’s fortifications at Harrison’s Landing. His next object, no doubt, Petersburg. . . . This is all a confession of complete failure on his chosen line. He will give us some trouble on the south side.”97 The trouble brewing south of the James on the morning of June 15 did not belong exclusively to the Confederates. The confusion that had delayed the departure of the Second Corps continued to plague Hancock once his men finally stepped off for Petersburg. By the time Birney’s division at last headed west at 10:​​30 a.m., followed by Gibbon’s about noon, and Barlow’s at 1:30 p.m., the early summer sun beat down on the Federals with merciless intensity. “Wednesday was the hottest day we felt this season,” recalled a soldier in the Fifth New

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Hampshire. “There was a rage amongst us for water; the burning thirst should be satisfied; and many of the men were seized with diarrhea.”98 To make matters worse, Hancock’s progress depended on a map that the general would find “utterly worthless.” Colonel Morgan had obtained the faulty cartography from army headquarters, the so-­called Abbott map made in 1861 by the corps of engineers. The map located Hancock’s destination, Harrison’s Creek, about four miles east of Petersburg. However, Harrison’s Creek actually coursed within Confederate lines. Moreover, the roads depicted on Hancock’s map “were widely out of the way,” and other landmarks proved erroneous as well. By midafternoon, the Second Corps commander discarded the useless document in favor of an intelligent local black guide recruited by Morgan, the white inhabitants of Prince George County proving unwilling or unable to provide useful information regarding the local geography.99 Morgan, at the head of the column, obtained Hancock’s permission to alter the route of march toward what his black guide and Morgan’s instincts indicated was the shortest route to Petersburg. Several hours’ delay inevitably ensued as the Federal column shifted direction on dusty country roads. Soldiers collapsed from the brutal marching conditions, while others seized the opportunity to loot abandoned homes along the way. “These straggling scoundrels, murderers, and pillagers should all be shot or hung by the provost-­marshal,” thought Major Mitchell. At 5:30 p.m., as Birney’s column neared the site of the old Prince George County courthouse, a courier dashed up to Morgan, a mile in Birney’s rear. The man bore a message from General Grant for “General Gibbon or any division commander of the Second Corps.” The dispatch directed that “all haste . . . be made in getting up to the assistance of General Smith, who, it stated, had attacked Petersburg and carried the outer works in front of that city.” Morgan forwarded this message to Hancock, and shortly thereafter a note from Smith arrived imploring Hancock on Grant’s authority to “come up as rapidly as possible.”100 Hancock was shocked. This was the first he had heard that Petersburg was to be attacked that day, not to mention that his men would be expected to play a significant role in the day’s activities. The emphasis that morning on being reprovisioned and the orders to march to a specific location east of Petersburg without intimation of particular urgency implied to the exhausted Hancock that his day’s chore entailed merely a routine trek to a designated position, although he must have clearly understood that eventually an attempt to capture Petersburg would be the upshot of the operation south of the James. The mix-­ ups that morning regarding the phantom rations, the misleading map, and the harsh marching conditions conspired to delay the Second Corps, which under 80

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better circumstances might have reached the Confederate works east of Petersburg between noon and 1:00 p.m.101 But such coordination on June 15 was not to be. The sudden capture of Petersburg, key to the survival of Richmond, remained solely in the hands of William Farrar Smith. On Smith’s performance that day hinged the fate of Lee’s army and, perhaps, the Confederacy itself.

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three

My Best Achievement

June 15, 1864 William Farrar Smith was a difficult fellow. “A short, quite portly man, with a light-­brown imperial and shaggy mustache, a round, military head, and the look of a German officer,” Smith, thought Ulysses S. Grant, was “obstinate” and “likely to condemn whatever is not suggested by himself.” In point of fact, Smith considered his commander, Ben Butler, “as helpless as a child on the field of battle and as visionary as an opium eater in council.” Still, Smith brought strong technical credentials to the Army of the James and owed his present position to Grant’s respect for those abilities.1 Smith was born in St. Albans, Vermont, on February 17, 1824, and graduated fourth in the West Point class of 1845, where he earned the playful moniker, “Baldy,” from his fellow cadets. Commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant and posted to a surveying party on Lake Erie, Smith missed the Mexican War and spent his antebellum career as a mathematics teacher at the U.S. Military Academy and on routine duty at remote posts in the Southwest and in Florida. He contracted malaria while on the frontier, an ailment that would plague him periodically throughout his life. Smith began the Civil War as colonel of the Third Vermont, earned promotion to brigadier general following First Manassas, and rose to major general by July 1862. His habit of undermining his superiors cost him command of the Sixth Corps following the battle of Fredericksburg, when he brazenly criticized army commander Burnside in a letter to the president. Smith resurfaced in 1863 as chief engineer of the Department of the Cumberland, where he developed the plan that lifted the partial siege of 82

Chattanooga. His service in the western theater impressed General Grant, who brought him east in 1864 and placed him in command of the Eighteenth Corps, assuming Smith’s combat acumen would complement the administrative bent of army commander Butler.2 Smith’s corps had taken a pounding at Cold Harbor on June 3, and memories of their tragic attack haunted the Eighteenth Corps soldiers as they boarded their transports at White House Landing. Their staggered departures and irregular arrivals at Bermuda Hundred and Point of Rocks would compromise Smith’s ability to carry out Grant’s intentions to assault Petersburg at daylight on June 15. Smith’s attack force included three full infantry divisions and a portion of a fourth, along with two brigades of cavalry and eleven artillery batteries. Edward W. Hinks led the only U.S. Colored Troops in Butler’s army—two brigades under Cols. John H. Holman and Samuel A. Duncan. Hinks, a native of Maine, who relocated to Massachusetts as a young man and served in that state’s legislature, obtained an appointment as colonel of the Nineteenth Massachusetts in 1861. Wounded at both Glendale and Antietam in 1862, he received promotion to brigadier general in 1863 and served in noncombat positions, including commanding the prison at Point Lookout, Maryland, through the winter of 1864. Butler knew Hinks, and in the spring of that year helped arrange his appointment as the commander of the African American division assigned to the Eighteenth Corps of the Army of the James. Neither Holman, an architect and master builder from Maine, who entered the Union army from Missouri, nor Duncan, a Dartmouth tutor, had the benefit of any prewar military experience.3 William T. H. Brooks and John H. Martindale led Smith’s two white divisions. The forty-­three-­year-­old Brooks graduated near the bottom of the West Point class of 1841, but earned two brevets in the war with Mexico and developed a reputation “for his coolness and intelligence on the field of battle.” Brooks’s Civil War service included a stint under Smith on Virginia’s Peninsula in 1862. He fell wounded at Savage’s Station during the Seven Days battles and again at Antietam. Brooks received promotion to division command in the Sixth Corps but, like Smith, participated in the conspiracy to discredit Ambrose Burnside after the disaster at Fredericksburg. Brooks eventually found himself transferred out of the army until he landed division command under his old friend, Smith. The opinionated Theodore Lyman, who referred to General Brooks as “Bully,” considered him “a tall strong man, with a heavy, rather sullen face. He has a great reputation as a valiant man & steady soldier, but seems to quarrel plentifully.”4 June 15, 1864

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John Henry Martindale sprang from good stock, his father serving five terms in Congress representing a district in western New York. “A black haired talkative man, full of great plans to do great things,” Martindale graduated third in the West Point class of 1835 and resigned shortly thereafter to practice law. He received an early commission as brigadier general in 1861, but a court of inquiry following the Seven Days battles and a case of typhoid fever interrupted his combat career. Exonerated by the court and regaining his health, Martindale acted as military governor of Washington, D.C., until Smith chose him to lead a division in his corps. One officer considered Martindale pompous and conceited, but also courteous, good natured, and of a “soldierly bearing and dignity.”5 Although Hinks commanded the corps’ official Third Division, Smith created a temporary organization that had carried that designation since May 30. Two brigades of this provisional unit, formerly a part of the Tenth Corps, would join Smith in the advance against Petersburg. Col. Newton Martin Curtis, a tall twenty-­nine-­year-­old New Yorker and amateur soldier, brought his Empire State regiments from Cold Harbor back to Bermuda Hundred as did Col. Louis Bell, a young New Hampshire lawyer whose father and older brother had served in the U.S. Senate. Both had led brigades in the division commanded by Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames.6 Butler’s cavalry chieftain, August Valentine Kautz, although born in Germany had grown up in Ohio. Kautz served as a volunteer in the Mexican War and then attended the U.S. Military Academy, graduating with an undistinguished rank in the class of 1852. He was posted to the Pacific Northwest, where he reputedly was the first man to scale Mount Rainier, and he entered the Civil War as a captain in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry, but soon accepted command of the Second Ohio Cavalry. After participating in the capture of the legendary Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan, Kautz took charge of the mounted division in the Army of the James. He required close supervision to accomplish good work in the saddle, and suffered from bouts of malaria that incapacitated him for extended periods. Kautz commanded two small brigades under Cols. Simon H. Mix and Samuel P. Spear, the latter a prewar noncommissioned officer and postwar major general in the Fenian Army. The First New York Mounted Rifles augmented Kautz’s force as an independent regiment.7 The effective strength of these ten brigades of infantry and associated cavalry and artillery on June 15 cannot be determined with precision. Smith admitted in his memoirs that “of the number of troops under me I have never had any idea. They were coming up to their command all day as they arrived.” In a paper delivered in 1887, however, Smith calculated that he commanded fewer 84

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than 10,000 infantry on June 15. He reached this figure by subtracting the provisional division and 5,000 Cold Harbor casualties, including sick and straggling soldiers, from the 16,000 men he brought north of the James. That left him about 6,000 troops, to which he added 3,747 under Hinks. Yet Curtis’s and Bell’s brigades were indisputably on the ground during the assaults that evening, averaging perhaps 1,000 veterans apiece, and with about 2,500 seasoned troopers in Kautz’s five regiments, Smith probably controlled about 14,000 soldiers on June 15.8 Grant’s expectation of launching Smith on a dawn attack against the eastern bastions of the Dimmock Line was a fantasy—an echo of the poor planning that had delayed General Hancock’s departure from Windmill Point. Smith’s troops did not fully disembark from their transports until after dark, and even then they had come ashore both at Point of Rocks and Bermuda Hundred Landing. It would take time to concentrate these units, convey orders for the offensive, and march across the pontoon bridge at Broadway Landing. Then the Federals faced a night march of at least five miles to reach their initial objective. Grant should have realized that completing all of this by dawn would be a logistical impossibility.9 Duncan’s brigade had established its camps at Point of Rocks and crossed the pontoon bridge at 11:​​00  p.m. without incident. The planking had been covered with hay and straw to muffle the soldiers’ footsteps. Halting his 2,200 men at the Cope house, about a mile inland on the south side of the Appomattox, Colonel Duncan reported his arrival to General Hinks. Holman’s brigade advanced at 2:00 a.m. from its bivouacs at City Point with approximately 1,300 effectives. All the black troops were ready to move on schedule by 3:00 a.m., but could not go forward until Kautz’s cavalry arrived to screen their advance.10 Smith ordered Kautz to precede the white infantry across the bridge at Broadway Landing at 1:00 a.m. on June 15. Once on the south shore, the cavalry would ride westward, clearing the way for Brooks and Martindale to approach the Confederate works on parallel highways—Brooks on City Point Road and Martindale on River Road to the north. The horsemen would then angle southwest toward the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad. Hinks’s U.S. Colored Troops would follow the cavalry to gain Jordan Point Road on Brooks’s left, with Kautz present to protect the corps’ southern flank. The two Tenth Corps brigades would follow Brooks and Martindale and provide support. Both Butler and Kautz assured Smith that “the works protecting Petersburg were not at all formidable,” Kautz citing his success in penetrating the Dimmock Line on June 9. Moreover, Butler told Smith that “no force of any consequence” protected the Cockade City.11 June 15, 1864

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The cavalry proved tardy in leading the advance, but the precise cause of Kautz’s delay, which Smith reported as unavoidable, remains a mystery. A number of Kautz’s subordinates stated that the troopers crossed the pontoons between midnight and 2:00 a.m., placing them on the south bank of the Appomattox in plenty of time to discharge their mission. Kautz reported that his cavalry crossed the Appomattox between midnight and daylight, a period of nearly four hours. A correspondent for the New York Times revealed that Kautz’s men “sandwiched themselves between Brooks’ and Martindale’s divisions,” offering the best explanation for their detention. In any event, the sluggish movement across the Appomattox upset Smith’s timetable—not unexpectedly, given the offensive’s superficial planning.12 Most of Smith’s infantry enjoyed only a very brief rest after disembarking from their transports, breaking camp between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. on an unusually cold morning and making for the bridge at Broadway Landing. The assistant adjutant general of Guy Henry’s brigade, Capt. William S. Hubbell of the Twenty-­First Connecticut, slept only twenty minutes, “being engaged all night in hunting up the 188th Penn,” which had landed at Bermuda Hundred and become lost trying to rejoin its brigade. The commanding officer of the Eighth Connecticut, Capt. Charles M. Coit, received orders to wake his men at 12:​​30 a.m., get breakfast, and be on the road in ninety minutes, depriving Coit of any sleep at all that night. “The air was chilly, and a thick mist curled upward from the marshy banks of the stream and floated lazily over the rising ground beyond,” remembered one witness. “Long lines of infantry . . . first showed themselves, solemnly issuing out of the mist, and streaming over the hay-­carpeted pontoon bridge, which muffled the noise of their marching.” One regiment violated protocol and common sense by walking in cadence as it crossed the bridge, setting the span into a “rapid vibration” and spilling a number of soldiers into the Appomattox. “Thoroughly bedaubed” with mud “from head to foot, they are greeted with shouts of laughter from the other troops,” wrote an amused bystander.13 The sun rose at 4:38 a.m. on June 15 with first light an hour earlier. “Never shall I forget that morning,” wrote a New Hampshire soldier. “Fresh and lovely each object animate and inanimate breathing an audible thanksgiving as it were. It seemed impossible that the sulphorous smoke of battle should so soon pollute that atmosphere of peace and beauty.” By about 5:00 a.m., Brooks and Martindale were on the south bank of the Appomattox, while the two Tenth Corps brigades, which had broken camp between 2:00  a.m. and 4:00  a.m., were nearly there. Spear’s horsemen led the advance westward on City Point Road with Lt. Col. George Stetzel’s Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry in front and 86

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the First District of Columbia Cavalry following, trailed by Mix’s brigade consisting of the Third New York Cavalry and Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry. Stetzel assigned a dozen men as an advanced guard and they soon encountered a small Confederate picket post near Perkinson’s Sawmill. The Pennsylvanians charged and drove the Rebels back, initiating the first armed conflict of the Petersburg Campaign. The Federals lost one man wounded and two captured as their opponents retreated west to a more formidable line of defense.14 As Spear’s two regiments trotted ahead, they suddenly encountered heavy musketry and artillery fire erupting from a line of works at the top of a rise on the Baylor farm, blocking both the road and the adjacent City Point Railroad, just west of Cedar Level depot. Spear deployed the First District of Columbia Cavalry as skirmishers, but Kautz quickly determined that dispersing these stubborn Confederates would be a job for the infantry. Kautz so reported to Smith, who ordered the horsemen to disengage and continue their ride southwest, while promptly instructing Hinks to “push on without delay and clear the enemy from our front.”15 Hinks responded with alacrity. He immediately galloped off, with his staff straining to keep pace, heading for Duncan’s brigade at the head of his colJune 15, 1864

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umn. Hinks’s horsemanship (or his horse) proved unequal to the occasion, however, as his mount stumbled while attempting to leap a ditch, throwing the general painfully to the ground. The plucky commander, though badly shaken, remounted and continued forward at a more measured speed, eventually dismounting “in great pain” in the rear of his troops. Soon enough, Hinks ordered Duncan’s infantry into line of battle. This would be the colonel’s first time in offensive combat, and he greeted his superior’s orders with a pale but determined countenance.16 Duncan’s opponents consisted of some 400 troopers of Col. Dennis D. Ferebee’s Fourth North Carolina Cavalry and a section of guns under Capt. Edward Graham of the Petersburg Artillery. Beauregard’s cavalry commander, James Dearing, had sent Ferebee east of Petersburg several days earlier to patrol the area between the Dimmock Line and Broadway Landing. Colonel Ferebee had erected a breastwork about 300 yards in length across City Point Road on June 14, and although the fortifications were not complete, the Tar Heel colonel considered them quite strong. He dismounted his troopers, leaving one out of four in the rear as horseholders.17 Ferebee’s little force also enjoyed the advantage of favorable terrain. He had located his barricade atop a rise overlooking an open field of fire 300 to 400 yards in width. At the bottom of the clearing, the road passed through a swampy wood some 600 yards deep, drained by Cabin Creek. Fallen timber obstructed the ground, which was covered with a dense thicket of vines, bushes, and small trees, in places reaching twenty feet in height. Such terrain would pre­sent problems for even seasoned combat troops, but the green soldiers of Hinks’s division would find deployment and maneuver in such surroundings highly challenging. Duncan’s large brigade formed Hinks’s first line. The Fifth USCT occupied the right of Duncan’s formation with the Twenty-­Second USCT on its left, both regiments north of City Point Road. On the south side of the highway, the Fourth USCT deployed with the Sixth USCT on its left. Colonel Holman’s small brigade formed a second line about 100 yards behind the first consisting of the First USCT and the Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry, fighting dismounted. Capt. James R. Angel’s Battery K, Third New York Light Artillery, provided support. Hinks’s men completed their arrangements at about 6:00 a.m. The white soldiers in Brooks’s division approved the decision to put the “colored troops [in the] advance . . . for we knew we were to see fighting before night & we wanted to see these Pets go in ahead of us & see how well they could fight.”18 Duncan ordered his brigade forward through the marshy forest below 88

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Ferebee’s stronghold. Confederate artillery ripped into the woods, inflicting random casualties and unnerving many of the inexperienced black soldiers. The Fourth USCT reached the edge of the clearing before the rest of the brigade, and three of its companies near the center of the regiment—Capt. John W. Parrington’s Company A, Capt. William V. King’s Company C, and Capt. Sidney J. Mendall’s Company I—refused to wait at the tree line. They impulsively began to charge up the naked slope toward the Confederates. Other companies of the Fourth, seeing their comrades advancing, also left the shelter of the wood line and joined in the attack. Almost instantly the Confederates concentrated their entire firepower against these brave, impetuous, but foolhardy novices. Lt. Col. George Rogers of the Fourth USCT, recognizing the futility of this unauthorized attack, chased after his men, screaming at them to retire, but the Confederate guns spoke louder than Rogers. Scores of men from the Fourth USCT fell in a blizzard of lead and iron before the survivors realized their folly and began to retreat. As they did so, a volley from the woods ripped through their ranks, fired by the undisciplined Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry, creating more chaos and bloodshed. Captain King fell dead in the initial charge and Parrington and Mendall were wounded. In less than fifteen minutes, 120 men of the Fourth USCT were shot in this tragic episode. The Sixth USCT also emerged from the woods, and the same fire that shredded the Fourth kept its sister regiment neutralized on the south side of the road.19 North of the highway, the Fifth USCT and Twenty-­Second USCT crept forward to the edge of the clearing, returning fire without undue exposure to the mayhem visited on their comrades to their left. Orderly Sgt. Milton M. Holland of Company C, Fifth USCT, recorded a spectacle that “attracted the attention of the whole division.” A Confederate officer mounted on a magnificent white charger could be plainly seen riding along his lines, exhorting his men to stand firm as “they had only niggers to contend with.” That officer, thought Holland, was infused “with supernatural talent.”20 Col. Joseph B. Kiddoo, a twenty-­seven-­year-­old Pennsylvanian in command of the Twenty-­Second USCT, waited expectantly for attack orders from Colonel Duncan. As the Confederates began to redirect their fire north of the road after dispersing the Fourth USCT, Kiddoo feared that his concealed position might make it difficult for Duncan’s orders to find him. So Kiddoo “took the responsibility and ordered my regiment to charge the line of rifle-­pits in my front.” Invoking the memory of the much-­publicized atrocities perpetrated on African American soldiers in a battle along the Mississippi River that spring, some of the black soldiers shouted “Remember Fort Pillow,” as they dashed across the open ground, taking advantage of the lingering distraction created June 15, 1864

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by the suicidal attack of the Fourth USCT. Apparently, the anonymous officer on the white horse had less influence than Sergeant Holland had imagined, because before Kiddoo’s men reached the Confederate works, Ferebee’s dismounted troopers fled. The color sergeant of the Twenty-­Second USCT proudly planted his banner on the abandoned breastworks. Among the trophies stood a twelve-­pounder Napoleon howitzer left behind by Graham’s artillery, perhaps because the battery horses had been killed. Joined by the Fifth USCT, Kiddoo’s victorious troops “were wild with joy. They embraced the captured cannon with affectionate enthusiasm, patting it as if it were animate, and could appreciate the endearment.” Hinks appeared near the front and asked one of his enlisted men why he thought the Rebels had run before the right wing of Duncan’s line had reached the works. “Yah! Yah!” replied the excited soldier, betraying a speech impediment, “I reckin dey thmelt uth.”21 The fighting at Baylor’s farm concluded about 8:00  a.m. Although the proud African Americans held the field, the disparity in casualties tempered the luster of their victory. Hinks did not separately report the losses in his division that morning, but they probably numbered 300 or more, the majority absorbed by the overeager Fourth USCT—one regimental estimate totaled 160. Kiddoo admitted that his unit “suffered severely while coming from the woods” and Pvt. Torrey Beman of the Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry counted about thirty killed and wounded in his outfit, including its commanding officer, Col. Henry Sturgis Russell, wounded in the charge.22 White troops marching toward the battlefield after the fight encountered wounded members of Hinks’s division passing to the rear in large numbers, many of whom nursed slight injuries to their hands or feet. “I dislike a negroe as much as any live man, but still I could not help pitying them when I saw them go limping past me all covered with blood,” confessed Capt. George Naylor Julian of the Thirteenth New Hampshire. Another member of that regiment scornfully considered the dead blacks that littered the battlefield “the most ghastly corpse[s] ever seen.” Despite his racial animus, he admired the pluck of the wounded black soldiers. “Negroes will keep on their feet, and move on, with wounds that would utterly lay out white men, and they stick like death to their guns.” Ferebee reported two killed and eight wounded, although at least some Confederates fell captive as three of them “looked as if they could have taken off a tenpenny nail, at a snap,” suffering the perceived indignity of being “under guard of nigs!”23 In the words of a pair of newspaper correspondents, “the chivalry had been driven by the descendants of Ham” and “every soldier of the colored division was two inches taller for that achievement.” Hinks, who considered the Fifth 90

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Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry “little more than an armed mob,” nevertheless praised Duncan’s brigade and the First USCT of Holman’s. Their performance, wrote Smith, “affords conclusive evidence that colored men, when properly officered and drilled, will not only make soldiers, but the best of soldiers of the line.”24 However, Hinks’s hard-­earned victory at Baylor’s farm brewed a sinister by-­product: it intimidated Baldy Smith. “The fact that there were troops sufficient in our front to leave the works at Petersburg and come out to meet us induced the belief that the enemy was much stronger than General Butler supposed and I learned conclusively that the movement was no surprise,” explained Smith. “At a most unexpected place I had been called upon to develop my force and make an assault and this fact . . . caused me at once to cease taking anything for granted that had been asserted.” As one critic observed, “the reservoir of ‘promptness and spirit’ possessed by General Smith was so small that a single draught from it at Baylor’s Farm left it dry.” The tone had been set for Union generalship for the remainder of the day.25 Baldy Smith was not the only nervous general around Petersburg that morning. A few miles to the northwest, P. G. T. Beauregard continued his near-­ frantic effort to craft a defense against the massive Union attack he anticipated. At 7:00 a.m., while Ferebee and Hinks were locked in combat at the Baylor farm, Beauregard renewed his correspondence with General Bragg in Richmond. “Return of Butler’s force sent to Grant, and arrival of latter at Harrison’s Landing renders my position more critical than ever,” warned Beauregard. “If not re-­enforced immediately enemy could force my line at Bermuda Hundred Neck . . . or take Petersburg, before any troops from Lee’s army or Drewry’s Bluff could arrive in time. Can anything be done in the matter?”26 Beauregard, it will be recalled, had before midnight on the 14th ordered Robert Hoke’s Division of some 6,600 men to move to Petersburg from its position on the north side of the James opposite the pontoon bridge at Drewry’s Bluff. An all-­night march or the use of the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad would have brought Hoke’s four brigades to Beauregard’s relief by dawn, but come first light on the 15th the North Carolinian’s troops were nowhere in sight. Bragg wired the Louisianan at noon that day informing him that Hoke’s troops were en route, but that they had started for Petersburg only thirty minutes earlier, some twelve hours after Beauregard issued his marching orders and, apparently, in response to Lee’s instructions, rather than Beauregard’s. A worried Beauregard dispatched his aide, Maj. Giles B. Cooke, to ride into Petersburg and advise the local commander that Hoke was on the way.27 Since April 23, 1864, Beauregard had commanded the Department of June 15, 1864

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North Carolina and Southern Virginia, a vast tidewater domain stretching from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to the south shore of the James. He designated the Virginia portion of his department the First Military District, and on June 1 named Henry Alexander Wise as its commander.28 General Wise arrived in Petersburg with a distinguished portfolio; unfortunately, little of it pertained to martial accomplishments. The fifty-­seven-­year-­ old Virginian had served in Congress as a Jacksonian Democrat and in 1856 began a momentous term as his state’s governor, championing the Southern-­ rights faction of his party and seeing to the prosecution and execution of the abolitionist John Brown, whose raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859 had inflamed the South. Despite his advancing age and an utter lack of military training, Wise received a commission as brigadier general in early June 1861. His first significant field assignment that summer and fall took him to western Virginia, where he proved an abject failure. Then, troops under his command surrendered Roanoke Island on the North Carolina sounds in early 1862. Wise transferred to South Carolina in 1863, came north with Beauregard in the spring of 1864, and now found himself on the front lines of a developing crisis.29 Wise’s explicit command authority consisted of the forces considered as garrison troops at Petersburg, Hicksford, and along Swift Creek south of Drewry’s Bluff. Col. Powhatan R. Page of the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia now led Wise’s Brigade in the field. Page’s regiments belonged to the infantry division under Maj. Gen. Bushrod R. Johnson—which, along with Hoke’s Division, constituted the bulk of Beauregard’s infantry strength. Two of Johnson’s brigades, Alabamans under Archibald Gracie and Matthew Ransom’s North Carolinians, had in early June been detached for duty north of the James. Johnson’s remaining 2,000 men—his old Tennessee brigade, now commanded by Col. John S. Fulton, and a brigade of South Carolinians under Brig. Gen. Stephen Elliott— had responsibility for defending the Howlett Line between the Appomattox and the James. Gracie’s Brigade, temporarily assigned to the Department of Richmond, had returned to the Southside and reinforced Johnson on June 11, so Page could move the bulk of his Virginians into the Dimmock Line. Gracie’s four regiments and a battalion of sharpshooters numbered about 1,200 men. The tiny Fifty-­Ninth Virginia of Page’s command had remained north of the Appomattox as well, so Beauregard counted approximately 3,300 rifles along the Howlett Line.30 On the morning of June 15, Wise had Page’s command at his disposal, with 528 men of the Forty-­Sixth Virginia, 375 in the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia, and about 600 of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia present, along with 180 men of the orphaned Sixty-­Fourth Georgia and a company of about 70 troops of the Twenty-­Third 92

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South Carolina of Elliott’s brigade. To these forces he added three local militia battalions numbering 510 sunshine soldiers under Majs. Peter V. Batte, William H. Hood, and Fletcher H. Archer. Dearing’s cavalry brigade, consisting of Ferebee’s Tar Heels, the Seventh Confederate States Cavalry, and the Sixty-­Second Georgia Cavalry, added about 1,300 men. Wise’s artillery support is difficult to identify with precision, but there is no question that Capt. Nathaniel A. Sturdivant’s Albemarle (Virginia) Battery, Capt. Charles William Slaten’s Macon (Georgia) Battery, and Graham’s horse artillery were available. Additional artillery companies raised the total number of guns in the batteries to as many as twenty-­two. Assuming an average strength of eighty-­four men per battery and counting only Sturdivant’s, Slaten’s, and Graham’s cannoneers, fewer than 4,000 men of all arms poised south of the Appomattox to meet Smith’s force, which boasted more than three times that number.31 Beauregard maintained his headquarters in Chesterfield County four miles north of Petersburg at David Dunlop’s elegant house, Ellerslie, about midway along his lines. Immediate responsibility for his troops south of the Appomattox rested with Wise, who assigned key roles to two other officers. Colonel Page personally commanded that portion of the Dimmock Line from Battery 1, below Petersburg on the Appomattox River, southward to Battery 14. The forty-­two-­year-­old Page had led the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia for more than two years and was a veteran of the Mexican War. He had his own regiment, the Forty-­Sixth Virginia, and Hood’s and Batte’s militia battalions to defend this section of the line, perhaps 1,300 men to cover nearly three miles of works. Sturdivant’s Battery of four guns unlimbered in Battery 5. Wise took personal command of the line from Battery 14 to Battery 23, just east of Jerusalem Plank Road, using the 600 soldiers of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia to guard another one and a half miles of fortifications, supported by Slaten’s Georgia artillerists in Battery 16. Many Confederate officers believed this to be the sector most likely to be targeted, given the Union success there less than a week earlier. The right of Beauregard’s line belonged to the essentially supernumerary Gen. Raleigh Colston, who by then had been assigned to command the Sixty-­Fourth Georgia, the reserves, and the militia. Colston deployed his Georgians, the single company of the Twenty-­Third South Carolina, and Archer’s Battalion—fewer than 500 men—westward to Battery 40 near Butterworth’s Bridge and the Petersburg Railroad. A portion of Dearing’s cavalry patrolled the line between Battery 40 and the upper Appomattox River, which was otherwise devoid of troops. Beauregard estimated that he had in place one man for every four and a half yards of line or about 300 men per mile, which exaggerated the inadequacy just a bit. Still, there can be no question that June 15, 1864

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the Confederates were stretched too thin to offer Smith’s approaching divisions decisive resistance.32 Ferebee and Graham had retreated in stages, buying time by compelling the cautious Federals to halt at every intervening ridge between the Baylor farm and the Dimmock Line. Smith admitted that the battle at Baylor’s farm disorganized his troops, and putting them “back into some kind of order and consistency . . . took up valuable time.” After at least an hour’s delay, Smith ordered his advance to resume, although “finding that the enemy had sufficient troops to send outside of his works to defend a causeway nearly two miles to the front, I at once ordered Brooks to make the rest of his march in line of battle,” he explained.33 Brooks, in keeping with the spirit of Smith’s generalship, shook out a skirmish line to precede his cumbersome marching formation. Col. Aaron F. Stevens of the Thirteenth New Hampshire, a forty-­four-­year-­old lawyer and “a brave and efficient officer,” took command of the skirmishers, a force that included 120 men from the Eighth Connecticut, two companies of the 118th New York, and 150 men of the Ninety-­Second New York, in addition to Stevens’s own troops. The Tenth New Hampshire marched in support of Stevens. The Federals engaged in nearly constant skirmishing as they slowly advanced westward toward the Dimmock Line. Capt. George A. Bruce of the Thirteenth New Hampshire minimized the level of resistance the skirmish line encountered— only one man in the Thirteenth received a wound, and that a mere trifle—and thought that “the men, now thoroughly familiar with the methods of their corps commander, followed a well-­established precedent, dawdled along, and took three hours for an hour’s work.”34 By the afternoon, Brooks’s skirmish line had worked its way through a patchwork of woods and fields, emerging into a clearing filled with a tangle of fallen trees and stumps and within sight of the Confederate line. There in plain view loomed Battery 5, “with very high parapets and perched on the top of a high hill.” Four hundred yards to its front stood a line of rifle pits. A grassy slope stretched between the edges of the cleared field of fire down to a deep ravine that fronted Battery 5. With the spires of Petersburg’s churches visible in the distance, Brooks’s men halted and faced the enemy. The Federals repulsed at least one dash by Rebel skirmishers and endured random shelling and picket firing that claimed a few victims. Maj. Charles E. Pruyn, the commanding officer of the 118th New York, was the most prominent casualty. While Pruyn was scanning the Confederate lines, an unexploded shell ricocheted off a woods road, fatally striking him in the chest. The Yankees took cover close enough to the Confederate works that they could occasionally hear the orders of Captain 94

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Sturdivant and his battery officers as they served the guns in Battery 5. “Our cover is so secure, however, that his firing is more interesting than harmful,” remembered a soldier in the Thirteenth New Hampshire.35 To Brooks’s right, Martindale’s division moved forward on River Road, with the Eighty-­Ninth New York of Brig. Gen. George Jerrison Stannard’s brigade in the lead. “We advanced through tangled thickets, swamps, ravines and open undulating fields,” wrote a member of the Twenty-­Seventh Massachusetts, “our whole force . . . deployed and [marching] in line of battle, each organization furnishing its own skirmishers.” When Martindale’s men reached a cornfield, they suddenly came under heavy shelling issuing from forts now visible in their front. “We were in some confusion but kept in good line under the conditions,” remembered a soldier in the Twenty-­Fifth Massachusetts. Some of the troops received orders to hit the ground where they had halted, exposed not only to Confederate iron but to a broiling sun. “We hadn’t gone far before our skirmishers were hard at it, and in a short time we were marched into a large corn field, and ordered to lie down and not to fire, but to keep still and let the rebels give us gush,” complained Pvt. John E. Bassett of the Twenty-­ Fifth Massachusetts. “The rebels had 3 ways to fire at us, from in front and on both flanks, the boys began to grumble a great deal.” Some soldiers dug pits in the earth, concealing themselves with stalks from the surrounding cornfield. “Here, under protection of the youthful cornstalks, the [Twenty-­Fifth Massachusetts] remained during the day, receiving shots frequently from a two-­gun battery located about a mile to the front and right, upon the plain.” Martindale’s two brigades occupied the ground between the Appomattox River and the City Point Railroad. Col. Griffin A. Stedman’s brigade on Martindale’s right suffered not only from the guns in the Dimmock Line but also endured enfilading fire from Archer’s Hill, across the Appomattox, that forced them to retire about 800 yards. The Confederates gobbled up a small reconnoitering party during this afternoon jousting.36 Bell and Curtis continued to bring up the rear, the two Tenth Corps brigades following Brooks along City Point Road. They formed a line of battle in the woods behind Brooks, 200 of Bell’s men moving forward to bolster Brooks’s skirmish line, and here they rested under enemy shelling for the remainder of the afternoon.37 While Brooks, Martindale, Bell, and Curtis took position from the Appomattox River to the ground opposite Battery 5, Hinks’s African Americans filed into line farther south. It took an hour to re-­form the jubilant blacks after their triumph at the Baylor farm. Hinks regained City Point Road about 9:00 a.m. and then branched off on a country lane running southwest, toward Jordan June 15, 1864

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Point Road. Reaching that highway, Holman’s brigade, now in the lead— minus the undisciplined Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry—skirmished with Confederate pickets on Bailey’s Creek near the Bryant house. Driving the Rebels westward, Holman’s men took position between Baxter Road on the left and Jordan Point Road on the right, eventually making contact with Brooks when that division arrived. Hinks’s troops reached their positions before noon.38 By then, General Hinks had become all but immobile. The painful fall he experienced en route to the Baylor farm battlefield had aggravated an injury to his intestines sustained at the battle of Glendale two years earlier. Although unwilling to leave the field, the ailing brigadier maintained a recumbent position for the rest of the day, relying on staff officers to inform him of events on the field.39 Holman and Duncan now deployed the Fifth USCT as skirmishers south of Jordan Point Road, moving through thick underbrush toward Batteries 9 and 10 on the Dimmock Line. However, when they reached the cleared field of fire east of those positions, they saw that the fortifications stood about 600 yards distant, too far for the infantry to apply effective pressure. Hinks sent word to bring up the division’s two artillery batteries, Angel’s Battery K, Third New York Light Artillery and the Second U.S. Colored Artillery, Battery B, under Capt. Francis E. Choate. A gunner in Angel’s battery considered their position “one of the hottest places” he had ever experienced. “Every part of the field was so thoroughly commanded by a direct, an oblique, and an enfilading fire from the enemy’s guns that prudence dictated the withdrawal of the batteries,” explained Colonel Duncan.40 After Kautz had disengaged at the Baylor farm, he placed Spear’s Second Brigade in the lead and rode southwest toward his intended target along the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad. Using the same byway that Hinks would employ to reach Jordan Point Road, Spear drove away a small body of Dearing’s cavalry, killing an unidentified lieutenant, and pushed on past Prince George Court House Road to Baxter Road. Again encountering cavalry pickets, the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry, Kautz’s lead regiment, swept aside the meager opposition and by noon gained sight of the frowning works of the Dimmock Line, apparently bristling with artillery.41 Reprising his tentative generalship of June 9, Kautz halted his troopers and reconnoitered the works for almost three hours while a section of the Fourth Wisconsin Battery fired harmlessly at the Confederates. Kautz concluded at last that although he faced scant infantry, the Confederate artillery enjoyed a long, open, and worrisome field of fire. At 3:00 p.m. he decided to test the 96

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enemy’s strength and brought forward a line of dismounted men armed with short-­range carbines, Mix’s brigade on the right and Spear’s on the left of Baxter Road. Kautz intended merely to make a demonstration consistent with his understanding of his assignment, hoping to hear that Smith’s infantry had launched the main attack several miles to his right. The Federal troopers advanced unevenly, some approaching within 500 yards of the Rebel line and others halting 1,500 yards away. The cavalry maintained a desultory and, at that range, ineffective fire, while taking cover from “a well directed and rapid” artillery shelling “supported by a lively sprinkling of musketry.” Toward the end of this almost bloodless exchange, word arrived that a Confederate cavalry force had been spotted moving toward the Union right flank. Mounted soldiers under Colonel Mix rode forward to counter this gambit, bringing on the sharpest fighting Kautz experienced all day. Near the bed of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad a brief struggle flared, delivering a mortal wound to Simon Mix during a charge by the Third New York Cavalry. The Union brigade commander declined removal from the battlefield as his troopers disengaged, and would die in Confederate hands; Col. Robert M. West of the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry replaced him at the head of his brigade. Kautz considered mounting a more serious assault on the Confederate line, but thought better of it. By 5:30 p.m., running short of ammunition, citing the fatigue of soldiers who had been in the saddle since shortly after midnight, and despairing of anything aggressive from General Smith, Kautz withdrew to a bivouac along Jordan Point Road, neglecting to notify Smith or any of the infantry commanders of his retreat. Federal cavalrymen suffered six killed, thirty-­two wounded, and five missing in the afternoon’s fighting. Confederate casualties are unknown.42 While Kautz sparred to the south, the U.S. Colored Troops moved forward opposite Batteries 6 through 10. Earlier in the afternoon, General Smith had ridden to Hinks’s front and, along with Colonel Holman and a staff officer, reconnoitered the Confederate line. A Rebel minié ball whizzed toward the little knot of officers, compelling Holman to jump aside “with an exclamation,” although Smith seemed unfazed, impressing one observer with his bravery under fire. By 2:00 p.m. Hinks’s men made firm contact with Brooks’s division, on their right, and for the next three hours took cover under “an unremitting and very accurate and severe fire of artillery.” A noncommissioned officer in the First USCT condemned the situation as “everything but a pleasant one to remain all day, with the scorching sun on the backs of the troops, and the cannons belching forth their murderous missiles.” A soldier in the Sixth USCT considered the fire inaccurate but “quite annoying. The little shells sent every few minutes to greet us were not as large as hornets’ nests . . . but were filled with June 15, 1864

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little metal bullets as big as hickory nuts.” The blacks periodically lurched ahead to advance a skirmish line, gaining little and taking casualties in the process. “They rush forward, and are then driven back; and then try again and again but without success,” according to a witness from Brooks’s division. “The negroes are doing wretched skirmishing.”43 The tenacious Confederate response to these probes from Smith’s various commands was more apparent than real. General Wise did what he could to counter the threats to the eastern portion of his defenses by shifting forces from Colston’s sector to bolster Colonel John Thomas Goode and the Thirty-­ Fourth Virginia, who, along with Slaten’s Georgia cannoneers, provided Kautz’s opposition. “No troops on the line but our brigade,” recorded Sgt. Robert W. Hicks of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia, “and they was scattered.” Major Batte’s militia battalion had been dispatched that morning from Page’s command on the left to Battery 24, but under pressure from Kautz moved east to near Battery 14 and then to Battery 7 in front of Holman. To Wise’s repeated requests for assistance the reply came merely to “hold on . . . reinforcements would be sent.” Until then, the outgunned Confederate defenders were told to “hold on at all hazards.” Wise admitted that the probes made in midafternoon by Kautz and Hinks had “stretched our line to its most tension. I will hold on to the last ditch,” promised Wise in a message to Beauregard, “but the enemy are overwhelming & reinforcements must be hastened up.”44 Smith, of course, could not know for certain the vulnerability of his outnumbered opponents without obtaining additional information. Thus far on June 15, the Confederates had demonstrated boldness, stamina, and an abundance of deadly artillery power. Whatever hope Smith may have nurtured for Kautz to penetrate the Confederate front seemed misplaced, while the cavalryman understood that he was merely to demonstrate and prevent reinforcements from shifting northward. Rebel resistance convinced the Eighteenth Corps commander that “Butler’s information which he had imparted to me was wrong” and that “a close reconnaissance was necessary to search for a point where the physical obstructions were not impassable.” The general thought that anyone in his shoes who would have ordered a blind attack would have been either remarkably reckless or hopelessly stupid. Perhaps memories of the assaults at Cold Harbor influenced his thinking, although nowhere in Smith’s voluminous self-­justifying postwar apologia does he explicitly cite Cold Harbor as a rationale for his caution.45 Smith claimed to have requested the service of an engineer on the night of June 14, but that no such specialist was provided. Therefore, he wrote, “I was obliged to do the work myself which might have been much more quickly done 98

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by an engineer officer rather than by myself, who was frequently interrupted by the necessity of attending to my proper duties.” For two hours Smith carefully examined the Confederate works, conducting his mission mounted, on foot, and sometimes, he claimed, on his hands and knees, all the while struggling against the intestinal distress that plagued him that day. To make matters worse, he explained, “the condition of my head was such that I could not remain in the sun for two minutes without an intense headache.” Smith began reconnoitering on Brooks’s front, visited Hinks, and eventually made his way to Martindale’s sector near the river. Considering the breadth of his line and his physical maladies, Smith completed his investigations in good time, although he admitted that had he been healthy, he could have finished his work sooner. The general concluded that if the works contained a strong complement of infantry any frontal attack would fail. “My best chance of success,” he determined, “was to trust to a very heavy skirmish line which would not of itself attract much artillery fire and which yet would be sufficient to do the work if the enemy was not very strong in infantry.” Smith would order his men to advance using intervals of a single pace between them rather than the standard skirmish line formation of five paces. “The plan adopted . . . was to me a novelty in the art of war,” wrote Smith, and “educated soldiers who are not geniuses treat novelties with wariness, and therefore it took time to get hold of the plan and determine to adopt it.”46 Smith’s plan, when completed, targeted Battery 5. That stronghold occupied the plateau of the Jordan farm, anchoring a prominent salient in the Confederate line running from Battery 4 south to Battery 7 and offering advantages to the attackers. “Seamed with deep ravines” along the perimeter of these gun emplacements, the ground provided natural cover once charging troops cleared the naked ridge crests where the Confederate guns would perform their most deadly work. Moreover, a depression running perpendicular to the Dimmock Line between Batteries 6 and 7 would offer a sheltered corridor—defilade—to any unit able to gain its protection. Thus Brooks’s division opposite the Jordan house plateau would bear responsibility for initiating the attack. Orders arrived at Hinks’s headquarters to advance when Brooks began his assault. Martindale, on the Union right, would also take his cue from Brooks, while Bell and Curtis would be available to support the First Division.47 Smith conveyed these instructions by 5:30  p.m., but before the infantry went forward he thought it imperative to suppress the enemy artillery that had been so bothersome during the afternoon probes. While Brooks deployed his division’s skirmishers for their deadly duty, Smith sent a directive to his chief of artillery, Capt. Frederick M. Follett, to move his guns into position to blanJune 15, 1864

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ket the Confederate line with a strong cannonade. “To my dismay,” remembered Smith, “I found that the Chief of Artillery without any consultation or authority had taken out the horses and sent them to water.” Thinking it unwise to commit his infantry “without an attempt to demoralize the artillery in my immediate front,” Smith deferred the attack until his guns could be relimbered and brought to positions from which they could fire effectively on the Confederate line, a process that consumed more than an hour. He also at this time dispatched his message to Hancock requesting assistance. Thus, for a period of some five hours from the time Smith’s infantry had gained a unified position opposite Wise’s outmanned defenders, only light skirmishing had intruded on the quiet of that Wednesday afternoon—time that would benefit the overmatched Confederates.48 This lengthy delay received blistering criticism from Captain Bruce of the Thirteenth New Hampshire more than half a century after the war. He lambasted Smith for failing to move forward once Brooks, Martindale, and Hinks had assumed their mutually supporting positions. Emphasizing that each hour Smith demurred provided the Confederates a greater opportunity to strengthen their defense, Bruce charged Smith with failing to recognize that the capture of Petersburg, while Lee’s army remained mesmerized north of the James, trumped the possibility of absorbing heavy casualties in the process of doing so. It should have been obvious to Smith, thought Bruce, that the Jordan farm salient presented the most vulnerable portion of the Dimmock Line and that the troops there could not be easily reinforced. The captain dismissed the wisdom of deferring the assault until the artillery could be employed. In short, this critic fumed that any competent commander would have assaulted sometime early in the afternoon, and if he had done so Petersburg would have fallen.49 Bruce’s speculation that a coup-­de-­main would have captured Petersburg on the afternoon of June 15 may be correct. Reinforcements had not yet reached Beauregard’s outnumbered defenders, and events would prove that the eastern portions of the Dimmock Line were far from impregnable. Smith had, however, encountered a military problem he had not anticipated. Expecting to push straight through weakly held and deteriorated works, Smith found instead an aggressive advance force at the Baylor farm, permanent fortifications that appeared even stronger than the temporary fieldworks that had repulsed Union assaults for the previous six weeks (including twelve days earlier at Cold Harbor), and a blanketing artillery fire that stymied his preliminary probes. Without explicit orders to brook no hesitation in pressing forward to the streets of Petersburg, Smith’s circumspection becomes understandable, 100

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if ultimately unnecessary and counterproductive. As a contemporary analyst phrased it, “looking at it from the point of view of gain and risk . . . the Union Army as a whole could much better afford the possible loss of perhaps a thousand killed and wounded, in an unsuccessful assault upon the works, than it could risk the chance of the capture of the town becoming an impossibility by re-­enforcements to the Confederates.”50 Army commander Butler remained largely aloof from events transpiring east of Petersburg, but he found time to write his wife a gloating letter proclaiming vindication as the Army of the Potomac assembled in his theater of operations. He informed his spouse that “I am attacking Petersburg [at] 7 p.m. under Smith with twelve thousand men. The guns are now sounding in my ears.” At 7:20 p.m. he finally sent a critical message to Smith: “I grieve for the delays,” Butler complained. “Time is of the essence of this movement. I doubt not the delays were necessary, but now push and get the Appomattox between you and Lee.”51 Butler’s adjuration carried little weight as it is doubtful that Smith received this message before commencing his long-­deferred offensive. Just before 7:00 p.m., he positioned three batteries—sixteen guns—taking extraordinary care to mask their deployment. The crews unlimbered their pieces under the reverse slope of the ridge, ran them to the front by hand, and then, at the appointed signal, opened a furious fire on the Confederate fortifications along the Jordan house plateau. Shortly thereafter, the Federal skirmish line rolled into action.52 Troops from Brig. Gen. Hiram Burnham’s brigade of Brooks’s division provided the bulk of Smith’s attackers. After consulting with various field officers of his brigade, Burnham—a tough Maine lumberman about fifty years of age— selected the Thirteenth New Hampshire and Eighth Connecticut of his command to make the assault, augmented by men from the Ninety-­Second New York of Colonel Henry’s command. Two companies of the Eighth Connecticut carried Sharps rifles and had expended their entire ammunition supply during the afternoon skirmishing. Embarrassingly, more Sharps cartridges could not be found, so these Nutmeggers stepped aside and two companies of the 118th New York filled their place. The Thirteenth New Hampshire contributed 189 men to the task and took position on Burnham’s left, opposite Battery 5. Contrary to Smith’s intentions, they deployed in typical skirmish formation, five paces between soldiers. About 200 men of the Eighth Connecticut and their 118th New York replacements occupied Burnham’s right, with the Ninety-­Second New York detachment in the center. Burnham brought no more than 500 men to the endeavor.53 June 15, 1864

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About 100 men of the 117th New York joined the skirmish line, supported by seventy-­five soldiers of the Third New York, all from Curtis’s command. Capt. William J. Hunt of the 117th New York took charge of this portion of the line, including his own company and that of Capt. Almon R. Stevens. These men, who were ordered to go forward with fixed bayonets, better adhered to Smith’s preferred tactical formation by deploying two paces apart. Bell’s brigade poised in the rear to exploit any success, as Hunt’s men took position between the Thirteenth New Hampshire and Hinks’s U.S. Colored Troops on the left of the skirmish line. All eyes would be on this picked body of fewer than 700 soldiers who, if successful, would trigger a general advance along Smith’s entire line.54 Smith opened the action with his artillery “in good earnest. I never heard such a noise before,” testified a member of the 117th New York, while a soldier in Martindale’s division marveled that “of all the Artillery firing which I ever saw this was the most tremendious.” Even as the guns roared, Burnham’s and Curtis’s skirmishers rose and began crossing the treeless ground in front of the Dimmock Line. The Confederates had originally strewn their field of fire with abatis and other obstructions, but these impediments had deteriorated in the 102

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months since the works were built and, shockingly, had not been repaired. In their place now stood tree stumps and undergrowth leading down toward a row of inclined “French rifle pits” and the low ground that fronted the base of the batteries themselves. In places the density of the vegetation actually shielded the attackers from view without unduly retarding their progress. Rifle fire promptly erupted and claimed a few casualties before the Federals drove the advanced Confederate infantry out of the rifle pits and back toward the main line of works. “How fiercely those guns did flash out through the smoke, throwing showers of shot all round us in front overhead on either side & way in the rear,” remembered New Hampshire’s Captain Julian.55 Julian and a handful of his comrades from the Thirteenth New Hampshire eventually found themselves at the bottom of the ravine, staring some thirty or forty feet above them at the ramparts of Battery 5. Although they enjoyed a measure of security so far below the ability of Sturdivant’s Battery to depress the muzzles of their twelve-­pounders, Capt. Nathan D. Stoodley—described as “the most unwarlike-­looking . . . officer in the regiment” and hampered by “a half-­feminine voice”—called out to Julian, “if we follow this thing right up now, we can take this Battery.” Julian replied, “then we will take it,” and, he recalled, “then up we got & at them we went.” Scaling the fort’s dirt walls by using their bayonets as steps or grasping weeds and grass for balance, about a dozen Granite Staters climbed the works and leapt into the Confederate bastion.56 In the meantime, Captain Hunt and his New Yorkers charged across the stump-­filled field “with yells that might have raised the dead.” They found the vulnerable ravine separating Batteries 6 and 7, and using this natural avenue, gained the reverse of Batteries 5 and 6. These redans were, by definition, open in the rear and thus Hunt’s men had a clear shot at the defenders, who were focused on the assaults coming at them from the front. The Federals fired a volley from behind Battery 5 at about the same time that Julian’s and Stoodley’s intrepid band appeared in front of Sturdivant’s guns. Both little clusters of bluecoats claimed to solicit and then accept the surrender of the Confederate defenders, when in reality their combined efforts produced a near-­simultaneous capitulation of much of the surprised Virginia garrison. One Confederate officer tendered his sword to Captain Hunt while Captain Julian accepted the surrender of Lt. Col. James C. Councill of the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia, a thirty-­ eight-­year-­old former Virginia Military Institute professor and the ranking officer in Battery 5. Nathan Stoodley took Captain Sturdivant as his prisoner. Militia commander Peter Batte was numbered among those captured.57 Although some of the defenders managed to escape in the gathering dusk, running west toward Petersburg under fire from their own captured guns— June 15, 1864

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now wielded by men of the Thirteenth New Hampshire—many more members of the Battery 5 garrison threw up their hands. Five pieces of artillery also fell to the victors: the four twelve-­pounders of Sturdivant’s Battery and a rifled piece belonging to the Halifax (Virginia) Light Artillery that had been shifted from Battery 9 the previous day; its crew managed to spike the rifle before abandoning it. “Cheer upon cheer rung along our lines, hats and caps filled the air, while friends turned to clasp each other’s hands, and see tears of joy standing in eyes unused to weeping,” remembered a New York soldier. Smith’s appearance elicited three cheers, prompting the general to doff his hat, smiling from ear to ear, but cautioning the men to quiet down “by waving his hand gently, as does an orchestra leader when he means ‘pianissimo.’”58 Official reports and participant accounts disagree regarding the number of Confederates taken prisoner in the swift capture of Battery 5. Colonel Bell tallied 211 enlisted men, one lieutenant colonel, two majors, four captains, and nine lieutenants, along with four guns and the flag of the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia. Captain Coit counted five guns and 250 captives. General Burnham reported that five guns and 100 POWs fell into his hands. Captain Julian agreed with Burnham’s estimate, taking personal credit for capturing Colonel Councill and four other officers. “I never felt so proud in all my life,” he beamed.59 “You never saw such a crazy crowd of men as those who captured the fort,” explained Captain Coit in a letter to his family. “I attempted the first instant after we got in & had sent the prisoners to the rear to have my Co[mpa‑ nie]s form to be ready to receive a Reb charge if they should attempt to retake, but as not either of the other Regts attempted to form & their men were running all around I found it next to impossible.” Another witness remembered that the cheering that erupted along the Union line at the fall of Battery 5 “was thrilling, making one live a lifetime in a minute. Wounded men waved their gory arms and shouted their gladness from blood-­choked mouths.” The Thirteenth New Hampshire tallied four men killed and forty-­nine officers and men wounded in the assault. The Eighth Connecticut reported two killed and seventeen wounded. Hunt’s losses went unreported.60 Reactions from the vanquished Confederates naturally ran in the opposite direction. Captain Sturdivant felt particularly chagrined when he discovered that he had surrendered to so small a contingent. “Here are my guns double-­ shotted for infantry, and all of us captured by a _____ Yankee skirmish line,” he is supposed to have muttered. Smith directed the prisoners to Butler’s headquarters at Bermuda Hundred, then on to Fort Monroe, where the wounded men received medical treatment. The rest of the enlisted prisoners landed at Maryland’s Point Lookout prison, near the mouth of the Potomac River. Most 104

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of the officers were remanded to Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River, although Colonel Councill and two other officers eventually journeyed to Morris Island off the South Carolina coast.61 Brooks joined Smith in Battery 5 shortly after its capture, and the two officers eventually gained control of the celebrating soldiers, some of whom had been inadvertently firing at their own men within the works. They ordered the troops to shift west toward the rear of the fort, the Eighth Connecticut advancing as far as the Charles Friend house, from which the spires of Petersburg appeared as specters in the darkening night sky.62 The successful advance of Burnham and Curtis signaled the rest of the Eighteenth Corps that they, too, should test the strength of the Confederates. Brooks had deployed his other two brigades on Burnham’s right, Brig. Gen. Gilman Marston’s New Yorkers anchoring the division’s right and connecting with the left flank of Martindale’s division. Marston, a fifty-­two-­year-­ old former New Hampshire congressman and Harvard Law School graduate, stalked up and down behind his troops, assuring them that they outnumbered their foes ten-­to-­one. Colonel Henry positioned his brigade, minus the Ninety-­ Second New York detachment assigned to Burnham’s skirmish line, in support of Marston, prepared to “meet any counter-­charge of the enemy in the event of a repulse.” Brooks’s entire division front extended some 800 yards, from around Battery 6 northwest to Martindale’s sector.63 Marston and Henry lurched ahead, but by the time they reached the Jordan house plateau the Confederate defenders had vanished. “We emerged from the woods on an open plain overlooking the woods between us & Petersburg,” wrote an officer serving on Henry’s staff. “We passed 200 rebel prisoners with a stand of colors.” Marston’s men advanced to the brow of the plateau and formed a line amid the orchards of the Jordan farm. “The poultry thereabouts suffered heavily and the night (for it was now evening) resounded with the dying screams of distracted pullets & motherless chickens.”64 Martindale’s two brigades on Smith’s extreme right had endured more intense shelling and suffered greater losses during the afternoon sparring than had either Brooks or Hinks. Stedman’s brigade on the division’s right had been compelled to retire and seek cover from the enfilading fire across the Appomattox River. They prepared to advance along City Point Road, although they started farther from the Confederate works than any of Smith’s units. Stannard’s men, to Stedman’s left, hunkered down opposite the annoying fire of Battery 3. Once Burnham and Hunt sprang forward toward Battery 5, Stedman and Stannard also charged ahead. George Stannard enjoyed a long and varied Civil War military career. A June 15, 1864

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native of Vermont and forty-­three years old in June 1864, Stannard parlayed his antebellum militia service into regimental command early in the war. He and his unit were among those captured by Stonewall Jackson at Harpers Ferry in September 1862. Upon his exchange, Stannard received the star of a brigadier general and command of a brigade of nine-­month Vermont volunteers. In this capacity, Stannard earned what renown still attaches to his name by playing a prominent role in the repulse of the Pickett-­Pettigrew-­Trimble charge on July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg. Wounded during this action, Stannard eventually returned to active duty with the Eighteenth Corps in command of a mixed brigade of Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania troops.65 The Twenty-­Fifth Massachusetts led Stannard’s advance along the bed of the City Point Railroad, straight toward the two guns in Battery 3. Although “shells were bursting and the shot falling like hail” from various Confederate positions, the cannon in Battery 3 remained strangely silent. When a detachment from Company A of the Twenty-­Fifth Massachusetts gained the Confederate works—scrambling over the parapet and into the battery—they discovered two abandoned brass Napoleons and three caissons with a generous supply of ammunition. The position “had evidently been vacated but a few minutes and in a great hurry, for blankets, clothing, and equipment were scattered around, and a supper already prepared was left untouched.” The Massachusetts men dragged the captured ordnance back to their lines, expressing great satisfaction at having taken some of the artillery that had so pestered them during the day.66 Stedman’s brigade enjoyed less success along City Point Road. It managed to drive skirmishers from the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia into the works at Batteries 1 and 2, but made no attempt to storm those fortifications. In the gathering darkness, Smith sent Martindale orders to withdraw both of his brigades and assume a supporting position behind Brooks. Martindale promptly obeyed, leaving the Fifty-­Fifth Pennsylvania and the Twenty-­Fifth Massachusetts of Stannard’s brigade behind as a broad skirmish line. Martindale reported thirteen men killed, 133 wounded, and thirty-­eight missing on June 15, with most of those relatively heavy casualties sustained during the skirmishing prior to the final assaults.67 Hinks’s soldiers captured an even wider swath of the Confederate defenses. Hinks implemented Smith’s order to prepare a heavy skirmish line about 5:00  p.m. Colonel Kiddoo of the Twenty-­Second USCT had advanced one of his companies in skirmish formation earlier in the afternoon, and when Smith’s orders filtered down to Duncan’s brigade, Kiddoo received instructions to commit three additional companies, placing all four under the command of Maj. John B. Cook. Colonel Duncan also directed three companies of the 106

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Fourth USCT under Maj. Augustus S. Boernstein to join Cook’s men in the advanced line. Duncan told these seven companies to “push their skirmishers well to the front and to charge the works as soon as the charge should begin to their right.”68 A lively exchange of fire ensued during which the blacks compelled the Confederate sharpshooters in front of the works from Battery  6 southward to fall back toward their main line. When Major Cook spotted Brooks’s assault toward Batteries 5 and 6, he ordered his skirmish line to advance as well. Colonel Holman contributed to the attack by committing a portion of the First USCT under Lt. Col. Elias Wright, on Duncan’s right. These soldiers aimed for Battery 6, and along with Hunt’s New Yorkers they overwhelmed the defenders there. Holman personally assumed control of two additional companies of the First USCT near Jordan Point Road on the far south end of Hinks’s combat front. His attempt to reinforce these troops foundered, however, when two companies of the Fifth USCT failed to move forward. Cook’s and Boernstein’s troops focused on Battery 7. The Confederates responded with blistering volleys and the Federals “seemed to fall like blades of grass before a machine.” A New England soldier claimed to have counted forty or fifty bodies shortly after the attack, “some on their backs, some on their faces, some on their sides, in all manner of ways, just as they had fallen, with knapsack still unslung from their shoulders.” Undaunted, the determined blacks advanced on the double-­quick, inspired by adrenaline-­induced cheering. Most of the attackers reached defilade in front of Battery 7, where Major Cook ordered the survivors to move to the right and left of the redan and aim for its unprotected rear. These raw troops, who had experienced their first serious combat only that morning at the Baylor farm, promptly obeyed and stormed into Battery 7 from the west, led by Capt. Jacob F. Force and Lt. William B. Milliken of the Twenty-­Second USCT. Two twelve-­pounder howitzers and one iron gun were among the trophies seized when Battery 7 fell and its garrison “skedaddled.”69 Battery 8 loomed southwest of Battery 7 on a knoll separated from the Jordan house plateau by deep ravines to the north and east. It would provide the African Americans’ next target. In keeping with Smith’s general plan of attack, once Duncan’s skirmishers had gone forward and gained success the rest of his brigade received orders to join in the offensive. Colonel Kiddoo led the remainder of the Twenty-­Second USCT toward Battery 7, but soon realized that his skirmish line had already reduced it, turning his attention instead to Battery 8. As he shifted his regiment to the south, Kiddoo encountered Colonel Wright and his men from the First USCT, fresh from their victory at Battery 6. Wright’s June 15, 1864

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men occupied an abandoned artillery lunette between Batteries 7 and 8 and the two officers consulted on a plan of action. Kiddoo proposed an immediate assault against Battery 8, but Wright demurred, thinking the position too strongly held to storm with the troops at hand. When Kiddoo expressed his determination to advance regardless of the enemy firepower, Wright agreed to support him. The Twenty-­Second USCT commander left a small portion of his men at the lunette to assist Wright with suppressing the artillery fire spewing from Battery 8, and then led the remainder of his regiment into the swampy lowland northeast of the Confederate strongpoint. “We charged across what appeared to be an almost impassable ravine,” remembered an officer, “all the time subject to a hot fire of grape and canister until we got so far under the guns as to be sheltered, when the enemy took to their rifle pits as infantrymen. Our brave fellows went steadily through the swamp and up the side of a hill, at an angle of almost fifty degrees, rendered nearly impassable by fallen timber.” The Confederate artillerists dropped their lanyards, snatched small arms, and mounted the fort’s parapet, from which their musketry could reach the black troops huddled in the defilade now shielding them from artillery fire, pouring “a storm of leaden hail into the head of the column.” Colonel Kiddoo admitted that “my men wavered at first,” but they soon rallied when they noticed their comrades of the First USCT charging toward Battery 8 from the east. This two-­pronged assault worked. The defenders abandoned another artillery piece and scampered to the south, for the protection of Battery 9, while the Federals swiveled their captured twelve-­pounder to the right and fired at the retreating Confederates. The Twenty-­Second USCT paid a heavy price for the capture of Battery 8, losing eleven men killed and forty-­three wounded, including a cluster of their corpses surrounding the body of a large Confederate officer, in silent illustration of one fatal drama.70 Wise’s defenders had now been expelled from Batteries 3 through 8, surrendering or fleeing once the Federals reached their fortifications. The Rebels from Battery 8 were the first to rally after relinquishing their position. Catching their collective breath, the displaced Southerners halted, aligned at right angles to the Dimmock Line, and advanced northward toward the troops of the First and Twenty-­Second USCT in and around Battery 8. Kiddoo responded by forming his own line of battle and repelled this brief Confederate counteroffensive, but a lack of ammunition prevented him from following the retiring Confederates into Battery 9. That job now belonged to the Fourth USCT, Fifth USCT, and Sixth USCT of Duncan’s brigade.71 General Smith had by this time ridden south from Battery 5 to observe the 108

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progress of his black division. Appearing in Hinks’s sector “on horseback with one pantaloon leg in his boot, and wearing a straw hat,” Smith instructed Lieutenant Colonel Rogers of the Fourth USCT to attack Battery 8, not realizing that Kiddoo and Wright were even then in the process of taking that stronghold. When Rogers discovered that Battery 8 had fallen, he reoriented his regiment to face south and headed for Battery  9, at the junction of Jordan Point and Prince George Court House Roads. At the same time, Duncan found it impossible to arrange his second line, consisting of the Fifth USCT and Sixth USCT, to follow the skirmishers who conquered Battery 7, so he shifted those two regiments south and deployed them opposite Batteries 9, 10, and 11. Duncan ordered the Sixth USCT, in the front of his formation, to probe forward and test the level of resistance before committing to a full-­blown assault.72 The Sixth USCT marched about half a mile, faced right, and prepared to advance toward Battery 9, immediately in their front. Battery E, Third New York Artillery, moved up to provide covering fire. The terrain between their position and the Confederates gave them pause. “Stumps, piles of wood, fallen timber, bushes, and pools” loomed ahead. “As we went forward we came to black burnt logs as high as our breasts, sometimes climbing over them and sometimes going under,” remembered Capt. John McMurray of the Sixth USCT. “As we neared the battery, or fort, we could see that it looked grim and formidable in the dusk of the evening.” With each step the Federals expected a rain of fire to descend from the Confederate citadel, but inexplicably “all before us was silent as death.” The men of the Sixth USCT reached the moat fronting Battery 9 and began climbing the fort’s steep front slope. “A man would run his bayonet into the side of the parapet, and another would use it as a step-­ladder to climb up,” explained McMurray. “It was getting quite dark, and I felt sure that as fast as a ‘colored troop’ would put his head above the level of that parapet it would be shot off, or he would be knocked back into the ditch; and I fully expected the Sixth U.S. Colored Troops, officers and all, to find their death in that ditch.” McMurray was happily mistaken: Colonel Rogers and the Fourth USCT, approaching from the northeast, had already compelled the surprised Confederates to abandon Battery 9 and seek shelter in the next redan to the south. The evidence suggests that the defenders fled without putting up a fight, as no prisoners were taken and another artillery piece fell into Union hands. “Not a shot was fired, not a man was killed, but some were nearly scared to death,” admitted Captain McMurray.73 Colonel Rogers moved south against Battery 10 in the fading light, prompting the Confederates to abandon it along with another piece of ordnance. They June 15, 1864

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evacuated Battery 11 near the Dunn house as well. Darkness at last arrested the Federal momentum and Duncan reorganized his victorious troops around Battery 10, taking precautions against a possible Confederate counterattack. It had been a landmark day for Hinks’s division. Duncan’s brigade alone counted six guns among the prizes taken from Batteries 7 through 11. But the human cost of his victory had been substantial. Duncan reported total casualties of 378 on June 15, embracing the morning action at Baylor’s farm and the evening assaults against the Dimmock Line. Holman’s First USCT added as many as 156 losses to the equation. A member of Hinks’s staff estimated that the division lost 800 men in the evening attacks alone, as did an officer in the Fifth USCT. The blacks undeniably had paid a high price that day, but the first large-­scale combat action for these untried African Americans had in a sense transformed them.74 William H. Hunter, the black chaplain of the Fourth USCT, considered June 15, 1864, “the day when prejudice died in the entire Army of the U.S. of America. It is the day when it was admitted that colored men were equal to the severest ordeal.” A white soldier reported that his comrades looked on the works captured by the African Americans with amazement, and “are loud and unreserved in their praise.” Charles A. Dana told his boss, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, that “the hardest fighting was done by the black troops” and that General Smith thought “they cannot be exceeded as soldiers, and that hereafter he will send them in a difficult place as readily as the best white troops.” Capt. Edward K. Russell, a staff officer with the Sixth Corps, recognized that Smith’s endorsement carried some weight because “like most of our Army of the Potomac officers [he] had no particular love for the ‘nigs.’” According to Col. Charles J. Paine of Butler’s staff, the good performance of the black troops meant that “Smith, Meade & Grant all have ‘nigger on the brain.’”75 In contrast to such laudatory comments, some white Union soldiers in the Army of the Potomac—who had not personally witnessed the fighting on June 15—reflexively discounted the accomplishment of their black comrades. “The works were carried by storm by colored troops” recorded Maj. Lemuel Abbott of the Tenth Vermont, “but they couldn’t have taken them if the forts had been fully garrisoned by veterans instead of citizens.” Sgt. George Breck, a gunner with Battery L, First New York Light Artillery, was willing to give “due credit to the black soldier for his fighting qualities, but this rendering to Caesar the things that don’t honestly belong to Caesar, and extolling Pompey above the white soldier, for courage and dash, valor, bravery and endurance, may delight some of the devoted worshippers of the ebony idol, but we fail to ‘see it’ ourself.” Breck expressed no objection to “our darkly-­hued ‘comrades in arms,’ assaulting the heaviest works, and rushing into the hottest places of attack,—rather 110

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he would than not, but don’t seek to make him the superior of the American soldier of American or European descent.” Even General Hinks betrayed his racial orientation when he warned that, “in our exuberance of satisfaction at [the black troops’] deportment, we should be cautious lest we imperil the success of the project of arming colored men . . . by assuming that the negro is a soldier ready made.”76 Revenge accounted for at least a portion of the zealous determination displayed by Hinks’s soldiers. The widely publicized accusations of the murder of black troops at Fort Pillow undoubtedly animated some of the African Americans as they came face-­to-­face with their first Confederate opponents. Still, scuttlebutt in the Union camps, such as the account repeated by Maj. Albert F. Brooker of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, obviously exaggerated the level of atrocities committed against Confederate prisoners. “It’s said that a Brigade of Nigars charged the Johnies as they went in the rebs said give the black sons of bitches no quarter and give them h—& c,” reported Major Brooker. “I am told that it’s just what the nigars did to them, they took no prisoners but 2 and bayoneted every one that was in the Rifle Pitts.”77 Such tall tales made the rounds, earning the usual mix of credibility and skepticism around the campfires, but the evidence suggests that some surrendered Southerners never made it to the rear. William Foster, a hospital steward assigned to the 126th Ohio, asked a black sergeant why his unit had taken so many prisoners during the fighting. The sergeant replied that “our officers were with us and General Grant and Smith were on the field . . . and we had to do a nice thing.” “You need not ask them of Fort Pillow,” added Foster. “They swear by its sad memory.” An officer in the Twenty-­Second USCT explained why the Rebels ran when attacked by the blacks. “The real fact is, the rebels will not stand against our colored soldiers when there is any chance of their being taken prisoners, for they are conscious of what they justly deserve. Our men went into those works after they were taken, yelling ‘Fort Pillow!’ The enemy well knows what this means.” A Pennsylvania soldier wrote home that he had seen several bayoneted Confederate corpses and assumed that “our colored soldiers remembered their murdered brethren.” Lt. Hermon Clarke of the 117th New York provided one of the few eyewitness accounts documenting the execution of Confederate captives. In describing the capture of Battery 6, Clarke wrote his father that the blacks contributed to the victory and had done well. “Some of them came where we were and attempted to kill our prisoners,” Clarke explained. “I didn’t see but one killed. . . . A great bushy Nigger came up to him, knocked him down, and ran his bayonet through his heart. Our boys turned on the Niggers and kept them back.”78 June 15, 1864

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The story of a hospitalized black soldier whose wounds on June 15 required the amputation of his left leg illuminated a noble motivation that trumped the baser instincts of those who were out for blood. A white officer passing through the hospital spotted the black man and said in a jocular tone, “Well, my boy, I see that you have lost a leg for glory.” The amputee looked at his kindly visitor and replied, “No, sir; I have not lost it for glory, but for the elevation of my race.”79 Beauregard reported total casualties in the evening’s debacle as 238, including 153 missing. He minimized the loss of ordnance, characterizing many of the ten guns he claimed to have surrendered as “old, useless pieces permanently in position on the lines,” and denied reports that any regimental colors had been taken. But no amount of understatement could mask the magnitude of the Confederate defeat during those two hours of combat. Nine of the Dimmock Line batteries, containing at least thirteen artillery pieces, had fallen along a front of nearly two miles, and everywhere the Union infantry had been victorious at a cost of about 750 total casualties. However, reducing the Confederate defenses was merely the means to an end. Smith’s goal remained the capture of Petersburg.80 The travails of the Second Corps would contribute to Smith’s inability to achieve that goal. Hancock’s three divisions had struggled all afternoon with the challenges of poor roads, faulty maps, and intense heat. The corps commander’s festering Gettysburg wound had confined him to a wagon most of the day, and, lacking his usual mobility, he had passively dismissed sounds of artillery firing audible much of the afternoon as nothing more than the product of one of Kautz’s ubiquitous raids. Despite these problems, Birney’s division— with Gibbon’s not far behind—had reached a point near old Prince George Court House within four miles of the Petersburg lines when the messenger reined up in front of General Hancock at 5:30 p.m. with Grant’s surprising order to hasten to Smith’s assistance. Twenty minutes later, Capt. Thomas L. Livermore, of Smith’s staff, and an escort of half a dozen cavalrymen found Hancock about a mile in rear of Birney’s division and handed the general a corroborating message from Smith. Citing Grant’s authority, Smith asked that Hancock come immediately to the front to participate in the impending attack, targeting the vicinity of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad to the left of the Eighteenth Corps’ deployment. Smith further requested that Hancock inform him when the Second Corps might be expected at the front and explained that his left rested on Jordan Point Road. Hancock directed Colonel Morgan, his chief of staff, to apprise Smith of the location of the Second Corps “and to assure him

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that I was marching to his support with all dispatch,” while Livermore rode ahead to notify Birney of the developing situation.81 When Livermore arrived with Grant’s directive, Birney reoriented his division on the road toward Petersburg. Birney’s troops advanced as far as the Bryant house along Bailey’s Creek, about one mile behind Hinks’s lines, and halted to await further instructions, gratefully devouring a few rations shared by some of Kautz’s cavalry, now idly resting in the rear. Colonel Morgan found Baldy Smith about 6:30 p.m., summarized the location of Hancock’s leading divisions, and asked Smith to explain more explicitly how he wished Birney and Gibbon to assist with the attack. Morgan found Smith’s response maddeningly vague. “On my left,” replied the corps commander, “but [he] neither indicated to me where his left was nor sent his staff officer” to show Morgan the way. The frustrated colonel, along with another of Hancock’s staffers, Capt. William P. Wilson, bade Smith a hasty goodbye and rode away seeking Hinks, hoping that he would provide more specific guidance.82 At this point the record grows muddled. Birney testified that at 6:25 p.m. he found General Hinks and offered Hinks the support of his division. Hinks, said Birney, replied that he had seen an order from Grant—perhaps Smith’s recent communication to Hancock—instructing the Second Corps to take position along Baxter Road, extending Smith’s line to the south. Accompanied by a guide provided by Hinks, Birney returned to the head of his division to execute the march as Hinks had directed. When Birney arrived back at the Bryant house, he found Kautz and more of his cavalry division in the road, Kautz reporting that he had encountered the enemy “in great force and that he had been ‘hanging all day by the eyelids.’” Then, according to Birney, a staff officer from Second Corps headquarters arrived, confirming that Birney’s division should take position on Hinks’s left—orders reiterated in person by Hancock at 7:40 p.m. Birney initiated the advance, with guidance from none of the staff officers supposedly dispatched earlier to determine the best route. He reached either Prince George Court House Road or Jordan Point Road when another Second Corps staff officer appeared, canceling the orders to move to Hinks’s left, and instructing Birney to relieve the African Americans in the trenches they had captured. “I was from 6:25 to about 10 p.m. in finding the position, and my success then was owing to my marching down a by-­road without a guide, at night, in my effort to get into position and execute the verbal order of General Hancock,” Birney explained. Neither Hinks nor Hancock confirmed meetings with Birney that evening, although Hinks asserted that Birney’s division arrived on his left “shortly after the final assault.”83

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Captain Livermore maintained that he, not Birney, met with Hinks after delivering Smith’s message to Hancock and informed Hinks of Birney’s proximity. Hinks gave Livermore a map and told the captain to carry it to Birney and guide him to the front, if Birney so desired. Livermore then returned to Birney, who, said Livermore, was on Prince George Court House Road, where he gave him Hinks’s map and offered to lead Birney’s division forward. Birney abruptly declined to consult the map and impatiently requested that Livermore instead show one of Birney’s staff the route to Hinks’s left. Livermore agreed, and waited until one of Birney’s own officers became available. Together the two men plunged “straight through the woods for our left,” but by the time they reached the Union lines they discovered that the blacks had already captured the Confederate works.84 Morgan asserted that upon his return from meeting with General Smith, he and Wilson encountered one of Birney’s staff officers who, upon Birney’s instructions, was himself trying to find the Eighteenth Corps commander. Morgan turned him around, accompanied by Captain Wilson, with orders to “conduct the head of the column to such point as General Hinks might advise.” Hancock wrote only that he and William G. Mitchell of his staff left Birney and Gibbon at the Bryant house at 6:30 p.m. with “instructions to move forward as soon as they could ascertain at what point their assistance was required,” while he followed after Morgan in search of Smith. When Hancock and Mitchell finally found Smith and General Brooks near Battery 5, the fighting had all but ended and the Confederate line had been captured.85 These varying accounts of the confusing command and communication situation on the evening of June 15 cannot be reconciled. It is indisputable, however, that the same lack of a single guiding hand that had so delayed Hancock’s march complicated the ability of Hancock and Smith to cooperate. General Meade remained completely out of the command loop. Army commander Butler displayed remarkable detachment, spending the evening north of the Appomattox River, while Grant relied on the out-­of-­touch Butler to apprise him of the critical offensive culminating from the herculean logistical feats of the previous seventy-­two hours. Grant had established his headquarters at City Point by midafternoon, in plenty of time to ride forward and take personal command of the situation, had he chosen to do so. Instead, he wired Butler for news from Petersburg, expressing as much interest in the whereabouts of Hancock’s rations as in the progress of Smith’s combat mission. Butler replied that he had been watching affairs east of Petersburg from his tower on Cobb’s Hill, and had noticed “pretty sharp fighting,” but more than that he could not say. He did suggest that Smith’s force 114

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remained more than adequate to capture Petersburg. When Grant asked for a progress report at 3:30 p.m., Butler admitted that he had heard nothing from Smith; he had merely dispatched two staff officers to communicate with him, and promised to report their findings.86 Both Grant and Butler were in positions to assume control of the all-­ important offensive against Petersburg, but neither did. Butler not only delegated complete responsibility to Smith, but showed little interest in Smith’s progress—or lack thereof—throughout the day. Grant communicated with Butler as if he expected the commander of the Army of the James to be at the helm of the day’s crucial operation, and he expressed only perfunctory concern about a tardy offensive that had been designed to capture Petersburg with a dawn assault. It had grown dark and the serious fighting had abated by the time Hancock and Mitchell found Smith and Brooks. Smith explained what had transpired during the previous two hours, pointing out as best he could the position of the Confederate line and the extent of the Union captures. Hancock confirmed that both Birney and Gibbon were nearby and available to continue the offensive if Smith so requested. Although Hancock outranked the Eighteenth Corps commander, he deferred to Smith’s judgment, “desiring not to interfere with his honor as he was directed to take the place.” Smith declined to pursue his attacks and simply requested that Hancock relieve Hinks’s and Brooks’s men at the front and prepare to defend the captured works should the Confederates— whom Smith thought had been reinforced—attempt a counterattack. Between 11:​​00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m., Hancock’s men slid into positions along the captured lines from Battery 7 to Battery 11. Birney’s division occupied the works on the left, from the Dunn house northward and Gibbon filed in on the right from near the Friend house southward. “By the time this movement was completed it was . . . too late and dark for any immediate advance,” Hancock reported.87 The missing division of Hancock’s corps, Francis Barlow’s, played no role in the evening’s events. Barlow’s brigades had been the last to leave Windmill Point that afternoon, and they fell victim to the confusing road network of Prince George County. Instead of angling toward Petersburg in the wake of Birney and Gibbon, Barlow’s men followed roads that led toward City Point. The division commander would vehemently deny any negligence, ascribing his misdirection to orders issued by Colonel Morgan to follow the wrong road, but an investigation by Hancock concluded that Barlow owned the error. His division would not arrive at the front until the morning of June 16.88 Smith offered a plethora of explanations for why he declined Hancock’s offer to renew the assaults. His brief report to Butler on June 16 simply asserted June 15, 1864

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that after the last of the Confederate defenders had fled, “darkness had set in, and having learned some time before that reenforcements were rapidly coming in from Richmond, and deeming that I held important points of the enemy’s line of works, I thought it prudent to make no further advance.” After the war, when broad criticism had been leveled against the failure to exploit his victory that evening, Smith grew more creative. He reminded his detractors of his poor health and exhausted troops, and pointed out that had Hancock wished to continue the assault he could have so ordered it, denying reports that Hancock had waived his seniority on the field. Smith made a strong case against the efficacy of night attacks under any circumstances, and denied assertions that the moon shone brightly enough that night to mitigate the gloom. He also accused the black troops of disorganization after the fighting, “eating their supper without pickets or even sentinels in their front” and so “intoxicated by their success” they “could hardly be kept in order.” “It seemed to me then . . . that it would have been simple madness for me to have moved forward at that time, and would almost inevitably [have] resulted in disaster and the loss of all we had gained,” wrote Smith.89 The natural disorganization coincident to combat, the perils of a night attack, the commander’s poor health, unknown but increasing enemy strength, and Hancock’s acquiescence in Smith’s conservative generalship are all plausible arguments in support of Smith’s decision, if deserving of scrutiny. The general, to the detriment of his credibility, was not content to rest his case on these logical factors. Smith advanced two additional explanations that defy reason. Remarkably, Smith boasted: “I have a copy of the telegram sent by me to General Butler at midnight saying that Hancock’s troops had not yet arrived which proves indubitably that up to that time there were no reinforcements for an advance even if it had been practicable.” Smith, of course, knew of Birney’s and Gibbon’s proximity as early as 6:30 p.m. that evening, and to imply that these men were unavailable to continue the assaults two, three, or four hours later, while many of them were relieving the Eighteenth Corps men at the front, contradicts all the evidence. Even more incredible was Smith’s claim, proffered in 1900, that Butler ordered him at 7:30 p.m. to halt and entrench. Admitting that he had no recollection of receiving such an order, and that the only proof that such a directive existed rested in a private diary written by a lowly signalman, Smith nevertheless advanced this as the simple rationale for why he failed to press his advantage that fateful night. Smith offered no explanation for how Butler would have been aware of the status of Smith’s attack so soon after it commenced, or for the existence of several documents that demonstrate Butler’s desire to exploit 116

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Smith’s gains, including the message received from Butler at 9:30 p.m. imploring Smith to “Push on to the Appomattox,” which Smith had cited in an 1897 published defense of his actions. If Butler ordered Smith to halt, why would Smith tell Butler at midnight that “it is impossible for me to go farther to-­night”?90 Some postwar voices, phony directives notwithstanding, defended Smith’s decision or at least held other officers accountable for the failure to press forward that night. Edward Hinks was among the most articulate. Hinks, who claimed that Birney initially refused to participate in a night attack without specific orders from Hancock, thought he could have captured Petersburg that night with Birney’s help: but, he asked, “Could we have gained the works north of the town on the left bank of the Appomattox?” Hinks argued that merely seizing Petersburg until Lee’s forces arrived and drove out the attackers would have lacked permanent advantage and not been worth the risk inherent in the attempt. He felt that only if they could have controlled the ground between the Appomattox and Swift Creek would the perils of a night attack been justified. “I believe that nothing was lost by Smith’s caution,” concluded Hinks. “A brilliant dash would have won éclat for him and his officers, but would probably have resulted in no permanent benefit to the cause of the Republic.” Moreover, Hinks credited Smith’s reliance on heavy lines of skirmishers for the successful outcome during the attacks themselves. “An assault made in any other mode would have resulted in disaster, as no column or line of battle which General Smith could have arrayed could have marched over the long and difficult approaches under the direct and enfilading fire of the enemy.”91 Others made the case that the missed opportunity rested on Butler’s failure to explicitly order Smith forward. Contemporary accounts published in the New York Times and New York Tribune shifted the blame from Smith to Hancock, prompting a swift and defensive response from the aggrieved corps commander. As one of Meade’s biographers later argued, Hancock’s acquiescence in Smith’s decision exonerated Smith from blame, as Hancock clearly possessed command authority once he arrived on the field. In the event, none of this stuck, as Grant banished the responsible correspondent, William Kent, and declined to launch an investigation into Hancock’s culpability, stating that the reputation of the Second Corps and its commander “can not be tarnished by newspaper articles or scribblers.”92 General Grant, in fact, stands first among Smith’s historical detractors, although he did not hold Smith accountable for the failure to capture Petersburg until writing his report on the campaign and his memoirs after the war. The majority of postwar analysts followed Grant’s lead. Thomas Livermore blamed Smith’s “cautious disposition” for his hesitation, while George Bruce June 15, 1864

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cited Smith’s “constitutional limitations.” In an 1876 address, former Confederate officer William Gordon McCabe told his audience, “Smith, it would seem, though possessed of considerable professional skill, was not endowed with that intuitive sagacity which swiftly discerns the chances of the moment, and thus halting on the very threshold of decisive victory, contented himself with partial success and . . . waited for the morning.” Grant’s former aides, Horace Porter and Lt. Col. Adam Badeau, joined in the chorus, Badeau characterizing Smith’s hesitation as “the greatest mistake of the campaign,” while Livermore thought that “a great piece of strategy was thwarted at the very moment when success had been earned and the prize was within the grasp of a hand which refused to take it.”93 Contemporary criticism also blamed Smith. Theodore Lyman cited the corps commander’s alleged congenital deficiencies for his failure to finish the job he started that evening. “A great soldier must have, in addition to all usual traits of intellect, a courage unmoved by the greatest danger,” wrote Lyman in commenting on Smith’s generalship. “Petersburg would have gone like a rotten branch,” he thought, had someone other than Smith been responsible for events that night. Less exalted officers, such as Capt. William A. Ketcham of the Thirteenth Indiana of Bell’s brigade, shared Lyman’s opinion. “I have never believed there was any reason why . . . we should not have gone on, driven the scanty force that confronted us across the Appomattox, destroyed the bridges and held the south and west bank of the Appomattox until the Army of the Potomac could have reached us and cooperated with us,” wrote Ketcham. This Hoosier believed that the failure to do so “was simply a companion piece for all the other works of General Butler and his corps commanders in the Army of the James.” Pvt. Frank Wilkeson of the Fourth U.S. Artillery remembered stopping to cook his evening meal, wondering if orders would arrive to push into Petersburg. “Gradually the fact that we were not to fight that night impressed itself on us,” wrote Wilkeson. “The rage of the intelligent enlisted men was devilish. The most blood-­curdling blasphemy I ever listened to I heard that night, uttered by men who knew they were to be sacrificed on the morrow.”94 Those who found fault with Smith’s decision frequently cited the bright moonlight that would have rendered a night offensive feasible. “That evening of the 15th of June, we stood on the heights, and, by the light of a brilliant moon, contemplated the silent valley, and beheld the nearly defenceless city,” remembered a man in the 117th New York. “Why we did not then go down and possess them, is the question, which occurred and recurred times innumerable, during the months of carnage, which followed on that line.” A Rhode Island artillerist recalled that “the night was almost as bright as day, a full or nearly full moon 118

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shining from a cloudless sky.” Porter Alexander, the Confederate cannoneer, who had no skin in the postwar blame game, agreed that “it was at that time about 3 days before full moon, & the nights were generally bright.” Smith, Hancock, and Martindale, however, would reference the nighttime conditions as reason enough to defer further assaults. Robert Dollard of the Second U.S. Colored Cavalry offered an explanation for these divergent impressions: “I remember distinctly that it was a very dark night when night closed in, but shortly after we got into the enemy’s works the moon rose bright and beautiful.”95 In spite of this condemnatory testimony, it is too easy to assign all the blame to Baldy Smith for the failure to capture Petersburg on June 15. Granted, he certainly held the authority to order his victorious troops to push toward the city after their capture of the Dimmock Line at nightfall, given Hancock’s deference to his judgment. Criticisms of Smith’s overcaution in preparing his attacks are also valid, but the capture and retention of Petersburg depended on any number of factors and was by no means inevitable—although no less an authority than General Beauregard wrote that “Petersburg at that hour was clearly at the mercy of the Federal commander.”96 By Smith’s way of thinking, more infantry attacks would not only have been dangerous but superfluous. The capture of so much of the Dimmock Line seemed tantamount to the reduction of Petersburg, because with nearly two miles of the Confederate batteries in Union hands, Smith’s long-­range artillery could easily reach the city. “Unless I misapprehend the topography, I hold the key to Petersburg,” Smith told Butler at midnight. Assistant Secretary of War Dana agreed, informing Stanton on the 16th that the Confederates could not think of holding Petersburg, “for it lies directly under our guns.”97 Although Hancock is almost blameless for the Second Corps’ protracted march from the James to the battlefield that day, he certainly could have insisted on a coordinated advance after 9:00 p.m., if in his judgment such an attack was warranted. He did not. Neither of the army commanders—Butler or Meade—set foot anywhere near the scene of action, nor did the general-­in-­ chief, whose headquarters at City Point were barely an hour’s ride away. Grant must also accept responsibility for failing to ensure that all his subordinate generals understood their roles that day. It is tempting to speculate about what might have transpired had Grant issued Meade, Butler, Smith, and Hancock the same written orders for the capture of Petersburg. The outcome of an assault by the Eighteenth and Second Corps in the afternoon or of a renewal of the offensive following the capture of the Dimmock Line that evening can never be known. It is safe to say, however, that through their brilliant maneuvers from Cold Harbor, across the James, and June 15, 1864

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toward Petersburg, Grant’s forces had unlocked the door that could lead to a decisive victory, but their logistical, communication, and command lapses prevented them from turning the knob. Strangely, General Grant did not seem to notice. He found time on the 15th to write a homely letter to his wife filled with matters of strictly personal interest. As for the progress of the campaign, “so far it has been eminently successful,” the general-­in-­chief cheerfully wrote, “and I hope will prove so to the end.”98 One factor is indisputable: Smith’s concerns regarding Confederate reinforcements were legitimate. General Beauregard was among the first to arrive in the Cockade City that evening. He traveled from his field headquarters at the Dunlop house, reaching Petersburg about 6:00 p.m. The Union offensive that immediately followed came as no surprise to the Louisiana general, who had been expecting one for several days. Now, for Beauregard, the issue was simple: either defend Petersburg and abandon Bermuda Hundred or forsake the Cockade City and hold the Howlett Line. As early as 11:​​45 a.m., Beauregard had wired Bragg framing this dilemma. When Bragg failed to specify a course of action, Beauregard responded petulantly two hours later, reiterating that he “wished to know [the] preference of [the] War Department between Petersburg and lines across Bermuda Hundred Neck . . . as I fear my present force may prove unequal to hold both.” He received no response.99 Beauregard rode out to meet with General Wise about the same time that Brooks overran Batteries 4 through 6 and Hinks was making headway with his attacks to the south. By then, the 112 members of the Fifty-­Ninth Virginia of Wise’s Brigade, who had been stationed north of the Appomattox, arrived to bolster portions of the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia and the militia still defending Batteries 1 and 2, while the first elements of Hoke’s Division filed into Petersburg.100 Hoke’s leading unit, the Seventh South Carolina Battalion of Johnson Hagood’s Brigade, boarded a small train at Chester consisting of an engine, its tender, and two cars sent down from Richmond. Eight companies totaling some 500 soldiers packed the interiors of the cars and their roofs, the men standing for lack of room. Lt. William M. Thomas was among the troops riding in the open. “I was on top taking in the scenery and the pine smoke from the engine,” remembered Thomas. “I was a dirty white man before we started, but by the time we arrived in Petersburg I was black.” Eventually authorities found rail transportation for the rest of Hagood’s men and then for the Georgia Brigade of Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Colquitt. Hoke’s remaining two brigades, under Brig. Gens. Thomas L. Clingman and James G. Martin, would march the entire thirteen miles from Drewry’s Bluff to Petersburg.101 120

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Hagood’s 1,400 South Carolinians, exhausted from their long journey, started spilling out of the cars in Petersburg about sunset and kept coming in by companies and battalions until well after dark, forming in the streets to await further orders as Wise’s hatless, barefoot, and unarmed fugitives streamed into town “spreading alarm at every hand.” Anxious citizens greeted the Carolinians, waving handkerchiefs and hats and intoning sentiments such as, “God bless Hagood and his South Carolinians,” and “Boys, don’t let them come,” while serenaded by the strains of “Dixie” emanating jauntily from the brigade band. General Hagood repaired to Beauregard’s temporary headquarters at the Petersburg post office, but discovered that the department commander was absent consulting with General Wise on the front lines. Col. David B. Harris, Beauregard’s highly competent chief engineer, told Hagood to march out Jerusalem Plank Road and protect the army’s right flank. Before Hagood left, however, word arrived of the capture of the batteries east of the city and Harris modified his instructions, now directing Hagood to follow City Point Road and establish a new defensive position somewhere behind the broken Dimmock Line. Guides would be available to direct Hagood in the gathering gloom.102 Hagood reached the intersection of Prince George Court House and City Point Roads, no thanks to the confusing and contradictory advice of his local guides, including Colonel Paul of Beauregard’s staff. Leaving Col. Charles H. Simonton of the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina in charge of the brigade, Hagood and two staff officers, Capt. Patrick K. Molony and Lt. Benjamin Martin, ventured off to reconnoiter on their own. Following Prince George Court House Road to the southeast, they narrowly avoided capture thanks to a wounded Confederate soldier, who warned them of the presence of Union pickets near the ford at Harrison’s Creek. The officers then turned back when, fortuitously, a courier from Colonel Harris arrived with a map, tallow candle, and matches. With the aid of these tools and the advice of the newly arrived General Colquitt, Hagood determined to use the ridge above the west bank of Harrison’s Creek as the Confederates’ new perimeter. This line, informally bearing the brigade commander’s name, would connect with the intact Dimmock Line at Battery 2 and Battery 15, although the Confederates still held batteries 12 through 14 east of Hagood’s chosen frontier. The ground in front of Hagood’s new position had been cleared and cultivated, offering a practical field of fire, and fronted its entire length with the minor obstacle of Harrison’s Creek and the slope that rolled steeply upward from it. As fast as the troops could be deployed, the South Carolinians moved into position. The Twenty-­Seventh South Carolina relieved the Fifty-­Ninth Virginia in Batteries 1 and 2, while the remainder of the brigade ranged south to June 15, 1864

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near Prince George Court House Road. From there, Colquitt’s arriving Georgians continued the line. The troops immediately began digging new fortifications with “bayonets and hands” or whatever implements were available. Clingman and Martin would drag in after midnight, traversing the city’s now quiet streets, although women’s wails and the occasional admonition “Do drive them back” interrupted the rhythm of the soldiers’ tread. Clingman extended the line to the southwest while Martin moved out along City Point Road in support of Hagood.103 Beauregard had, in the meantime, decided that Bushrod Johnson’s Division must abandon its defenses at Bermuda Hundred and join Hoke in protecting Petersburg. Colonel Fulton’s 500 Tennesseans had already arrived in Petersburg when at 10:​​20 p.m. Beauregard ordered Johnson to move south of the Appomattox, leaving a thin line of pickets, skirmishers, and lighted campfires to keep up appearances until dawn. Stephen Elliott’s 1,900 South Carolinians would lead the way, while Gracie’s 1,200 Alabamans would withdraw only as far as Swift Creek, guarding the crossing points of that stream in anticipation of a southward push by Butler. Ransom’s North Carolina brigade, about 1,800 strong, had been at Bottom’s Bridge along the Chickahominy and then at Chaffin’s Bluff, on the left bank of the James, since June 4. They received orders to repair to Petersburg and left Chaffin’s Bluff about 7:00 p.m. Elliott would arrive before dawn, and Ransom’s men would trickle in just after sunrise on June 16 following an exhausting all-­night march, unnerved by the sight of a suicidal Petersburg citizen shooting himself in the street.104 Beauregard informed General Lee at 11:​​15 p.m. of his decision to strip the Bermuda Hundred defenses, adding a plea that the Army of Northern Virginia now take responsibility for guarding the Howlett Line, which was all that stood between the Federals and the vital rail and turnpike links connecting Richmond and Petersburg. “Five thousand or 6,000 men may do,” advised Beauregard. Beauregard briefly toyed with the notion of launching a night attack of his own to regain the lost fortifications, but in the end wisely settled on adopting a purely defensive posture. At some point that evening, he established his field headquarters at the Griffith farm, in the angle formed by Baxter and Jerusalem Plank Roads. By 11:​​00 p.m. Hoke, who arrived with Clingman’s North Carolinians, and Johnson were also on the scene, directly handling the deployment of their respective troops.105 General Lee had been monitoring the situation south of the Appomattox all day, sending Hoke across the James and facilitating the return of Ransom’s Brigade. Special Orders No. 139, issued by the secretary of war on June 15, officially placed Beauregard’s department under Lee’s authority, underscor122

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ing the Virginian’s sense of responsibility for the security of both Richmond and Petersburg and partially explaining his measured response to Beauregard’s concerns for affairs on the Southside. “I shall remain where I am to-­day,” Lee informed General Bragg that afternoon, “as the enemy’s plans do not seem to be settled.”106 In the predawn hours of June 16, Lee reacted to Beauregard’s latest telegraphic bombshell by ordering George Pickett’s Division of about 4,500 men to cross the James and relieve Gracie’s placeholders, hopefully before the Federals learned that the Howlett Line could be theirs for the taking. These reinforcements complied with Beauregard’s recommendation, and the Creole commander had yet to inform Lee that he was dealing with anyone except Butler’s returning troops. Inexplicably, Beauregard’s elaborate network of scouts and signalmen had failed to notice Grant’s massive bridge across the James, and the notion that the Army of the Potomac had Petersburg in its crosshairs was, for General Lee, mere speculation. With most of his cavalry off sparring with Sheridan, and James Wilson’s horsemen keeping the Confederates’ attention focused north of the James, it is difficult to fault General Lee, who, before dawn on June 16, in contrast to his overly conservative posture the previous day, committed two full divisions plus Ransom’s Brigade to reinforce Beauregard, and positioned a third division for a quick shift south of the James. Lee also built a third pontoon bridge across the river near Chaffin’s Bluff and dispatched Richard Anderson to take personal control of affairs at Bermuda Hundred.107 After midnight, the battlefield east of Petersburg had grown silent, save for the scraping sounds emanating from the bayonets, tin plates, and canteen halves wielded by sleep-­deprived soldiers in blue and gray. The Second Corps units that moved to the front lines built new works and gradually enclosed the captured redans, piling protective earth on their western faces while Beauregard’s reinforcements spent a restless night carving out the physical dimensions of the Hagood Line behind Harrison’s Creek. Baldy Smith would remember his unfinished victory on June 15 “as my best achievement.” None of the thousands of soldiers then on the ground or the anxious citizens nestled in the Cockade City could know that Smith’s accomplishment merely marked the first of 292 days in the struggle for Petersburg, but Pvt. Orrin Sweet Allen of the 112th New York had his suspicions. “Had our men pushed the thing right along we might have taken the town with small loss,” he wrote with uncanny prescience. “Now it will cost rivers of blood.”108

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four

More Hard Fighting and Many More Lives Must Be Lost June 16–17, 1864 The scale of the Union assaults on the evening of June 15 had, by the next day, convinced many Confederates that the Federals had transferred operations south of the James River. “We may now expect the whole strength of Grant’s & Butler’s armies united, to be directed against Petersburg, as the first part of the last desperate effort against Richmond,” predicted Petersburg’s ultrasecessionist, Edmund Ruffin. Pvt. James T. Perry of the Seventeenth Virginia agreed: “Grant has rushed across to the Southside of the James into the arms of the beast,” Perry confided to his diary. “Poor Useless! He seems to have ‘unconditionally surrendered’ that ‘line’ on which he proposed to play the belligerent until the dog days had passed.” Capt. Thomas F. Screven of the Eighteenth Georgia Battalion admitted that “a strong enemy on the south side may gain a great deal and give serious inconvenience to Genl Lee,” but North Carolina cavalry sergeant James W. Biddle thought that the Federals “will soon find that Mr. Lee’s Company is about as hard to whip on the south side as on the north side of the James.” Robert E. Lee could not be so sure.1 The Confederate commander had placed Pickett’s Division on the road to Bermuda Hundred at 3:00 a.m. on June 16 after learning that General Beauregard intended to abandon the Howlett Line in his effort to protect Petersburg. Pickett’s Virginians crossed the James at Drewry’s Bluff, and quickly gained the road south. Brig. Gen. Eppa Hunton took the lead with his veteran brigade, following shortcuts cross country and executing a march that he considered to be “the fastest on record.” Col. William R. Aylett’s regiments followed Hunton, 124

Brig. Gen. William R. Terry’s brigade trod behind Aylett, and Brig. Gen. Montgomery D. Corse’s men formed Pickett’s rear guard.2 First Corps commander Richard Anderson also committed Charles Field’s Division to the emergency mission south of the James. Orders arrived at 4:00 a.m. for Field’s brigades to head for the pontoon bridge at Drewry’s Bluff, where they followed several hours in Pickett’s wake. Three artillery battalions bounced behind the infantry. Anderson’s remaining troops, Kershaw’s Division, shifted closer to the river, but remained on the left bank.3 With about half of his infantry now south of the James, General Lee relocated his own headquarters to Drewry’s Bluff, arriving at 9:40 a.m. He notified Braxton Bragg of his new position and immediately telegraphed General Beauregard, informing his subordinate of Pickett’s impending arrival and requesting a status report on the Creole’s two fronts.4 Beauregard had anticipated such an inquiry, and at 7:45 a.m. informed Lee that a Union prisoner, identifying himself as a member of Hancock’s command, had stated that the entire Second Corps had crossed the James the previous day. This was momentous news. Lee had been under the impression that only returning troops from the Army of the James opposed Beauregard. Now, evidence suggested that a portion of Meade’s army threatened Petersburg as well. Beauregard directed this message to Lee’s headquarters, north of the James, but the army commander decamped before the telegram arrived. In a communications failure as serious as those that had plagued the Federals the day before, no one forwarded Beauregard’s missive to Lee’s new command post at Drewry’s Bluff. Consequently, Beauregard’s reply to Lee’s 9:40 a.m. inquiry simply repeated his earlier request that Pickett’s Division be sent to Petersburg and another force be assigned to occupy the Howlett Line. The text of this telegram alluded to Beauregard’s request for “re-­enforcements asked for this morning,” but no one at Lee’s headquarters grasped that such a message had not been received.5 As a result of this lapse, Lee replied to Beauregard at 10:​​30 a.m. that, because he knew nothing of Grant’s whereabouts, he could not strip the north side of the James of additional manpower. “Have you not force sufficient?” inquired the gray commander. Kershaw and all of A. P. Hill’s corps would thus remain watching phantoms in Henrico County.6 When Beauregard summoned Bushrod Johnson to Petersburg before midnight, he had ordered Johnson to leave his picket line in place until 6:00 a.m., two hours after daylight. Beauregard hoped that this thin line of about 300 skirmishers would keep the Yankees at bay until Lee’s reinforcements arrived to man the abandoned trenches.7 June 16–17, 1864

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Opposite these vacant works, some 949 men of the Tenth Corps held the Union picket line on the night of June 15 under new leadership. Butler had dismissed the hapless Quincy Gillmore the previous day, disgusted with that officer’s “imbecility and folly.” “He is come to his end,” Butler told his wife. “No army officers can uphold him.” He temporarily replaced Gillmore with Brig. Gen. Alfred Howe Terry, a thirty-­three-­year-­old Connecticut native and amateur soldier who had compiled a creditable record during operations along the South Atlantic coast. Brig. Gen. Robert Sanford Foster, Gillmore’s chief-­ of-­staff, moved up to command Terry’s division. This thirty-­year-­old Indiana tinsmith could boast even less of a military pedigree than Terry but, like his new chief, he had earned successive promotions through his meritorious performance during the first three years of the war. Foster’s picket line included units from all three of his brigades. The Tenth Connecticut of Col. Harris M. Plaisted’s command patrolled the right with 300 men under Maj. Edwin S. Greeley. The Eighty-­Fifth Pennsylvania of Col. Joshua B. Howell’s brigade, joined by some walking wounded from the convalescent camps, guarded the center of Foster’s front, while the Seventh Connecticut of Col. Joseph R. Hawley’s brigade occupied the left. Lt. Col. Alvin C. Voris of the Sixty-­Seventh Ohio, Foster’s officer-­of-­the-­day, bore immediate responsibility for the picket line.8 About 10:​​00 p.m. Major Greeley began to discern unusual activity behind the Confederate lines—suspicious sounds that Colonel Voris also noticed a few hours later. Voris reported that movements of infantry and artillery could be plainly heard for at least ninety minutes, but he could not be sure if they represented a retreat toward Petersburg or concentration for an attack. Greeley and a companion ventured out in the darkness to investigate and returned convinced that the Rebels were evacuating their lines. As the first hints of morning light dimly illuminated the Bermuda Hundred peninsula, Greeley forwarded his picket line to test the validity of his assumption. “The signal was given, the advance made, and so rapidly and quietly that we captured the enemy’s videttes and many of his pickets without firing a single shot,” reported Greeley. Voris then ordered the rest of his picket line to probe ahead, and they, too, found the first Confederate line abandoned.9 Foster, Terry, and Butler now all sought to determine if the main Confederate defenses were equally vulnerable. Foster assembled a strike force consisting of most of Howell’s troops: the Third New Hampshire and Seventh New Hampshire of Hawley’s brigade, and Plaisted’s Tenth Connecticut, Eleventh Maine, and Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts. Col. Bolling Hall Jr. of the Fifty-­ Ninth Alabama commanded the skirmishers who confronted Foster’s gather126

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Osborn

Corse

To Drewry’s Bluff Hunton

0

1

Miles Contour Intervals - 20 Feet

N

James River

Howlett

P.M. Attack

Winfree

to Railroad

59

AL

es

Am

Clay

T 7C

Ri d on m ch & gR ur rsb

te Pe

pike urg Turn d-Petersb Richmon

Ames

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Howell

Ware Bottom Church

A.M. Advance

Voris

To Chester Station

85 PA

Old Stage Ro

10 CT

ad

Howell

a ro ail d

To Point of Rocks

er

rn Tu

Port Walthall Junction

Ashton Creek

Dunn

Turner

ry bu

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Galloway

Port Walthall

k ee Cr

Gracie

To Petersburg

Bermuda Hundred, June 16, 1864 16, 1864 Map 8 - Bermuda Hundred, June

ing host that morning. Through some misunderstanding, the men on Hall’s right belonging to Stephen Elliott’s South Carolina brigade had pulled back at daylight without orders. Foster’s advance exploited this weakness, compelling the rest of Hall’s gossamer line of riflemen to hastily decamp. “You ought to see me run!” admitted one Alabaman. Not all the Confederates escaped as Foster’s euphoric troops scooped up three officers and about thirty enlisted men belonging to the Sixty-­First North Carolina of Thomas Clingman’s Brigade. “The inclination to join in the cheer which ran along the entire line was irresistible,” gushed one Federal.10 The Northerners pushed ahead. On their right, the Tenth Connecticut June 16–17, 1864

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Appom atto River x

Williams

reached Ware Bottom Church and stretched north to the once-­elegant Howlett mansion, now forsaken by its owners and riddled with projectiles fired by nearby Union gunboats, whose crews were unaware that friendly troops now controlled the property. Those same vessels now poured in shells that made “a roar like that of a dozen shrieking locomotives,” sending the Nutmeg boys jumping for cover. They promptly displayed a makeshift white flag that elicited a cease-­fire and the appearance of a stunned naval contingent that, instead of snagging a covey of capitulated Confederates, returned to its boats laden only with ice from the Howlett stash.11 The rest of Foster’s force pressed westward past Old Stage Road, where the bluecoats encountered another line of abandoned works. Terry joined the column to provide overall guidance. About 10:​​30 a.m. Howell pushed his men ahead to the Clay house, just east of Old Stage Road, where he was joined by a section of guns from the Fifth New Jersey Battery. Under direct orders from Foster, Howell advanced his Thirty-­Ninth Illinois and Sixty-­Seventh Ohio, “intending to strike the turnpike at a point near Winfree’s, this side of and a little southwest of Chester Station,” supported by the Third New Hampshire and Seventh New Hampshire of Hawley’s command.12 Foster received assistance from troops under General Ames, whose men angled southwest to protect Foster’s left flank. Now with the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois in the vanguard, the Unionists moved cautiously ahead, bayonets fixed, until they reached the turnpike. “As soon as we struck the pike the pioneers pitched into the telegraph wire and before we left had cut three miles, removing the wire and burying it,” reported Sgt. Edmond J. Thayer of the Thirty-­Ninth. “A couple of regiments also went to the railroad and tore up a mile or so of track, warping the rails with fire.”13 These Suckers were not the only Federals destroying the railroad that morning. On the far Union left, Brig. Gen. John W. Turner, described by one skeptical observer as “a pale-­faced youth who did not look to have a great force of character,” advanced a makeshift battalion of about 530 men toward Port Walthall Junction, the intersection of the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad with a spur line leading to the Appomattox River downstream from Petersburg. Joined there by a hodgepodge of U.S. Colored Troops, 100-­day militia from Ohio, and dismounted cavalry, Turner’s force destroyed a mile of track and an equal distance of telegraph line, while ransacking an abandoned Confederate camp.14 General Butler remained at his headquarters near Point of Rocks, but provided Terry with constant guidance for the morning’s operations. He advised his corps commander to reinforce Turner’s small band at Port Walthall Junc128

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tion, noting that “the road well destroyed at one place is better than to poorly destroy it in several places.” He encouraged Terry to exploit the opportunity for as long as the Confederates permitted and wired Grant requesting reinforcements in order to “isolate Petersburg.” Some 1,200 Federals spent the better part of the day demolishing the captured Confederate works. Butler also interrogated numerous prisoners brought to army headquarters prior to their transfer to Northern prison camps. One brazen Virginia artillerist remonstrated that black troops should not be employed in battle. “We of the South regard them as ‘non combatants’ & we don’t fight them against you,” the soldier advised. “Why, I would arm a regiment of mules to kick your damned brains out,” Butler replied. That evening, Butler would mount a “fine horse” and ride slowly among the captives “gazing at us with eyes of hate,” remembered one prisoner. “As a military man on horseback, big & fat as he was, he was a parody.”15 Another memorable vision impressed observers downstream on the James as an endless stream of troops, artillery, and wagons crossed the pontoon bridge into Prince George County. “It was a sight of grand significance, worth a year of one’s life,” thought one enthralled witness, “a scene strange and magnificent beyond description.” Beginning at sunset on June 15 and continuing through the following day, two additional corps of Meade’s army and their associated ordnance and supply vehicles made their way across the expansive river in response to orders from General Meade.16 Grant had requested around 3:00 p.m. on June 15 that Meade “cross another corps as rapidly as possible and send it forward to its position.” The Ninth Corps’ three white divisions were the logical candidates for this assignment, given their proximity to the pontoon bridge, and General Burnside’s commissary officers busily distributed four days’ rations of ham, hardtack, sugar, and coffee three hours later. By 8:00 p.m. Burnside’s soldiers began their trek under orders from Meade to “proceed on the road to Petersburg, via Old Court-­House, and take position on the left of the Second Corps.” Meade also instructed Gouverneur Warren to board his four divisions on transports and ferry across the river at two locations, while the Fifth Corps artillery and trains would use the pontoon bridge once Burnside’s men had cleared it. Warren was to take position on Burnside’s left. The Sixth Corps and James Wilson’s cavalry division, along with the black division of the Ninth Corps, would remain on the north shore to protect the remaining wagons until they had reached the south bank.17 Wheeled traffic ceased as Burnside’s troops clattered onto the pontoon bridge. “All that night the dark moving line could be seen stretching across the river,” wrote a Ninth Corps soldier. “The pontons made of canvas were very June 16–17, 1864

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unsteady under the pressure of such a moving weight, and would tip and sway as the weight became lighter or heavier at certain points, so that it was difficult to march without staggering.” The men soon learned to avoid walking in typical rhythmic fashion to improve the span’s stability. Once on the south shore, they ascended the steep bank and began what would be a memorable march. “Sleepy, exhausted and foot-­sore—on-­on-­on all the livelong night that seemed an age,” wrote a soldier in the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania. “How we prayed for one minute’s rest!” A gun carriage broke down along the line of march and in the few minutes required to remove it, many of the enervated men laid down in the dusty road and fell sound asleep.18 Orlando Willcox’s and Robert Potter’s troops led the way, the men tramping across the swaying bridge between 9:30 p.m. and midnight. James Ledlie’s First Division followed. Some soldiers stopped for a brief respite to gobble down breakfast and then resumed their trek as the heat of a mid-­June morning began to build. In addition to the dust generated along the drought-­stricken roads, the smoke from burning houses set ablaze by Union vandals choked Burnside’s troops. Rather than following directly in Hancock’s footsteps, the corps swung toward City Point and then past the Baylor’s farm battlefield, “grimly marked by the dead bodies of negro troops.” They encountered some of Hinks’s men, who “were singing and having a regular jubilee over the guns they had captured.” The U.S. Colored Troops offered cool water and words of encouragement while listening as the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts sang “we’ll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree.” Pvt. Conrad Dippel of the Thirty-­Seventh Wisconsin remembered that “on this long and weary march every man’s strength was tasked to the highest degree. We toiled on beneath the heat of the scorching sun amidst clouds of smothering dust, leaving many stout and able men behind, who fell to the ground entirely exhausted and sunstruck.”19 Meade allowed Burnside’s tired veterans the opportunity to clear the landings before embarking Warren’s four divisions on transports to be ferried to Prince George County. At daylight on June 16, satisfied that his superior’s orders had been faithfully executed and receiving a message from Grant to proceed to City Point to take direct command of the gathering army, Meade boarded a skiff with his chief-­of-­staff, Andrew Humphreys, to be rowed out to the ironclad Atlanta about 9:00 a.m. for the hour’s journey to City Point. Meade hoped to consult there with the general-­in-­chief, but upon arriving discovered that Grant had ridden to the front, so he and his staff procured a guide and headed west in search of the Union commander.20 By the time Meade reached City Point, Elliott’s and Matthew Ransom’s brigades of Johnson’s Division had joined John Fulton’s Tennesseans in Peters130

June 16–17, 1864

burg. Johnson’s old command of roughly 500 men under Colonel Fulton had taken position directly on the right of Beauregard’s new line. General Wise’s Brigade was on their left, near the Shand house, north of a deep ravine where the absence of Confederate defenders greatly concerned Wise. However, Johnson requested that Wise return to his position as post commander in Petersburg to avoid confusion over lines of authority and Beauregard agreed, leaving Colonel Page in charge of the Virginians, about 1,400 strong.21 General Hoke’s Division on Beauregard’s left hurriedly built fortifications, while enduring a spirited artillery fire and waiting for Johnson’s men to extend the Confederate line southward. One Union shell exploded above the Twenty-­ Seventh South Carolina, killing three officers and wounding several enlisted men. “Had the enemy pushed on at this time he could have easily so far as I could tell taken Petersburg,” thought that unit’s Pvt. William R. Barry. Despite the shelling, the South Carolinians recovered a pair of spiked guns near City Point Road and brought them to the rear.22 Ransom’s Brigade had the most difficult march to Petersburg. Starting from north of the James about sundown on the 15th, these North Carolinians crossed at Drewry’s Bluff and trekked the thirteen miles to Petersburg with only two rest breaks. “Every soldier knows how it is to march until his clothes are wet with sweat, then to lie down a few minutes to rest and get cold and stiff,” wrote Pvt. William A. Day of the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina. “He can scarcely move, but he hears the call to ‘attention!’ pushes his legs about, gets on his hands and knees, scrambles up, and staggers on.” The Tar Heels reached Petersburg between sunrise and 8:00 a.m., rested a while, and then pushed south on Jerusalem Plank Road to a position near the Avery house, where they relieved some of the weary Petersburg militia on the right of Johnson’s line. Union cannon fire made this march particularly unpleasant. The Fifty-­Sixth North Carolina did not join its comrades on the front lines, being directed instead to proceed up the north bank of the Appomattox River to protect the cotton factories at Ettrick and Matoaca from potential Union cavalry raids.23 Elliott’s 1,900-­man South Carolina brigade was the last of Johnson’s reinforcements to reach Petersburg that morning, filing into the streets about 10:​​ 00 a.m. with the sound of distant cannon fire welcoming them to town. They relaxed there until midafternoon, when orders arrived to move south. The Carolinians eventually took a reserve position in a pine grove near the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad with their left flank on Baxter Road.24 Johnson described his position as being to the right of Wise’s Brigade with “its right flank resting between Batteries No XIV and XV on the old line of fortifications east of Petersburg and its left on a ravine running diagonally across June 16–17, 1864

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and to the left of its line of battle.” His men constructed “a very low and bad breast works of logs and rails which was partly covered with dirt, that the men had dug up with bayonets.” He enjoyed the support of Capt. Edward R. Young’s Yorktown Battery of three guns and the six cannon of Capt. Joseph G. Blount’s Lynchburg Battery, along with two sections of Slaten’s Macon Battery posted near the Shand house and at Battery 16. The Federals deployed 600 to 800 yards in front with sharpshooters in advance laying down a harassing fire. Counting Page’s Virginians, Johnson commanded about 6,100 effectives along his portion of the lines.25 This new Confederate line would face its first test early that morning. Shortly after midnight on June 16, General Hancock issued orders to division commanders David Birney and John Gibbon to search for and capture weak points along their front “at or before daylight.” The corps commander’s Gettysburg wound still tormented him during the predawn hours, and he lacked the energy and mobility to ensure that his subordinates promptly executed his instructions. In fact, it would not be until well after sunrise, perhaps as late as 8:00 a.m., that any action resulted from his directive.26 With the shells from Confederate artillery exploding about them in uncomfortable profusion, Birney tapped Thomas Egan’s brigade to move forward opposite Confederate Batteries 11 through 13 and probe the enemy position. Egan, the former commander of the Fortieth New York, had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday. Like so many volunteer officers, this son of Irish immigrants learned the military trade through hard experience. His brigade included eight regiments in addition to his old Fortieth New York, which was only two days from receiving its discharge. Egan did not enjoy universal respect from his troops. “Tommy Egan is a third rate idiot,” testified one soldier from Maine. “He desires two things: to add another star to his shoulder straps, and to wreak vengeance on his old regiment.”27 Egan placed the Seventeenth Maine and Twentieth Indiana in his front, supported by the balance of his brigade, and aimed for the open ground where, near a rise on which stood the Otway P. Hare house, Clingman’s Brigade repulsed the charging Federals with ease. The short-­timers in the Fortieth New York showed little grit in this assault and “decided to place themselves in as safe a place as possible and only swung around under cover of the line of works in our front.” Egan re-­formed his men and made a second charge, this one succeeding in capturing Battery 12, but achieving little else. Shortly after this assault, Colonel Egan fell with a painful wound near a kidney and was removed from the field. “With astonishing complacency we watched him dragged to the rear,” observed 132

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Egan’s Down East detractor. “If any tears were shed, they were tears of joy mingled with the hope that his wound will keep him away till our term ends.” The brigade’s second-­in-­command, Lt. Col. Augustus J. Warner of the Fortieth New York, also sustained a debilitating injury, leaving the brigade under the temporary leadership of a major. These little forays cost the Seventeenth Maine seven killed, forty-­eight wounded, and five missing. Following their attacks, Egan’s men fortified a line facing southwest. Henry J. Madill of the 141st Pennsylvania eventually assumed brigade command.28 On the Union right the Eighteenth Corps conducted similarly unproductive operations near the right bank of the Appomattox River. General Martindale’s division held the right of Smith’s line, with Hinks’s blacks extending south toward the Friend house. Bully Brooks remained in reserve. An early morning probe westward by elements of Martindale’s and Hinks’s commands pushed some of Johnson Hagood’s men toward Petersburg, but that initiative soon subsided into an exchange of artillery fire. The ground between the railroad and the river narrowed toward the Confederate works and Martindale’s men found themselves squeezed out of position on the skirmish line. Moreover, spirited blasts from Rebel batteries on Archer’s Hill north of the Appomattox made any approach close to the river perilous.29 At 10:​​30 a.m. Grant instructed Baldy Smith to “push the reconnaissance in your front with the view of ascertaining the best point and manner of advancing this evening at 6  p.m., if such an advance should be ordered.” The general-­in-­chief conservatively added that any troops not needed on his front line should be held in reserve to meet potential threats against the army’s left. Grant named Hancock the overall field commander in Meade’s absence, eliminating the previous evening’s ambiguity. Because Smith remained in the rear, Martindale assumed direct control of the Eighteenth Corps’ front, a responsibility that prompted him to “swell up like a turkey cock,” according to an officer on Hinks’s staff.30 Martindale promptly placed his own brigades on the front line and sent Hinks’s men to the rear, where they prepared an artillery position on high ground within range of the annoying Confederate batteries north of the river. Hinks placed the guns of Capt. John Howell’s Battery M, Third New York Light Artillery in these works, and Howell’s gunners traded iron salutes with their adversaries on the north bank, significantly suppressing their volume of fire. Still, Martindale considered the ground near the river too hazardous to cross and thought that any future offensive must favor a trajectory toward the railroad.31 Morning dragged into afternoon as Hagood and Martindale sparred inconclusively. “The Federals several times appeared to be forming for battle beJune 16–17, 1864

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yond rifle range,” remembered General Hagood, but nothing of consequence resulted. “We could see the Rebs, plain all day in front of us but we did not fire on them but very little during the day,” admitted a soldier in the 117th New York. A few of these idle troops caught a rare glimpse of the general-­in-­chief, who, along with a bevy of other officers, had ridden forward to examine Smith’s dispositions. “I stood within two or three paces of Genl Grant & watched him for some time,” wrote Capt. Charles M. Coit of the Eighth Connecticut. “He does not look like a man to give up a point; a smaller man than I supposed.”32 After conducting his reconnaissance, Grant turned back toward City Point. About halfway to his headquarters he encountered General Meade and his party, who had landed at City Point shortly before noon. “Well, Smith has taken a line of works . . . stronger than anything we have seen this campaign!” enthused Grant. “If it is a possible thing, I want an assault made at 6 o’clock this evening.” Grant had expressed identical sentiments to Hancock as well as to Smith, so that on this day there would be no misunderstanding regarding the commander’s intentions. Grant ceded operational command to Meade and then continued toward his headquarters tents. Meade rode ahead to consult with his subordinates.33 While the Pennsylvanian met with his corps commanders, the remaining Second Corps batteries rumbled toward the front. Much of Hancock’s ordnance had crossed the James late on the night of the 15th and resumed its journey at sunrise. “We were not in a state of mind to enjoy anything of an immaterial or aesthetical character, owing to the state of our stomachs,” grumbled one cannoneer. “One of the boys, by way of emphasizing the intensity of his feelings, said he believed he could eat a ‘raw dog with hair on.’” The gunners passed numerous abandoned homes, a circumstance that they interpreted as an invitation to pillage, at least in part to obtain something to eat. Although food proved scarce, the men found the nearby barns well stocked with tobacco and “lovers of the weed took the opportunity to replenish their stock at a figure considerably lower than sutlers’ prices.”34 By early afternoon Willcox’s and Potter’s road-­weary regiments began to file into position on the left of Hancock’s infantry. General Burnside took the head of his column and elicited a show of respect from some of Smith’s troops, who had served under Burnside earlier in the war, as he rode by on a reconnaissance with engineer officer Barnard. “Our men all took off their hats to him,” wrote Connecticut’s Captain Coit, “it was thought best not to cheer & when some of the men attempted it he immediately checked them. Genl B passed with his hat off & seemed much pleased.”35 The Ninth Corps staggered into line between 1:00  p.m. and dusk, after 134

June 16–17, 1864

what division commander Ledlie considered “a long and tedious march.” Brig. Gen. John F. Hartranft’s brigade of Willcox’s division took position on the “extreme left of the army” under the direction of Burnside’s engineer officer, Maj. James St. Clair Morton, their left flank guarded by August Kautz’s cavalry. Potter’s division deployed on Willcox’s right with Ledlie’s troops taking position in support of Potter “at right angles to the Petersburg and Suffolk State Road [Baxter Road], covering a wood road running through a piece of timber in front of the main line of the enemy’s works.” Exhausted as they were, these veterans instinctively began to fortify their new positions.36 While the Ninth Corps dug, the Fifth Corps marched. Most of Warren’s soldiers began to move toward the river’s north bank on time, with Samuel Crawford’s and Romeyn Ayres’s divisions heading for Douthat’s Landing, while Charles Griffin’s and Lysander Cutler’s men proceeded to Wilcox’s Landing. It took time for the troops to board the vessels, but after a slow start Warren’s troops made respectable progress and disembarked on the right bank between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.37 The men of the Maltese Cross took full advantage of orders to bathe in the river. “The way we washed was this,” explained a soldier in the 150th Pennsylvania. “We did not take our clothes off, but soaped them on our bodies, and swam around to work out the grime, giving them an occasional rubbing; then applied more soap and went through the same process again, until satisfied that we had about as much dirt off as it was safe to take at one time.” A man in the Twenty-­Second Massachusetts thought that amount to have been prodigious as he guessed there had been “a variation in the depth of the river at that point immediately after due to ‘alluvial deposit.’” Sgt. John H. Dusseault of the Thirty-­Ninth Massachusetts estimated that, “at the least calculation, five thousand men were in the water with me.”38 Those men not in the James enjoyed the hospitality of the ladies in the Wilcox mansion, whose gardens teemed with birds. Orders eventually arrived to take up the march for Petersburg. Departure times varied from 2:00 p.m. to just before dark. The Fifth Corps followed a route past Sycamore Church and through Prince George Court House, and like Burnside’s veterans they suffered from the heat. “At one time my tongue actually hung out and was covered with dust,” wrote a Massachusetts soldier. “I could spit cotton without any exaggeration.” Straggling became epidemic despite the sounds of artillery fire that accompanied the trek. “I shall never forget the joy with which I . . . quaffed a glass of ice water,” wrote one Michigan soldier. “The fabled nectar of the Gods was insipid in comparison with it.” Despite the hardships of a day that Charles Wainwright gauged the hottest of the season, Warren’s veterans found the time June 16–17, 1864

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and energy to punish the local citizens. “All the houses on the road have been deserted, and all such establishments that savor of wealth of Virginia F.F.V.’s we burn and destroy,” boasted a man in Griffin’s division. “We are raising Cain with this ‘Sacred Soil.’”39 Griffin’s division trickled into the Federal lines between midnight and 1:00  a.m. on June 17. Crawford’s division, at the rear of Warren’s column, marched through the night, halting for a few hours’ rest and then regaining the road around 3:00 a.m. The last of Warren’s troops arrived behind the Ninth Corps lines after sunrise, and by then momentous events had transpired.40 George Meade had been busy since his brief meeting with Grant en route to the Petersburg lines. Summoning the services of General Barnard and Cyrus Comstock of Grant’s staff, the army commander reconnoitered Beauregard’s defenses, searching for likely locations to execute Grant’s desired 6:00 p.m. assault. Division commander Barlow along with General Humphreys explored the Confederate front as well, and each officer spotted opportunities to penetrate the Petersburg defenses. By 3:45 p.m. Meade and Hancock had conferred about the specifics of the impending offensive. Birney’s division would attack south of Prince George Court House Road toward the Hare house plateau, supported by Gibbon’s brigades. Barlow, backed by troops from the Ninth Corps, would aim for the works farther south near the Shand and Avery houses. Diversions on the right by Smith and on the left by Kautz would pin the Confederates in place. Everyone would move forward at 6:00 p.m. “General Butler [reports] that his troops have advanced to the Richmond railroad and the pike without opposition,” Meade informed Grant. “This is most remarkable . . . and indicates the abandonment of Richmond.” Meade could not have been more badly mistaken.41 At the time Meade wrote that optimistic dispatch, two brigades of George Pickett’s Division had already attacked and driven the lead elements of Butler’s advancing troops from the Richmond-­Petersburg Turnpike. Hunton’s Virginians assaulted the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois shortly before 1:00 p.m., in a charge that the Confederates characterized as vigorous, but an Illinoisan considered only “brisk.” Pickett then summoned Corse’s Brigade, led by the Fifteenth Virginia and Seventeenth Virginia, which went forward “with a loud determined wild ringing yell.” General Corse stood on an abandoned earthwork waving his hat and shouting “Go it, my bullies,” and Hunton thought that he had “never seen anything done so handsomely.” General Foster immediately called on the Third New Hampshire and Seventh New Hampshire to move to the right and left in support of the retreating Thirty-­Ninth Illinois.42 Elements of Howell’s and Plaisted’s brigades rallied to resist the Confeder136

June 16–17, 1864

ate onslaught, but Pickett’s men lapped around the flanks of the overmatched Union line. Foster notified General Terry of his dilemma and gradually withdrew in three separate increments over a period of several hours, finally taking position along the old Union skirmish line near Ware Bottom Church. Colonel Howell boasted that when the final order to withdraw arrived, his brigade did so “in perfect coolness and order; no confusion, no hurry.” The combat never rose to the level of an all-­out battle, assuming instead the character of sustained and spirited skirmishing. Confederate prisoners disingenuously insisted that Pickett’s Division represented merely the tip of a spear comprised of Lee’s entire army, persuading Terry to instruct Foster to retire and Ben Butler to send similar orders to John Turner, on the railroad near Port Walthall Junction. Conservative generalship characterized the Union psyche at Bermuda Hundred that day, for even as Pickett began his attacks, Grant had warned Butler against becoming overly aggressive along his lines.43 At this point, however, the Federals stiffened. Grant informed Butler at 4:10 p.m. that two divisions of the Sixth Corps had been ordered to City Point by transport and were expected to arrive around 6:00 p.m. “If you still hold your present advantage when they reach here I will send them to you,” he wrote. Butler replied an hour and a half later that he would attempt to maintain at least some of the morning’s captured real estate with his skirmishers, but that he doubted he could do so. Perhaps Butler had not yet learned that Foster’s troops had already surrendered most of their gains or perhaps he was being less than forthright with Grant. In any event, a few minutes later, Butler ordered Terry to defend a position from Howlett’s house down to Ware Bottom Church. “I hope to get up two divisions of Wright’s Corps to occupy it during the night or early in the morning,” he added.44 About sunset Pickett’s victorious Virginians probed forward once more in an unsuccessful effort to drive the Federals away from their last chosen stand. The attack unnerved the 133rd Ohio, one of the hundred-­day units that had reported to Butler with little training and less stomach for danger. Colonel Howell took umbrage at such cowardice from troops under his authority and rode down the line, pistol drawn, aiming to make an example of one of the frightened Buckeyes. Fortunately for some Ohioan, a Confederate ball struck Howell’s thumb, paralyzing his hand and rendering him unable to pull the trigger. Another round struck the colonel’s chest, but he managed to rally the rookies despite his injuries. “It would have done your heart good to have seen my dear old brigade (the old regiments) meet the yells and shots of the rebels,” Howell boasted to his brother. “It was glorious.” Pickett’s second attack proved short-­lived, and the Confederates melted back into their recaptured lines.45 June 16–17, 1864

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Turner’s contingent near Port Walthall Junction encountered much less drama than their comrades farther north. By 5:00 p.m., in accordance with Butler’s orders, Turner started withdrawing from the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad, leaving it partially dismantled. Archibald Gracie’s brigade had remained along Swift Creek as a rear guard to protect the northern approach to Petersburg and, joined by Ransom’s Fifty-­Sixth and Forty-­Ninth North Carolina regiments, the Alabamans arrived in time to give Turner a gratuitous shove. Gracie then stretched northward to forge a link with Pickett’s right flank.46 Field’s Division proved to be superfluous to the combat on June 16. Col. Dudley M. DuBose, in command of Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning’s Georgia brigade, led Field’s troops down the Richmond-­Petersburg Turnpike. A soldier in the Second Georgia, at the head of DuBose’s column, reported that his regiment came upon “the scene of the nigger destruction”—meaning the damage to the railroad and telegraph lines, which he mistakenly ascribed to black troops. Ordered to halt about six miles north of Petersburg, the Second Georgia and Seventeenth Georgia were posted “to protect the right flank against another nigger incursion or any other that might be made.” Brig. Gen. John Gregg’s Texas Brigade deployed nearby, groping forward about a mile in the gathering darkness, and came upon a section of abandoned works, leaving one soldier “[allegedly] disappointed in not finding them occupied by the enemy.” Some of Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law’s Alabamans, now commanded by Col. William F. Perry, reported skirmishing with the Federals about sundown, but for all practical purposes Field’s men settled down between Gracie and Pickett that night, unscathed by the afternoon’s excitement.47 Considering the stakes along the turnpike and railroad between Richmond and Petersburg that afternoon, casualties were remarkably light. The Thirty-­ Ninth Illinois, one of the more heavily engaged of Foster’s regiments, reported one officer and twenty enlisted men killed or wounded. The Third New Hampshire lost between thirty and thirty-­nine, including six men killed. The Twenty-­ Fourth Massachusetts, one of the support units of Plaisted’s brigade, had two men killed and nine wounded. Confederate casualties must have been equally modest.48 Historian Thomas J. Howe concludes that “Butler bungled another splendid opportunity at Bermuda Hundred” on June 16. Howe finds Butler negligent in neither expanding the amount of damage inflicted on the transportation links between Petersburg and the Confederate capital nor fighting more tenaciously to retain the footholds he had gained from Beauregard’s evacuation of the Howlett Line. Edward Longacre, the author of the premier work on the Army of the James, excuses Butler for failing to destroy more of the railroad, 138

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but faults him for not fortifying a position astride the road and railroad somewhere north of Petersburg, to delay Lee’s ability to funnel reinforcements to Beauregard. Doing so, argues Longacre, would have allowed Smith, Hancock, Burnside, and Warren the opportunity to overwhelm Beauregard’s Petersburg defenses. The most recent student of this phase of the campaign simply characterizes Butler as “timid,” and paranoid about suffering a great defeat.49 Col. Francis Osborn of the Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts took a more charitable tack in evaluating Butler’s generalship that day. Admitting that the damage to the railroad was easily repaired and that Lee’s pipeline to Petersburg flowed unimpeded, Osborn noted that the Army of the James had been weakened due to the Eighteenth Corps’ operations south of the Appomattox. The Confederate line extended much farther north and south than did the one that Butler fortified across Bermuda Hundred, leaving the Federals unable to occupy adequately the entire Confederate front. With little time to erect fortifications, the expectation that the entire Army of Northern Virginia could appear at any moment, and his flanks offering tempting and indefensible targets for Confederate envelopment, Osborn considered Butler’s withdrawal as understandable. The loss of a significant number of the Tenth Corps would have placed the entire Bermuda Hundred bridgehead in jeopardy; a risk, Osborn asserted, that made little sense.50 Ulysses S. Grant must, as during the previous day, share the responsibility for squandering the chance to isolate Petersburg on June 16. His afternoon message to Butler only reinforced that officer’s natural caution and reflected the absence of a determination to hold the turnpike or railroad. Retaining the entire Sixth Corps on the north bank of the James to guard the remaining wagon trains betrayed Grant’s inclination to protect his supplies rather than dispatch troops to the front for maximum offensive capacity. There can be no question that the nine brigades of Pickett’s and Field’s Divisions, with four additional brigades under Kershaw within striking distance, might have overwhelmed any force Butler and Grant could have deployed across the turnpike and railroad on June 16. Considering the potential advantages that such a position offered, however, it seems reasonable to have expected the Union high command to have tried harder to control the transportation nexus between Richmond and Petersburg. The Union offensive near Petersburg on the evening of June 16, as it turned out, bore little tactical relationship to events north of the Appomattox River that day. Consistent with Grant’s instructions, Meade spent the afternoon “actively engaged” in preparing an assault that would involve portions of three infantry corps supported by a strong contingent of Second Corps artillery, and June 16–17, 1864

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displaying what one witness considered his “usual nervous energy” and “intensity of manner.” At 6:00 p.m. he was ready. Col. John C. Tidball, Hancock’s chief gunner, arrayed ten batteries from the City Point Railroad on the right to well south of Prince George Court House Road on the left, and the sound of these cannon left an indelible impression on those around them. “I never heard such a noise,” testified a New York soldier. “The roar of battle exceeded anything I ever before heard,” agreed a staff officer. Capt. Edwin B. Dow of the Sixth Maine Battery reported firing 400 rounds of solid and case shot during this bombardment. The hot, humid summer atmosphere trapped the sulphurous vapors from the artillery’s discharges near the ground, “and as the sun declined, the air, full of dust and powder smoke, gave a copper hue to the scene that was most striking,” mused Theodore Lyman. A New York newspaper correspondent observed that the “clouds of dense smoke . . . changed the golden sun to a blood red hue.”51 Martindale’s division moved out of its works between the river and the City Point Railroad to create a diversion in favor of Meade’s primary assault by Hancock’s corps, farther south. The Fifty-­Fifth Pennsylvania led Martindale’s advance, overrunning Battery 3, followed by the rest of General Stannard’s brigade, Colonel Stedman’s troops, and the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery under Col. Augustus A. Gibson. The Federals endured some enfilading fire from the troublesome ordnance across the river, but Union guns leveled an effective counterbattery response that largely silenced the Confederate cannon. Martindale challenged the main enemy line, held here by Hagood’s South Carolinians, and reached to within seventy-­five yards of the Rebel works. Hagood characterized the attack as “feeble,” but a soldier in the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina considered the engagement “quite a fight” and reported two killed and twenty wounded in his regiment. Martindale dug in and held his captured ground until 10:​​00 p.m.—when, under discretionary orders to withdraw, he fell back to the division’s starting points.52 At the other end of the Union line, Generals Potter and Willcox sparred with the Confederate right. Brig. Gen. Simon G. Griffin’s brigade of Potter’s division played the starring role in this portion of Meade’s offensive. Potter assigned Griffin’s men to General Barlow, whose division abutted Potter on the right. Beauregard had entrusted his southern flank to the Petersburg militia, “a heterogeneous mass of men, hastily collected from the hospitals, guard-­houses, and other places in Petersburg, and called by Gen’l Wise . . . the P.P.’s (patients and penitents).” As was the case on Martindale’s front, the Ninth Corps troops, wearied by their long march from the James, launched only token assaults de-

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signed to prevent the Confederates from reinforcing their center, where Hancock’s three divisions would wield the principal blow.53 John Gibbon’s division deployed on the right of Hancock’s formation along Prince George Court House Road, although Gibbon committed only Col. John Ramsey’s Fourth Brigade to the assault, supported by Col. John Fraser’s Second Brigade. Ramsey, a twenty-­five-­year-­old tobacconist and internal revenue collector from northern New Jersey, advanced his 155th New York as skirmishers and arrayed the rest of his men in two lines of battle, with the outsize Eighth New York Heavy Artillery forming the entire second line. Under cover of Tidball’s ordnance, Ramsey began the attack promptly at 6:00 p.m., dashing through the woods “like an avalanche” and emerging in the open ground fronting James Martin’s North Carolinians near Hare’s Hill. “The fire here was fearfully destructive,” reported Ramsey, who fell wounded early in the attack, replaced by Col. James P. McIvor of the 170th New York. Halted some thirty yards short of the Confederate line by “a most terrible fire of artillery and musketry,” the Federals withdrew to the edge of the woods and began digging entrenchments using picks, shovels, tin cups, plates, and bayonets. Casualties were “quite severe,” the Eighth New York Heavy Artillery alone losing 174 killed, wounded, or missing.54 Hancock positioned David Birney’s division in the center of his formation and Birney in turn selected his Second and Third Brigades under Col. Thomas R. Tannatt and Brig. Gen. Gershom Mott, respectively, to make his assault. A soldier in the First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery of Tannatt’s command considered his unit’s approach to be “a magnificent sight . . . the long lines advancing with gleaming bayonets, even though to almost certain death.” For a large number of Tannatt’s men, that prophecy proved all too accurate. Colonel Tannatt, an 1858 West Point graduate, fell with a head wound that would end his military career, and his brigade suffered 274 casualties before halting and seeking cover.55 Mott divided his large brigade into two segments. The general took personal command of the First Maine Heavy Artillery, Sixteenth Massachusetts, and 115th Pennsylvania, while Colonel McAllister led Mott’s five New Jersey regiments in the front of the formation. “We had a hard fight,” McAllister informed his wife. “The New Jersey troops suffered a considerable loss.” Like Tannatt’s men, Mott’s brigade hit the ground short of the Confederate works, manned in their sector primarily by Clingman’s Tar Heels, and there they dug in. “Genl. Birney told me confidentially the other day that he will take care of me,” wrote McAllister. “But it will be a miracle if I live through these scenes. . . . These are terrible battles. I am more concerned in putting down the Rebellion 142

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and getting home safely than I am about promotion.” In fact, McAllister would replace Tannatt in command of the Second Brigade early the next morning.56 Hancock reserved the heaviest of his attacks for his left-­most division under Francis Barlow. All four of Barlow’s brigades would go forward in concert with the other Second Corps divisions, aiming for the Confederate works held by Wise’s Virginians and Fulton’s Tennessee Brigade, including a contingent of Rebels holding Batteries 13, 14, and 15 in the Dimmock Line in front of the main Confederate defenses. Brig. Gen. Nelson A. Miles’s brigade formed on Barlow’s right with brigades under Cols. James A. Beaver, Clinton D. MacDougall, and Patrick Kelly aligned on Miles’s left. Beaver convened a meeting of his regimental commanders, explaining their mission in pessimistic terms, underscored by methodically designating a plan of succession should he and subsequent brigade commanders become incapacitated. Barlow positioned himself near the head of his troops so he could lead the attack. The Hagood Line stood nearly one-­half mile in front of them through a belt of cut timber and slashing and then downhill into a clearing and up the opposite side. “It was the best engineered and constructed works we ever charged,” thought Sgt. Stephen Osborn of the 145th Pennsylvania.57 The division bugler sounded the charge about 6:30 p.m. as Barlow stepped out at the head of MacDougall’s brigade, hat in hand. Colonel Beaver drew his sword from its scabbard and led about 1,000 New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware troops to the attack. “The boys greatly dreaded this charge, as it seemed a hopeless one,” remembered a soldier in the Fifty-­Seventh New York. Through the felled trees and into the open burst Barlow’s attackers, artillery and infantry fire sweeping their front. The Confederates, however, made only a brief stand at the isolated Dimmock Line batteries and fell back toward their primary defenses. As Colonel Beaver approached Battery 14, an artillery shell buried itself in the ground at the commander’s feet and then exploded. The blast catapulted Beaver into the air, inflicting a debilitating wound in his side. In spite of the colonel’s prescient planning, command and control disintegrated in his brigade, with some of his men fleeing to the rear, while others took refuge in a nearby ravine, their momentum irretrievably arrested.58 Beaver’s opponents were the Tennesseans of Col. John Fulton. The Forty-­ Fourth Tennessee held the right of Fulton’s command about 100 yards north of and behind Battery 15. Beaver’s attack had targeted the Confederates’ vulnerable right flank, manned inadequately by the Petersburg militia, so Colonel Fulton ordered Lt. Francis M. Kelso to shift his company southward to meet the threat. Kelso led just seventeen men on this mission. He saw the Yankees huddled in the ravine not fifty yards to his front, and to his surprise they began June 16–17, 1864

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waving hats and handkerchiefs from the shelter of their depression. Kelso ordered his men to cease firing and demanded the surrender of these inexplicable Yankees. The hats and handkerchiefs continued to wave, but no blueclad officer ventured forward to offer his sword. Kelso, seeing more Federals bearing down on him in the distance, directed his men to come out of their works and demand their opponents’ capitulation before the reinforcements arrived, the Southerners’ small numbers masked by the gathering darkness. This did the trick. As many as 500 Federals, most of them members of the Seventh New York Heavy Artillery, emerged from the ravine and hustled to the rear under guard of the Sixty-­Fourth Georgia. To add to their humiliation, the Seventh New York Heavy Artillery turned over “a large, elegant silk banner, heavily fringed” along with a second regimental flag. Some of these surrendered men felt that they had been sacrificed to the ambition of their senior officers, and particularly General Barlow.59 Barlow’s attack resulted in the loss of Colonel Kelly, intrepid commander of the Irish Brigade, who took a bullet to the head and died within minutes. A Confederate artillery round almost claimed more important victims as it skipped along the ground, narrowly missing Meade and Humphreys, who watched the engagement from an exposed position.60 The Union offensive ran out of steam around 9:00 p.m. Beauregard made “several vigorous attempts during the night to retake the ground which he had lost,” but none of them succeeded. The evening’s action—the fiercest combat yet seen at Petersburg—netted the Federals three more of the Dimmock Line batteries and persuaded Beauregard that, despite his successful defense, the Hagood Line would be in jeopardy the next time the Federals attacked. He instructed Colonel Harris to begin defining a new defensive perimeter closer to the city.61 As if to underscore Petersburg’s vulnerability, Union artillery fired into the town for the first time about 10:​​00 p.m. “The Yankees opened on the city without any warning & shelled it all night,” wrote an incensed South Carolinian. “The city is full of women & children & wounded men. Is this not barbarous?” Meanwhile, cursing Union ambulance drivers navigated around the offending batteries, delivering wounded men to hastily prepared hospitals in the Federal rear. The surgeons would be busy that night. Federal casualties approached 2,500 during the evening attacks, and Hancock’s corps suffered the overwhelming majority. Four Second Corps brigade commanders had fallen on June 16, along with four regimental commanders. A total of nineteen of Hancock’s officers were killed or wounded. Meade would characterize his losses as having “not been great,” an opinion that few in the Army of the Potomac would have 144

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shared. Confederate losses are unknown, but as Beauregard’s men fought from behind earthworks it can be assumed that they sustained significantly fewer.62 Hundreds of Federal prisoners marched into Petersburg that evening. “Like sheep in the shambles, we were helpless,” lamented a Pennsylvania captive. Their guards herded them into a tobacco factory on High Street, where they spent a miserable night “defending ourselves as best we could against innumerable swarms of fleas, lice, bed bugs, cockroaches and musquitoes that seemed to have leased the room and were determined to drive us out as trespassers or secure pay for our nightly lodging by dining upon us.” Word arrived the next day that the enlisted men would be sent to the notorious prison camp near Andersonville, Georgia.63 Fresh troops would arrive on the Union battle line overnight and into the early morning of June 17. On the left, Warren’s weary divisions shuffled toward Burnside’s position. The missing element of the Army of the Potomac, Wright’s Sixth Corps, was also on the move. Meade’s June 15 orders had designated that the Sixth Corps cross the pontoon bridge only after the army’s trains and Wilson’s cavalry had reached the south shore, an arrangement confirmed by Grant at 10:​​15 a.m. the following morning. But six hours later, Wright had received Grant’s orders to ferry two of his divisions to reinforce Butler and to send the other across the pontoon bridge to march to the aid of Meade. Wright designated Brig. Gen. David A. Russell’s First Division and Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts’s Third Division for the boat ride to Bermuda Hundred, while Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Neill’s Second Division would hike to the Petersburg front. Ferrero’s black division and Wilson’s cavalry would assume responsibility for guarding the wagon train until it navigated the James. Ricketts’s division boarded its transports that evening and began arriving at Bermuda Hundred and Point of Rocks around midnight. Russell’s men followed, embarking around 1:00 a.m. on the 17th and landing shortly after dawn. The Second Division tramped across the pontoon bridge at sunset on the 16th and marched through the hot night, “the dust beaten into powder by the hosts of horses and men [filling] the air with a choking, stifling mixture that was hardly breathable.”64 In contrast, Beauregard would receive no additional help from the Army of Northern Virginia beyond what Lee had already provided. The two Southern commanders exchanged correspondence throughout June 16, Lee asking Beauregard on four separate occasions for information on the whereabouts of Meade’s various corps. It was not until 7:00  p.m., however, that Beauregard again mentioned Hancock’s presence. Of course, because the Creole’s morning message to that effect had gone astray, this was Lee’s first confirmation that at least a part of Meade’s army had reached Petersburg. Even then, Beauregard June 16–17, 1864

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told Lee that “no satisfactory information [is] yet received of Grant’s crossing the James.”65 Lee reported the day’s activities to President Davis at 7:30 p.m., explaining his rationale for transferring Pickett and Field to the south side of the James. Beauregard then notified Bragg at 9:45  p.m. of his victory at Petersburg, news that reached Lee shortly thereafter. “I am delighted at your repulse of the enemy,” Lee praised Beauregard early the next morning. “Endeavor to recover your lines. Can you ascertain anything of Grant’s movements?” Lee also contacted the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad, requesting that the damaged tracks near Port Walthall Junction be repaired. Nothing that had transpired throughout June 16 persuaded Lee to release Kershaw’s Division or any of Powell Hill’s troops from their defensive assignments north of the James. Consequently, with Warren’s corps now on the scene and Wright’s divisions en route, the Federals would enjoy even more overwhelming numerical superiority at Petersburg on June 17.66 Those advantages might have been irrelevant had Meade and his army performed better on June 16. “Meade’s failure to capture Petersburg on the sixteenth has not received the attention it deserves,” wrote General Kautz after the war, who judged Meade’s opportunities that day to have been greater than Smith’s had been on June 15.67 The commander’s decision to disperse Hancock’s strength along a wide front prevented the Second Corps from concentrating overwhelming power at any single point. The diversions along the flanks accomplished little. In fact, Beauregard’s Achilles’ heel resided on his right, where militia and a few scattered cavalry were all that stood between the Federals and Petersburg, yet Meade did nothing to exploit that weakness. “It is evident that if the enemy had left one corps in my front and attacked with another corps by the Jerusalem Plank Road or westwardly of it, I would have been compelled to evacuate Petersburg without much resistance,” wrote Beauregard after the war. Meade offered this explanation to Grant on the morning of June 17: “Our men are tired and the attacks have not been made with the vigor and force which characterized our fighting in the Wilderness; if they had been I think we should have been more successful.” Meade candidly admitted to his wife, “We find the enemy, as usual, in a very strong position . . . and it looks very much as if we will have to go through a siege of Petersburg before entering on the siege of Richmond, and that Grant’s words of keeping at it all summer will prove to be quite prophetic.”68 Still, General Grant, who remained detached from the day’s operations following his brief morning reconnaissance, was “considerably encouraged” by 146

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the outcome of the fighting. Colonel Lyman carried a message from Meade to the general-­in-­chief that evening, arriving just as Grant prepared to turn in for the night. Explaining Meade’s plan to renew the assaults first thing in the morning, Lyman saw Grant smile, “like one who had done a clever thing.” “I think it is pretty well to get across a great river, and come up here and attack Lee in his rear before he is ready for us!” beamed Grant, exhibiting no evidence of disappointment with the outcome of the day’s events. “Too much credit cannot be given the troops and their commanders for the energy and fortitude displayed during the last five days,” he wired Halleck the next morning, betraying either low expectations, a failure to understand possibilities, or an effort to sugarcoat his armies’ failure to capture Petersburg.69 President Lincoln seemed to share Grant’s optimism that day as he addressed the Great Central Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia. “I have never been in the habit of making predictions in regard to the war,” Lincoln told his audience, but “Grant is this evening, with General Meade and General Hancock . . . and the brave officers and soldiers with him, in a position from whence he will never be dislodged until Richmond is taken.” Two hundred miles from Philadelphia, a diarist in Richmond recorded his impressions of the fighting on June 16: “To-­ day it is reported that they are fighting again at Petersburg and great masses of troops are in motion. The war will be determined, perhaps, by the operations of a day or two; and much anxiety is felt by all.”70 A message from Butler provided the inspiration for Meade to pursue such a prognostication on June 17. Admiral Lee had reported the previous afternoon the presence of “40,000 to 50,000” Confederates “passing from Deep Bottom to Malvern Hill toward Richmond.” Butler passed this important intelligence to Grant who shared it with Meade. “This would show the enemy not yet on south side of James River in great force,” concluded the general-­in-­chief. Meade in turn wired Hancock, his senior commander at the front, that “this makes it of great importance to force the enemy’s lines before the troops here referred to can join those now in our front.” Meade directed Hancock to share this information with Burnside and acting Second Corps commander Birney and to encourage those officers to renew their attacks as soon as possible. Grant reaffirmed that Meade would continue to call the tactical shots: “I will leave this to your judgment, knowing that you will push any advantage that may be gained.”71 Hancock ordered both Birney and Burnside to prepare for an assault but, given the recent, bloody experience of the Second Corps, the burden would fall on the Ninth Corps’ comparatively fresh men. Potter’s division, supported by Ledlie’s, would make the attack. Their target would be a narrow plateau known locally as Hickory Hill, on which stood an elegant home belonging to William June 16–17, 1864

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Briggs Shand. This two-­story frame dwelling flanked by brick chimneys and enhanced by a number of outbuildings, mature shade trees, and a peach orchard, had stood unoccupied since General Wise evicted Shand’s mother on the eve of the campaign. Fulton’s brigade, along with the Twenty-­Third South Carolina, defended the ridge on which it stood, extending along the high ground fronting Harrison’s Creek 1,000 yards to the north. Slaten’s Macon Battery provided direct artillery support, and two guns of Capt. Richard Pegram’s Petersburg Artillery waited in position to contribute flanking fire from Battery 15, a short distance to the south. Colonel Page deployed Wise’s Brigade along the Hagood Line north of Fulton’s position, still separated from the Tennesseans by a deep and unguarded ravine. Wise lobbied General Johnson to send additional troops to cover this gap, but the division commander, who complained of dyspepsia, failed to do so. Elements of Ransom’s Tar Heels extended Fulton’s position to the south and west, making Hickory Hill a salient projecting eastward.72 The corrugated terrain fronting and dividing the Confederate defenses provided opportunities for Potter. A narrow, steep declivity fronted Fulton’s position on Hickory Hill, a mere 100 yards below the Confederate defenses. Another ravine coursed northward, west of Hickory Hill. The little streams draining these valleys eventually combined to form Harrison’s Creek, which flowed north to the Appomattox River and provided the ready-­made moat behind which Hoke and Johnson had arranged most of their two divisions. The Confederate pickets did not extend to the bottom of the hill, offering Potter’s two brigades the chance to occupy the drainage just east of Fulton’s position. If Federal troops could reach this little valley unseen they would have but a short dash up the slope to engage their opponents.73 Robert Brown Potter was a self-­made soldier. Hailing from a distinguished family of clergymen and educators, he abandoned his New York City law practice to begin the war as a militia private, and he rose steadily through the ranks. He first drew wide attention by leading his regiment, the Fifty-­First New York, across “Burnside’s Bridge” at the battle of Antietam in September 1862. The thirty-­four-­year-­old Potter advanced to brigadier general in service under Burnside, and earned an excellent reputation as a division commander. Tall, well dressed, and taciturn, Potter, according to Theodore Lyman, was “a grave, pleasant-­looking man, known for his coolness and courage,” characteristics that would be required during the impending assault.74 Potter led two brigades commanded by Simon Griffin and Col. John I. Curtin. Griffin shared much in common with his immediate superior. A lawyer, who began the war as a private, the thirty-­nine-­year-­old New Hampshire native had also risen under Burnside’s leadership. His regiment, the Sixth New Hamp148

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shire, likewise earned distinction in the fighting at Burnside’s Bridge. His recent promotion to brigadier general apparently swelled his ego as one of his regimental commanders thought Griffin “puts on airs quite noticeably.” His brigade consisted of six New England outfits and the Second Maryland. Colonel Curtin, nephew of Pennsylvania’s governor, had seen service in the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania. A civil engineer and lumber manufacturer before the war, Curtin would celebrate his twenty-­seventh birthday on June 17.75 Griffin’s understrength brigade of perhaps 1,000 men drew the honor of leading the attack, and Griffin himself bore responsibility for devising the specific tactics to be employed. After midnight, he gingerly directed his troops forward nearly half a mile, the soldiers picking their way through felled timber and passing supine units of the Second Corps, maintaining almost absolute silence. When they reached the base of the bluff on which the Confederates had their defenses, Griffin halted and deployed his men in two lines. The Seventeenth Vermont occupied the right in advance with the Eleventh New Hampshire and Thirty-­Second Maine to its left in that order. The Sixth New Hampshire, Ninth New Hampshire, Thirty-­First Maine, and Second Maryland formed Griffin’s second line. Inattentive Confederate pickets lounged as little as forty feet in front of and above them, so close that their conversations could be easily overheard. The New Englanders conveyed their orders in whispers, and the soldiers secured canteens, tin cups, and all other accoutrements that might betray their presence. The men had received orders to fix bayonets and, for the most part, uncap their rifles to prevent an unwitting discharge. The assault would be executed as quickly and quietly as possible, relying on the bayonet and surprise to carry the day. “Gen. Griffin . . . felt sadly to put in his three best regiments,” wrote the pessimistic commander of the Seventeenth Vermont, “but it was Burnside’s order & made as too often such orders are upon information furnished by some incompetent popinjay on the staff who comes into some safe place and looks a minute when all is quiet & then reports . . . there was no alternative.”76 Curtin’s troops aligned behind and to the left of Griffin’s men. The Forty-­ Fifth Pennsylvania, Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, and Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts took the first line with the Seventh Rhode Island, Fifty-­Eighth Massachusetts, and Second New York Mounted Rifles (serving dismounted) in reserve. The Federals completed their deployment sometime after 1:00 a.m. and, faces to the ground, sought sleep or waited silently in the moonlight for the signal to charge at first daylight, two or three hours away. “No sounds were heard save the distant rumble of wagons and artillery, the trickling of the brook in the ravine, and the subdued breathing of the worn and weary men,” remembered one anxious soldier.77 June 16–17, 1864

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At 3:15 a.m. Burnside notified Meade that Potter’s division was in position. Thirty minutes later, Meade replied: “I want the attack to go on as ordered, with all the force you can put in.” Soon thereafter, “at first blush of the morning,” Potter’s two brigades arose and, without a cheer, started forward and up toward the unsuspecting Confederates in their front.78 Griffin’s brigade headed for the Shand house and points northwest while Curtin’s men veered to their left aiming roughly toward Battery 15. By all accounts, the Federals burst forward rapidly and with remarkable coordination, considering the terrain and the dim light of early dawn. Recovering from their initial shock at being under assault, Fulton’s Tennesseans unloosed a volley 150

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while the Georgia cannoneers leapt to their guns and pulled lanyards as quickly as they could. “Directly into this fiery ribbon, belching its leaden hail through the ranks of the charging line,” the Federals covered the short distance to the Confederate works. A few of the Yankees fired while others employed their bayonets. “It was a savage fight and we suffered frightful loss,” wrote General Griffin, whose horse fell to Confederate fire. “The Rebs stood well until our boys got at them with bayonets and butts of muskets,” remembered Pvt. Henry Clay Heisler of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania.79 Close-­quarters combat lasted only a few minutes. “Surrender, you d__d rebels,” shouted Lt. Charles E. Frost of the Eleventh New Hampshire, and many of them did. “We crept up so silently that before the rebs knew it we were on their rifle pits [and] were taking prisoners by the score,” echoed that regiment’s Pvt. Willard J. Templeton. “Nothing so astonished the rebels as much as our being able to get so close to them without discovery,” marveled a soldier in the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania. Charles Cummings of the Seventeenth Vermont spotted an officer crawling back out of one of the ravines and demanded his surrender. “Sir, I am an officer in the service of the Confederate States,” answered the offended graycoat, thinking he had been accosted by one of his own soldiers. “You are just the man I’m looking for,” replied an amused Colonel Cummings, “for I am the commanding officer of the Seventeenth Vermont in the service of the United States & you are my prisoner.”80 This unfortunate Tennessean was not alone. As many as 600 of Fulton’s men dropped their weapons. Slaten’s cannoneers abandoned all four of their guns, and Potter’s soldiers seized the flags of the Forty-­Fourth Tennessee, Sixty-­ Third Tennessee, and Seventeenth Tennessee as tangible evidence of their swift and certain victory. On Fulton’s left, Wise’s Brigade was also dislodged, losing Colonel Page to a mortal wound in the process, “shot through the body while going down the line to give an order.” Elements of Curtin’s command, suffering under an enfilade fire, targeted Pegram’s guns in Battery 15 and drove the Virginians away. Ransom’s regiments on the south shoulder of the breakthrough held their positions until ordered to fall back. In all, about a mile of the Hagood Line had crumbled in less than an hour. “It was the most brilliant thing we ever done,” wrote Private Templeton. The door of opportunity now lay ajar for the Federals if they could just walk through it.81 But as had become characteristic of the Union performance at Petersburg, they did not, despite the encouragement of the army commander. “Push any advantage Burnside and Barlow may have gained,” Meade instructed Hancock. “I am satisfied that Lee’s army is coming up and our only chance is now.” Meade’s message arrived while Burnside and Hancock were together and both June 16–17, 1864

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officers promised to exploit the advantage Potter’s facile victory had gained. Meade replied by congratulating Burnside, while reiterating that “it is of the utmost importance to do all we can before [the forces of Lee’s army] get up, as the resistance to be met will be proportionately less.”82 Potter expected help from the Second Corps on his right and Ledlie in his rear. Hancock would report after the war that Barlow “advanced against the enemy in conjunction with General Burnside, and succeeded in pushing forward his line considerably after some sharp fighting,” but evidence of such combat is lacking. His more contemporary account stated that “no assaults made by Second Corps to-­day.” Potter testified that just prior to his advance he learned that Barlow “had given up all idea of making the attack” and that Ledlie’s division were “all asleep, had abandoned all idea of an attack being made, and that it would take some time to get them ready.”83 Burnside ascribed Ledlie’s tardiness to “the obstacles which intervened between this division and General Potter’s, the whole ground being covered by fallen timber, over which it was very difficult to pass in the dark.” Griffin assigned the delay to something more sinister. “Many of our commanders were either lazy and stupid or kept themselves full of whiskey and didn’t know what they were about,” he wrote. For his part, Ledlie admitted no culpability and merely reported that “I immediately ordered forward my division, and occupied Battery 15 and Battery 16, with earth-­works connecting.” No matter what the cause—drunkenness, incompetence, sloth, or simple lack of planning— “by the time that gentleman arrived on the scene the curtain had dropped on yet another lost opportunity,” lamented Sgt. Leander O. Merriam of the Thirty-­ First Maine.84 The Confederates used the respite to create a new line of defense west of the shattered salient. Johnson rallied his remaining Tennesseans and ordered Elliott’s South Carolina Brigade forward from reserve. On the right, Ransom’s troops fell back with discipline and Wise’s survivors, supported by two batteries of artillery, held the left. General Wise claimed for himself a prominent role in fashioning the new defenses, which stood just east of Taylor’s (or Poor) Creek, several hundred yards behind the captured position.85 Potter advanced his skirmishers as close to the new Confederate line as possible and ordered the captured works to be refaced, including Battery 15. He moved artillery onto the Shand house plateau, making his headquarters in the damaged dwelling, so riddled with shell and bullet holes as to resemble “a pepper-­castor top!” A Maine soldier remembered that, for the men on Hickory Hill, “there was music by the full band. Solid shot, shells, grape, canister

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and minnies came in lively shape” for the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon.86 Potter’s division suffered perhaps 150 killed and wounded in the predawn attack. Confederate casualties went unreported, although Fulton’s prisoners no doubt accounted for the majority of the losses. Burnside issued a congratulatory order to Potter’s troops the following day, citing their “wearied condition” and praising their “persistence.” Yet, everyone realized that the chance to exploit another isolated tactical victory had been squandered. “It was the old story over again—a most spirited and gallant attack without adequate supports,” thought a veteran in the Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts. “Had a single corps been on the ground in position, or had the divisions which were ordered to support us been ready to advance, the fearful carnage of the two succeeding days would doubtless have been prevented, and the long, tedious, wasting, bloody siege of Petersburg might have been avoided.”87 While Potter mopped up on the Shand house plateau, waiting in vain for Ledlie’s division to pitch in, the Fifth Corps began deploying after an exhausting all-­night march. About 8:00 a.m. Cutler’s brigades shifted from their brief bivouac on the Avery plantation, “in the middle of wheat up to our eyes,” south to the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, where they began digging a line of entrenchments. Sgt. Robert Tilney of the Fifth New York in Ayres’s division visited the Avery home, “a fine colonial mansion,” that Tilney considered “the finest building I have seen in Virginia.” The colorful wallpaper attracted his attention, as did the damage caused by a large artillery projectile that had penetrated an interior wall. The home featured polished yellow-­pine floors, marble mantels and fireplace work, and large bay windows overlooking “splendid gardens.”88 By noon, Griffin’s and Crawford’s divisions had also arrived and Warren completed the positioning of his large command. Abandoning the Avery mansion to Confederate sharpshooters, the Fifth Corps troops extended northward from the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad on the left, behind the Avery house, to a point in the rear of the Ninth Corps and the Confederate works Potter had captured that morning. Bushrod Johnson’s new trenches rose prominently before them along the edge of a wood line west of the Avery house, aligned almost due north and south. Portions of three artillery batteries could be seen, although fire from Union guns kept them quiet. “The enemy did not show a very heavy force behind their lines,” thought Warren’s staff officer, Major Roebling, “although they may have had a heavy body concealed in the thick pine woods.”89 Curiously, Meade’s instinct to go for broke on the morning of June 17 cooled once Warren deployed. At 5:30 a.m. the army commander urged Han-

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cock to “call on Warren for troops” if he needed them to exploit Potter’s advantage. Hancock directed the Fifth Corps into position on Burnside’s left, but delegated responsibility to Warren for committing it to action, because his old wound had nearly immobilized him. “There is no doubt but what Cutler could have taken the Avery house at once by assault,” thought Roebling, “but no order was given to that effect.” When Warren informed Meade at 11:​​00 a.m. that his corps had arrived and that he “was ready for whatever is to be done,” Meade instructed him only to extend his skirmish line and conduct a reconnaissance. Meade informed Grant that “Warren is taking position to cover our left flank, placing one division in line of battle and holding the balance of his corps to meet any attack on our left flank, which I anticipate . . . as soon as Lee’s army gets up,” although it is difficult to understand why he thought such an offensive was imminent considering his understanding of Lee’s still-­distant location.90 Even less activity engaged Martindale’s troops on the Union right. The Confederates opened a lively cannonade and skirmish fire on the Eighteenth Corps at dawn, causing the Federals to prepare additional works. “You should have seen us throw dirt,” boasted a New Yorker in Curtis’s brigade. “Roots and stumps were cut through and out with the shovels as easily as though they had been twigs.” The Federal guns responded in kind, but neither side took the offensive. The diary entry of a Massachusetts soldier summarized the situation succinctly: “Plesant. Under fire, and men lying around, without much of anything to do.” Martindale expected to be relieved by either Wright or Burnside, and so marked time doing nothing to support Birney’s half-­hearted advance on his left. Only sharpshooters kept busy as Meade ordered a thorough inspection along his entire front.91 While the Pennsylvanian managed affairs in front of Petersburg, Grant, Butler, and Horatio Wright focused on the contested ground at Bermuda Hundred through an apparently dense fog of war. Butler contacted Grant shortly after sunrise, reporting no significant changes along his lines overnight and that the two Sixth Corps divisions had not fully arrived. “If you desire, when Wright’s troops get up and are refreshed by a little rest, I will endeavor to drive the enemy back on the railroad or turnpike,” he informed Grant.92 Grant waited two and a half hours to respond, evincing an odd lassitude in dealing with affairs on Butler’s front. He eventually informed Butler that he had dispatched a staff officer, Lt. Colonel Babcock, to investigate the situation and relay Butler’s recommendations and need for reinforcements. “It seems to me important that we should hold our advantage gained yesterday and maintain a position commanding the road between Petersburg and Richmond,” Grant added, with unconscious understatement. His language suggested that he did 154

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not realize that Butler had abandoned his toeholds on the railroad and turnpike the previous afternoon. Moreover, if a question of reinforcements existed, what was the mission of the two divisions of Wright’s corps that had landed at Point of Rocks and Bermuda Hundred, which were even then marching toward Butler’s front lines? Butler complicated matters by replying that, while either Wright’s or Smith’s corps would be sufficient to achieve Grant’s objective, he preferred his own Eighteenth Corps for the job because its officers were familiar with the terrain. Grant promised to gratify Butler’s wish “as rapidly as possible” by swapping Wright’s troops for Smith’s. The need to act quickly before Lee’s fresh units could intrude on the operational equation—the contingency that so motivated Meade that morning—seemed irrelevant to both Butler and Grant, as, manifestly, it would take significant time for two army corps to switch places from opposite sides of the Appomattox River.93 The Sixth Corps’ soldiers reflected the confusion and uncertainty of their mission at Bermuda Hundred. Disembarking in the predawn hours of June 17, Wright’s troops began marching west through terra incognita. “I don’t know where this place is,” admitted Pvt. Henry Burnham of the Tenth Vermont. “I guess it is no place in particular, but it is not far from several places near here.” Passing Butler’s impressive observation tower on Cobb’s Hill, the men tramped a few miles and halted behind the front lines held by Foster’s weary regiments. “Evidently we are off here for a purpose, but . . . to the rank and file the future is wholly inscrutable and what that purpose is we do not know,” grumbled a soldier in the Ninth New York Heavy Artillery. Butler’s troops brought hardtack and kettles full of hot coffee to refresh their hungry comrades from the Army of the Potomac, who went into temporary bivouac entirely removed from enemy contact. At 12:​​45 p.m. Wright asked General Meade “what the intentions of the major-­general commanding the army might be in reference to my remaining here.”94 Little had disturbed the peace along the lines that morning. The Confederates opened a brisk fire near Ware Bottom Church at dawn that the Federals of the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois and Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts interpreted as a failed offensive. A couple of dozen Southerners fell into Union hands. Pickett’s men then contented themselves with strengthening the obstructions in front of the recaptured lines as the morning action degenerated into the usual deadly skirmish firing. “If you didn’t want to be shot, keep out of sight,” observed a Federal soldier. The Confederates unearthed ordnance they had buried earlier at Battery Dantzler, near the Howlett house, and used it to fire at the Union gunboats below them in the James. General Lee shifted his headquarters south to the Clay house, in position to better coordinate affairs between Beauregard June 16–17, 1864

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and the forces north of the James. But as the morning passed into another broiling afternoon, the Union offensive that began with so much promise on Potter’s front sputtered to a halt on both sides of the Appomattox.95 The fog of war also enveloped the Confederate high command on June 17. Lee opened his correspondence with Beauregard at 6:00 a.m. expressing delight with the Creole’s repulse of the Federal assaults the previous day, urging him to recover his lost lines, and inquiring again about Grant’s whereabouts. Beauregard replied three hours later that the Federals had “two corps in my front,” that it was impossible for him to regain the captured real estate, and that he had no positive knowledge of Grant’s movements. “Could I not be sufficiently re-­enforced to take the offensive [and] thus get rid of the enemy here?” he inquired.96 At the time Beauregard dictated this message, Potter’s attack had ended five hours earlier and Cutler’s division was uncoiling opposite Beauregard’s right near the Avery house and the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad. Beauregard’s field headquarters occupied the Griffith house, near the intersection of Baxter and Jerusalem Plank Roads, less than a mile from the Ninth and Fifth Corps deployments. Three brigades of his troops had been displaced by Potter’s assault, and others could see Warren’s men moving into position. How the Confederate commander and his subordinates failed to identify these two new Union corps defies explanation.97 Beauregard revealed the depths of his confusion at 11:​​15 a.m. when he reported to Lee that Warren had likely headed toward the Virginia Piedmont to confront Early, suggesting that if Lee reinforced him at Petersburg he could “crush the enemy in our immediate front.” Lee demurred. “Until I can get more definite information of Grant’s movements I do not think it prudent to draw more troops to this side of the river,” he replied. Then, quickly, the news from Petersburg changed yet again. “The enemy carried this morning another of the weak points in the old lines,” Beauregard reported. “We greatly need re-­ enforcements to resist such large odds against us.” In a subsequent message the Louisiana general informed Lee that a local citizen reported seeing “large numbers of Grant’s troops” crossing the James, perhaps as many as 30,000.98 One can only imagine Lee’s reaction to these varying versions of the situation at Petersburg. One minute Beauregard contemplated crushing the enemy; the next, disaster stared him in the face. In the morning, Warren was heading west; by the afternoon he must have been part of a massive Federal movement to Southside Virginia. “Have no information of Grant’s crossing James River,” Lee replied at 4:30 p.m., “but upon your report have ordered troops up to Chaffin’s Bluff.” Shortly thereafter, Rooney Lee, having ridden within sight of the 156

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Union pontoon bridge, at last confirmed for his father that the Yankees were, indeed, on the south side of the river.99 By this time, Beauregard was contending with a renewal of the Ninth Corps attacks that had died out some nine hours earlier. Orlando Bolivar Willcox, commander of Burnside’s Third Division, led this assault. A native of Detroit and a West Point classmate of his corps commander, Willcox served in the old army for a decade before resigning to practice law. He returned as colonel of the First Michigan and led his regiment onto the plains of Manassas in July 1861, where he was wounded and captured. Imprisoned for more than a year, Willcox received a commission as brigadier general upon his release and served as a division commander under Burnside through the numerous theaters in which the Ninth Corps saw action. Theodore Lyman considered him “a negative looking man, with much whisker,” and despite a creditable record, Bolivar, as he was known to his friends, would never earn promotion to major general.100 Willcox’s two brigades spent the night of June 16 to the rear and south of the Second Corps, and about 10:​​00 a.m. on the 17th moved southwest to occupy the ravine fronting the Shand house plateau. Burnside assigned Major Morton responsibility for directing Willcox’s deployment and determining the specific target for his impending attack. Considered “a man of eccentric disposition, but of much ability,” this thirty-­three-­year-­old Philadelphian had matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania at age fourteen and after graduation enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy, where he finished second in his class. Morton compiled a distinguished record as an engineer before the war and then held top engineering positions in the western theater. In possible evidence of his idiosyncrasy, Morton relinquished his general’s star in the volunteer service and reverted to his permanent rank as major in late 1863, landing in Burnside’s corps as chief engineer the following May.101 Morton assigned Hartranft’s brigade to Willcox’s front, dividing the command into two lines as well as the wrinkled terrain would allow. The Second Michigan, 109th New York, Thirty-­Seventh Wisconsin, and Thirty-­Eighth Wisconsin filed into the ravine from left to right. Hartranft’s second rank had the Twenty-­Seventh Michigan on the right, the Eighth Michigan in the center, and the Fifty-­First Pennsylvania on the left. The Second Michigan, “the directing regiment,” formed at right angles to the rest of the brigade, facing more northerly than to the west. This faulty formation would yield devastating consequences. Col. Benjamin C. Christ’s brigade formed in reserve behind Hartranft’s 1,900 men. Most of the division lay in the shelter of the ravine, but some soldiers hunkered down on the crest beyond.102 Johnson’s rallying Confederates waited for them several hundred yards to June 16–17, 1864

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the west. Wise’s, Fulton’s, Elliott’s, and Ransom’s Brigades, arrayed from north to south, formed a reentrant angle with artillery placed on both flanks and a battery concealed in the woods behind the Confederate center. Their position largely occupied a field of knee-­high corn. The Rebels had feverishly improved the slight ridgeline they now occupied by stacking rails and digging breastworks. “We had no trenching tools and cut the earth with our bayonets,” remembered Capt. William Henry Harder of the Twenty-­Third Tennessee, “and through it out with our hands, sides of canteens, or anything we could raise earth with.” By midafternoon, the Southerners had fashioned a barrier that rose about waist-­high, an improvement made possible by the long delay between Potter’s assault and Willcox’s deployment.103 The Confederate artillery maintained “a furious cannonade of shell & shot” that occasionally found a mark among Willcox’s supine soldiers. The Federals waited in the broiling sun as Major Morton, compass in hand, determined the precise angle that Hartranft’s troops would follow in their assault. By 2:00 p.m. he was ready: “Forward, double quick! charge!” rang the orders, and Hartranft’s troops “went pell-­mell, cheering and yelling like demons,” crested the ravine, and made for the Confederate line on the far side of the field.104 The Southern artillery opened immediately, playing with particular effect on the Second Michigan on Hartranft’s left. Seventy-­seven out of the ninety-­ five men of the left companies in that regiment fell in that iron hailstorm. In a matter of moments, smoke and dust enveloped the entire battlefield, obscuring the Confederate line and adding to the confusion inherent in Hartranft’s flawed deployment. “I think the shells were the thickest in this fight of any I was ever in,” testified a soldier in the 109th New York. The Confederates first glimpsed the Union battle flags, then the tops of their rifles, and afterward their heads. “Steady boys, keep cool,” counseled an officer in the Twenty-­Third South Carolina. “Don’t fire until I give the word.” As soon as the Yankees presented a full target, the Southern infantry unleashed a deadly volley. “Give it to them,” shouted the South Carolinian, “and we certainly did in great style,” remembered one of his men.105 Hartranft’s assault lasted for about twenty minutes, the formation skewed by the Second Michigan being advanced on the left and steering northward; the right end of the Federals’ first line had also advanced beyond the center. Despite the clumsy alignment, the Federals managed to reach within ten feet of the Confederate works and began to see the Rebels removing their artillery and scattering to the rear. Major Morton then ordered the attackers to “half wheel to the right,” an ill-­advised maneuver that caused Hartranft’s entire line to expose its left flank to the Confederate marksmen. This order “completely broke 158

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up our organization” and the Confederates, “with a yell of derision,” pounded the Federals with renewed fire as Hartranft’s men advanced for at least 200 deadly yards parallel to the Confederate works. The Union battle line “melted away in a moment.” “Column after column fled like chaff before the wind from our hot fire making all haste to regain their entrenchments,” remembered a South Carolinian. Clingman’s North Carolinians, on Hartranft’s right, added their volleys to the equation and on the Union left “the tar-­heel grit” of Ransom’s Brigade “poured hot minies into them.” Major Morton was numbered among the slain, while many of Hartranft’s survivors sought shelter in the Second Corps works to the north.106 Burnside had asked Hancock to occupy the enemy during Willcox’s assault June 16–17, 1864

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and to protect his men should the offensive fail. The Second Corps artillery opened in concert with Willcox’s advance and laid down an impressive covering fire, while General Miles made a demonstration in front of Hare’s Hill. On Willcox’s left even this tepid level of support failed to materialize: Warren’s corps received no orders to cooperate with the attack, Meade’s worries about the army’s left flank taking precedence. Christ’s reserve brigade advanced on schedule but, seeing the fate of Hartranft’s assault, Christ halted his men halfway to the Confederate works, lay down, “and started to burrow.” Despite “a storm of missiles sent on them from the rebel batteries,” Christ’s troops maintained their advanced position.107 Morton was merely the most prominent of Willcox’s casualties that afternoon. Hartranft reported losses of 840 men out of his brigade alone. The brigade commander suffered a minor wound himself. “It seems as though our bluecoats lay there thickly as sheaves of grain on a bountiful harvest-­field,” wrote a Wisconsin soldier. “Verily it was a harvest of death.” The Thirty-­Seventh Wisconsin reported 138 casualties, of which forty-­four were killed and ten more mortally wounded. The 109th New York lost 140 out of 179 engaged. Confederate casualties are unknown, but undoubtedly much less severe than those of their opponents.108 A combination of factors deprived Willcox of a breakthrough. The division commander cited a lack of artillery support to suppress the enemy batteries that inflicted such mayhem on Hartranft’s attackers. He might have just as easily mentioned the failure of Warren’s corps to relieve the pressure on his left as his men left the shelter of the Shand house ravine. Hartranft, Willcox, and Morton could do nothing about the dust clouds that reduced visibility and hindered command and control of the attacking regiments, but the failure to rectify the faulty alignment that compromised the integrity of the battle line— a flaw that the brigade commander noticed—can be blamed on no one but the officers in charge. Many of the participants cited Morton’s senseless order to wheel to the right as the proximate cause of the disaster. In any event, Beauregard’s beleaguered troops managed to hold their position in front of Petersburg and forestall the collapse of their outmanned defenses until at least the next Union thrust. The Creole summoned Gracie’s Alabama Brigade from its defensive positions along Swift Creek in midafternoon to bolster his troops, who had now sustained two division-­sized attacks during the day.109 At Bermuda Hundred, action resumed north of Swift Creek that afternoon. The Confederates had managed to restore most of their original primary defense line, but a section of the works east of the Clay house remained under Union control. The Southerners conducted a thorough area reconnaissance 160

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and determined upon a late afternoon assault using elements of Pickett’s and Field’s Divisions to expel the enemy. During the afternoon, Lee ordered General Anderson to reexamine the situation to see if, by constructing a new line of trenches, the Union foothold might be contained without hazarding an attack. Anderson took a fresh look and decided that an offensive would, in fact, be unnecessary, informing General Field of his decision. Anderson directed a message to Pickett canceling the attack, but it failed to reach him in time. Consequently, about 4:00 p.m. Pickett’s veterans charged toward the Federal enclave “in the most spirited style.”110 The Texas Brigade guarded Pickett’s right, and when the Virginians went forward Gregg’s men advanced spontaneously with them. Perry’s Alabamans and DuBose’s Georgians also participated in the attack, as did the skirmishers from Brig. Gen. John Bratton’s South Carolinians, who had rejoined their division comrades earlier that day. “There was no alignment, no attempt at any, and such a yell as resounded was never, before or since, heard between Richmond and Petersburg,” remembered a Texan. “The works were literally filled with blue jackets,” recalled William Jordan of the Fifteenth Alabama. “They made no resistance whatever.” Most of the surprised Federal defenders fled, although a few were killed, wounded, or captured.111 The Confederates’ victims came from Hawley’s and Howell’s brigades. While the Sixth Connecticut, Seventh Connecticut, Eighty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, and Thirty-­Ninth Illinois retired in good order, the Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts of Plaisted’s command remained in position on the right shoulder of the incursion near Ware Bottom Church. Eventually, elements of the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois extended a line linking to the left flank of the Twenty-­Fourth, which received assistance on its right from the 100th New York. Casualties were generally quite light and the Confederates did not attempt to press their advantage.112 By 5:00 p.m. Lee was able to wire both Beauregard and President Davis that the entire Howlett Line, from Dunn’s Mill to the Howlett house, was back under Confederate control. Lee expressed relief at restoring an unfettered connection between Richmond and Petersburg in a humorous message to Anderson: “General: I take great pleasure in presenting to you my congratulations upon the conduct of the men of your corps. I believe that they will carry anything they are put against. We tried very hard to stop Pickett’s men from capturing the breastworks of the enemy, but couldn’t do it. I hope his loss has been small.”113 The mood was anything but lighthearted at Butler’s headquarters that night. The general informed Grant at 5:15 p.m. of the loss of the old Confederate line and ninety minutes later Grant replied, asking Butler to retake the lost June 16–17, 1864

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works if possible. Grant informed his subordinate that he had ordered Smith to Bermuda Hundred and that he could retain Wright until the Sixth Corps was no longer needed. In the meantime, General Terry wired Butler that in his opinion a “very heavy force” would be required to regain the ground lost during the afternoon assault. Acting on Grant’s instructions, Butler replied to Terry at 7:00 p.m. that “I desire the most strenuous efforts to retake the line which we held this morning. It is most important.” Ten minutes later, he instructed Wright to support Terry with his entire force. Wright promised to assign Ricketts’s division to the task and use Russell if necessary.114 Nothing would come of Butler’s promised counteroffensive. Wright and Terry crept cautiously forward, their effort never rising above the level of a reconnaissance. They concluded that the Confederates held too strong a position to assault, even as an impatient Grant reiterated at 9:45 p.m. the importance of blocking the railroad between Richmond and Petersburg. At 10:​​20 p.m. Wright telegraphed Butler summarizing his thinking and explaining why, in his judgment, the targeted strike that Butler had ordered was impractical. Butler exploded. “At 7:10 this evening I sent an order to you and General Terry to do some fighting,” Butler fumed. “At 10:​​30 I get no fighting, but an argument.” Butler’s frustration is understandable. The opportunity to isolate Petersburg from the Army of Northern Virginia had vanished, although the “Beast” was not entirely blameless, since he never visited the front to enforce execution of his orders.115 In fact, the window of opportunity to defeat an unsupported Beauregard was closing fast, too. At 5:00 p.m., about the same time Pickett and Field expelled Terry from the Howlett Line, Beauregard finally provided Lee with definitive information regarding the location of the Army of the Potomac. “Prisoners just taken report themselves as belonging to the Second, Ninth and Eighteenth Corps,” wrote Beauregard. “They state that the Fifth and Sixth Corps are coming on.” As Lee contemplated this news, a few hours later a second message arrived from Petersburg. Beauregard explained that the large force he now faced compelled him to retire to a new line closer to the city. “This I shall hold as long as possible, but,” he added ominously, “without reinforcements, I may have to evacuate the city very shortly.”116 General Lee at last possessed the information and the confidence in it to commit the remainder of his army to the Southside, if not entirely to the defense of Petersburg. He ordered Hill’s corps to move to Chaffin’s Bluff and prepare to cross the James at early dawn. Kershaw’s Division crossed at Drewry’s Bluff and would march as far south as Redwater Creek that night.117 Meade’s clock was ticking and he would venture once more to take Peters162

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burg on the evening of June 17. His weapon would be the First Division of the Ninth Corps. This unit brought a troubled command organization to its task that day, starting with the commander. James Hewitt Ledlie, a thirty-­two-­year-­ old native of Utica, New York, had done little to warrant his high position. Ledlie trained as a civil engineer, worked in railroad construction before the war, and volunteered for service in April 1861. He rose through the field-­officer ranks of a New York artillery regiment and spent more than two years in backwater assignments in North Carolina, using self-­promotion and political influence with the likes of Secretary of State William H. Seward to gain a brigadier’s star in late 1863. As the officer corps dwindled during the Overland Campaign, Ledlie found himself transferred to brigade command in the Ninth Corps—his first infantry assignment. Ostentatiously drunk on May 24, 1864, at the North Anna, Ledlie led his brigade to disaster, but somehow his moral and tactical incompetence escaped Burnside, Meade, and Grant, because on June 9 he received promotion to division command. He was “a good soul, but a very weak man,” stated a member of his staff, “and no more fit to command a division than half the privates under him.”118 Ledlie’s division contained three brigades on June 17, but attrition had been so severe that only one of them still operated with a full colonel at its head. That man, Jacob Parker Gould, led the First Brigade. Like Ledlie, the forty-­ two-­year-­old Gould practiced civil engineering before the war, his education at Norwich University providing him exposure to the military arts. The Massachusetts native assumed command of his brigade in May 1864 and earned a sterling reputation among his troops, having led the Fifty-­Ninth Massachusetts prior to his promotion. “No braver officer ever drew sword,” thought a comrade, who praised Gould’s habit of personally leading his men to the assault. His brigade consisted of just three Massachusetts regiments—all that remained of the command Ledlie had sacrificed three weeks earlier at the North Anna.119 The Second Brigade belonged to Col. Ebenezer W. Peirce, but Peirce served as corps officer of the day on June 17, a position that one of his skeptical subordinates believed permitted him to stay safely in the rear. Lt. Col. Joseph H. Barnes of the Twenty-­Ninth Massachusetts—a thirty-­one-­year-­old native of Hingham—assumed field command in Peirce’s absence. In addition to his own regiment, Barnes led the Third Maryland, Twenty-­First Massachusetts, 100th Pennsylvania, and a new regiment, the 179th New York.120 Ledlie’s Third Brigade consisted of two large heavy artillery regiments. They began the day under Col. Elisha G. Marshall, who fell wounded during Willcox’s offensive. Lt. Col. Benjamin Griffin Barney of the Second Provisional Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery stepped up to replace Marshall. Barney, who June 16–17, 1864

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had been born thirty-­six years earlier in Nantucket, Massachusetts, also had the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery under his command. In addition to these ten infantry regiments, Ledlie enjoyed the service of three artillery batteries under the control of Capt. John B. Eaton. The division strength went unreported on June 17, but probably totaled about 5,000.121 After failing to arrive at the front in time to aid Potter during his morning assault, Ledlie positioned his division in abandoned Confederate Batteries 15 and 16. Ledlie may have personally suggested that Burnside use his division offensively, but regardless of the origin of the idea, at about 4:00 p.m. the corps commander directed the First Division to shift northward into the ravine fronting the Shand house. Ninety minutes later, Ledlie arranged his troops for an attack. He placed Gould and Barnes in front, with the 100th Pennsylvania arrayed as skirmishers covering the entire deployment. Colonel Gould assumed overall command, delegating the direction of his brigade to Col. Stephen M. Weld of the Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts. Ledlie angled the Twenty-­First Massachusetts on the right of his line to protect that flank and positioned the left of Barnes’s command in a similar fashion to guard the opposite flank. The men advanced to the edge of the ravine, while Barney’s heavies took position about a hundred paces to the rear. While they were waiting for the word to go forward, incoming Confederate artillery claimed thirty-­two victims among the prone Federal soldiers.122 The offending batteries were positioned beyond Ledlie’s flanks and opposite the left end of his alignment, some 500 yards west of the Shand house ravine. Clingman’s North Carolinians supported the guns on Ledlie’s right, Wise’s Virginians and elements of Elliott’s South Carolinians stood opposite the Federal center, and Ransom’s Tar Heels deployed on Ledlie’s left, with Fulton’s survivors to their right. Gracie’s Alabama Brigade had arrived from Swift Creek and waited in reserve. The low row of earthworks here had been hastily constructed and offered only modest protection.123 General Ledlie apparently took advantage of this interlude to indulge in his favorite habit. “Our . . . division commander was in no condition to exercise command of anything at that time,” recalled a member of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts. “The supply of artificial courage which he had taken carried him beyond the proper counterpoise and rendered him hors-­de-­combat, in which condition he remained in the ravine.” Gould assumed unofficial command of the division while Ledlie raved in an alcohol-­saturated state safely in the rear. The field officers instructed their troops to load but uncap their rifles. “I knew from previous experience . . . that, if we made a charge and the men had caps on their guns, when we got within a few yards of the works the men would stop and 164

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fire and then turn and run, and that would be the end of it,” thought Colonel Weld. “The only chance was to keep on the steady jump and rush them right over the works.” Weld told his men to “leg it like the devil” at the order to charge and “don’t stop for anything.”124 At one point it appeared there might be no offensive as one of Ledlie’s aides crept out of the ravine and informed Gould and Barnes that the assault had been canceled. An instinct to protect the exposed men at the front of the division may account for these instructions or they might have been the product of Ledlie’s inebriated absence. Moments later, however, just before sunset, word arrived for the division to advance. The entire front line arose and moved at the double quick, and Barney’s heavy artillerists did not lag far behind. The June 16–17, 1864

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attackers endured “a fire of grape and canister solid shot railroad iron minnies and I don’t know what,” and “with a regular Yankee yell” gained the Confederate works. “We drove them like sheep,” thought Pvt. Charles D. Austin of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery. The severe Confederate fire took its toll, however, dropping men by scores and causing the Union line to become “considerably broken; and though the charge was made most gallantly, it was merely a rush of men without much organization.” The Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery suffered 213 killed and wounded in forty minutes.125 Gould’s assault struck the portion of the Confederate line held by the Forty-­Sixth Virginia and Thirty-­Fourth Virginia of Wise’s Brigade and the Twenty-­Third South Carolina of Elliott’s command. “They charged our works in eight lines,” recalled Sergeant Hicks of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia, with the Union artillery thundering in support. The Carolinians broke first, followed quickly by the Virginians. “The sun set in a sea of blood and the foundation of the earth seemed to heave and shake,” remembered one Confederate. Capt. Samuel Davis Preston at the head of a company of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia arrested the retreat after it had fallen back about 100 yards. The plucky Southerners halted and attempted to regain the lost ground, but the Yankees enjoyed the advantage of numbers and momentum. Despite Preston’s efforts, the center of the Confederate line collapsed for good, leaving the Ninth Corps men in control of a salient of captured works. The Forty-­Sixth Virginia lost some 131 men during the assault. Clingman’s and Ransom’s Tar Heels, on the margins of the penetration, refused their flanks and held firm.126 Gould’s victorious soldiers now needed help to exploit their advantage. Four regiments from Willcox’s division moved up, three of them on Gould’s right, attempting to link with Barlow to the north, and the First Michigan Sharpshooters to the left. The Michiganders executed the most spirited attack, striking the Thirty-­Fifth North Carolina of Ransom’s Brigade and capturing three officers and eighty-­six men along with the regimental flag; brigade commander Christ fell wounded leading the attack.127 Farther to the left, Crawford’s Fifth Corps division moved forward after dark. These men became “bewildered” by the ravines surrounding the Avery house, squandering some thirty minutes before gaining the proper trajectory. Colonel Carle’s Pennsylvanians in advance on Crawford’s right made contact with the enemy, captured about sixty men and a battle flag, but then “became mixed up with the 9th Corps” and eventually fell back under the same pressure that was about to visit Ledlie’s division. Barlow’s troops on Burnside’s right engaged in a fight with Alfred Colquitt’s Brigade near the Hare house plateau for

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more than two hours, but exerted little influence on the Ninth Corps’ immediate front.128 About 10:​​00 p.m. the course of the engagement took a radical change as a series of Confederate counterattacks forced Ledlie’s division to relinquish the captured works. Gould’s men had been exchanging fire with the Confederates for two hours, and their supply of ammunition had almost run out. Messengers repeatedly dashed to the rear requesting more cartridges and eventually a staff officer was dispatched to appeal directly to the division commander. He located Ledlie in his ravine lying on the floor of a tent: “General, the troops have no ammunition: I was sent to request some ammunition,” he explained. Ledlie roused himself, inquiring “What troops?” “The troops under your command,” replied the astonished subaltern, to which Ledlie allegedly replied, “Let the troops go to ____ .” Lt. Col. George P. Hawkes of the Twenty-­First Massachusetts confirmed that “our Division Commander . . . was drunk. He was taken from his headquarters tent and sent to a hiding place.”129 Meanwhile along the front lines, an inexperienced lieutenant in the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery foolishly leapt upon the works and shouted at the top of his lungs, “We are out of ammunition,” directing his comments to soldiers in the rear. Rather than eliciting relief, the lieutenant’s request helped trigger a charge by elements of Ransom’s, Clingman’s, and Elliott’s brigades.130 Under a nearly full moon, the Thirty-­Fifth North Carolina, Fifty-­Sixth North Carolina, and Twenty-­Second South Carolina shifted to their left and rear and then charged the southern base of the Federal salient. “Our boys raised the yell and on we went into an open field for about 100 yards, the bullets whizzing around my head like bees,” recalled Pvt. William C. Leak of the Twenty-­ Second South Carolina. “When we got to the entrenchment, we jumped right in amongst the Yankees.” Brutal hand-­to-­hand combat ensued in which the Carolinians inflicted and sustained serious casualties, including Col. John G. Jones, who was mortally wounded commanding the Thirty-­Fifth North Carolina. On the opposite end of the Union penetration, Clingman’s Fifty-­First North Carolina and four companies of the Sixty-­First North Carolina drove back the Federals, who left some 300 prisoners behind. The Thirty-­Fifth North Carolina lost seven officers in addition to Colonel Jones, and more than 300 men killed or wounded.131 Gracie’s brigade also participated in the redeeming counterattack, but perhaps not to the extent of some later claims. Beauregard’s postwar account credited the Alabamans with the capture of as many as 2,300 Federals, a ridiculous exaggeration, and Gracie’s son perpetuated the myth that his father’s brigade

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alone deserved credit for the successful counterattack. A contemporary letter from the commander of the Fifty-­Ninth Alabama paints a different picture. Bolling Hall Jr. testified that his regiment was on the front line during Gould’s assault, to the right of Wise’s Virginians, and despite fighting “in beautiful style” was compelled to fall back with the rest of the Confederate center “where they stood until the Yankees were completely in our rear having taken the works on the left.” There can be no doubt that Gracie’s soldiers bravely contributed to the counterattack, but as one Carolinian wrote, “All our historians give the Alabamians all the credit,” when it should have been shared with Ransom’s and Clingman’s men along with the Twenty-­Second South Carolina.132 By midnight, the fighting at last died away and the Federals returned to the ravine from which their charge had emanated some four hours earlier. Colonel Weld sought out General Ledlie and found him asleep. A staff officer roused the general. “We have been driven back and our men are all scattered,” reported Weld, “and I don’t know what to do.” Ledlie “drew himself up in a hazey-­dazey sort of way and said, ‘Why Colonel Weld, there are thousands of men all around here’ and then tumbled down in a drunken sleep again.”133 Ledlie would eventually awaken, but hundreds of men in blue and gray who fought that night would not. The general reported 841 casualties on June 17, including 124 officers and men killed. This may have understated the case. Staff officer Charles Mills estimated the losses at 1,000, and some regiments counted as many as half their effectives killed, wounded, or captured. The battlefield presented a grim specter the following morning. “Our men lay piled up on the outside and the rebels on the inside, most of them on both sides having been killed with the bayonet,” wrote Capt. Charles H. Salter of the Sixteenth Michigan. “Over 200 dead on each side piled up about a line of breastworks, not 100 yards long.” Mills agreed: “For so small a force engaged, I never saw so many dead. The grape and canister make horrible wounds. It was a consolation to find almost as many gray as blue.” Confederate losses, as usual, went unreported.134 So ended the fighting on June 17, another day of missed opportunities for the Union army. One observer considered the failure to take advantage of Ledlie’s temporary incursion the result of “absolute negligence on the part of every one. Not even ammunition could be procured,—to say nothing of reinforcements.” Those fresh troops might have come from Potter’s division, which spent the evening huddled in the Shand house ravine in idle reserve. Crawford’s weak efforts on Burnside’s left contributed almost nothing to the offensive and, while Barlow’s men fought tenaciously, their advance drew little from the Confederates’ ability to restore their lost entrenchments.135 The same combination of factors that had prevented a decisive Federal 168

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victory on June 15 and 16 explains the relatively barren results of the sustained combat on June 17. Beauregard and his brigade commanders deserve great credit for holding the Hagood Line for forty-­eight hours under unrelenting pressure, but even the best Confederate generalship and bravest fighting could not have prevailed against competent leadership. Meade could not coordinate the efforts of his several corps; Butler and his subordinates lacked the will and ability to recognize the importance of holding the key transportation routes that Beauregard had been forced to abandon; and Grant remained disengaged at City Point, exercising almost no influence on the conduct of the two armies under his command. Mrs. Sarah Butler, the general’s wife, may have best summarized Union generalship during these two days: “We seem to lack strategic skill, the electric fire of genius, that launches the thunderbolt of war where the enemy look not for it,” she wrote her husband on the evening of June 17. On the following day, that enemy would be ready.136

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five

We Have Done All That It Is Possible for Men to Do and Must Be Resigned to the Result June 18, 1864 The savage fighting southeast of Petersburg finally ebbed into the occasional skirmish fire shortly before midnight on June 17. “If there was ever a place on earth that looked like the infernal regions, this was the place,” shuddered a Virginia soldier as he gazed out on the moonlit battlefield, littered with writhing wounded and silent corpses. Between dawn and dark, Beauregard’s two divisions under Robert Hoke and Bushrod Johnson had endured three division-­ sized assaults from the Union Ninth Corps as well as supporting flank attacks by the Eighteenth, Second, and Fifth Corps. The Confederates surrendered portions of their Hagood Line, but managed to maintain a viable perimeter while inflicting and sustaining substantial casualties. Union gains, however, persuaded Beauregard that he must implement his plan to occupy a new line of defense closer to Petersburg. When at last the artillery and musketry cacophony abated and the calendar flipped to June 18, the Confederate commander issued an order to withdraw.1 Beauregard had intended to relocate his line immediately after dark, but the Federal offensive that began around sunset delayed his plans. Earlier in the day, Beauregard’s chief engineer, David B. Harris, along with artillery commander Col. Hilary P. Jones, had examined the ground between the Appomattox River and Baxter Road, embedding white stakes along prominent points of their proposed line. David Bullock Harris had served loyally under Beauregard since the first battle of Manassas in 1861. A native of central Virginia, distinguished graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and prewar tobacco farmer and 170

civil engineer, the forty-­nine-­year-­old Harris earned the highest marks from comrades and his superior. The esteemed Confederate artillerist, E. P. Alexander, considered Harris “the very type of everything brave & modest & gentle, of indefatigable energy, & of most excellent engineering judgment and skill.” Harris had contributed to the Confederacy’s defenses along the Mississippi River and at Charleston, and Beauregard considered him his only infallible officer. Beauregard directed Hoke’s and Johnson’s staffs to study Harris’s new line and learn where to place their various brigades and batteries once the fallback order arrived.2 The new “Harris Line” commenced near the Appomattox River in front of its tributary, Poor Creek, then ran behind the New Market race course, crossed the creek, and continued to and across Baxter Road, terminating near Jerusalem Plank Road, where it rejoined the original Dimmock Line. On average, the Harris Line measured 800 to 1,000 yards west of the Hagood Line, defining the last feasible defensive ground east of Petersburg. About 12:​​30 a.m. on the 18th, Beauregard authorized the lighting of multiple campfires to pre­sent the illusion of stability, while the combat-­weary brigades of his army silently retreated to their new positions. Nearly every man carried at least one extra weapon gleaned from the wounded and dead to the new line, and General Gracie instructed his Alabamans to bring as many as five. Pickets remained along the old perimeter to keep suspicious Federals at bay. William H. Harder of the Twenty-­Third Tennessee took command of 140 sentries and shifted them from one end of the old line to the other all night “to make it appear that we were waiting for the morning.” Despite their exhaustion, the motivated soldiers immediately began fortifying their new line using bayonets, knives, and tin cups to expedite the work. “We worked for life,” explained a Georgian.3 Meanwhile on the north side of the Appomattox River, General Lee received a series of correspondence and messengers during the night that resulted, at last, in his orders to transfer nearly all the Army of Northern Virginia to Petersburg. At 10:​​20 p.m. on June 17, Lee’s son and cavalry officer, “Rooney” Lee, reiterated his earlier report that the entire Federal army had crossed the James. This confirmed for Lee the wisdom of his 10:​​00 p.m. order to First Corps commander Dick Anderson, directing Joseph Kershaw’s Division, to continue its march from Chesterfield County to Petersburg at 3:00  a.m. Lee also requested that Anderson arrange the defenses at Bermuda Hundred so Charles Field’s Division might also be available for service south of the Appomattox River if necessary. Lee then instructed Third Corps commander A. P. Hill to cross the James before dawn, move to the Richmond-­Petersburg Turnpike, and there await orders.4 June 18, 1864

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Beauregard wired Lee shortly after midnight that his troops were exhausted and that he needed immediate reinforcements in order to meet what he judged to be Grant’s entire force. The Louisiana general thought, however, that messages alone were not equal to the looming emergency. He dispatched in succession three staff officers to meet with Lee and plead his case. Lt. Alexander R. Chisholm went first and gained an audience with Lee early on June 18. Chisholm failed to convince the general that the complete Army of the Potomac confronted Beauregard at Petersburg, but Marse Robert did inform his visitor that he had ordered Kershaw to Petersburg in the morning and that he, the commanding general himself, would go to the Cockade City to assess the situation.5 Shortly after Chisholm’s departure, Beauregard ordered his inspector general, Lt. Col. Alfred Roman, to journey to Lee’s command post at the Clay house, armed with the transcribed testimony of Federal prisoners with which Beauregard had calculated the composition of the force confronting him. Roman was to “impress upon the General’s mind the necessity of sending over reinforcements . . . as soon as possible.” Beauregard further told Roman to inform Lee that if the Army of Northern Virginia failed to come to Petersburg in less than forty-­eight hours, “God Almighty alone would save Petersburg and Richmond.” The colonel rode to Anderson’s headquarters at the Hancock house near the Richmond-­Petersburg Turnpike, where he obtained a guide who directed him to Lee’s post along Old Stage Road. There, Roman met a brick wall in the person of a staff officer, probably Lt. Col. Walter Taylor, who declined to disturb the general. Citing Lee’s need for rest, the aide listened to Roman’s report and, according to Roman, sent him on his way expressing doubt about the legitimacy of Beauregard’s apprehensions. Roman probably overstated the officer’s degree of skepticism, as by then Lee had written his orders to Anderson and Hill responding to Rooney Lee’s positive report of Grant’s absence from the north bank of the James.6 Giles Cooke, while delivering dispatches to Beauregard as the troops began their withdrawal to the Harris Line, received Beauregard’s orders to follow Chisholm and Roman to Lee’s headquarters and reiterate the need for more troops. Cooke dashed more than fifteen miles in two hours and, after stopping at Anderson’s tents and conducting a brief meeting with the southbound Colonel Roman, gained an interview with Lee about 3:00 a.m. No one recorded their conversation but, as Alexander reported, Cooke “thoroughly satisfied” the general that Grant’s army was across the James. Cooke reported only that he met with Lee for “some time” and accomplished “in part my object

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in seeking him.” Lee’s tangible reaction to Cooke’s visit, however, leaves little doubt that it had confirmed for Lee the need to act.7 Lee promptly sent Hill orders to move his corps to Petersburg and told Field to follow Kershaw across the Appomattox as well. He wired the superintendent of the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad at 3:30 a.m. inquiring about the ability of trains to operate between the two cities, requesting that if the repairs were not yet complete to send cars from Petersburg to the “point where the road is broken” in order to expedite the transfer of troops. He even contacted Jubal Early in the Virginia Piedmont, informing that officer that “Grant is in front of Petersburg” and telling him either to strike the enemy near Lynchburg immediately or “move upon Petersburg without delay.” After seventy-­two hours of uncertainty, confusion, and misapprehension between Lee and Beauregard, Confederate forces were finally moving toward consolidation at Petersburg.8 Hill’s troops had responded about 5:00 p.m. on June 17 to Lee’s afternoon orders. They marched five miles that evening to points along Darbytown Road, a few miles from the pontoon bridge above Drewry’s Bluff, before going into camp at 10:​​00 p.m. “It was a dry, dirty, and hard march” thought Pvt. William D. Alexander of the Thirty-­Seventh North Carolina.9 Hill’s men were astir as early as 2:00 a.m. on the 18th and by sunrise they began the short hike to two pontoon crossings. By 9:00 a.m. most of the Third Corps had gained the right bank of the James and headed south, William Mahone’s Division in the lead followed by Henry Heth’s and Cadmus Wilcox’s, which crossed the river upstream above Drewry’s Bluff. This trek proved to be “hot, dusty, and laborious.” Broken-­down men littered the roadsides for miles as the soldiers strode the Richmond-­Petersburg Turnpike, gasping for water and scuffling for a place at every well along the way. Officers maintained an unrelenting pace, commensurate with the situation, and one North Carolinian thought that the stretch of highway near the river seemed “almost like going thru a furnace.” “Every effort was made to keep up the men; but the continuation of such speed, under such a sun, and in the clouds of dust that stifled us, was utterly out of the question to a majority of the division,” wrote a South Carolina officer. “Regiments melted down to the dimensions of companies, and many companies had hardly a single representative left. A brigade would stretch for miles.” Dirt clung to sweat-­soaked soldiers so that one “could hardly tell a white man from a negro.” Despite these hardships, Hill’s veterans maintained their sense of humor. As they passed the natty garrison at Drewry’s Bluff, sarcastic assurances rang out: “You stay there, boys, and make onions for us.

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We’ll do your fighting for you and won’t let you get hurt!” One ragged man stepped out of the ranks and conducted a mock demonstration of how to load a rifle-­musket as the fort’s defenders looked on with a mixture of amusement and umbrage.10 Union troops also moved toward a concentration at Petersburg on June 17. The huge Federal wagon train began crossing the pontoon bridge over the James before noon on June 16, and by 8:00 a.m. the following day all the vehicles and a herd of nearly 3,000 cattle had reached the south shore. James Wilson’s cavalry division rode across the bridge shortly after dawn on the 17th, one trooper considering the scene as pleasant as any he had ever witnessed. Pvt. Albion W. Clark of the First Maine Cavalry noticed a number of artists busily sketching the impressive prospect “as if it was either very beautiful or quite important,” and commented on the profusion of vessels in the river, both transports and gunboats. The horsemen received rations and forage for their animals on the right bank, enjoyed a welcome rest, and then resumed their ride in midafternoon, camping for the night near Prince George Court House. General Edward Ferrero’s division of the Ninth Corps was the last Union unit to use the pontoon bridge, clearing the river by 9:30 a.m. on the 17th. These U.S. Colored Troops, eager to “show their guts” as had their comrades in Hinks’s division, halted on the south shore and went into camp near the Wilcox mansion.11 Two divisions of the Sixth Corps had reported to Butler at Bermuda Hundred while the third, under Thomas H. Neill, had marched across the bridge aiming for the Union right, south of the Appomattox River. Although one of his soldiers considered Neill “a very agreeable gentleman” and “an intelligent man,” most of Neill’s subordinates despised him. “Gen. Neill has few friends, and few who respect him very seriously,” wrote a Vermont officer. Sgt. Joseph K. Taylor of the Thirty-­Seventh Massachusetts considered “Bucky” Neill “a contemptible coward,” while a staff officer thought him to be “a little crazy.” Thirty-­eight years old and a West Point graduate from Philadelphia with a limited combat record in the Army of the Potomac, Neill had the habit of “ejaculating his sentences,” which provided a source of amusement for his intimates. He was a famously fastidious dresser and could be seen emerging from his headquarters tent on tiptoes “holding up white corduroy trousers as a lady would her dress” and calling on an officer to douse the dusty ground with water. Neill had replaced the popular George Washington Getty in division command following Getty’s wounding in the Wilderness, and most of Neill’s troops looked forward to Getty’s return.12 Grant intended that Neill relieve William Smith’s Eighteenth Corps troops

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June 18, 1864

so they could rejoin the rest of the Army of the James at Bermuda Hundred, in keeping with General Butler’s preference. Three of Neill’s brigades reached the Petersburg front between 4:00 p.m. and 10:​​00 p.m. on the 17th, allowing General Brooks’s division to report to Bermuda Hundred later that night. John Martindale’s and Edward Hinks’s divisions, however, remained south of the Appomattox, it being considered unsafe to remove them in the close presence of the enemy.13 Even before the final June 17 attack east of Petersburg had run its course, George Meade informed the general-­in-­chief that if a decisive penetration of the Confederate lines could not be achieved that night, he would “assault vigorously” at daylight with the Fifth, Ninth, and Second Corps. Meade had thirteen divisions on the field at Petersburg, numbering between 63,000 and 80,000 men. The condition of those troops, however, cast doubt on their ability to execute further offensives. “I have not the slightest idea that these brigades could accomplish anything in the way of an assault,” confessed the Second Corps’ Francis Barlow. “There are scarcely any officers in the brigades.” Each of Ambrose Burnside’s divisions had also sustained serious attrition in the ranks and among the field and line officers. Gouverneur Warren’s Fifth Corps enjoyed the best fighting trim among Meade’s troops, although their long march had taken its toll. To make matters worse, Winfield Scott Hancock, Meade’s senior commander, reported himself incapable of maintaining the field after midnight, his Gettysburg wound discharging bone fragments and rendering him incapable of vigorous movement. David Birney assumed temporary command of the Second Corps while Gershom Mott took charge of Birney’s division.14 Grant, in keeping with his preference since arriving at City Point, spent considerable time on logistical and administrative matters, leaving operational decisions to Meade. He ordered the repair or construction of wharves at Bermuda Hundred, City Point, and along the Appomattox River, the fabrication of warehouses, and the refitting of the City Point Railroad, all indications that he did not anticipate a swift conclusion to his present offensive against Petersburg. Grant found time to seek Butler’s acquiescence in mitigating that officer’s abrupt dismissal of Quincy Gillmore, allowing Gillmore to request reassignment instead of enduring the humiliation of being sacked. Grant’s almost total delegation of battlefield responsibilities to Meade and Butler comported with his position as general-­in-­chief and seemed not to mar his image with the troops as the reliable mastermind calling the shots. “Grant handles this army as easy as a Captain can handle a Company,” wrote Col. William Wells of the First Vermont Cavalry. “He does not have any trouble in having every command

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in their right place and at the right time, in fact he is the greatest Genl living.” As June 18 dawned, however, Grant and the Union high command would find plenty of trouble achieving their goals.15 Meade acted on his promise to Grant and circulated orders at 11:​​00 p.m. on the 17th to renew the offensive five hours later. He instructed the entire Fifth, Ninth, and Second Corps to move forward simultaneously with “strong columns, well supported,” so that success by one unit could be exploited by another. Neill’s division, along with the two divisions of the Eighteenth Corps south of the Appomattox, would remain in reserve. These instructions reached the front a little past midnight and officers awakened weary soldiers from a brief sleep, instructing them to pack their traps and be ready to move in an hour. Grant ordered Butler at 1:00 a.m. to defer assaults at Bermuda Hundred, but to prepare to exploit any weakness caused by the withdrawal of Confederate forces sent to counter Meade’s massive attack. “Nature seemed almost to hold her breath while the two armies waited in silence for a renewal of the fight,” thought Pvt. Samuel K. Gates of the Twenty-­Seventh Michigan, reflecting the tension felt by tens of thousands.16 Confederate forces were busy before dawn on June 18. Beauregard’s brigades fortified their new positions with “uncommonly good order and precision,” although the process of strengthening their improvised defenses continued without rest. Johnson Hagood’s South Carolinians remained on Beauregard’s left, anchored on the Appomattox River about 200 yards west of the “younger” Hare house. His regiments extended south, crossed City Point Road and railroad, skirted the New Market race track, and ended on Hare’s Hill, connecting with Alfred Colquitt’s Georgians. James Martin’s, Thomas Clingman’s, Archibald Gracie’s, Matthew Ransom’s, Stephen Elliott’s, John Fulton’s, and Henry Wise’s Brigades completed the Harris Line going south, where it terminated at the Dimmock Line batteries guarding Jerusalem Plank Road. Although Beauregard’s effectives could not have numbered much above 10,000, the Harris Line occupied high ground well supported by artillery with cleared fields of fire between it and the crouching Yankee legions.17 Kershaw’s Division was the first unit of Lee’s army to reinforce Petersburg. Its commander ranked among the better of the army’s citizen-­soldiers. A lawyer and member of the South Carolina legislature before the war, the forty-­two-­ year-­old Kershaw gained some martial experience during the Mexican War and volunteered for state service shortly after his state’s secession. He succeeded Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws in division command at the outset of the Overland Campaign, and his performance that spring had fully validated his promotion. Porter Alexander considered him “of the highest type, both of a gentleman 176

June 18, 1864

& a soldier.” Kershaw’s Division included four brigades of South Carolinians, Mississippians, and Georgians.18 Kershaw’s troops left their bivouacs along Redwater Creek before dawn, some of the men boarding trains and others undertaking a forced march that at times became nearly a run, the division commander joining the lead units entering Petersburg about sunrise. These perspiring soldiers marched through the city past flag-­waving women, who offered desperate words of encouragement. Kershaw consulted with Beauregard for about an hour as his men continued south along Jerusalem Plank Road, relieving elements of Wise’s weary warriors and anchoring the right along the highway. Beauregard had informed Hoke and Johnson at 2:30 a.m. that help was on the way, and it is easy to imagine their relief as the long-­awaited veterans of Lee’s campaigns swung into view.19 Another of Anderson’s divisions, the five brigades under General Field, arose from their camps along the Howlett Line near dawn and took up the march for Petersburg, leaving Pickett’s Division to cover their void. Field, like Kershaw, had been in command only since the spring. A thirty-­six-­year-­old Kentuckian, Field graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1849 and remained in the army until May 1861, when he accepted a commission in a Virginia cavalry regiment. Less than a year later, Field assumed command of an infantry brigade, only to suffer a serious wound at Second Manassas in August 1862. He did not return to active duty until 1864, when he took charge of the division formerly led by Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood. One of Field’s staff officers judged him “a noble fellow and very generally beloved, both by officers and men, on account of his genial and agreeable manners.”20 Field’s leading units—Brig. Gen. George “Tige” Anderson’s Georgians, Wil­liam Perry’s Alabamans, and the famous Texas Brigade—marched about an hour and met the cars returning from delivering Kershaw’s men to Petersburg. These three brigades boarded and rode into town, leaving John Bratton’s South Carolinians and Dudley DuBose’s Georgians to hoof it the rest of the way. By the time the Texans reached Petersburg, the citizens had turned out in full force. “Everybody was either on the streets or at the doors and windows,” remembered an officer in the Fourth Texas. Women offered water to the thirsty soldiers and at two places along the route huge hogsheads of coffee provided jolting refreshment. DuBose’s Brigade shuffled into town about 11:​​00  a.m., and Bratton arrived around noon. Field marched south and initially placed his troops on the far right of the Confederate defenses, west of Jerusalem Plank Road.21 The Twelfth Virginia Infantry was among the first of Hill’s troops to enter June 18, 1864

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Petersburg that afternoon. This was the city’s hometown regiment, and poignant reunions—albeit quite brief—played out along Sycamore Street as wives and sweethearts recognized dirty, emaciated wraiths as their loved ones. Strangers, such as members of the Sixteenth Mississippi, expressed disappointment that they were not permitted to linger in town to admire the local beauties. Some of Mahone’s troops halted just north of the river to bolster the defenses in Chesterfield County, while others continued south to take up positions on the far western end of the expanding Confederate perimeter. The busy engines of the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad continued to chug between Petersburg and the break in the line, about five miles up the tracks, shuttling wave after wave of reinforcements into the Cockade City throughout the afternoon and into the evening. By then, however, the climactic day of the First Offensive at Petersburg had run its course.22 Federal troops across the entire battlefront—from the Appomattox River to Baxter Road—reacted at daylight to Meade’s attack orders. That general was “in a tearing humor” before dawn as he moved his headquarters to a point near the Bailey house on Prince George Court House Road. Nine divisions from all four corps achieved, for once, the approximation of a simultaneous advance at sunrise, although their movement proved largely anticlimactic. In short order each of these divisions discovered the same surprising truth: the Confederates were gone. When Meade learned that the Hagood Line, for which he had contended for forty-­eight hours, had been voluntarily evacuated, he ordered his corps commanders to move forward in concert and “develop the enemy’s new position.”23 Three divisions held Meade’s right. Martindale’s and Hinks’s Eighteenth Corps troops had remained along the Appomattox River overnight, even as Brooks’s brigades crossed the river and rejoined Butler at Bermuda Hundred. Neill’s division had arrived to replace Smith’s troops, but now they served as reinforcements for Martindale. Following inquiries into the identity of the ranking officer on the right, Martindale assumed command of all three divisions and deployed them for their advance. He placed Griffin Stedman’s brigade, buttressed by two battalions of the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, along City Point Road, followed by George Stannard’s regiments. Samuel Duncan’s USCT brigade received orders to move west along the City Point Railroad, while the rest of Hinks’s division remained in the rear guarding a battery and keeping an eye on the Appomattox River. Neill’s troops moved up on Martindale’s left with Brig. Gen. Frank Wheaton’s brigade in the lead. As the troops advanced, Wheaton maneuvered so his left flank anchored on City Point Road, supported by the remaining men of the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery.24 178

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Martindale met instant resistance from eight Confederate guns north of the Appomattox River belonging to the batteries of Capt. Samuel T. Wright and Capt. William D. Bradford, including three twenty-­pounder Parrott rifles. Hinks’s artillery responded with counterbattery fire sufficiently effective to permit the infantry to continue moving forward, voicing their enthusiasm with “shouts of exultation” and “vociferous cheers.” They tramped across the abandoned works toward the new line defended by their familiar foes from Hagood’s Brigade. The Confederate pickets gave way with what at least one Rebel considered cowardly behavior. Colquitt’s Georgians, on the right of Hagood’s skirmishers, also retreated without offering much resistance. Hagood called on the Seventh South Carolina Battalion to regain the picket line, and despite a “furious fight,” the Southerners fell back for a final time, seeking refuge in the developing works of the Harris Line near the Page house. Content with his gains and wary of the new line now confronting him, Martindale halted.25 Birney’s three divisions aligned on Martindale’s left in the order Gibbon, Mott, and Barlow. General Birney caparisoned himself in a full dress uniform, complete with yellow sash, making too conspicuous a target for the comfort of his staff. Colonel Tidball, Birney’s artillery chief, assigned the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery as infantry, then positioned his batteries to fire on the Confederates; their muzzles started roaring at 4:00 a.m. John Gibbon’s division promptly stepped off north of Prince George Court House Road, with Brig. Gen. Byron R. Pierce’s brigade and Col. John Fraser’s regiments forming the front line. They drove back Colquitt’s jittery pickets with so little trouble that, for a moment, they thought they were on their way into Petersburg. Pushing through the woods about 6:00 a.m., they halted at the edge of a field, where the new Confederate defenses revealed themselves. Mott advanced simultaneously on Gibbon’s left and also stopped some 200 yards short of the looming Confederate line. Both divisions dug in to protect themselves from a lively exchange of fire that claimed its share of casualties. Barlow’s division followed suit on the corps’ left flank. Birney’s captured ground included the rise on which stood the Otway P. Hare house, an elegant mansion whose furnishings were “sadly demoralized, and soon distributed along the works” by vandals in blue.26 Of all Meade’s soldiers that morning, members of the Ninth Corps were the least prepared to resume offensive operations. Burnside responded to Meade’s nocturnal attack circular by telling the army commander that “my first division is in no condition to attack; in fact there is scarcely anything left of it. . . . The other two divisions are very much wearied. . . . I can attack with them, but I am not confident of doing much.” An irritated Meade simply replied, “I want the attack to go on as ordered with all the force you can put in.”27 180

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With James Ledlie’s brigades shredded from their assaults the previous evening, Burnside turned to Generals Willcox and Potter to carry the offensive burden. Willcox placed his division in front with John Curtin’s brigade of Potter’s division in close support. Although the attack orders arrived at 4:30 a.m., it was not until well after sunrise that the Ninth Corps skirmishers pushed out of their ravines and temporary works toward the Confederate line. Those fortifications had been evacuated, of course, although Southern skirmishers in the woods east of the Taylor house fields offered token resistance before melting away. When Willcox’s men emerged into the open, they could see that the Confederate pickets had withdrawn to a deep cut in the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, beyond the Taylor house. More worrisome still, the raw earth of the Harris Line came into view on high ground beyond the railroad, fronted by a steep ravine drained by Poor Creek.28 The Taylor fields grew hot with incoming artillery fire. As the Federals sought cover in the woods, Willcox summoned ordnance of his own to suppress the Confederate guns. About 10:​​00 a.m. Willcox ordered John Hartranft to disperse the Rebel skirmishers and capture the railroad cut. Hartranft, a “modest and soldierly man,” arranged his regiments in two lines and his sister brigade, now under the command of Col. William C. Raulston, moved up in support. Hartranft’s troops advanced in good order, negotiated trip wires strung near the railroad cut, and plunged into the declivity, the stubborn enemy skirmishers retreating into their new line of defenses. While the cut sheltered the Federals in front, enfilading fire from the right made their position uncomfortable. The innovative Federals fashioned a makeshift traverse to guard their vulnerable flank, using the rails and sleepers from the abandoned railroad.29 Hartranft had company. Samuel Crawford’s Fifth Corps division joined in the assault against the railroad that morning, providing support on the Ninth Corps’ left. Warren’s four divisions had seen no hard combat thus far at Petersburg, and Meade counted on the contumacious New Yorker to pull his weight on June 18, particularly because the Confederate right offered a potentially vulnerable flank. No high-­ranking Union officer at Petersburg is more controversial than Gouverneur Kemble Warren. A product of the Hudson River Valley, Warren graduated second in the West Point class of 1850 and enjoyed a creditable prewar career as a topographical engineer and mathematics instructor at the U.S. Military Academy. He performed well enough as a regimental and brigade commander early in the war to earn a brigadier’s star at age thirty-­two. Warren became chief topographical engineer and then chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac and in that latter role won enduring glory as the man responsible for June 18, 1864

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saving Little Round Top at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. He led the Second Corps until March 1864, when he took command of the reorganized Fifth Corps, but garnered critical reviews from peers, subordinates, and General Meade.30 Warren demonstrated a knack for independent thinking that the army commander often considered insubordinate. “Meade finds fault with Warren’s contradictory spirit which loves to do a thing by a different way from the one ordered,” wrote Theodore Lyman. The candid Colonel Lyman thought Warren was unequal to the challenge of corps command and prone to “dilatory movements.” Warren’s chief of artillery, Charles Wainwright, judged his boss “a queer mixture” and was convinced that “he has a screw loose.” Brig. Gen. Marsena Patrick, the army’s provost marshal, thought Warren was “a very loathsome, profane, ungentlemanly & disgusting puppy in power,” and commented that everyone at army headquarters was “greatly disgusted” with the Fifth Corps’ chief. “Warren has been so puffed up & elated & swelled up, that his arrogance & insolence are intolerable,” thought Patrick. Yet an artillerist observed that “you will never hear any soldier of Warren’s . . . corps say anything but the kindest and the most admiring words about him,” and despite his shortcomings, the Fifth Corps often drew the most important assignments from Grant and Meade.31 There is little wonder, then, that Meade sent Lyman to Warren’s command post early that morning to act as a liaison between army headquarters and the potentially recalcitrant corps commander. Lyman arrived about 4:30  a.m. finding the general fully dressed but asleep on a camp bed at an informal bivouac pitched under a solitary tree. Burnside was present along with a telegraph operator, whose instrument soon hummed with inquiries from Meade asking why Warren had not yet moved forward on the army’s left. According to staff officer Washington Roebling, Warren’s headquarters received the attack orders at 4:00 a.m., but some time elapsed before Lysander Cutler’s division, strengthened by the Maryland Brigade of Romeyn Ayres’s division, began pushing forward. Cutler’s skirmishers passed the landmark Avery house, which they found abandoned except for one old Confederate who had slept through the evacuation of Ransom’s North Carolinians a few hours earlier.32 The entire Fifth Corps was on the move by 7:30  a.m., Crawford taking position on the right with Charles Griffin’s division between Crawford and Cutler and the balance of Ayres’s men on Warren’s left. Wainwright deployed a dozen batteries on the open ground on either side of the Avery house and began to exchange fire with Beauregard’s gunners astride Baxter Road. Many of the Fifth Corps soldiers mentioned passing mangled, hideous corpses, victims of the fight the night before, as they moved ahead. While the Confederate 182

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skirmishers withdrew in their front, Warren’s troops burst into the open and encountered the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, which ran through a deep gorge here as well. The Confederates had ignited the footbridge across this cut during their retreat and as the Federals contemplated their next move, Southern artillery found some victims, spraying Capt. George Hugunin of the 147th New York with “fragments of flesh & blood all around. My face was completely spattered with it,” he said, grimacing.33 Soon enough, the Federals resumed their advance, plunging into the railroad cut and driving out the remaining Confederates. Crawford’s men connected with Willcox to effect the only physical intercorps cooperation during the morning assaults. There were instances of sharp combat during this operation. The Twenty-­Second Massachusetts, serving as the advance for Col. Jacob Sweitzer’s brigade of Griffin’s division, met a repulse at the hands of stubborn members of Ransom’s Brigade. “They came on through the leaden tempest until they were nearly halfway to our works,” wrote a soldier in the Forty-­ Ninth North Carolina, “then wavered, about-­faced, and rushed back over the railroad fill, leaving the ground littered with their dead and wounded.” The Twenty-­Second’s colonel, William S. Tilton, called on his comrades from the Sixty-­Second Pennsylvania to rally his men, and the Confederate skirmishers retreated to their main line under this renewed pressure. All the while, General Griffin rode under fire along the front of his division, dispensing orders and leaving members of his staff to grind their teeth in fear for their lives.34 The railroad cut presented a formidable obstacle, being in places as much as eighteen feet deep. Struggling to reach the brow of the ravine, Warren’s men saw the same strong works that had paralyzed the Union advance that morning from Martindale’s division to Willcox’s. The Federals quickly prepared works of their own. “I’ll bet a ground mole couldn’t dig quicker than us,” boasted Maj. Robert G. King of Purnell’s (Maryland) Legion. As the morning fighting degenerated into stationary firing lines blazing away across more than four miles of battlefront, Kershaw’s and Field’s men began to arrive and deploy. They extended Beauregard’s right flank, robbing Warren of the chance to easily envelop what had been the most vulnerable portion of the new Confederate perimeter.35 Meade, of course, could not know with any precision the status of Confederate reinforcements. He did learn from prisoners seized during the morning advance that only Beauregard’s army confronted him at dawn. Meade implored Birney to coordinate an assault against the new Confederate line before the enemy had the opportunity to make it more formidable or Lee arrived with reinforcements. “If we engage them before they are fortified we ought to June 18, 1864

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whip them,” he wrote. Meade’s communication with Grant that morning suggested, however, that he harbored doubts about the army’s ability to charge into Petersburg. “The men require rest, and it is probable, unless some favorable chance pre­sents itself, that we shall not do more than envelop the enemy,” he temporized.36 The army’s commander would endure a frustrating morning trying to create that favorable chance as his corps chieftains disdained the spirit of Meade’s desire for an immediate attack and focused instead on perfecting their alignment to obtain mutual support and eliminate vulnerable flanks. “What progress are you making?” Meade asked Birney at 10:​​00 a.m. “You will please advise me at what time your columns of assault will be prepared to attack the enemy in your front, in order that I may notify Birney and Martindale and have a simultaneous attack,” he wrote Warren and Burnside, barely disguising his impatience. “I think there is too much time taken in preparations, and I fear the enemy will make more of the delay than we can.”37 Meade could not have been more right. As he exchanged messages with Martindale, Birney, Burnside, and Warren, Kershaw’s and Field’s men filed into the earthworks west of Jerusalem Plank Road or relieved Beauregard’s exhausted defenders on the right of the Harris Line. General Lee personally reached Petersburg about 11:​​30 a.m.38 While Lee crossed the Appomattox, Colonel Taylor searched for a suitable place to establish army headquarters. He settled on an elegant estate north of the river called Violet Bank. The home’s occupant graciously offered a room for General Lee and tents for the staff were pitched in the yard. As Taylor tended to these tasks, Lee met with Beauregard at Petersburg’s U.S. Customs House at the corner of Union and Tabb Streets. A crowd gathered to view the great man, and Lee graciously acknowledged them. Then, at Beauregard’s behest, the two generals rode south to the high ground near the city reservoir, where they enjoyed a good prospect overlooking the right end of the Confederate line. Beauregard explained his rationale for selecting the position, gaining Lee’s ready approbation. The Virginian however, after some consideration, rejected Beauregard’s suggestion that their combined armies assault the Federal left flank on Warren’s front, preferring to remain on the defense, resting the tired troops— Beauregard’s and his own—until the Federals ventured another thrust. That thrust would not be long in coming.39 Even while Beauregard and Lee examined the opposing lines, Meade set in motion what he hoped would be the massive attack that had misfired at dawn. He dispatched orders to Birney, Martindale, Burnside, and Warren at 11:​​34 a.m.

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calling for each corps to advance at noon with strong columns of assault, well supported by conventional lines of battle. No one was to fire a shot until they reached the enemy’s works, and each corps commander was to wire Meade’s headquarters in order to synchronize the time. Meade was still under the impression that only Beauregard’s fatigued brigades opposed him, and was determined to make one final effort to exploit his vast numerical superiority.40 The northern two corps, Martindale’s provisional one and Birney’s, did achieve a semblance of coordination. Both officers set their attacks in motion promptly at noon. Martindale called on Stedman’s and Stannard’s brigades to advance on his right and Wheaton’s troops along with Col. Oliver Edwards’s brigade of Neill’s division to cover his left south of City Point Road. Wheaton extended his left flank, attempting to maintain contact with the Second Corps. The Fourth USCT and Fifth USCT of Duncan’s brigade moved up in support of Stannard and Stedman on Martindale’s extreme right. The Federals succeeded in driving Hagood’s skirmishers back from a secondary line of works, crossed Harrison’s Creek, and ascended a small rise dominated by the Page house. Here, in the midst of “a heavy fire of artillery and musketry,” their momentum stopped. “We hugged and almost burrowed into the earth for safety,” admitted a Massachusetts soldier. Neill’s two brigades flushed out pickets from the Seventh South Carolina Battalion and the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina, capturing forty of them, but also halted as their left flank became exposed to Confederate fire.41 This attack presented Edwards’s men their first opportunity to observe black soldiers in combat, and they were impressed with what they witnessed. “Saw the nigger troops make a charge & I must say they are perfect bricks & make splendid soldiers,” wrote Pvt. Berea M. Willsey of the Tenth Massachusetts. “They take no prisoners.” Capt. Elisha Hunt Rhodes of the Second Rhode Island confessed that he had “not been much in favor of colored soldiers,” but their performance in this assault “convinced me that they will fight. So Hurrah for the colored troops!” Martindale’s men enjoyed more success than any of the other corps during this midday attack, but only gained about 150 yards of turf for their trouble.42 Birney committed three Second Corps brigades on Martindale’s left, while deploying others in reserve. John Gibbon provided two of them, his First under General Pierce and his Fourth under the temporary command of Colonel McIvor. Gibbon was to establish contact with Wheaton on his right, thus maintaining an unbroken front from the Appomattox River to Prince George Court House Road. Robert McAllister’s brigade of Mott’s division would press for-

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ward on Gibbon’s left, and Colonel Tidball moved three of his batteries into position to suppress Confederate fire. Birney gave the signal to advance promptly at noon.43 McAllister considered the ground over which he had to assault “a death trap,” and with good reason. The Confederates had prepared artillery redans, flanking lunettes, and rifle pits on a ridge west of the Hare house plateau. The profile of the primary fort, dubbed Colquitt’s Salient in honor of the Georgia brigade that defended it, had been excavated so as to mount the guns only two feet above ground level. This configuration reduced the tendency of artillerists to fire over attackers’ heads. A cornfield sloping gently up to the Rebel lines provided an unobstructed field of fire and a natural glacis for about 400 yards. Once the Federals left the reverse slope of the Hare house plateau or the shelter of the embankments along Prince George Court House Road, they would face an uphill run fully exposed to a murderous combined-­arms fire.44 McAllister notified General Pierce of his apprehension about assaulting across such a landscape, and the two commanders conducted a personal reconnaissance that confirmed McAllister’s judgment. Nevertheless, the Federals went forward as ordered. McAllister instantly met a blast of Confederate fire that “cut our men down like hail cuts the grain and grass.” After a short advance, the brigade hit the ground and dug in, doggedly holding its position on the Hare house plateau, well short of the Confederate line.45 Affairs on Birney’s right proceeded almost as badly. That morning, Gibbon received notification of his promotion to major general and, indicative of his pessimism, sought to be sworn in immediately so that, if the assault went as badly as he feared, his widow would receive the appropriate pension. As soon as Gibbon’s men abandoned their cover, frontal and enfilade fire pummeled them directly and from their left. “For a time the men pressed forward, but their ranks were so swept by incessant volleys that at last even the veterans recoiled,” wrote a Wisconsin soldier. Gibbon ordered Col. Thomas A. Smyth’s brigade to reinforce Pierce and McIvor, but these men had little impact on the tactical situation. Within twenty minutes, Birney reported that his attack had failed and that General Pierce had fallen wounded in the left shoulder. Like McAllister, Gibbon’s survivors entrenched their newly gained ground. “By the time we had dirt enough thrown up to cover our bodies they charged the front of the 6th Geo,” recorded Capt. Eugene P. Burnett of Colquitt’s defenders, “but the pill was too bitter, and broken and whipped they fled.”46 Given the barren results on the Union right, perhaps it was for the best that neither Burnside nor Warren obeyed the directive to assault at noon—although George Meade certainly did not see it that way. Meade included the Ninth 186

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Corps in his late morning attack order, but none of the corps’ senior leaders acknowledged receiving it. Willcox, in fact, took credit for recommending a coordinated assault at noon as if army headquarters had been silent. “I proposed to Crawford and Barlow to make a general attack on the works at 12,” reported Willcox. “Crawford acceded, but Barlow replied that he had no orders to attack.” Willcox considered Barlow’s participation on his right essential to the success of any offensive, so there ended his stillborn scheme. Burnside’s men contented themselves by exchanging compliments with Confederate sharpshooters and suppressing enemy artillery with counterbattery fire. Perhaps the positions gained in the morning fighting contributed to Burnside’s inaction. “It was comparatively easy to hold the railroad-­cut,” wrote a man in the Thirty-­ Sixth Massachusetts, “but to advance was quite another matter. The railroad-­ bank was high, and so steep that the men had to dig holes in the side of it to place their feet, and as soon as a man showed his head above the bank he was a target for the rebel sharpshooters.”47 On the far Union left General Warren labored under no uncertainty about his mandate to attack. As early as 10:​​00 a.m., Fifth Corps commanders worked toward participating in Meade’s coordinated offensive, but a series of obstacles—including Warren’s independent thinking—assured that his troops would not go forward. Washington Roebling cited enemy sharpshooters, the curve and deep cut of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, and the rugged ravines that fed into Poor Creek as impediments to conducting the necessary reconnaissance. “The ground was such that one Div. commander could not see how the other was getting on,” explained Roebling.48 The telegraph lines between Warren’s headquarters and Meade’s sang all morning as Warren provided detailed reports on the progress of his divisions. Moments after Meade’s explicit attack orders arrived, however, Warren demurred: “I cannot be ready to attack in line or column before 1 p.m.,” he stated. An obviously irate Meade wired back: “I cannot change the hour in the order of attack just issued. Everyone else is ready. You will attack as soon as possible after the hour designated, and endeavor to be ready at that hour.” Warren promised to do his best to advance Crawford’s division on the right to keep up with Burnside, and five minutes before noon, Meade resignedly agreed that doing so “will answer all purposes.”49 Colonel Lyman, who remained with Warren most of the morning, simply reported that “assault ordered for 12 m. by Gen. Meade. None made then by anybody.” In fairness to the Fifth Corps, Crawford’s men did attempt to advance, as did Sweitzer’s brigade of Griffin’s division, but by 12:​​30 p.m. their halting efforts ceased. Crawford sent an emissary to Warren reporting that he had June 18, 1864

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not reached the enemy line and that Rebel fire made it impossible for him even to entrench where he had stopped. Warren passed along this information to his superior, adding that he agreed with Crawford about the “impracticability of advancing where he is . . . nor do I see any chance of attacking to our left of that, except by attempting to turn the enemy’s extreme right along the railroad and Blackwater [Swamp].”50 This news did not play well at army headquarters, reducing Meade to “fits of anger” and a resort to “intemperate language.” Meade had not asked for Warren’s opinion, but had ordered an attack. Lyman recorded that Meade “was getting more and more indignant that he could not get his orders for an attack obeyed; and sent such telegraphs that Warren got very angry, and said corps commanders must have discretion, and he would not stand to be bullied.” One can imagine the effect on Meade’s blood pressure when Warren’s 2:00 p.m. message arrived explaining that he thought the attack at noon “was to be a rush. . . . As soon as I was prepared I went to my right and found that it had kept up with Willcox, but he had stopped because General Barlow could not advance and was enfiladed by guns in Barlow’s front. I think it would be safe for us all to make a rush at, say, 3 p.m.” Meade could barely contain his contempt as he directed a response to both Warren and Burnside: “I am greatly astonished at your dispatch of 2 p.m. What additional orders to attack you require I cannot imagine. My orders have been explicit and are now repeated, that you each immediately assault the enemy with all your force, and if there is any further delay the responsibility and the consequences will rest with you.”51 Birney did not escape Meade’s wrath. The acting Second Corps commander confirmed at 1:55 p.m. that Gibbon’s attack had failed but that he intended to “select another brigade” and assault again later in the day, admitting that although “the enemy’s position was strong,” Gibbon’s “assault was not a spirited one.” Meade replied immediately, reminding Birney that his orders anticipated “strong columns of assault” and that Martindale would require his assistance when the offensive resumed. Birney took umbrage at Meade’s tone, protesting rather haughtily that he had made a robust effort and implying that he disagreed with Meade’s instructions by writing, “will obey your order and attack again in the same place, as your order does not give me time to change the point of attack.” With this, Meade lost the firm grip of a seasoned commander. “I find it useless to appoint an hour to effect co-­operation,” he fumed to Birney. “You have a large corps, powerful and numerous, and I beg you will at once, as soon as possible, assault in a strong column. The day is fast going, and I wish the practicability of carrying the enemy’s line settled before dark.” After

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seventy-­two hours of hesitation, heavy casualties, and fumbled opportunities, the Union high command was unraveling.52 Meanwhile, the Confederates grew stronger. Kershaw’s men were in place, Field’s almost so, and Hill’s were on the way. Some of Beauregard’s exhausted troops retired to the rear, but others, such as Ransom’s North Carolinians, labored ceaselessly to improve their fortifications. While most Union witnesses pronounced the Confederate defenses intimidating, the Confederates perceived the need to dig more. “The work proceeded as rapidly as could be with men so long on a constant strain, and now three consecutive nights without sleep, and faring almost as roughly as to rations,” observed Capt. Robert D. Graham of the Fifty-­Sixth North Carolina. “The question of martial courage would seem to have been already decided; and now comes that of physical endurance.”53 The Confederates, though, had not cornered the market on endurance as Martindale’s provisional corps prepared to make its third advance of the day. Meade communicated with the Eighteenth Corps’ de facto commander at 1:30 p.m. and again about an hour later, authorizing him to go forward irrespective of the status of the other corps. “Finding it impossible to effect co-­ operation by appointing an hour for attack, I have sent an order to each corps commander to each attack at once at all hazards and without reference to each other,” Meade explained at 2:40 p.m. He “requested” that Martindale conform to the same instructions, using language much more conciliatory and respectful than that he had employed with Birney, Burnside, and Warren, perhaps because Martindale officially belonged to Butler’s army. Ten minutes later, Martindale sent word that he had commenced his assault.54 Martindale opted to use an en echelon formation, advancing his troops sequentially from right to left. Stannard and Stedman’s brigades, supported by the two African American regiments from Duncan’s command, would move first, between the river and City Point Road. They would enjoy support from two artillery batteries that deployed on a little peninsula near the mouth of Harrison’s Creek, which afforded them an elevated position that bore down on Hagood’s defenders. The buildings and a grove of trees associated with the “younger” Hare estate provided cover for the Federals as they debouched from their rudimentary fortifications. Wheaton’s brigade would follow, south of City Point Road, attempting once again to maintain contact with Gibbon’s division on its left.55 Hagood had positioned the Twenty-­Seventh South Carolina, Twenty-­First South Carolina, and Eleventh South Carolina north of City Point Road, and

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their officers could plainly hear the Federal commands to advance as their own ranks maintained “a deathlike stillness.” The trees and a small incline around the Hare house, however, shielded the Yankees from view for the first 200 yards of their approach. Then, as they appeared amid an oat field, the Carolinians unleashed “a sweeping volley . . . at close range [that] brought the depleted ranks to the earth like reeds before a tempest.” The shaken Federals dropped to the ground, seeking shelter wherever they could find it, including by stacking corpses of the slain as breastworks. “We could hear their officers cursing & urging in every possible way,” remembered South Carolina Lt. George H. Moffett, as some of Martindale’s men fled back to their starting points.56 The intrepid Federals rallied and advanced again, but could not pass the line of wounded and dead created by their initial assault. “Awful slaughter! We are literally cut to pieces . . . bullets flying like hailstones,” Lt. Edwin L. Peck of the Twenty-­Seventh Massachusetts recorded in his diary. “The cries and groans of the wounded and dying are awful. . . . To raise our heads is sure death.” As the prostrate Federals hugged the earth, Peck thought that if Confederate bullets didn’t kill him, the brutal rays of an unrelenting sun surely would.57 South of City Point Road, Wheaton’s brigade advanced, following their comrades on the right. “A severe front and cross-­fire of musketry and canister” courtesy of the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina, Seventh South Carolina Battalion, and their supporting artillery limited Wheaton’s gain to less than 150 yards. By 3:35 p.m. Martindale concluded that his assault had reached its climax. “I have found it impossible to proceed, on account of an enfilading fire on the left,” he wired Meade. Without help from Birney, Martindale was stymied. He would later summarize his achievements on the 18th by tallying the capture of seventy-­eight prisoners and control of strategic high ground around the Page house and on the neck of land near Harrison’s Creek, from which he could fire on the Appomattox River bridges in Petersburg. His losses for the day totaled 541, including nearly 100 killed; Stannard and Stedman sustained the most devastating casualties.58 Hagood lost 220 men during the day’s combat, including 36 killed, 121 wounded, and 63 missing. Meade told Martindale to “hold all you have, and arrange your lines in connection with Birney,” as both sides contented themselves with improving their fortifications until nightfall. The scene of action now shifted to the south.59 Consistent with his earlier unsolicited suggestion, General Warren ordered his four divisions to advance in unison at 3:00 p.m. The corps aligned between the Taylor house and a position several hundred yards southeast of Rives’

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Salient on Jerusalem Plank Road, with Crawford on the right followed southward by Griffin, Cutler, and Ayres. The Fifth Corps represented a formidable offensive weapon if Warren could achieve some unity of action with Burnside and among his own four divisions, an attribute sorely missing thus far from the afternoon’s offensive.60 Two of Crawford’s brigades—the First under Col. Peter Lyle and the Second under Col. James L. Bates—advanced promptly at the designated hour. Confederate pickets confronted them near a deep cut in the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad. Beyond the tracks, the treacherous banks of Poor Creek blocked their route, and on the high ground west of the stream stood the main Confederate line. The Rebel pickets scattered as Crawford’s men approached the cut, “just as fast as our legs would carry us,” according to a soldier in the Sixteenth Maine. The charging Federals had not expected such a sharp drop-­off into the railroad and “they came tumbling down every which way.” A Massachusetts man saw his comrades “rolling over each other clear to the bottom” and could not imagine “a more ludicrous sight in spite of the seriousness of the occasion.”61 The confusion along the railroad cut disorganized Lyle’s regiments, but Bates’s men negotiated this obstacle more deftly. Once they reached the cut, orders circulated “to double-­quick to a little stream by a hill-­side, a meadow with high grass intervening, the place being probably 200 yards from the railroad.” The men boiled out of the railroad cut with a hurrah, some soldiers in the Eighty-­Eighth Pennsylvania stumbling as they crossed over a concealed ditch. As soon as they came into view of the Confederate line, the graycoats opened “a vicious fire, the air hissing with screaming shot and shell.” Bates’s men fell by the dozens, but the bravest among them advanced to the very base of the Confederate works, where they planted their colors, concealed somewhat in a declivity before the Confederate line. Crawford’s men dug in wherever their attacks crested, some soldiers of the Thirteenth Massachusetts using the bodies of dead Rebels to buttress their defenses. “Our boys fired 300 rounds of ammunition to a man” testified Sgt. Charles McKnight of the Eighty-­Eighth Pennsylvania with obvious exaggeration, but despite Crawford’s efforts none of his troops penetrated the Confederate line.62 Griffin’s division, on Crawford’s left, straddled Baxter Road. General Griffin committed two of his three brigades to the offensive, Sweitzer’s on the right, north of the road, and Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s on the left. Like Crawford, Griffin’s soldiers advanced promptly at 3:00 p.m., but the two divisions failed to establish a connection, leading to the perception that Crawford

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had not executed his portion of the offensive. “Want of co-­operation lost us a position we ought to have won,” thought a member of Griffin’s staff, a lament that would be repeated by many in the Fifth Corps that afternoon.63 Sweitzer deployed his troops in two lines of battle with the 155th Pennsylvania, Twenty-­Second Massachusetts, and Ninety-­First Pennsylvania in front, left to right. When the command “forward, double-­quick” rang out, these three regiments arose, crested the ridge in front of them, and “met an avalanche of balls. They seemed as thick as insects of the air on a summer eve,” according to a man in the 155th Pennsylvania. A soldier in the Twenty-­Second Massachusetts employed another vivid metaphor, likening the Confederate bullets to “a sound like that of a scythe in the hands of a sturdy mower in a field of rank growth.”64 Despite the intensity of the Southern firepower, Sweitzer’s three regiments continued forward with their men “falling like leaves.” The attackers approached the Confederate line so closely that they could see their enemy limbering cannon and preparing to evacuate their trenches. The fiercest fire emanated from the Federal left, where the 155th Pennsylvania dangled its flank, causing someone to order the column to oblique to the right. This tactical error subjected the Pennsylvanians and Bay Staters to a punishing volley that compelled them to either flee or drop to the ground, in some cases as close as 150 yards from the Confederate works. “If we could have had two lines and been supported on the left flank we would have captured the positions,” thought a member of the Twenty-­Second Massachusetts. “Our men . . . came back, a bleeding routed body,” wrote another soldier. “It was simply indescribable. We lost some 400 men killed and wounded, and all for the misconduct of another brigade.” While some members of Sweitzer’s brigade blamed Crawford, equal postbattle opprobrium settled on Chamberlain’s brigade of Griffin’s command, which had taken position on Sweitzer’s left.65 Colonel Chamberlain had emerged from the obscurity of regimental command on July 2, 1863, when his unit, the Twentieth Maine, successfully defended the far left flank of the army on Gettysburg’s Little Round Top. Chamberlain would receive the Medal of Honor for his heroism that day, but a more immediate reward resulted in his promotion to command of Griffin’s First Brigade. Chamberlain’s outfit included five depleted veteran regiments and an oversized new one, Pennsylvanians all. The thirty-­five-­year-­old Chamberlain had been a professor at Maine’s Bowdoin College when he left the classroom in 1862 to fight for the Union. His distinguished postwar political and literary career—­ including a penchant for self-­promotion—and the attention paid him by modern writers and filmmakers have elevated Chamberlain’s stature well beyond

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what it was on June 18, 1864, although without doubt the colonel from Maine enjoyed a sterling reputation among those who knew him.66 Chamberlain had managed to advance his brigade across the railroad and into cleared ground south of Baxter Road, where Confederate shells played havoc with his waiting troops. The colonel placed his seasoned regiments, averaging about 250 men each, in his first line, extending along a front of about 400 yards. The 121st Pennsylvania anchored his left with the 142nd Pennsylvania, 150th Pennsylvania, 149th Pennsylvania, and 143rd Pennsylvania aligned, in that order, left to right. The rookie 187th Pennsylvania, numbering about 1,000 muskets and innocent of any combat experience, deployed in a second line some fifty yards behind the first and covering about three-­fourths of the length of its five sister regiments. Two batteries—Capt. Patrick Hart’s Fifteenth New York and Capt. John Bigelow’s Ninth Massachusetts—came forward to provide close support, joined later by a third set of guns.67 While supervising the initial deployment, Chamberlain and his staff looked up to see a Confederate shell that exploded immediately above them. The blast unhorsed every officer in the colonel’s entourage, severely wounded Chamberlain’s mount, Charlemagne, and claimed the lives of three men while wounding seven others, including the brigade color bearer. Chamberlain retrieved the flag and held it aloft as his troops withdrew a short distance to a safer location, awaiting orders for an assault against the main Confederate line.68 Those orders, according to Chamberlain, arrived in the person of an unidentified lieutenant colonel bearing instructions “in the name of the general commanding” for Chamberlain’s brigade to assault the enemy’s works alone. An astonished Chamberlain purportedly penned a three-­paragraph response to the unidentified general officer (presumably Meade) explaining the operational situation and suggesting that if an attack be made, the entire army should be ordered forward. When the staff officer returned, he brought the welcome news that the rest of the army would, indeed, be ordered forward, but that Chamberlain’s advanced position dictated that his brigade lead the effort.69 This tale has been repeated so often as to become generally accepted as factual. Its pedigree, however, is suspiciously limited to Chamberlain’s own testimony and that of a sergeant in the 143rd Pennsylvania, Patrick DeLacy, both writing several decades after the war. The notion that Meade would send direct orders to a lowly brigade commander, bypassing both Warren and Griffin in the process, is illogical, as is Chamberlain’s claim that he directed a written response straight to the army commander without going through channels. No evidence exists of any order designating Chamberlain to lead the attack, although the peculiar terrain that prevented a coordinated advance among War194

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ren’s units might have left Chamberlain with the impression that his regiments had charged alone. The complaints of Sweitzer’s soldiers that Chamberlain had failed to provide support on their left demonstrates that both of Griffin’s attacking brigades went forward without a firm physical or visual connection. Chamberlain’s postwar version of events has come under question in other contexts and this seems to be an example of the eloquent colonel’s fondness for enhancing his personal reputation and that of his soldiers at the expense of the truth.70 It is incontestable, however, that Chamberlain’s Pennsylvanians charged ahead about 3:00 p.m., consistent with Warren’s wishes. They faced a daunting task. Kershaw’s Division, thought by the Federals to be 3,000 to 5,000 strong and well supported by artillery, waited behind the works of the old Dimmock Line and the hasty barricades constructed by Beauregard’s forces early that morning. Ransom’s Tar Heels and Elliott’s South Carolinians dug in on Kershaw’s left, opposite Chamberlain, as part of an unbroken chain of Beauregard’s brigades. Chamberlain’s men would top the small ridge behind which they had sought protection, descend into the valley of Poor Creek, and then climb toward the Confederate line across shelterless ground. Chamberlain explained to his regimental commanders that they were to move quickly down the slope, break ranks to cross the stream as rapidly as possible, then re-­form on the other side and rush the enemy. The veterans in Chamberlain’s first line knew that many would never return from such a mission, and an officer in the new 187th Pennsylvania shared their concern. “My heart dropped to my shoes,” he remembered. “Cold drops stood on my forehead [and] my blood was frozen solid.”71 The Maine colonel attempted to calm the nerves of his anxious soldiers by delivering an inspirational speech and positioning himself at the head of the lead column. “Attention! Trail Arms! Double-­quick, march,” Chamberlain intoned as the buglers sounded the advance. The men crested the ridge and began to take musketry and artillery fire while yelling “like a pack of infuriated devils,” then plunged into the morass at the base of the hill. Chamberlain, on foot, reached the little stream, whose banks were festooned with dwarf trees and thick vegetation. Enfilading fire peppered the drainage, and Chamberlain saw that maneuvering through this terrain would be a deadly business. He turned to his left and began to give instructions for the men to oblique to their left in order to expedite their advance. As he did so, a minié ball ricocheted off the ground and into his right hip, passed through his lower abdomen, nicked his bladder and urethra, and came to rest just under the skin behind the bone near his left hip.72 The wound was as painful as it was serious, and Chamberlain staggered June 18, 1864

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under the blow. Fearing, however, that by falling he would demoralize his men, the colonel thrust his officer’s sabre into the ground as a prop and continued to stand as his troops rushed past and ascended the slope. Eventually, a loss of blood compelled his collapse. In the meantime, some of Chamberlain’s men reached the base of the Confederate works before the lethal fire pouring from the muzzles of rifles and cannon stopped them, and then drove most of them back down the hill, leaving the ground blanketed with casualties. A few intrepid souls remained at the base of the works, in defilade and hoping that a renewed attack or nightfall would provide them relief. The green soldiers of the 187th Pennsylvania broke when they reached the ravine, and although some of them rallied, their hesitance robbed the brigade of whatever slim chance it enjoyed of breaking the Rebel line. “Our boys killed ‘blue bellies’ to their hearts content,” wrote a satisfied captain in Kershaw’s Division.73 Two of Chamberlain’s aides, Lts. West Funk and Benjamin Waters, spied their colonel lying down in the mud and muck and dragged him out of the defile. Chamberlain remained conscious and ordered the subalterns to notify the brigade’s ranking officer that he was now in charge. He also instructed them to find support for the artillery, which was on the near side of the railroad cut and in danger of capture should the Confederates come screaming down the slope in a counterattack. Funk and Waters did as they were told, and Chamberlain remained alone, his life blood oozing into the Virginia soil. When Captain Bigelow of the Ninth Massachusetts Battery learned of Chamberlain’s wounding, he sent some men to retrieve him. The colonel waved them off and, thinking his wound fatal, urged them to devote their attention to those who might be saved. The cannoneers ignored this plea and, under fire from Confederate ordnance, loaded Chamberlain onto a litter and carried him to a spot behind Bigelow’s guns. Eventually, an ambulance transported the colonel to a field hospital several miles distant, where the first surgeon he saw declared him a lost cause. By this time, the colonel’s younger brother, Capt. Tom Chamberlain, had learned of his sibling’s dire situation and persuaded two surgeons from his old brigade, Dr. A. O. Shaw of the Twentieth Maine and Dr. M. W. Townsend of the Forty-­Fourth New York, to examine his brother. These physicians recognized a difficult case but decided to attempt to repair the damage to Chamberlain’s internal organs. Chamberlain had not been fully sedated, and at one point during the procedure his suffering became so acute that the doctors considered abandoning their work to spare a dying man such agony. Chamberlain, however, encouraged them to continue, and against all odds they managed to complete their work and provide the colonel at least the chance for recovery.74 196

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Warren and Griffin both reached the hospital once the fighting ebbed for the day and watched somberly, believing like most others that the gallant colonel would soon breathe his last. At Chamberlain’s behest, they hurriedly drafted a request to promote the wounded man to brigadier general, hoping that the honor could be approved before the sufferer expired. Their request reached Grant’s desk on June 20 and by virtue of Special Orders No. 39, the general-­in-­chief named Chamberlain a brigadier general of volunteers to rank from June 18. Despite the work of Shaw and Townsend, Chamberlain also considered himself mortally wounded and wrote a heartfelt letter to his wife on June 19, pledging his undying love and promising to meet her in heaven. But God had other plans for Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Transferred to the Naval Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland, Chamberlain received excellent care, and on September 20 he earned a discharge and a convalescent furlough. On November 18, 1864, Chamberlain would return to active duty.75 Chamberlain’s brigade failed to break the Confederate line for reasons other than simply the wounding of its popular commander. Like Sweitzer, Wheaton, and Martindale, the Pennsylvanians had charged with what they perceived as little direct support on their left. In Chamberlain’s case, that support was expected from Lysander Cutler’s Fourth Division. In point of fact, Cutler did commit both of his brigades to the 3:00 p.m. offensive. The division had crossed the railroad in the morning and lay about 700 yards southeast of Kershaw’s brigades with the swampy stream that had confronted Chamberlain trickling between the Federals and the Confederate line. Consistent with the situation along the entire Union battlefront that afternoon, Cutler’s right and Chamberlain’s left did not connect and so these Federals advanced absent any direct flank support.76 Cutler placed his Second Brigade, under Col. John William Hofmann, in the front of his assault formation. A Philadelphia hosiery merchant before the war, the forty-­year-­old Hofmann had led the Fifty-­Sixth Pennsylvania before his promotion to brigade command, in which role he demonstrated bravery and competence. In addition to his former regiment, his brigade included two Delaware regiments, three from New York, and the 157th Pennsylvania, numbering about 1,300 altogether. Col. Edward S. Bragg led the First Brigade, deployed behind and somewhat to the left of Hofmann. Bragg’s command, the old Iron Brigade, was now much reduced in strength if not reputation. Bragg aligned his Westerners in a column of regiments with the Seventh Wisconsin in front, followed by the Sixth Wisconsin, Nineteenth Indiana, Twenty-­Fourth Michigan, and Seventh Indiana.77 Cutler gave the signal to attack at 3:00 p.m. and Hofmann’s troops emerged June 18, 1864

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into the open ground, where they were immediately subjected to an intense fire. As the Federals descended the slope toward the creek, some 200 yards shy of the Confederate line, Kershaw’s supporting artillery switched to canister and Hofmann’s men fell with alarming frequency. One projectile killed the colonel’s horse, dismounting him, and as the brigade reached the ravine, it began to disintegrate. Flanking fire raked the survivors, although about 200 men managed to claw their way up the opposite slope to within 75 or 100 yards of the Southern works. “We hugged the ground so close, it seemed I was not more than 3 or 4 in. thick,” reported Captain Hugunin. All of Hofmann’s regimental commanders suffered wounds, two of them mortal.78 The Iron Brigade endured a similar experience. “Just before we reached the crest,” reported a soldier in the Sixth Wisconsin, “the enemy’s battery in our front opened upon us with canister shot; it seemed to us that every gun discharged a bushel of small shot through our ranks and that the interval between discharges was but a fraction of a minute.” The “Black Hats” stumbled down into the swampy ravine, where the Seventh Indiana had begun entrenching while under an annoying and occasionally deadly fire. General Cutler ordered the rest of the brigade to oblique to the right, exposing the troops to an enfilade fire that dropped forty-­four members of the Sixth Wisconsin, which never fired a return shot. “We poured it into them so heavily they couldn’t stand it and broke back for the railroad again,” remembered a Carolinian. A few survivors managed to join Hofmann’s men near the Confederate works, while others huddled in the ravine or fled back to their jumping-­off points. “This has been the most severe charge that we have yet made,” testified Capt. Alexander B. Pattison of the Seventh Indiana. Cutler reported losing about a third of his men, and the survivors of his Fourth Division hugged their meager cover, having spent their offensive energy. “The suicidal manner in which we are sent against the enemy’s entrenchments is discouraging,” wrote Lt. Col. Rufus Dawes of the Sixth Wisconsin to his wife. “Our brigade was simply food for powder.”79 Some of the blame for Cutler’s deadly ordeal belongs to the last of Warren’s divisions: the Second, under Romeyn Beck Ayres. Ayres was a career soldier, having graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1847 and served as an artillerist both in the old army and during the first two years of the Civil War. Competent, if unspectacular, Ayres brought three brigades to the field on June 18. The First, under Col. Edgar M. Gregory, included Meade’s regular army regiments along with three New York Zouave outfits. Col. Nathan T. Dushane led the Second Brigade, consisting entirely of Maryland regiments. Col. J. Howard Kitching, considered by artillerist Wainwright to be “a nice fellow and first-­ rate officer” if a bit of a busybody, led two of the large heavy artillery regiments 198

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constituting Ayres’s Third Brigade. Kitching’s “Heavies” deployed on the right, closest to Cutler, with Dushane’s Marylanders and then Gregory extending to the left—the entire division southwest of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, but east of Jerusalem Plank Road and south of Rives’ Salient, where a cluster of Confederate redans guarded the southeastern entrance to Petersburg.80 Ayres ordered his division forward at 3:00 p.m. in concert with the rest of the Fifth Corps, but he made little progress. “Just as soon as we raised the top of our works the rebs opened,” wrote Sgt. Charles Thomas Bowen of the Twelfth U.S. Infantry. “Sometimes a solid shot would knock a file of men ten feet in the air or a charge of canister tear down half a dozen files.” Bowen thought that “the air seemed full of iron of all shapes whizzing by us” and the officers ordered the regulars to hit the dirt. “We gradually sunk ourselves in the sandy soil by a regular hen scratching with our hands,” admitted Bowen, who considered the resistance to be “the heaviest artillery fire I ever was in. . . . Arms, legs, headless trunks, & heads without bodies were strewn in every direction.” The 146th New York suffered a similar nightmare. Their officers quickly called a halt to the slaughter and the men employed their bayonets and tin cups to create “a miniature breastwork” behind which they made themselves “as small as possible to avoid Confederate fire.” A shell decapitated the Fifth New York’s color bearer, splattering his brains over his comrades before that regiment reached cover.81 Dushane’s Marylanders hardly moved forward at all, but on Ayres’s right Kitching’s heavy artillery regiments formed in two lines and advanced at the signal. Kitching reported the loss of 159 men to a “fearful fire of artillery and musketry” and his soldiers, too, employed “bayonets, spoons, hands, sticks,— almost anything . . . to ‘scratch dirt,’ and like magic a line of two or three thousand men who are one moment exposed to every shot will be pitching head foremost into the earth, like moles.” Field’s troops were beginning to arrive and they contributed to the almost effortless repulse of Ayres’s division. “The men went in, but not with spirit,” thought Colonel Lyman, “as much to say, ‘We can’t assault but we won’t run.’” Ayres managed to shift some of his troops into abandoned Batteries 22 and 23 on the Dimmock Line, facing west, and thus refusing the army’s left flank. Warren suggested that the assaults be renewed that evening, but Meade disapproved. “We have done all that it is possible for men to do,” confessed the army commander, “and must be resigned to the result.”82 Chief artillerist Wainwright considered Warren’s offensive to be “a fiasco of the worst kind; I trust it will be the last attempt at this most absurd way of attacking entrenchments by a general advance in line.” At least Ayres spared his men the devastating casualties sustained by Cutler and Chamberlain. The Fifth New York of Gregory’s brigade lost thirty-­three men—including fifteen killed June 18, 1864

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or mortally wounded, the most severe regimental loss in the division. Warren’s casualties totaled about 1,600 during these fruitless assaults.83 Historian Thomas Howe considers Ayres’s performance that afternoon as “negligent at best and criminal at worst,” but perhaps he judges too harshly. None of Warren’s division commanders, from Crawford on the right to Ayres on the left, managed to forge a connection with the troops on their flanks, and as a result each division, and in some cases brigades within divisions, essentially advanced independently. The presence of Kershaw’s and Field’s veterans behind defensible works with strong artillery, made the success of Warren’s attacks doubtful even under the most faultless execution.84 While the Fifth Corps struggled on the army’s left, David Birney worked to organize a renewal of his offensive in the Union center. “I will attack again in General Mott’s front with all the force I can concentrate there,” Birney promised Meade, “but I have a line which takes nearly half the corps to hold in one line.” It required nearly two hours for the Second Corps’ acting commander to ready a resumption of the assaults that had so badly failed at midday, timing his renewed offensive well after those of Martindale and Warren. Birney decided to retest the Confederate defenses that McAllister’s men had assaulted with little success, centered on the Federal foothold near the Hare house along Prince George Court House Road. Birney would commit six brigades from Gibbon’s division and his own, now under Mott.85 David Bell Birney had gained prominent stature in the Army of the Potomac despite the absence of a West Point education or old army connections. Birney did have a famous father—former Liberty Party presidential candidate and abolitionist James G. Birney—and the younger man’s antislavery credentials helped him rise through the army’s volunteer hierarchy. A Philadelphia lawyer before the war, Birney organized a Pennsylvania regiment at the outset of hostilities and, using a combination of skill, drive, and political influence, rose to division command in little more than a year. The thirty-­nine-­year-­old Birney impressed most observers with his intelligence and his capacity to learn military principles, but some perceived an unflattering degree of personal ambition and a lack of combat aggressiveness. “We all like General Birney but he is not able to handle so large a command just yet,” thought one officer.86 Birney selected two brigades from his own Third Division to take the lead in his impending attack. The First Brigade, now under Colonel Madill, had advanced about 1:00 p.m. to a position under the sheltering elevation of the Hare house plateau, the ridge that separated the Union and Confederate lines just south of Prince George Court House Road. This elevation loomed fifty to

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sixty feet above the surrounding terrain, dividing the watersheds of Poor and Harrison’s Creeks. Here, Captain Dow’s Sixth Maine Battery exchanged fire with grayclad gunners around Colquitt’s Salient. Supported by the First U.S. Sharpshooters, Dow’s guns managed to silence two Confederate cannon and remained in position to fire over the heads of the attacking infantry once the offensive began. Colonel Madill crept to the top of the hill and saw that several hundred yards of a fallow cornfield, devoid of cover, separated his brigade from its target, a vision that did little to enhance his confidence. He arranged his men in column of regiments, ten lines deep, and waited for the signal to advance.87 Gershom Mott’s promotion to temporary division command left Col. Daniel Chaplin of the First Maine Heavy Artillery as acting commander of Mott’s Third Brigade. Chaplin haled from Cumberland County, Maine, and served as a clerk and bookkeeper before the war. At age forty-­four, Chaplin numbered among the older regimental commanders in the army. He had seen field service at First Manassas and on the Virginia Peninsula, but had spent the next two years with his heavy artillery regiment in the comfortable environs of the Washington defenses. His soldiers had suffered horrible casualties on May 19 at Spotsylvania, but Chaplin’s Mainers still outnumbered every other regiment in the brigade by a wide margin.88 Chaplin’s brigade took responsibility for the ground to the right of Madill’s command, along the sunken and partially planked Prince George Court House Road. One oft-­quoted account states that several veteran regiments had initial responsibility to deploy in front, but their protests of being “played out” and suggestions that the First Maine Heavy Artillery take the lead resulted in Chaplin positioning his own regiment in the front lines. There is no corroborating evidence for this dramatic tale, and it is more likely that Chaplin selected the First Maine Heavy Artillery for the lead role without any prompting from reluctant veterans.89 The New Englanders marched up from the rear ranks and deployed in three battalion-­sized lines along and behind Prince George Court House Road. They placed their left northeast of the Hare house, at the point where the road took a sharp turn to the right, and extended their line northwestward along the highway, protected by large brush-­lined embankments on either side of the road. The first battalion, commanded by Maj. Russell B. Shepherd, who also inherited overall regimental responsibility from Chaplin, would clear the abatis and gain the ditch in front of the Confederate works. The second battalion, led by Maj. Christopher V. Crossman, would follow Shepherd closely and pin down the Rebel riflemen, while Shepherd’s men prepared to storm the works.

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The last battalion, under Capt. William S. Clark, provided the regimental reserve and would be available to exploit any success or repulse a counterattack in case of failure. Every man on extra duty received a rifle and took his place in line, raising estimates of the regiment’s effective strength from 832 to 955.90 Two of Chaplin’s other regiments—the Sixteenth Massachusetts and the Seventh New Jersey in that order—aligned behind the Heavies in direct support. Mott’s other two brigades, McAllister’s and Col. William R. Brewster’s, moved into position behind Chaplin and Madill to attack should circumstances warrant. Gibbon loaned two of his brigades, Fraser’s and McIvor’s, to back up Brewster and McAllister. Thus a substantial force of between 7,000 and 9,000 soldiers poised to execute Birney’s assault, a powerful bludgeon if properly employed.91 Despite the modern perception that the men of the First Maine Heavy Artillery labored under a naïveté of stunning proportions, most of these troops realized full well that the task in front of them might prove fatal. Bravery and devotion to comrades and duty—not ignorance—animated these citizen-­ soldiers as they assumed their positions. “I think every man present realized the hopelessness of the undertaking,” wrote an ironically named Sgt. George H. Coffin. Chaplin ordered the troops to stack their knapsacks in the rear and assigned two men per company to guard them. These fortunate souls stayed busy recording the names of friends and relatives in Maine to be notified in case of calamity. “The men’s faces had grown very serious,” remembered Lt. Frederic C. Low. “We knew that very many of us were to die. Men turned to their comrades bidding each other good-­bye, and . . . dictated messages to wives, fathers, mothers, sisters and sweethearts in case they should be among the slain and their comrades survive.”92 The same sense of doom afflicted the soldiers in Madill’s brigade as the order to charge arrived sometime between 4:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. With fixed bayonets the Federals ascended Hare’s Hill, some making for a large barn that offered shelter and a place to re-­form for the final push toward the Confederate works. “As our advance line emerged from behind the crest of the hill and came in full view of the Confederates’ stronghold it seemed that all the reserve and concentrated fire of the entire rebel army was let loose upon it,” wrote a member of the 141st Pennsylvania. “A horrid tempest of iron and lead swept across that spot, laying low hundreds of brave men and making huge gaps in that living wall. It was more than flesh and blood could endure.” The barn proved to be a flimsy refuge as shot and shell splintered the wood and drove members of the Eighty-­Sixth New York out into the open. Colonel Madill quickly recognized that his assault had failed and, leaving some 200 casualties on the field, ordered 202

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his survivors to fall back to the reverse slope of the ridge. None of Madill’s men progressed more than fifty yards past Dow’s Battery.93 Chaplin’s men waited in and behind the roadbed, rifles loaded and bayonets fixed, for the word to advance. As they moved forward they became a bit disorganized, and Chaplin drilled them in the manual of arms to calm the men’s nerves, despite the occasional ball from a sharpshooter’s rifle. Then the colonel cried out, “Forward, Guide Right, March!” and the first battalion scaled the embankment, pushed through the brush, and entered the open field. “Men were shot within the first five feet,” reported Capt. Frederick A. Cummings. “The crash of two thousand muskets rent the air as a long line of flame leaped from the works in our front, and the well-­known yell of the Army of Northern VirJune 18, 1864

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ginia mingled with the roar of the Rebel batteries on our right and left as their canister followed the musket balls of the infantry and tore enormous gaps in our ranks.”94 In fact, what Cummings heard had not come from the throats of Lee’s soldiers but rather from the brigades of Colquitt and Gracie of Beauregard’s command. The Nineteenth Georgia and Twenty-­Seventh Georgia of Colquitt’s Brigade manned the salient that provided the focal point of Chaplin’s charge. Gracie’s Alabamans flanked Colquitt to the south, and even the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina of Hagood’s Brigade had the range north of the Georgians. In addition to the artillery that directly supported these infantrymen, the two batteries located across the Appomattox River could target the Federals as they debouched from their shelters and entered the old Hare cornfield. Thus the attackers faced frontal and flank fire from all directions as they ascended the gentle slope toward the Confederate works.95 Despite such a high volume of casualties, the First Maine Heavy Artillery pushed forward, pulling their “cap visors down over their eyes and advanc[ing] against the storm.” The men emitted a “wild cheer” as they pressed ahead amid “the hiss of the deadly minie, the scream of the shell, [and] the crackle and roar of every conceivable missile.” “That field became a seething hell,” wrote Sergeant Coffin. “They poured it into us from the front, from the right, and from the left.” The most intrepid attackers reached the line of abatis “when all of a sudden blaze after blaze of lightning” burst forth from the Confederate line. “You ought to have seen us kill them,” boasted one of Gracie’s men as the fire grew so heavy that the attackers “became a confused mass . . . unable to stand it.” A soldier in the Sixth Georgia thought that the slaughter was “equal to Cold Harbor.”96 The attack’s high-­water mark came perhaps thirty to fifty yards from Colquitt’s Salient, but the pitiful remnants of the First Maine Heavy Artillery quickly receded from that “whirlwind of death.” Pvt. Joel F. Brown of Company I was among the men who had advanced the farthest, but as he looked about, he found he was almost alone. “The ground over which we must return was covered thick with those who were down, the wounded, dead, and dying together,” Brown recalled. “How I ever got back I cannot tell.” Not many more of the First Maine Heavy Artillery joined him along Prince George Court House Road. Of the roughly 900 men who began the attack, 632 were casualties, the highest single regimental loss of any unit on any Civil War battlefield. The entire bloody episode consumed less than ten minutes.97 With the exception of the short-­lived advance of Madill’s men, the First Maine Heavy Artillery received precious little assistance. The regiments im204

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mediately behind them in line, the Sixteenth Massachusetts and Seventh New Jersey, failed to move forward. Brewster’s and McAllister’s men made token aggressive gestures at best. Sgt. Jerome Sears of the Ninety-­Third New York recalled that, “as soon as the command was given forward, the whole line hesitated. . . . [We] could see that we were ordered across a large cornfield where the enemy were strongly entrenched.” Two additional orders to charge finally motivated Sears and about twenty of his mates to move, only to meet “such a storm of Rebel bullets I never was in before though I have been in ten engagements. . . . A few of us remained there about a minute, we soon found out that it was no go, so we went back a little more than double quick.” Similar scenarios unfolded in Gibbon’s two brigades. The 152nd New York of Fraser’s command moved out subsequent to Chaplin’s attack, took ten paces, and met “a most murderous fire, resembling a violent tornado or rushing wind.” The front line recoiled after sustaining significant casualties; losses on the Confederate side were negligible. Colquitt’s casualties are unknown but Gracie reported one killed and twenty-­ four wounded.98 By then Birney realized that his offensive had failed, and he so reported to Meade. “I have just made an assault with nine brigades,” Birney exaggerated, “and have been repulsed with considerable loss.” Meade took the news surprisingly well, instructing Birney to “get the best line you can and be prepared to hold it,” adding that “I feel satisfied all has been done that can be done.” Colonel Chaplin certainly felt no satisfaction with the afternoon’s outcome. With tears flowing down his cheeks, the colonel offered his sword to General Mott, explaining that he had no use for it any longer. When General Birney saw Chaplin and asked about the colonel’s men, Chaplin angrily pointed toward the bloody cornfield and replied, “There they are, out on that field where your tried veterans dared not go.” Chaplin himself would have less than two months to live. In the succinct words of a Second Corps after-­action report: “a general assault on the enemy’s line was made by our forces, resulting in no decided success.”99 As Birney’s note reporting his failure reached Meade’s headquarters, around 5:00  p.m., the army commander authored his own terse message to Ambrose Burnside: “What progress? . . . Warren and Martindale report progressing, and Birney is about attacking with his whole corps. I hope you are going to-­day to outdo yesterday.” Burnside responded by assuring Meade that he would continue with his offensive, pointing out that “the condition of our force renders it necessary to move carefully and to keep the men well in hand.”100 Burnside would indeed resume his attacks, the last such assaults of the day, using Willcox’s division, supported by Curtin’s brigade of Potter’s division. June 18, 1864

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These men had remained in the railroad cut northwest of the Taylor house for hours, shielded by the steep embankment in their front and their ersatz traverses, which blocked enfilading fire from Confederate sharpshooters. Capt. William Hamilton Harris, Burnside’s chief of ordnance, recorded that their position in the railroad cut was “naturally very strong but while it seems impossible for the rebels to dislodge us, it is also extremely difficult to advance from it.” The continuing enfilade fire, despite the makeshift precautions, had compelled Sgt. Alexander S. Patten of the 109th New York to stop recording thoughts in his diary. “Men are constantly being killed and wounded all around me,” he explained.101 Orlando Willcox was the ranking officer at the front, although Burnside delegated overall command of the operation to his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. John G. Parke. Willcox positioned Hartranft’s brigade on his left and Curtin’s brigade of Potter’s division on his right, with his own Second Brigade, under Colonel Raulston, in support. In order to reach the main Confederate line, Willcox would have to scale the railroad embankment, traverse an oat field leading down to a ravine drained by Poor Creek, and then push through a fringe of trees and brush, into the open ground that ascended toward the Confederates. Enemy pickets waited near the creek and Elliott’s South Carolinians, Fulton’s Tennesseans, and a few of Wise’s Virginians supported by Richard Pegram’s Virginia Battery, among other artillery, manned the works in their front.102 Although Burnside received Meade’s 2:30 p.m. order to launch a general assault, his attack did not commence for three hours. Hartranft, Curtin, and Raulston clambered up their improvised steps on the west side of the railroad cut at 5:30 p.m. and hurled themselves forward toward the Poor Creek ravine. The three brigades that made the assault wielded only a fraction of their June 16 numbers. Hartranft reported that his regiments averaged less than 100 men apiece, and Sergeant Patten confirmed that “66 men is the entire strength of the Regt.” They immediately encountered “a galling fire of all the missiles known to war,” according to Sgt. John Frederic Holahan of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania. “Men were falling everywhere, but we swept on.”103 The Rebel pickets retreated back to their primary line, allowing Elliott’s Palmetto State soldiers to unleash a ferocious fusillade. “‘Fire’ came the word, and our whole line was a sheet of flame,” testified a member of the Seventeenth South Carolina, which in company with the Eighteenth South Carolina stood directly in the Federals’ path. The shallow water of Poor Creek ran red with the blood of the Union wounded and dead, a few hapless Federals drowning when pinned in the stream by the bodies of comrades. Nevertheless, many of Willcox’s bravest soldiers pushed through and into the old cornfield that led uphill 206

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to the Southern earthworks. Col. William Humphrey of the Second Michigan thought that he had never seen such a heavy volume of fire as that emanating from the Confederate pits. “The Yanks charged our works . . . and the 17th & 18th just slayed them,” agreed Lt. J. Warren Pursley of the Eighteenth South Carolina.104 Not more than 1,000 of Willcox’s men made it past the ravine, but those who did were halted by the intense Confederate fire about 100 to 125 yards below the works. These survivors retrieved tin cups, plates, and spoons from their haversacks and scratched out shallow barriers to enhance the natural defilade that allowed them to remain closer to the enemy line than any other Federal troops that day. General Elliott ordered a few companies to sally out to drive the Federals away, but the majority of the bluecoats remained in position until nightfall provided them a welcome shield.105 Union casualties were predictably heavy, especially among the higher ranks. Colonel Raulston fell wounded, and brigade command devolved on Lt. Col. George W. Travers of the Forty-­Sixth New York. A few moments later, a Confederate bullet found Travers, whereupon Lt. Col. Walter C. Newberry of the Twenty-­Fourth New York Cavalry took charge. Willcox promoted Colonel June 18, 1864

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Humphrey to the brigade’s command the following day. Colonel Curtin also went down near the Confederate line with a serious shoulder wound, leaving his brigade in the hands of his kinsman, Capt. Theodore Gregg of the Forty-­ Fifth Pennsylvania. Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania would take over, once the dust settled. “Our loss was very severe and the attacking troops behaved splendidly,” thought a Ninth Corps staff officer. Pvt. Jacob Kessinger of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania was among the missing that evening, but his mates were sure that his body would be identified. Kessinger went into battle shoeless, preferring to wear eight pairs of long lady’s stockings that he had purloined from an elderly woman the previous night.106 At 6:50 p.m. Burnside wired Meade that his attack had failed to take the enemy’s works. “The two divisions are across the railroad, and they can hold that position,” he added with a mixture of pride and defensiveness. Darkness soon followed, ending another long and sanguinary day south of the Appomattox.107 Early that morning on the north side of the river, General Wright prepared to execute the offensive that he declined to undertake on the 17th. Wright informed Butler at 1:30 a.m. that “the troops are now forming and will soon be ready, when the assault will be made at once.” He had positioned Adelbert Ames’s division in his front line, supported by General Ricketts’s Sixth Corps soldiers, but Butler intervened. “As you were unable to make the attack at the time first ordered,” Butler wrote at 1:40 a.m., “you will suspend the attack.” Alluding to the orders he had just received from the general-­in-­chief, Butler added instructions to “hold all your troops in readiness to take advantage of any unmasking of the enemy in your front caused by their withdrawal of troops to re-­enforce Petersburg against an attack that will be made by General Meade in the morning.”108 With Wright’s offensive deferred, the most important event to occur at Bermuda Hundred that morning involved a change in corps command. Quincy Gillmore had been sent to Fort Monroe to await his fate, and Grant had suggested that William Brooks be promoted to command the Tenth Corps. Butler agreed, and now that Brooks’s division of the Eighteenth Corps was en route to Bermuda Hundred, the time seemed right to make the move. Brooks announced his promotion in General Orders No. 9, and his elevation met with approval, at least in the press. General Brooks is “a splendid soldier,” beamed the New York Times, “and noted especially for perseverance, pluck, and endurance,” conveniently ignoring Brooks’s track record of contentiousness and subterfuge. General Terry reverted to division command.109 Only picket firing disturbed the peace at Bermuda Hundred during the 208

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morning and through the afternoon. At 4:00 p.m. Confederate artillery opened along the northern end of the line, lasting between thirty and forty-­five minutes. The cannonade then promptly ceased “and there were a few minutes of profound stillness, when the familiar rebel yell was heard on our left which was succeeded by volleys of musketry,” recalled a soldier in the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois. Montgomery Corse’s command, led by the Seventeenth Virginia, executed a spirited attack that drove back a portion of the Union picket line held by Colonel Howell’s brigade. The Sixty-­Seventh Ohio felt the Virginians’ wrath and withdrew before rallying with the aid of the Eighty-­Fifth Pennsylvania and Thirty-­Ninth Illinois. The Confederates managed to advance their picket line with this foray, a minor episode that resulted in minimal casualties, including the capture of a handful of Union prisoners. “This made our line of pickets near the right shape,” rationalized one of the Federals. Pickett’s Division thus solidified its hold on the Howlett Line with William R. Terry’s Brigade on the right, Eppa Hunton’s and Colonel Aylett’s brigades in the center, and Corse’s men now better aligned on the left.110 Pickett’s command alone protected Bermuda Hundred after the departure of Kershaw’s and Field’s Divisions that morning. Those thousands of soldiers had managed to move across the Appomattox River under Horatio Wright’s nose. Wright confidently informed Butler at 12:​​45 p.m. that his pickets and staff officers agreed that no change had occurred in the Confederate force they confronted, hours after the two Confederate divisions had entered Petersburg. “It is believed that no movement in force can be made without its being perceived by us” Wright reported, unaware of the irony.111 Behind those two divisions late that afternoon came Hill’s Third Corps. After partaking in various refreshments offered by Petersburg’s grateful townsfolk, Hill’s infantry tramped south and took position on the far right of the Confederate line, extending almost to the Petersburg Railroad. This allowed Field to shift to the left to relieve Beauregard’s men, “who retired to the rear complaining loudly of the fatigue and hard fighting they had endured for three whole days and nights before we got into position,” wrote a Georgian of DuBose’s Brigade.112 While the Confederates shuffled fresh troops into line, the Federals dug in where their attacks that day had terminated. Griffin, Crawford, and Willcox held positions closest to the Confederate lines, but Birney’s men around the Hare house plateau also fortified within easy rifle range of the enemy’s works. They could plainly hear the pitiful cries for water coming from the wounded survivors of the First Maine Heavy Artillery, who had fallen in the no-­man’s-­land between the lines. Sharp skirmishing that persisted all night denied these poor June 18, 1864

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wretches any relief. “It was perfectly heartrending,” wrote Colonel McAllister. Union soldiers returned fire along the entire line while improving their earthworks. “By working hard all night, three men firing, and one digging a safe and cozy breastwork was thrown up,” remembered one of Burnside’s men.113 “We triumphed at last against fearful odds in holding the invaders at bay and saving the city from the rule of the negro and the beast,” Private Perry recorded in his diary that night. Other Confederates shared Perry’s pride and confidence. “The Yankees has a large force,” admitted Lieutenant Pursley of South Carolina, “but if they keep on charging we will have them all killed in a few days.” Another South Carolinian wrote home to his father that “I am satisfied that the enemy cannot take Petersburg,” although he hoped they could drive the Federals a little farther back from the city. Some considered the Confederate victory on June 18 so effortless that they could not believe the Northerners had conducted anything more than demonstrations. “A brigade was brought up here and there and hurled against our steady lines as one would cast a stone against a wall of adamant,” wrote one newspaper correspondent, “but in every instance the enemy were repulsed with but little effort.” The Richmond Daily Dispatch assured its readers that “the time of our peril has passed and the hour for congratulation and felicitation now is.”114 Some Federal soldiers indulged in optimism of their own. Lt. Col. Ebenezer Gould, commanding the dismounted cavalry’s supply train, wrote his brother that “our men have shown themselves equal to any troops in the world and superior to the enemy.” Lt. Benjamin Wright, serving in the Quartermaster’s Department with the Army of the James, wrote home brimming with confidence: “I shall not be surprised to hear that Petersburg is ours before tomorrow night.”115 Gould, Wright, and men of similar sentiments usually shared one trait in common: they did not serve in the Army of the Potomac’s infantry. Those who did knew they had been through a meat grinder, not just on June 18 and not merely at Petersburg, but since the army crossed the Rapidan River in early May. “The feeling here in the army is that we have been absolutely butchered,” wrote Stephen Weld, commanding officer of the Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts in Burnside’s corps. “We can’t afford to make many more such bloody attacks as we have been doing. The enemy will outnumber us if we do so.” Weld blamed careless and reckless officers at the corps level and above “who have time and again . . . wickedly placed us in slaughter-­pens. I tell you, Father, it is discouraging to see one’s men and officers cut down and butchered time and again, and all for nothing.”116 Capt. Charles Francis Adams Jr., scion of the famous Massachusetts family 210

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and serving in the army’s provost guard with his squadron of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, expressed puzzlement in a letter to his father on June 19. “We have assaulted the enemy’s works repeatedly and lost many lives, but I cannot understand it. . . . Doubtless Grant has his reasons and we must have faith; but, certainly, I have never seen the Army so haggard and worn, so worked out and fought out, so dispirited and hopeless.” Sgt. Zerah C. Monks of the Sixty-­Second Pennsylvania told a correspondent that “the boys don’t seem to think so much of Gen. Grant now as they did some time ago. They think he has crowded us on their works too hard. It is nothing but charge, charge, and the ones that escape today fall tomorrow.”117 The casualty estimates for Grant’s First Petersburg Offensive validate these concerns. As is usually the case with Civil War combat, determining precise numbers for the killed, wounded, and missing in the First Offensive is an exercise in futility, particularly for the Confederates. Published Union casualty estimates range from fewer than 9,000 to more than 11,000, and all are probably too conservative. General Meade, on June 21, wrote his wife that he guessed his losses would amount to 9,500 of all categories. General Andrew A. Humphreys in his detailed history of the campaign arrived at a figure of 10,586 based on reports and educated guesses. A contemporary accounting tallied 4,263 casualties in the Second Corps and Willcox provided figures of 1,590 or 1,231 for losses in his division, while Ninth Corps staff officer Daniel Read Larned reported about 3,000 total casualties in Burnside’s command. In the Eighteenth Corps, Stannard counted 237 losses in his brigade and Duncan 416 in fighting south of the Appomattox, and it is not unreasonable to believe that Smith’s entire loss approached 2,000. Historian Thomas Howe estimates total Union losses between 10,000 and 11,000. The most detailed summary of Union killed, wounded, and missing in Meade’s and Butler’s armies includes casualties from June 15 through June 30. This summary yields a total of 16,569 of which perhaps as many as 13,000 occurred between June 15 and 18 in the brutal combat that marked Grant’s first attempt to conquer Petersburg.118 Far fewer sources tackle Confederate losses, but there is no doubt that the report in the Richmond Daily Dispatch assuring its readers that “1,000 would cover our total casualties in killed and wounded since the fighting commenced in front of Petersburg” grossly understates the matter. General Beauregard wrote to E. P. Alexander after the war that “I cannot say positively now the number of killed, wounded, and missing during these three and a half days [June 15–18], but I should say not far from about 2,500 men.” Bushrod Johnson made a contemporary tally of his losses, arriving at a figure of 1,512 in his five brigades plus the Sixty-­Fourth Georgia. Hagood reported 220 men lost in his briJune 18, 1864

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gade on the 18th, leaving his earlier losses and casualties in Hoke’s other three brigades unstated, along with those in Kershaw’s Division, Field’s Division, and the artillery and cavalry. Assuming that Martin, Colquitt, and Clingman suffered losses more or less commensurate with those of Hagood, and adding a few hundred more among the newly arrived infantry on June 18, Beauregard’s figure of 2,500 seems reasonable. The careful chronicler, Porter Alexander, estimated nearly twice that many in his postwar writings, suggesting that Beauregard’s number may be on the low end of a plausible estimate.119 No matter how many Americans were laid low during these four days of fighting, few could argue with Lewis H. Steiner of the Sanitary Commission, who witnessed the human carnage from his perspective in the Union rear. “If future generations do not appreciate the amount which is now expended for the preservation of the Union they will deserve the contempt of the race.”120

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six

Our Work Here Progresses Slowly

Grant’s Second Offensive Virginia! Old Virginia! How bears your pulse today? We come up here to greet you, And, lo! you run away. We heard you long’d to meet us, And when we come to see, You lock yourselves in Petersburg— But Grant has got the key And is knocking—gently knocking— You have heard his ‘rap’ before; So you’d better come and open, Or he’ll batter down the door.1 The crack of the rifle and the roar of the cannon gave way to the cries of the wounded as darkness settled over the Petersburg battlefield on the evening of June 18. Concern about tactics yielded to contemplation as the officers and men in all four contending armies reflected on their experience of the last four days and speculated about the campaign’s future. Maj. Gen. George Meade prepared a summary of the day’s events for his general-­in-­chief, concluding that he found it “a source of great regret that I am not able to report more success,” adding that “I believe every effort to command it has been made.” Ulysses S. Grant immediately responded that he was 213

“perfectly satisfied that all has been done that could be done, and that the assaults to-­day were called for by all the appearances and information that could be obtained.” He informed Meade that the assaults would not resume on June 19. “Now we will rest the men and use the spade for their protection until a new vein can be struck.” Grant explained to staff officer Horace Porter that because Robert E. Lee’s army had arrived and the enemy had adopted strong positions, he had decided to suspend the offensive, but “then look to extensions toward our left, with a view to destroying Lee’s communications on the south and confining him to a close siege.” Grant’s facile acceptance of the status quo stood in contrast with the inclination of most soldiers and countless subsequent observers to question the Union armies’ failure to capture Petersburg or isolate it from the Confederate capital.2 The mood at Meade’s headquarters that night also seemed more chipper than might have been expected after the day’s failures. Theodore Lyman of Meade’s staff found his chief to be “extremely brave and cheerful, though much disappointed.” This had been Meade’s battle, as General Grant, except for two brief occasions, remained at his City Point command post throughout the First Offensive. Meade had been unquestionably aggressive, focusing relentlessly on exploiting his numerical superiority. He “showed himself the personification of earnest, vigorous action in rousing his subordinate commanders to superior exertions,” thought Porter, who spent a good deal of June 18 at Meade’s side. “Even his fits of anger and his resort to intemperate language stood him at times in good stead in spurring on every one upon that active field.”3 Some, however, believed that Meade’s personality undermined his leadership abilities—on June 18 or at any other time. Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana considered Meade to be “a man of the worst possible temper, especially toward his subordinates. I think he had not a friend in the whole army.” Moreover, Dana thought that Meade’s generals had lost confidence in him, which helped explain their seeming inability—or unwillingness—to obey his orders, the behavior that caused Meade to lose his composure on the afternoon of June 18. “General [Horatio] Wright remarked confidentially to a friend,” wrote Dana, “that all of Meade’s attacks had been made without brains and without generalship.”4 Meade, for his part, would admit two months later that by all odds he had failed in the First Offensive. “I should have taken Petersburg,” he confessed to Lyman. “I had reason to calculate on success. The enemy had no defences but what they had thrown up in a few hours; and I had 60,000 men to their 25,000.” But a few days after the fighting ceased, the Pennsylvania general had attributed his failure to the condition of his troops and attrition among his officers. 214

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“Indeed, the army is exhausted with forty-­nine days of continued marching and fighting, and absolutely requires rest to prevent its morale being impaired,” he explained. “We cannot replace the officers lost with experienced men, and there is no time for reorganization or careful selection.” Still, Meade contended that although “this army has not accomplished all that ignorant people anticipated, it has really done more than could reasonably have been counted on,” adding that his casualties were no “larger than is incidental to operations of the character of ours, being offensive, and conducted on so grand a scale.”5 Many voices echoed Meade’s perception that the Army of the Potomac’s enervated condition explained its lack of success. “The loss of a large proportion of the best officers, the nervous prostration of the men [and] the immense destruction of life all tend to injure the morale and discipline and skill” of the army, thought Lyman. Cyrus B. Comstock of Grant’s staff agreed that the heavy loss in field and line officers sustained since May, requiring inexperienced and often unqualified men to assume leadership roles, accounted for the army’s substandard performance. “The men fight as well, but are not directed with the same skill and enthusiasm,” he wrote. Contemporary historian John Codman Ropes called the Army of the Potomac “a blunt tool when it reached Petersburg.” The Overland Campaign had consumed many of the army’s bravest men “and the remainder were discouraged by incessant fighting and toil, and by want of success. . . . The army could still march and intrench and obey orders, and resist heavy attacks; but for the assault it was no longer available.” Colonel Porter added the element of sleep deprivation to the formula and noted the “considerable suffering from sickness in many of the camps.” The condition of Sergeant Sears of the Ninety-­Third New York typified that of many Federals following the First Offensive. “My health is very good,” he wrote his brother on June 19, “but I am very thin in flesh & am pretty much played out. It don’t seem possible that I can endure this campaign much longer. I feel very lonesome, the most of the boys of my company are killed or wounded.”6 Other critics looked higher up the table of organization to locate the source of the army’s decline. A soldier in the Eleventh New York Battery wrote that the failures of the Second Corps left the men “supremely disgusted with the display of military stupidity our generals had made.” Another cannoneer, Col. Charles Wainwright, admitted that “even the stupidest private now knows” that frontal assaults against earthworks could not succeed. At least sixteen regimental commanders had been killed, wounded, or captured between June 15 and 18, two brigade commanders had been killed, and twelve more had been wounded. “The universal opinion is that [the June 18 assaults] would have been successful if the troops had only had the presence of their old officers to lead them,” editoGrant’s Second Offensive

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rialized the New York Herald. No Federal commander’s absence was felt more keenly than Winfield Scott Hancock’s. “If General Hancock was only in command of the Army of the Potomac it would not be many days before we would be in Richmond,” wrote one Second Corps officer.7 The atmosphere in Ben Butler’s sector was decidedly more upbeat, at least in the bivouac of the 117th New York. “One thing is certain our Army occupies the best position now than it has during this campaign,” wrote Pvt. John P. Foote, “and I hope that we shall soon be able to put to flight Gen. Lee & all his grey back followers.” Capt. Linus R. Clark agreed. “I think Richmond will be ours very soon . . . the last move of Grant’s army is one of the greatest successes of the war.”8 Admiration for the Army of the Potomac proved difficult to detect at Butler’s headquarters, where the commander and his staff considered Meade’s organization institutionally flawed. “Mistakes will always happen & there will always be some officers who misbehave,” explained Col. Charles J. Paine, one of Butler’s aides, “but it is impossible to hope much from an army where undisputed misbehavior of such disastrous consequences (every man lost before Petersburg) goes unpunished. . . . There is a thorough business like indifference through that army; when it is bedtime their generals would rather go to bed than end the war. . . . If Grant had been well seconded in Meade’s army Richmond would now be tottering.” Butler, like Paine, made it clear that he absolved Grant of personal responsibility for the failures of the last four days: “In a word, it’s the West Pointism of the Army, of the McClellanism, for he is but the representative of the system.”9 What of Grant, whose fingerprints are all but invisible on the operations just concluded? The general-­in-­chief had little to say about affairs between June 16 and 18, although he would express the belief in his memoirs that Petersburg might easily have been seized on the evening of the 15th, an opinion colored, perhaps, by soured relations with Baldy Smith. A postwar pundit asserted that had anyone but Grant presided over the Petersburg fiasco a court of inquiry would have been convened to determine the responsible party. But most of Grant’s biographers, both men who knew him and modern scholars, exonerate their subject from responsibility for the armies’ failures. “Between Butler and Bermuda Hundred, Petersburg, and the crossing of the James, [Grant] had much to manage,” writes historian Brooks Simpson, “and he had to trust that his generals would do what they could to achieve success.” Although it is curious that Grant showed such scant interest in overseeing the culmination of his brilliant maneuver from Cold Harbor, his behavior was not inconsistent with his generalship at other battlefields, such as Champion Hill, Missionary Ridge, 216

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or the Wilderness. Grant saw his primary role as ensuring that army commanders Meade and Butler had the means to carry out his instructions and that is how he spent his time at City Point.10 Grant’s two armies could have indisputably altered the course of the Civil War in Virginia between June 15 and 17, but that opportunity was not as easy to exploit as conventional wisdom might suggest. The Federals certainly enjoyed numerical superiority on both sides of the Appomattox River, but, given the depleted physical condition of the Union soldiers and the strong positions manned by the Confederates, those odds for frontal attacks were not overwhelming. A better option might have been to skirt Beauregard’s right flank, west of Jerusalem Plank Road, rather than continually test the Southerners’ occupied fortifications. Butler’s failure to exert a stronger effort to block access to Petersburg from the north looms large in the litany of missed opportunities during the First Offensive—although, again, how the Army of the James might have fared against a determined effort by Lee to punch through to Petersburg cannot be known. Historian John Ropes identified half a dozen tactical miscues between the morning of June 16 and the morning of June 18, where better coordination between corps or more aggressive generalship might have altered the outcome. Joshua Chamberlain considered Smith’s hesitancy on the night of June 15 as “the golden moment” to capture Petersburg. Whatever lingering influence the failure of June 3 may have cast over the psyches of the Federal rank and file, historian Thomas Howe rejects the idea of a “Cold Harbor Syndrome,” noting that only a few brigades declined to make assaults as ordered, and only at the end of the offensive. The reality of nearly 13,000 casualties speaks more eloquently than any other source to the bravery and determination of the Northern soldier. There can be little doubt that the attrition experienced by the Army of the Potomac, particularly in its leadership ranks, reduced its effectiveness and spirit, as did the sheer physical toll that forty-­five days of continuous combat would take on any fighting force. But every explanation of Union defeat during the First Offensive must consider the performance of the Confederates.11 Many in the South credited P. G. T. Beauregard and his little army for safeguarding the Cockade City. “Beauregard’s defence of Petersburg with two slim divisions against two corps of Grant’s army . . . holding them in check & then driving them back until Lee came up, is regarded as one of the grandest achievements of that great warrior,” wrote Quartermaster Capt. Charles Morris from the capital. “By his gallantry and unflinching courage, by the devotion & bravery of his little band of heroes, he saved Petersburg & perhaps Richmond.” Beauregard’s aide and the titular author of a laudatory biography, Alfred Grant’s Second Offensive

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Roman, unlimbered all his literary ordnance in praise of his chieftain’s performance: “With such fearful and almost incredible odds against him, General Beauregard, from the 15th to the 18th of June, maintained a successful barrier to the Federal advance—a feat of war almost without a precedent in which the courage and the endurance of the troops, no less than the skill with which the commander used his small resources, were fully as conspicuous as the good-­ fortune that lent itself to such a result.”12 Without doubt, the Creole commander deserves high marks for denying the Federals access to Petersburg. He allocated Generals Hoke’s and Johnson’s units properly and set the leadership tone that facilitated the splendid fighting done by most of the outnumbered Confederate brigades, although little evidence suggests his personal influence on the tactical conduct of the defense. Most importantly, with the assistance of his engineer, David Harris, and his competent brigade commanders, Beauregard’s selection of the Hagood Line and the Harris Line and his skillful withdrawals to them on the nights of June 15–16 and June 17–18 proved as wise as they were expedient. But as historian Alfred Burne points out, “the prosaic fact is that a general conducting a defensive war in an entrenched position can have very little direct influence on the fight.” Burne concludes that “the claim that Beauregard’s defence of Petersburg was ‘a feat of war almost without precedent’ must be set down as hyperbole.”13 Historian T. Harry Williams considers the issue of Lee’s measured response to Beauregard’s warnings of impending disaster at Petersburg as “one of the great controversies of the war.” Indeed, the question of Lee’s grasp on the operational situation has provided writers with one of the few blemishes on Marse Robert’s record as army commander. Had Grant “successfully deceived [Lee] as to his whereabouts for several days,” as charged by Porter Alexander, or is historian Douglas Southall Freeman correct in asserting that “no man of [Lee’s] ability could have failed to understand the significance of Grant’s movement to the [James] river”?14 While it is tempting to cite Beauregard’s many warnings about the vulnerability of Petersburg and his attempts to persuade Bragg and Lee to bolster the defenses south of the James as evidence of the Creole’s strategic prescience, the facts do not sustain such a judgment. Beauregard’s intelligence network failed to detect one of the largest pontoon bridges in military history and only tardily identified the enemy troops against which Johnson and Hoke contended. Moreover, the quality of Beauregard’s communication with Lee and the War Department left much to be desired. He failed to reveal the presence of Meade’s army while vacillating between predictions of disaster and sudden bursts of optimism. 218

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There can be no question that Grant stole a march on Lee and deceived the Confederate commander for nearly seventy-­two hours. Still, Lee acted reasonably, given the information available to him between June 14 and the evening of June 17. Neither Lee nor Beauregard understood the true nature of affairs during this time, a lapse for which the Louisianan is the more culpable. It may be fairly argued that the First Offensive at Petersburg was Beauregard’s “best battle of the war,” but that does not imply that it was among Lee’s worst.15 Brilliant moonlight bathed the armies in a silver glow on the night of June 18–19 giving way to a hazy and relatively cool morning. The overnight hours had been busy ones for soldiers in blue and gray, who adjusted their positions and fortified their lines.16 Robert Potter’s Ninth Corps troops spent the night shifting left and strengthening their toehold west of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, making it defensible by dawn. Dubbed the “Horseshoe” by Burnside’s defenders, this bulge approached Elliott’s Salient a few hundred yards north of Baxter Road. The men devoted the next several days to improving these works and their ability to communicate with the main Federal line east of the railroad. Zigzag covered ways eventually connected the Horseshoe with rear areas so supplies, ammunition, and troops could safely traverse the vulnerable ground. The trenches themselves sank deeper and the excavated dirt rose higher, neutralizing the deadly fire of Confederate marksmen. Sandbagged loopholes offered protection to Union sharpshooters, and brave souls placed abatis in front of the lines under cover of darkness.17 Despite these improvements, the Horseshoe remained a dangerous place. Maj. Joseph P. Cleary of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery remembered June 19 there as the most trying day of his military career. “My pit was dug into the side of the bank,” he wrote, “with but a piece of poncho fastened with sticks, over my head and the sun piercing down on the red, sandy clay ground, baked and cracking, and with a small supply of water.” Confederate bullets whizzed over his head throughout the day, pinning Cleary to the confines of his shelter. When evening arrived, the major thought he would test the marksmanship of his antagonists by placing a hat on his sword and raising it above the parapet. “In a second I had four holes through it,” he testified. “I quit then.”18 The Confederates would prove unusually interested in peppering the Horseshoe with skirmish fire whenever General Ferrero’s division of U.S. Colored Troops appeared in the vicinity. Southern soldiers resented fighting blacks and they expressed their disdain by making it hot for any Yankees sharing a portion of the lines with the African Americans. In fact, Ferrero’s men spent Grant’s Second Offensive

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most of their time near the Shand house, where “one of the finest springs of pure water” provided relief for much of Burnside’s corps, including those unfortunates who rotated into the Horseshoe every forty-­eight hours.19 General Potter oversaw the evolving defenses at the Horseshoe, but imagined offensive possibilities there as well. “There is a redoubt not quite 100 yards in front of our line,” reported Potter, “which I think can be approached by a sap. At any rate, its reduction seems quite practicable with the spade.” In a few more days, that concept would be modified into the most unusual offensive expedient attempted during the entire Petersburg Campaign.20 Simon Griffin’s brigade of Potter’s division provided the connection between Warren’s corps on Burnside’s left and David Birney’s to his right. There, on the Second Corps’ front, Hare’s Hill served as a platform for the nearest Federal approach. Shot and shell had perforated Hare’s once-­elegant home, leaving broken furniture and scattered personal papers testifying to their owner’s wealth and interest in horse racing. Robert McAllister’s brigade constructed its works right through Hare’s front yard, savaging flowerbeds, destroying beautiful boxwoods and ornamental trees, and purloining Hare’s personal property to make the trenches homey. The corps artillery chief, John Tidball, erected artillery batteries and mortar beds on the plateau, creating a network of embankments that would eventually become Fort Stedman. Members of two companies of Berdan’s Sharpshooters exploited the vantage point offered by Hare’s ruined home. Taking position behind basement windows that overlooked the Confederate fortifications, several imaginative marksmen maintained a regular fire while comfortably seated in Mr. Hare’s beautiful mahogany chairs.21 The view from the Hare house included the heartrending and increasingly grisly specter of the wounded and dead from the June 18 attacks. Meade on the 19th, via Colonel Lyman, directed a request for a ceasefire to the “commanding officer of the Confederate forces occupying Petersburg . . . during which time unarmed parties with medical officers can, under a flag of truce, bury the dead and remove the wounded of each army,” although almost all of those lying between the lines were Federals. Beauregard rejected Meade’s request, employing a remarkably callous and disingenuous explanation. “Since assuming our present lines, no serious engagement has taken place which would justify an approval of your proposition, which appears unusual under existing circumstances,” Beauregard lamely explained. “All the dead and wounded in reach of my lines have been removed. After a general battle I will cheerfully accede to a flag of truce for the purposes indicated.” Lyman considered this document “a specimen of [Beauregard’s] mean creole blood,” and after a century and a half no credible justification emerges for such an inhumane decision.22 220

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The cornfield through which the First Maine Heavy Artillery had charged the previous afternoon was “nearly covered with the killed & wounded,” wrote Sergeant Sears. “I think that cornfield contained the bodies of hundreds, if not thousands of dead, agreed an Indiana soldier with forgivable exaggeration. “The dead lay in wind-­rows, in some cases piled on one another.” Colonel McAllister listened all day to the increasingly feeble calls for “Water! Water!” and advanced his lines during the night so that under a cloak of darkness and fog, his troops rescued some of the last pitiful survivors. As the days passed, the corpses began to emit an unbearable stench, and each evening some Federal volunteers crept out between the lines to bury the bodies they could reach while collecting swords, guns, and various accoutrements no longer needed by their owners. Capt. John McMurray of the Sixth USCT led a detail on the night of June 28 to complete the task. “Their grim work was indescribably distasteful,” remembered McMurray. “Groping through the darkness, the burial detail could not distinguish by sight the difference between a body and a flattened section of corn row. They had to feel their way with their hands.” The captain counted this night as “the saddest experience of my service in the army.”23 Although no major combat marred the quiet of June 19, sharpshooting between the lines occupied soldiers of both sides. Lt. Samuel Gilbreth of the First Massachusetts Sharpshooters challenged a Confederate counterpart to a deadly duel and leapt upon the parapet to exchange shots with the graycoat. Gilbreth had emerged unscathed from similar contests in the past, but this time a second Confederate marksman intervened, drilling a bullet through Gilbreth’s mouth and into his spine. Just before he died, the lieutenant mumbled, “I hit him anyway, Doctor.” Some men on either side spent so much time sharpshooting that they complained of sore shoulders, and they frequently inflicted less dramatic but equally deadly wounds on their opponents. In addition to small arms fire, the Federals continued to lob shells into Petersburg from vantage points east of the city, finding the range by observers posted in lookout towers constructed in the tops of tall trees.24 Despite their failure to capture the city, some Union troops expressed unwavering optimism in their commander and their campaign. “The men all believe in Grant and are ready to do anything he orders,” averred a noncommissioned quartermaster officer, Henry E. Taintor of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery. “I do not think the Johnnys will be able to hold Petersburg,” agreed Pvt. Edward D. Hatch of the Third Vermont. “I think we will have possession of it in a few days as now our advanced lines are in the outskirts of the town.” Not every Vermonter agreed with this assessment. Pvt. Wilbur Fisk of the Second Vermont confessed regret at having reenlisted as he watched a number of Grant’s Second Offensive

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his colleagues trundle off for home. “This terrible campaign with its ill proportioned results I confess has discouraged me considerably,” Fisk confided to his diary, “and the more I look at it the more I feel a misgiving about the final issue. Men that fight as these Southerners do are not to be easily beaten.” Cpl. Arthur Wyman of the Fifty-­Ninth Massachusetts concurred: “I am almost ready to say with the Rebels that we never can take [Richmond], not if we are ten to one.”25 The performance of the various black brigades sparked optimism among some discouraged Union troops, such as Pvt. Carlos Parsons Lyman of the Sixth Ohio Cavalry. “All the soldiers give the colored troops much praise,” he reported. The Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery relieved a portion of Hinks’s USCT division on the afternoon of the 19th, providing the Nutmeggers a close view of them. One New Englander admired the “fine physique” of the black men and their “soldierly bearing,” while another commented that they did not look “worn out like our men but fresh and healthy.” “There was not a man of the ‘superior Anglo-­Saxon race’ in all the division, with brains enough to put two ideas together, who would have deemed ‘niggers’ unfit for soldiers,” concluded a witness, although Colonel Paine thought the army had “nigger on the brain.”26 While the Union rank and file settled into the routine of static warfare, the Federal high command engaged in more weighty concerns. Grant and Butler boarded a steamer and cruised up the James River looking for a place to locate a bridgehead on the north bank. They selected a landing called Deep Bottom, ten miles downstream from Richmond and across from a slivered projection of the Bermuda Hundred peninsula called Jones Neck. The river narrowed here and Union troops gaining the left bank would be beyond Richmond’s outermost defenses. Two steep-­banked streams, Three Mile Creek and Four Mile Creek, guarded the flanks at Deep Bottom. Grant ordered Butler to place a brigade on the north shore, fortify the position, and connect it to Bermuda Hundred by a pontoon bridge. After a visit to Rear Adm. Samuel Phillips Lee, the two generals inspected Butler’s lines from north to south before Grant returned to City Point.27 No doubt the two generals also discussed the abrupt recent changes of command in the Tenth Corps. First, Quincy Gillmore had gone home at Butler’s insistence, but nominally at his own request thanks to the intercession of Grant, who wished to avoid riling Gillmore allies, such as Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. Then, Bully Brooks left his Eighteenth Corps division to replace Alfred Terry as permanent head of the Tenth Corps. Butler drafted a general order on the 19th announcing the new army organization. Terry returned to his division, Gilman Marston replaced Brooks for a day before being himself

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transferred to the Tenth Corps, when George Stannard stepped up to take over Brooks’s old division.28 During their sojourn together, Grant asked Butler to recommend a place where Mrs. Grant and their two sons might lodge at Fort Monroe, knowing that Butler’s wife was living at the fort in Butler’s permanent quarters. Butler replied that Grant’s family was welcome to stay with his spouse while they visited Fort Monroe between interludes at City Point. There was more than mere professional hospitality implicit in Butler’s offer. He told his wife that “if you do all that your knowledge of the world, tact, and genius will enable you to do, then you will do a thousand times more in captivating the woman than I could possibly do with the husband.” This would not be the last time that Butler would attempt to manipulate the nation’s ranking officer.29 Meanwhile on the Confederate side of the lines, General Lee settled into his new headquarters, Violet Bank, the comfortable home of the Shippen family north of the Appomattox River. Lee enjoyed good company in southern Chesterfield County as Henry Heth’s Division deployed there along with a powerful collection of artillery arrayed on high ground near the Archer house. Some fifty guns on Archer’s Hill enfiladed the Federal right south of the Appomattox, helping to protect the relatively flat terrain in the river valley on the northern extremities of Lee’s Petersburg defenses. These cannon, many of them long-­range rifled pieces, also provided effective counterbattery fire against the Federal ordnance positioned to bombard the city.30 Like their Union counterparts, Confederate soldiers went to work immediately to improve their fortifications. “There was a great deal to be done at all points,” remembered Porter Alexander, “and every man was personally interested in working at his immediate location.” Within a few days, some 120 guns would bristle from the raw earth defining the Confederate line. The infantry “worked all night widening & strengthening our works,” while subjected to a constant fire from Federal sharpshooters. “We poor gophers are compelled to keep our heads inside our shells, an elevated cranium would draw the attention of a dozen minie balls instantly,” reported a Georgian. South Carolina Capt. Joseph Banks Lyle found his portion of the works “the most cramped, disagreeable & confined place I have ever been in” and expressed his preference for open-­field fighting over being trapped in the trenches. Elements of A. P. Hill’s Corps extended the line as far west as the Petersburg Railroad, where soldiers of Brig. Gen. Samuel McGowan’s Brigade enjoyed a relatively peaceful interlude, being beyond the Union left flank anchored southeast along Jerusalem Plank Road. “I hope they will leave here and let us alone,” wrote Cpl. Benjamin H.

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Freeman of the Forty-­Fourth North Carolina on the night of June 19, although prospects for a lengthy campaign seemed more likely.31 General Lee had inherited a relatively strong defensive arrangement from Beauregard, but he recognized that protecting the Petersburg Railroad would be a difficult task, correctly anticipating the next Union offensive. “My greatest apprehension at present is the maintenance of our communications south,” he wrote the president on June 19. “It will be difficult, and I fear impracticable to preserve it uninterrupted. The enemy’s left now rests on the Jerusalem road, and I fear it would be impossible to arrest a sudden attack aimed at a distant point.” Lee would recommend over the course of the next week that the War Department ensure that the Richmond & Danville and South Side Railroads operated at maximum efficiency in anticipation of the loss of the line to Weldon and Wilmington. Secretary of War James A. Seddon objected to Lee’s pessimism and encouraged the army to protect the southern route for at least three weeks to allow the ripening North Carolina wheat crop to be transported directly into Petersburg. Lee merely repeated the long-­term impossibility of preserving that railroad and reiterated the critical importance of the line to Danville as the only way of “averting the terrible disaster that will ensue” should it become dysfunctional.32 The most notable action of June 19 occurred at the opposite end of the lines from the Petersburg Railroad. Ware Bottom Church, “a small, shabby building, somewhat resembling many of the district school-­houses found in New England,” stood between the lines at Bermuda Hundred. Both sides could use the structure as a haven for sharpshooting and both sides claimed to have burned it down that Sunday to prevent such employment. Its destruction, from “a pecuniary point of view, is a matter of little importance,” wisecracked one Connecticut Yankee.33 The mood of Lee’s soldiers on June 19 ran the gamut from discouragement to elation, but Pvt. John R. Zimmerman of the Seventeenth Virginia expressed a nuanced point of view that reflected a firm grasp on the operational situation. Zimmerman first drew a distinction between most Union soldiers and “Negroes and foreigners,” for whom he had little regard. “The foreign hirelings I do not think are of any advantage for them,” wrote Zimmerman, “but rather an element of weakness as they can have no heart in the war, but only in the large bounty they get and the prospect for plunder.” He similarly dismissed the “Yankee professional ‘bounty jumper.’” “It is only the great resources behind them, their immense numbers, vast resources and open ports” that gave the Federals a distinct advantage in the operations that were about to commence. “With their present army we can deal and do not fear two or three to one as I 224

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believe we have often fought—but how to replace our losses is what troubles me.” That problem would haunt the Army of Northern Virginia for the next 288 days.34 Relative quiet continued along the lines on the foggy morning of June 20. At the headquarters of Grant and Meade, however, momentous plans would keep the telegraph lines humming all day. The operations that collectively resulted in Grant’s Second Petersburg Offensive evolved on that warm Monday, and they would involve most of the Union forces. Both generals had cavalry on their minds. Meade had learned that Philip Sheridan’s two mounted divisions had reached the former Union supply base at White House Landing following their unsuccessful operations against the Virginia Central Railroad in Louisa County. Meade advised Grant that, because Maj. Gen. David Hunter’s army had retreated southwest of Lynchburg in the face of Jubal Early’s troops, it was unlikely to effect a rendezvous with Sheridan at White House. Once Sheridan left there for the Army of the Potomac, Meade questioned the need to maintain troops at the old supply depot. Grant agreed and authorized Meade to order Sheridan to dismantle the enclave at White House Landing and return to the army, sending the Veteran Reserve troops stationed there back to Washington and directing the rest of the garrison to join Meade.35 Grant further directed Meade to send Sheridan’s other division, that of James H. Wilson, on a raid against Lee’s railroad communications—­including the Petersburg, South Side, and Richmond & Danville lines—as soon as Wilson’s troopers had rested sufficiently from their rigorous duties during the movement from Cold Harbor. The general-­in-­chief added that Meade could use Butler’s cavalry division under August Kautz to replace Wilson as protection for the army’s left flank. Meade promptly passed these orders on to Wilson, but expressed a prescient warning that Sheridan’s withdrawal from north of the James would free Wade Hampton’s cavalry to operate against Wilson’s raiders.36 Meade advised Grant that he intended to pull the Second Corps out of the trenches that night in order to transform them into a mobile force to meet possible threats to the army’s left, where reports suggested that the Confederates menaced his western flank. He closed his telegram with a request for a meeting at City Point.37 The two generals conferred at Grant’s headquarters during the afternoon, and the plan for the Second Offensive began to grow from the seeds planted by their morning’s correspondence. Neither of them revealed the specifics of their conference, but they very likely incrementally developed a concept of a Grant’s Second Offensive

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two-­corps infantry thrust combined with a mounted raid by both Wilson’s and Kautz’s cavalry. Grant added Wright’s Sixth Corps to Birney’s forces with the mission—which in retrospect bordered on the geographically ludicrous—of cutting the Petersburg and South Side Railroads and extending the Union left all the way to the Appomattox River. The cavalry would ravage bridges and tracks, crippling Lee’s supply lines. Utilizing newly arrived siege artillery, Butler would destroy the railroad bridge across the Appomattox at Petersburg, completing Lee’s isolation, and silence the Confederate guns on Archer’s Hill. If successful, these operations would place Lee in an untenable position and force the Confederates to abandon Richmond and Petersburg or risk an open fight in which the Federals would hold the advantage.38 Transforming the Second and Sixth Corps into a mobile strike force would require a massive redeployment along Grant’s entire line from Butler’s troops at Bermuda Hundred to Warren’s left flank on Jerusalem Plank Road. Orders reached Butler to shift Smith’s Eighteenth Corps south of the Appomattox to relieve Wright’s men, while Brooks extended the Tenth Corps to cover Smith’s trenches north of the river. Grant hoped that Warren could stretch farther west, placing an enormous burden on Burnside’s weary divisions to defend the ground between Warren’s right and Smith’s left. Burnside expressed grave doubts about the ability of his battered corps to protect such an expanse, but in the end General Willcox filled the trenches held by Gershom Mott’s division, James Ledlie guarded Francis Barlow’s sector, while Potter continued to hold the Horseshoe and the works on either side of it, supported by Ferrero’s black division. Thomas Neill’s Sixth Corps troops relieved John Gibbon’s division on Birney’s right until Smith’s men could take their place. Hare’s Hill marked the boundary between Neill and Willcox.39 Birney and his staff spent an anxious day determining their destination once darkness triggered the wholesale shift along the Union battlefront. Lt. Col. Charles H. Morgan led a reconnoitering party to Warren’s sector and learned that only the clearing behind the Avery house offered an ample camping ground for so many additional troops. After extensive discussion, Meade permitted Birney to use this area even though it would require a longer march to extend west toward the railroads the following day. Once the sun went down, most of five Union army corps would begin an immense shuffle in order to execute this large and overly ambitious envelopment. The fate of the cavalry component of the offensive remained uncertain that night.40 While Grant, Meade, and the Army of the Potomac’s corps commanders busied themselves with these plans, Butler moved to fulfill Grant’s desire to establish a new bridgehead. He ordered Brig. Gen. Robert Foster to “occupy 226

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a point on the north side of the James near Deep Bottom.” Foster’s brigade—1,200 strong and consisting of the Tenth Connecticut, 100th New York, Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts, and Eleventh Maine—would be supplemented by other Tenth Corps troops and carry with them two days’ rations and 100 rounds of ammunition. They would march to a position near the proposed bridge site, cross the James in pontoon boats, scatter whatever opposition they might encounter, and fortify their toehold. Engineers would complete the pontoon bridge in their wake.41 As the Federal high command orchestrated these elaborate redeployments, Union artillerists continued shelling the town. “We are now in the rear of Petersburg and are bombarding the city every day,” wrote Pvt. John Wesley Ringler, a Pennsylvania gunner. Alabama Brig. Gen. John C. C. Sanders acknowledged that the Union cannonade made civilian life in Petersburg uncomfortable, but noted with relief that few residents had been killed or injured. “The citizens do not seem to be alarmed,” he marveled. “When we marched through crowds of ladies could be seen on the streets.” Meade wired Birney in the morning that, unless there was a military reason behind the shelling, he preferred that it cease. The Second Corps’ acting commander replied that the bombardment seemed to suppress enemy fire. Meade agreed that this rationale justified pursuing the bombardment and told Birney that it “may be resorted to whenever necessary.”42 Some of the Confederate counterbattery fire from north of the Appomattox focused on the Jordan house plateau, where the provost marshal had erected a scaffold to accommodate the execution of William Johnson, a deserter from the Twenty-­Third USCT who, under an assumed name, had joined the quartermaster department as a teamster. While working north of the James near Cold Harbor, Johnson had attempted to rape a local white woman, identified as Lucy B. Batkins. Captured by Union cavalry and tried expeditiously by court-­martial, Johnson received a sentence of death by hanging, a rare penalty reserved for only the most heinous crimes. Provost Marshal Marsena Patrick arranged the proceedings and intentionally selected a venue that would be in full view of the Confederates to demonstrate that the Union army refused to tolerate such outrages on the civilian population. Johnson, with handcuffs applied and accompanied by the muffled drums of a regimental band, rode in an ambulance atop his coffin as troops from the 114th Pennsylvania and Sixty-­Eighth Pennsylvania arrived as witnesses and escorts. Johnson ascended the scaffold steps, heard prayers from two army chaplains, and confessed his crime, expressing regret and conducting himself with quiet resignation. An attendant applied a blindfold, and as Confederate Grant’s Second Offensive

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shelling intensified, calls to get on with the proceedings resulted in an immediate execution of the sentence. Johnson’s body dangled in view for a full twenty-­ four hours as an object lesson for anyone inclined to commit similar acts, also allowing photographer Mathew Brady the opportunity to capture images of the condemned. The Confederates used the occasion to spread rumors among the local slave population that such would be the fate of any Negroes who dared run away to the Yankees, a tale that seemed to suppress the arrival of Contrabands in the Union camps for several weeks.43 The hanging claimed another victim, Sgt. Maj. George F. Polley of the Tenth Massachusetts. Polley, like many soldiers during the war, predicted his own death, but went to the extreme of carving his headstone, dating his demise as June 20, the very day his regiment was scheduled to muster out of service. The Tenth was receiving rations in rear of the Jordan house plateau when one of the incoming shells from across the Appomattox, a twenty-­pounder Parrott projectile, found Polley and killed him almost instantly. His shocked comrades buried him at City Point the next day en route to the boats that would take the rest of the regiment home for the duration of the war.44 It is possible that this solemn ceremony coincided with the arrival of Abraham Lincoln, who had boarded a City Point–­bound boat in Washington the previous day. The president traveled on the steamer City of Baltimore in the company of his son Tad, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox, and the Marine band. Lincoln arrived unannounced, making his way up the bluff at City Point and, being mistaken for a member of the Sanitary Commission, initially denied access to headquarters until a staff officer happened by, recognized the chief magistrate, and led him to Grant’s tents.45 Horace Porter thought the “long, lank, looking personage dressed all in black” standing before Grant’s quarters, looked “very much like a boss undertaker.” The president shook hands all around and told the general-­in-­chief that “I just thought I would jump aboard a boat and come down. I don’t expect I can do much good, and in fact I’m afraid I may do some harm but I’ll put myself under your orders and if you find me doing anything wrong just send me right away.” Grant laughed, agreed that he would do so, and invited the president into his mess tent, pitched to the rear of the headquarters canvas. The party enjoyed a hearty meal, Lincoln entertaining everyone with animated stories punctuated by what one witness considered “numerous and awkward” gestures. Grant suggested a tour of the lines, to which Lincoln readily agreed. The president mounted Grant’s warhorse, Cincinnati, around 2:00  p.m., and accompanied by Tad, members of Grant’s staff, and a detachment of the Fifth U.S. Cavalry, the party rode down City Point Road to Horatio Wright’s headquarters. There, 228

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Meade and his staff greeted the president, who observed the military scene for about thirty minutes before turning back for City Point.46 Lincoln cut a less-­than-­dashing figure on horseback, his tall silk hat, frock coat, and dark pants covered with dust and singularly out of context in a purely military tableau. Porter now compared the president to a “country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday clothes,” and a New Hampshire soldier thought Lincoln looked “very careworn, even to haggardness,” but the troops he passed seemed not to mind. Word had circulated that “Uncle Abe” was in the neighborhood, and groups of soldiers gathered by the roadside to cheer their commander-­in-­chief. The black troops of Hinks’s division provided the most enthusiastic welcome. These men credited the president with responsibility for lifting their race out of bondage, and they were “wild with excitement and delight.” Lincoln rode past them with his hat in hand, the entire entourage moved by the emotion of the moment.47 Lincoln and Grant shared some light refreshments back at City Point and chatted amiably until about 9:00 p.m., when the president returned to his steamboat for the evening. He never inquired about Grant’s plans and stated that he did not wish to know them. The next morning, Grant boarded the City of Baltimore and cruised to Bermuda Hundred, where General Butler and his staff awaited them. Joined by Fox, Charles Dana, and old General Barnard, Butler and Lincoln engaged in conversation that one witness considered extremely cordial, suggesting that the two “eminent men were in entire accord upon all public and social issues.” The boat made its way up the James and reached Rear Admiral Lee and members of his staff, who joined the party. They continued upriver, disembarking to inspect the monitor Onondaga before landing at Bermuda Hundred, where Butler and Lincoln conducted a thorough inspection of Butler’s defenses.48 Although the Army of the James also provided the president with cheers, some troops pointedly withheld their approbation. The “100-­day men” of the militia, who had been promised cushy rear-­echelon duty, harbored deep resentment at being thrust into the front lines. Butler had sent word ahead for the soldiers to recognize the president with the customary ebullience, but these citizen-­soldiers would have none of it. As the distinguished party approached, a flinty silence greeted their appearance, causing Butler to drop behind Lincoln and “by frantic gestures and pantomime” attempt to rouse the discontented troops into cheering. This effort also failed, prompting Butler to rise in the stirrups and shake his fist in anger, at which the troops responded with “shouts of derision.” One trooper thought that Lincoln was merely “electioneering,” while another reported that the president promised that the fighting would conclude Grant’s Second Offensive

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by the Fourth of July. “I wonder if he thought we were all fools,” questioned this disaffected New Yorker.49 Lincoln returned to City Point and then departed almost immediately for Washington. Although Attorney General Edward Bates remembered that the president was disappointed “at the small measure of our success” at Petersburg, Lincoln arrived “encouraged by Grant’s persistent confidence.” The president told his Illinois friend, former Senator Orville Browning, that Grant had promised him that the army would never be farther away from Richmond than at the present and that he was certain that he would conquer the Confederate capital, although he offered no timetable. Lincoln told a staff officer that, “when Grant once gets possession of a place, he holds on to it as if he had inherited it.” Lincoln’s visit cemented the absolute trust that he invested in his general-­ in-­chief.50 Given the events of June 22–23, Grant would have reason to be grateful for the president’s faith. The opening maneuvers that would result in Grant’s Second Offensive began after dark on the 20th when Willcox’s, Ferrero’s, and Ledlie’s Ninth Corps divisions shifted north, allowing Barlow’s and Mott’s troops to slip away and find temporary bivouacs behind the front lines. Thomas Neill’s and David Russell’s Sixth Corps soldiers relieved Gibbon’s men, who marched southwest as well; all of Birney’s corps stood poised to launch its drive toward the Petersburg Railroad the next morning.51 The Eighteenth Corps went into motion early on June 21. Smith had sent orders to all three of his division commanders the previous day to move in sequence toward the Sixth Corps front. Stannard’s brigades would cross the Appomattox at 4:00 a.m., Hinks’s at 5:30 a.m., and Martindale would march at 7:30 a.m., with each soldier carrying sixty rounds of ammunition and three days’ rations. Meade hoped that Wright could pull out of line and begin his trek west to join Birney as soon as Smith’s men arrived, but Wright and Stannard concluded that to do so in plain sight of the enemy would be reckless. James Ricketts’s Sixth Corps division, however, was in reserve and did depart late that afternoon. By nightfall on the 21st, Stannard had moved into position on the right and Martindale on the left, with Hinks in reserve, allowing Wright’s remaining two divisions to turn westward under cover of darkness.52 Wright’s Second Division marched that evening under the temporary command of Frank Wheaton. The unpopular Thomas Neill had been exiled to a staff position in Butler’s army, a transfer that Sixth Corps staff officer Hazard Stevens deemed “a blessing.” Meade instructed Wright to move to the left of the Second Corps, west of Jerusalem Plank Road, with the goal of enveloping both the Petersburg and South Side Railroads, meaning that Wright faced a 230

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to extend “as far to the left as practicable, enveloping and keeping as close as possible to the enemy’s line,” expressing the hope that he could take possession of the Petersburg Railroad and promising to send the Sixth Corps to “take post on your left,” where Meade hoped it could “stretch across to the Appomattox.”54 Barlow’s division led the Second Corps, and by 1:00 p.m. reached a point he overestimated to be two and a half miles east of the railroad. Birney established his headquarters at the Richard Williams house, just west of the plank road, where Colonel Lyman reported to Meade that the country between there and the railroad was densely wooded with only a few open fields. As Barlow crept west through thick underbrush about 2:00 p.m., gunfire erupted in his front.55 Brig. Gen. Rufus Barringer’s Brigade of North Carolina cavalry, which had crossed the James on June 18, provided Barlow’s opposition. Barringer’s scouts had reported the Federals’ approach, and the newly minted brigadier dismounted three of his regiments in the heavy timber to block access to the railroad. Capt. William McGregor’s Battery of horse artillery unlimbered along the tracks near the Davis house, supported by Barringer’s Fifth North Carolina Cavalry. Barringer took care to conceal his men in the trees, so when Barlow’s lead brigade reached close range, the Tar Heels’ volley took it by surprise. McGregor’s guns then roared, and the Federals scrambled to escape the unexpected fusillade. Soon enough, the Yankees rallied and charged their opponents, driving Barringer west of the railroad, and inflicting and sustaining moderate casualties in the process. Col. John A. Baker, commanding the Third North Carolina Cavalry, and Lt. Fred C. Foard, an aide on Barringer’s staff, were among the captured. Barlow, however, had outmarched the rest of the corps and opted to withdraw, never quite reaching the railroad. Barringer reported killing forty of Barlow’s men and capturing another twenty, while sustaining twenty-­seven casualties of his own, including Baker and Foard.56 By then, Cadmus Wilcox had advanced a portion of his infantry division from the far right of the Confederate line to assist Barringer. Wilcox sent two of his brigades to shoo the Federals eastward, reaching a point within one-­half mile of Jerusalem Plank Road. At dark, Wilcox ordered his men to return to the Confederate lines after engaging in minor skirmishing, supported by some of Barringer’s troopers, ending the combat for the day.57 General Hancock had traveled west with his corps and taken up residence in the Jones house attended by his physicians, who still pronounced him too incapacitated to take the field. The sound of skirmishing west of the plank road, however, aroused the general, who rushed outside calling for his horse, intend232

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ing to ride to the scene of action. The doctors managed to usher their patient back into his bed, Hancock protesting that “I am afraid something will happen to the Corps.” Meanwhile behind Union lines, General Barlow had been conversing amiably with Colonel Baker, who had been mounted on a splendid white horse when he was captured. The staff officers at corps headquarters coveted the beautiful animal, but in the end presented it to Barlow in recognition of his performance during the fight.58 The presence of such spirited Confederate resistance prompted Birney to suspend further exploration westward until all of Wright’s troops arrived on the scene. In the meantime, he deployed his divisions on a line running a little south of due west with Gibbon’s right flank anchored on the plank road, followed by Mott and then Barlow. Crowninshield’s inept cavalry roamed on Birney’s exposed flank until later in the evening, when Ricketts moved to Barlow’s left, advancing northward until encountering the Confederate pickets and then entrenching. The Second Corps troops also erected breastworks, but the thick ground cover limited fields of fire for the corps artillery, most of which parked in the yard of the Jones house behind Birney’s lines.59 Grant envisioned relatively passive roles for Warren and Burnside on June 21, although he encouraged Meade to concentrate artillery along the Fifth Corps front and adopt a “threatening attitude” with the Fifth and Ninth Corps troops to distract the Confederates, while Wright and Birney sidled westward. He couched this advice in the form of a suggestion, averring that Meade knew the ground better than he and that he was confident that the army commander “will adopt the best course to accomplish the work that is to be done.” As usual, Grant delegated control of the tactical arrangements to Meade, confining his role to articulating the grand strategy of enveloping Petersburg “as far as possible, without attacking fortifications.” Warren moved Griffin’s division around to the Chieves house and by late afternoon, after some prodding from Meade, ordered Griffin northward to connect with Gibbon’s right, controlling the gap along the plank road with artillery. The rest of the Fifth Corps covered the works to the east, connecting with Burnside’s left, who in turn maintained contact with the Sixth Corps and, after sunset, Martindale’s division at Prince George Court House Road.60 Unknown to Warren, Meade had written a letter that day to Grant’s chief of staff and alter ego, Brig. Gen. John Rawlins, calling for the dismissal of the Fifth Corps commander. Citing Warren’s inability to “yield his judgment so as to promptly execute orders,” and referencing examples ranging from the previous autumn’s campaign at Mine Run to the disastrous events of June 18, Meade decried “what I consider a defect in Genl Warren’s character.” Warren, sensing Grant’s Second Offensive

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trouble, wrote his wife that “a rupture is probable between me and Genl Meade who has become very irritable and unreasonable of late. . . . I will not allow myself to be made anyone’s scapegoat and you must be prepared to see me disgraced.” In the end, perhaps after consulting with Grant, Meade withheld his letter and reached something of an accommodation with Warren once their disagreements became public knowledge. The tension between these two officers would persist, however, for the duration of the campaign.61 Meanwhile, two noteworthy events unfolded at the opposite end of the battle lines. Some 1,400 men, with the Tenth Connecticut in the lead, had ferried across the James at Deep Bottom by 11:​​00 p.m. on the 20th. They immediately began fortifying their foothold in Henrico County. At daylight, the Fiftieth New York Engineers completed their pontoon bridge and the remainder of Foster’s brigade crossed to the left bank, supplemented by the Thirty-­ Ninth Illinois and more of the 100-­day units. The soldiers cleared the bluff and established a picket line in front of their entrenched camp. Heth hurried two brigades over the bridge at Drewry’s Bluff to counter Butler’s incursion.62 The sound of shelling echoed among Foster’s troops as Confederate gunners at Battery Dantzler—upstream on the James along Trent’s Reach—joined their navy in bombarding the Union fleet. The Federal ships replied, and the din proved more impressive than the results. One of Admiral Lee’s monitors took a damaging hit from a ten-­inch shell fired from Battery Dantzler, but neither side inflicted serious harm, one Confederate naval officer considering the effort “a fiasco.” Admiral Lee recommended that Grant mount additional batteries at the lower end of Trent’s Reach; combined with more river obstructions, these guns would safeguard the Union fleet from both the Confederate navy and the heavy ordnance near the Howlett house.63 Wednesday, June 22, dawned cloudy and humid, but with the promise of another scorching summer day. At dawn, both Birney and Wright moved out, intending to execute Grant’s master plan of enveloping the Confederate right and strangling the Petersburg and South Side Railroads, but one glance at any moderately reliable map would have betrayed their mission as utterly unrealistic. Under no circumstances, short of total Confederate acquiescence, could the Second and Sixth Corps have maintained even an unbroken skirmish line with Warren and each other and still stretched some seven miles from Jerusalem Plank Road to the Appomattox River. The commanders on the ground realized this almost immediately, and the morning’s movements would reflect a sharp departure from Grant’s fanciful operational vision. The Second Corps moved forward with Gibbon on the right and Mott in

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the center. Barlow, on Birney’s left, bore responsibility for maintaining contact with the Sixth Corps. Birney instructed Barlow at 4:50 a.m. to conform to Wright’s movements, “advancing your line as General Wright advances his.” However, at 7:30 a.m. Birney altered those orders, telling Barlow to swing his left forward, and he reiterated those instructions at 10:​​00 a.m., adding, “You will not be dependent on any movement of the Sixth Corps.” What had happened during those five hours to cause the Federals to abandon the operation they had been pursuing so carefully for the previous thirty-­six hours?64 Very early in the morning’s march, Wright encountered delays that threatened to reduce the entire offensive to a crawl, borne of difficult terrain and his own cautious predisposition. He placed Russell’s division on his right, attempting to connect with Barlow, and Ricketts’s forces on the left, with Wheaton’s division deployed in reserve, the corps as a whole moving west but making scant progress. Meade, whose command post was at the Jones house that morning, rode out to investigate matters with Barlow, who explained that he found it impossible to maintain contact with both Mott on his right and Russell on his left. Meade, understandably frustrated with what he must by now have perceived as an impossible mission (Lyman characterized Meade’s mood that morning as “exceeding[ly] snappy”), told Barlow, “You cannot connect with both; keep your connection to the right; each corps must look out for itself.” This order, reminiscent of Meade’s exasperated instructions on the afternoon of June 18, would trigger a series of events that one Union regimental commander characterized as “the saddest day ever experienced by the Second Corps.”65 Birney’s men plowed ahead through “woods more dense and continuous than any encountered since the Wilderness,” following narrow trails where possible. The troops estimated they traveled north 900 to 1,200 yards before halting to begin a new line of entrenchments fronting Confederate skirmishers. Gibbon anchored Birney’s right on Jerusalem Plank Road with Byron Pierce’s brigade on his right and Maj. Timothy O’Brien (in command of what remained of the Philadelphia Brigade) on the left. Gibbon’s other two brigades—Col. Thomas Smyth’s Third and Col. William Blaisdell’s Fourth—supported Pierce and O’Brien from a secondary line in their rear. Gibbon fortified his position well. McAllister’s brigade of Mott’s division connected with O’Brien’s left while Mott’s own brigade, still under the temporary command of Colonel Chaplin, extended his division front to the west. Mott placed his other two brigades in reserve, and the trenches on his line were not as developed as those Gibbon had built. Capt. George F. McKnight’s Twelfth New York Independent Battery,

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boasting four three-­inch rifles, went into battery between O’Brien and Pierce on Gibbon’s front about 600 yards west of the plank road, facing an open field. Colonel Tidball also unlimbered Capt. A. Judson Clark’s Battery B, First New Jersey Light Artillery on the road—the only other position along Gibbon’s or Mott’s lines that offered a decent field of fire.66 Barlow’s division on the far left of Birney’s evolving battle line arrived after Gibbon and Mott, having the longest distance to travel on the outside of Birney’s northerly rotating wheel. He positioned his Fourth Brigade under John Fraser to extend Mott’s left, with Nelson Miles’s brigade in support. Barlow refused his left, to protect that dangling flank: Clinton MacDougall’s New York brigade and the Irish Brigade, this day under Maj. Richard Moroney of the Sixty-­Ninth New York, swung back to face west. For some reason, no one ordered Barlow’s men to dig in, so most of them assumed their places as assigned and simply lay down in the steamy woods. Barlow at first neglected to advance a strong skirmish line, although he later deployed pickets as evidence of Confederate activity to his front caught his attention.67 According to Grant’s plan, General Wright bore responsibility for marching completely around the Confederate perimeter, severing the South Side Railroad, and anchoring his left flank on the Appomattox River. Wright advanced less than one-­tenth of that distance on the morning of June 22 and then dug in. Russell’s failure to keep pace with Barlow helped prompt Meade to abandon the planned connection between the two corps. On Russell’s left, Ricketts marched about half a mile, halted, and entrenched, reflecting generalship on the part of the Sixth Corps entirely incompatible with Grant’s grandiose intentions. Ricketts did send the Tenth Vermont and Eighty-­Seventh Pennsylvania forward toward the Petersburg Railroad, where they ran into stiff Confederate resistance and fell back.68 Wright’s deployment of Wheaton’s division demonstrated an even greater departure from Grant’s conception. These troops tramped south on Jerusalem Plank Road until they reached the byway running west toward the Williams house and Globe Tavern, on the Petersburg Railroad. Wheaton assigned his old brigade, under Col. John F. Ballier, to follow in Ricketts’s wake. The Vermont Brigade swung back to face south, refusing the left flank of the corps, while Brig. Gen. Daniel Bidwell’s brigade pivoted another ninety degrees to shield the Vermonters’ flank, and ended up facing back the way the corps had come. Wheaton’s Fourth Brigade, under Oliver Edwards, continued south on the highway, halting at a small bridge that crossed a marshy drainage called Second Swamp. Edwards removed the bridge planking, advanced a line of skirmishers to the south, and fortified his position. Wright’s deployment that morning rep236

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resented the virtual antithesis of an aggressive attempt to outflank the enemy. Instead, the Sixth Corps behaved that morning as if it was about to be attacked. As it turned out, it was.69 Cadmus Wilcox provided Wright’s opposition. Wilcox’s four brigades began the day where they had ended the previous one: on the far right of the permanent Confederate line between the Petersburg Railroad and Lieutenant Run, where their left connected with General Mahone’s Division. Mahone’s line extended east to Rives’ Salient, where two of Heth’s brigades—Brig. Gen. William W. Kirkland’s and Brig. Gen. Birkett D. Fry’s—occupied the Dimmock Line redans, well supported by Third Corps artillery.70 Confederate cavalry reported the renewed Union push west early that morning and Wilcox received orders, presumably from corps commander Hill, to advance down the railroad, turn east, and drive the Federals back to Jerusalem Plank Road. Wilcox led his entire division west along the Confederate works until they struck the tracks, turned south, and at the Davis house bore east on a “road almost at right angles” to the railroad in woods and undergrowth so thick that a colonel could not see his regiment deployed in line of battle. Wilcox’s South Carolina brigade, led by General Conner, and the Georgia brigade under Col. Thomas Jefferson Simmons, led Wilcox’s approach, advancing a mile and a half or two miles from the tracks. These were the troops who encountered Ricketts’s lead regiments and captured as many as 100 Federal skirmishers before the rest of the Yankees withdrew to their fortified lines. Wilcox halted his lead brigades 200 or 300 yards short of his stopping point on the previous day, brought up the North Carolina brigades of Brig. Gens. James Lane and Alfred Scales on the left of his division, facing north, and settled in—­content that the Federals were unlikely to resume their advance, and confident that he had successfully discharged his mission.71 Mahone’s Division would be the primary Confederate protagonist this day, although he and Wilcox would engage in an acrimonious postwar debate over their actions on June 22. Who conceived Mahone’s critical role represents the first aspect of the controversy. Mahone would claim credit for suggesting the operation, as well as for devising the tactics employed to implement it, but his postwar accounts vary in important details. In 1892 Mahone explained that General Lee rode to his headquarters tent behind Rives’ Salient that morning, viewed the advance of Birney’s troops through field glasses, and told Mahone that he did not wish the Federals to move north any farther. “General Lee, do I understand that you wish me to drive them back?” Mahone inquired. “You understand me correctly, sir,” replied Lee, who then turned back toward Petersburg, implicitly trusting Mahone to execute his wishes. In 1895 Mahone altered 238

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his story, crediting himself with spotting the Union movement, “the leading regiment halting, stacking arms, and the men going deliberately to intrenching” facing what he called the Johnston house. At this point, Mahone explained, Lee appeared and expressed the desire that something be done to arrest the Union advance.72 Staff officer Gordon McCabe provided yet a third version of events. According to McCabe, Lee had ridden to the right end of the line, saw the Federals, and called for Mahone, “who proposed that he be allowed to take three brigades . . . and strike the enemy in flank. Lee assented.” Douglas S. Freeman in his respected biography of Lee credits McCabe’s account.73 Wilcox presented a different scenario, although one wonders how he became privy to an exchange to which he was not a witness. According to Wilcox, Lee appeared that morning at the headquarters of one of Mahone’s brigadiers, sent for Mahone, and issued the division commander orders for an attack. “The movement did not originate with Mahone,” Wilcox insisted. The inconsistencies in Mahone’s testimony and the improbability of either Mahone or Lee witnessing the Federal movement so precisely through the thick woods that intervened between the lines renders both of Mahone’s explanations suspect. It is more plausible that Lee ordered the attack based on the information available to him and delegated the details of its execution to Mahone.74 Whoever devised the plan, Mahone assembled three of his five brigades and identified the deep ravine drained by Lieutenant Run as the means by which he could gain the Union flanks unseen. At about 2:00 p.m. Sanders’s Alabamans, Ambrose R. Wright’s Georgians (commanded that day by Col. William Gibson), and Mahone’s old brigade under Petersburg resident Col. David A. Weisiger assembled quickly for the march. Two guns of Capt. William F. Dement’s First Maryland Battery under Lt. John Gale joined Mahone’s force, accompanied by the battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Gregg McIntosh. By 3:00 p.m. Mahone had his demi-­division in position, with Sanders on the left, Gibson on the right, and Weisiger in close support. The Maryland cannoneers deployed on the left of the formation that halted near the Johnson house.75 Their initial blow landed on Barlow. Mahone had located the seam separating Barlow’s left and Russell’s right—a gap grown large due to the uneven and multidirectional movements of the two corps authorized by Meade’s 10:00 a.m. directive. Wright had sensed that such a situation existed and notified Second Corps headquarters, prompting a concerned chief of staff Morgan to ride toward Barlow’s end of the line. But by the time Morgan arrived, the First Division had already collapsed.76 Moroney’s and MacDougall’s troops on Barlow’s refused left flank spotted Grant’s Second Offensive

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Mahone through the thick woods and opened fire. This prompted the Virginian to launch his charge, as Lieutenant Gale opened fire with his two guns. Barlow’s men simply “melted away like ice in the sun.” MacDougall’s brigade crumbled first, attacked in front, flank, and rear. Many of the new recruits, engaged in their first battle, threw away their arms and “luggage,” and ran, shattering regimental formations in their flight. Moroney attempted to assist his comrades, but the Irish Brigade, too, disappeared with hardly a whimper. “Some regiments of the corps seemed paralyzed, the men running in every direction, and many of them going directly into the Confederates’ ranks,” wrote one Union officer. Barlow had been consulting with Miles in the rear and testified that his division’s destruction “took place without any warning to me and entirely unexpectedly. It was all over in a few minutes.”77 Mahone now turned on Fraser’s brigade, which desperately realigned to counter the tidal wave overwhelming it from the west. Colonel Fraser fell into Rebel hands while his soldiers attempted their escape, hindered by brush and small timber “so thick it was impossible to keep in line.” Some feckless commanding officers issued orders for every man to simply fend for himself. Sanders’s and Gibson’s troops gave chase, screaming the Rebel Yell and shooting the fleeing Federals “at will.” Meanwhile, Barlow ordered Miles to fall back to the rifle pits they had occupied in the morning, and to rally there. Weisiger now moved up to test Miles, the Virginians attacking “with great determination,” but Miles held, and the Confederates drifted back into the underbrush to search for easier targets.78 They soon found these targets in the form of Mott’s two front-­line brigades. Chaplin and McAllister had just completed their modest entrenchments when Barlow’s fugitives came bounding through them from the left and rear, shouting that the Rebels were close on their heels. Chaplin attempted to pivot his brigade ninety degrees to confront the new threat, but “the troops coming from our left in great disorder carried my command with them.” The leader of the Fifth New Jersey characterized his men as “panic-­stricken,” and called Chaplin’s disintegration a “general stampede.”79 The disintegration of Chaplin’s brigade exposed McAllister’s troops to the butternut juggernaut. A soldier in the Fifty-­Seventh Pennsylvania, resting from his just-­completed trench-­building labors, looked up and shouted, “Oh, God, there comes the rebs.” While many of McAllister’s men rushed to collect their stacked rifles in the rear, Gibson and Sanders “mowed the thick underbrush with their bullets like they would a scythe, and yell[ed] like demons to us to surrender.” “The whole brigade run like sheep,” admitted another Pennsylvanian. “If we had not got out when we did we would have been gobbled.” As it 240

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was, McAllister lost more than 100 men killed, wounded, or missing during his collapse. Sgt. James E. Whitehorne of the Twelfth Virginia observed that they rolled up Mott’s division “like a sheet of paper.” Mott’s reserve brigades also skedaddled and, like Miles, sought shelter in the works they had left in the morning.80 Gibbon’s division lay next in Mahone’s crosshairs, with the Alabamans and the Georgians rolling forward on the heels of Mott’s scattered brigades. Major O’Brien had deployed the Sixty-­Ninth Pennsylvania on his left with the 184th Pennsylvania, 106th Pennsylvania, and Ninety-­Second Pennsylvania stretching east. His own regiment, the 152nd New York, remained in reserve. There was considerable diversity of opinion as to the performance of the Philadelphia Brigade that afternoon. General Birney reported that this outfit was “very small, very deficient in officers, and the conduct of Major O’Brien seems to have been wanting in force and promptness.” Gibbon agreed that the brigade “gave way in confusion” and “without an attempt at resistance . . . by direction of the brigade commander, Major O’Brien, who has been placed under arrest.”81 O’Brien and the officers under his command described the attack on their brigade quite differently. According to O’Brien, when he spotted Mott’s men beginning to run he dispatched a staff officer to notify Gibbon of the developing crisis. He then repulsed Confederate pressure against his front for ten minutes and turned the Sixty-­Ninth Pennsylvania and 152nd New York to the west to oppose the pressure gathering on his flank. O’Brien then dashed to the right of his brigade to check on Captain McKnight’s Battery and noted that the Ninety-­ Second Pennsylvania was holding its own against a Confederate assault in its front. While there, O’Brien witnessed the collapse of his left and remained with the Ninety-­Second Pennsylvania and the battery until the danger of wholesale capture compelled him to order a retreat. Capt. Patrick S. Tinen of the Sixty-­ Ninth Pennsylvania claimed that his men each fired an average of thirty-­five rounds in holding the line on the division’s far left flank, and only when the left of the brigade was enveloped did he order a withdrawal. The commander of the 106th Pennsylvania also testified that his regiment held firm until Mott’s collapse allowed the Rebels to gain his rear and then, only upon the order of Capt. Edward B. Whitaker, division officer of the day, did his unit withdraw. Whatever the truth, O’Brien’s regiments disappeared from the battle line and Mahone’s assault continued eating up the Second Corps, as Colonel Wainwright described it, “like flame travels up a slip of paper.”82 McKnight’s Empire State battery was the next domino in Birney’s toppling formation. The New York cannoneers had been subjected to shelling from unseen Confederate artillery off to their right front since noon. Because they had Grant’s Second Offensive

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been instructed not to engage in counterbattery fire, McKnight had contented himself with adjusting the embrasures in his works, to allow him to respond when authorized, and General Pierce arrived about 2:00 p.m. with that permission. As soon as McKnight’s gunners began pulling their lanyards, additional Southern ordnance started raining down on their four guns. McKnight engaged in this unequal and largely blind exchange until 3:00 p.m., when he noticed O’Brien’s infantry opening a brisk fire toward his left. The battery commander ordered the embrasure protecting his left gun destroyed to allow that piece to fire toward the source of O’Brien’s distress, but then blueclad fugitives streamed past the guns announcing that they had been flanked. McKnight continued to fire canister toward the approaching Confederates until they ascended his works, planted a flag, and demanded the battery’s surrender. McKnight ordered the cannoneers to remove the guns by prolonge, but the time for such an expedient had passed. Efforts at rallying the infantry around them failed, except for a small party from the First Minnesota. McKnight had no choice but to order the guns abandoned and his surviving artillerists to save themselves. All four of McKnight’s pieces fell into Confederate hands, eventually to be removed by Colonel McIntosh and his gunners.83 This left only General Pierce’s brigade in position along Birney’s front line. Byron Root Pierce was a thirty-­four-­year-­old native of western New York who had moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to practice dentistry before the war. He had served in the prewar militia and entered the volunteer service shortly after the outbreak of hostilities as a line officer in the Third Michigan. He worked his way up to colonel of the regiment, and had been promoted to brigadier general barely two weeks before the greatest crisis his brigade would ever face burst into view on his left flank. Pierce commanded the remnants of nine veteran regiments that had numbered less than 2,000 strong prior to the attrition of the First Offensive. On June 22 its numbers were much reduced. Some of his units, such as the Fifty-­ Ninth New York, deployed with fewer than 100 men in the ranks. The First Minnesota guarded Pierce’s left, next to McKnight’s guns, followed by the Nineteenth Maine, Forty-­Second New York, Eighty-­Second New York, Fifteenth Massachusetts, Fifty-­Ninth New York, and Twentieth Massachusetts, all hunkered down behind a slight bend in the line. The Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin and Seventh Michigan extended Pierce’s battlefront, ending on Jerusalem Plank Road, where Clark’s New Jersey battery unlimbered its guns.84 After granting McKnight permission to return fire against the annoying Confederate batteries, General Pierce rode east to the plank road to authorize Clark to commence firing as well, hoping to draw some of the Southern vitriol 242

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away from McKnight’s beleaguered cannoneers. As Pierce looked to his left he saw, to his dismay, the road leading back along his brigade front filled with Union soldiers “in a disorganized state.” He sent these fugitives to the rear to form along the reserve line held by Blaisdell’s brigade. O’Brien’s fleeing soldiers soon made their appearance, and Pierce’s attempt to rally them failed. Finally, in logical order, McKnight’s survivors passed the general, and Captain McKnight explained his battery’s calamity. Pierce told Captain Clark to bring up his horses and realign his guns to face west, where the butternut onslaught was sure to break into view at any moment. When his own two left regiments, the First Minnesota and Nineteenth Maine, appeared in retreat, Pierce halted them, telling them to support Clark’s guns and forward a skirmish line to warn of the Confederate approach. As if to emphasize the depth of the crisis, Lt. Col. I. Harris Hooper, in command of the Fifteenth Massachusetts, now reported that most of his regiment had been captured.85 By this time Mahone’s three brigades had been either on the march or in their attack for some three hours, having vanquished most of ten brigades of Federal infantry and swallowed an artillery battery whole. In addition to the heat, tangled landscape, and distance traveled, the Confederates had to cope with hundreds of prisoners who required attention, not to mention significant battle casualties of their own. Understandably, the Southerners began to run out of steam. When they reached the point where the Twentieth Massachusetts refused its line to face west, their attack reached its limit, 300 to 400 yards west of Jerusalem Plank Road. Maj. Henry L. Patten of the Twentieth Massachusetts distinguished himself by coolly reorienting his troops and presenting the first unyielding front that Mahone’s men had encountered.86 “I found it necessary to pause for reorganization and assignment,” Mahone reported to Hill that evening. He had sent word back to the main Confederate line, summoning Brig. Gen. Nathaniel H. Harris’s Mississippi brigade, and at 4:00 p.m. Harris started forward. Negotiating artillery fire as they approached at the double-­quick, the Mississippians deployed on Mahone’s right, advancing skirmishers. A section of Capt. Valentine J. Clutter’s Jackson Flying Artillery, under Lt. Clifton H. Wilkes, also rumbled up to support Mahone, who now began to face aggressive action from the stabilized Federals.87 Meade, Birney, and Gibbon all reacted to the disaster along the Second Corps front with the same bold instinct: repair the damage now! As soon as the gray storm descended on Birney’s line, Meade advised Warren to prepare reinforcements for the Second Corps, should it prove necessary. Warren responded that he could spare two brigades, and at 4:00 p.m. Meade told the Fifth Corps commander to dispatch those units to the rear of Charles Griffin’s left, Grant’s Second Offensive

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cross Jerusalem Plank Road, and go to Birney’s aid. Warren sent Jacob Sweitzer’s regiments and Nathan Dushane’s Maryland Brigade toward the Jones house to report to Birney.88 Birney and Gibbon required neither reinforcements nor prompting from army headquarters to transition from stabilizing their position to assuming the offensive. Birney reported to Meade at 4:00 p.m. that he had reestablished a line of defense, then rode to the front where he found Gibbon. There, he ordered his subordinate to recapture McKnight’s Battery. Birney then found Barlow, satisfied himself that his First Division had recovered from its shock, and returned to Gibbon’s line, where one of Warren’s brigades had arrived. Birney reiterated his attack orders.89 Gibbon, for his part, claimed to have independently inaugurated plans for the counterattack. After seeing to the stabilization of Pierce’s brigade, he sent Pierce the Eighth New York Heavy Artillery and the 155th New York from Blaisdell’s brigade with orders to recapture the lost guns. Pierce aligned these fresh troops on the left of the Nineteenth Maine and moved ahead, stopping about 100 yards short of their captured forward lines under intense Confederate fire. Pierce realigned his men and made a second lunge, this time reaching to within fifty yards of the works before a deadly volley drove them back to their starting point. Pierce was in the process of shifting his men to the right, now reinforced by more of Blaisdell’s brigade, in an attempt to gain a position opposite Mahone’s left flank, when Capt. Henry A. Embler of Gibbon’s staff placed Pierce under arrest, replacing him with Colonel Blaisdell—Gibbon unfairly accusing Pierce of sloth. Blaisdell went forward immediately, about 5:00 p.m., and met with yet a third repulse at the hands of the defiant but flagging Confederates.90 When these ad hoc assaults ended in failure, Meade ordered the entire Second Corps to launch a coordinated attack at 7:00 p.m. or sooner, if Birney could arrange his divisions appropriately. Gibbon went forward accordingly at 7:05 p.m., Barlow advanced a short while later, and Mott eventually joined in as the sun began to disappear behind Mahone’s infantry. Gibbon reported that the resistance in his front remained strong, but Barlow and Mott made better headway on the left.91 By this time Mahone had determined that he had achieved all that was possible and that it was time to withdraw. “The enemy has recovered himself somewhat,” Mahone informed A. P. Hill, “and has now made several assaults, feeble, upon our position. . . . It is too late to push farther. . . . Do not think the position we occupy desirable to hold.” Leaving Harris’s relatively fresh men as a rear guard, Mahone pulled out Sanders, Gibson, and Weisiger along with some 244

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1,650 prisoners and returned to his positions along the permanent defense line. Harris quietly followed about 11:​​00 p.m., and most of Mahone’s troops were back in place around midnight.92 Mahone mentioned one additional detail to Hill in his 7:20 p.m. message: “General Wilcox is now behind me.” The circumstances surrounding Wilcox’s arrival would create a bitter controversy between the two division commanders and their partisans. The intensity of that disagreement is evident in Mahone’s divergent postwar versions of events that afternoon and evening. In 1892 Mahone toured the battlefield with a Union veteran and stated that when Wilcox arrived and asked where he should go, Mahone told him that he “might go to hell for all I cared. His troops had accomplished nothing.” A few years later, the Virginian altered his story in a letter to another Federal veteran: “General Wilcox came up, having strangely marched out of the timber and all around the fringe of the woodland to meet me. I urged him to throw in his division and join me with the remnant of my two attacking brigades in a vigorous assault on the Plank Road. He wanted orders from the corps commander, two miles away, so then and there the idea of any further advance on my part was abandoned.” Both iterations of Mahone’s reminiscence indict Wilcox for wasting the day and squandering a last chance to administer a devastating blow to the reeling Second Corps.93 Following his repulse of Wright’s probe toward the railroad that morning, Wilcox had advanced his South Carolina and Georgia brigades eastward, preceded by a thick line of skirmishers. The jungle-­like terrain of eastern Dinwiddie County limited visibility, but the skirmishers indicated and Union prisoners confirmed that entrenched Northern forces lay ahead in strength. Wilcox remained convinced that he had done his job, and the demeanor of the Yankees suggested they would remain on the defensive.94 Ricketts’s brigades had, indeed, dug in facing west, finishing a serviceable line by noon. Some thirty minutes later, Wright ordered Ricketts to advance westward again, where he encountered Wilcox’s forces, and a sharp engagement erupted between the opposing skirmish lines. Wright, like Wilcox, decried the impenetrable vegetation that restricted his mobility and veiled the enemy’s position, but he deduced that Russell’s division, on Ricketts’s right, might be able to maneuver astride the Rebels’ left flank and drive them. This expedient evidently involved Scales’s and Lane’s Tar Heels on Wilcox’s left, who reported stiff if indecisive fighting in their front. At some point, three spent minié balls struck General Scales, although none of them did him much harm. Wright reported at 3:00 p.m. that his advance had been stymied and inquired of Meade if he should continue the offensive by committing a serious line of battle.95 Grant’s Second Offensive

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By this time, according to Wilcox, General Hill had appeared with orders to halt the eastward advance and dispatch two brigades to march north—­ apparently to support Mahone’s attack—although Wilcox did not specify Hill’s intent. The corps commander further instructed Wilcox to retain the rest of his division to divert Wright’s attention until the sounds of Mahone’s guns would prompt Wilcox to terminate contact with the Sixth Corps and rush north. Wilcox logically selected Lane and Scales, already deployed on the left end of his line, to make the march, while Conner and Simmons, commanding McGowan’s and Thomas’s Brigades, maintained a bold front against Wright. The North Carolinians promptly moved northward, but the dense undergrowth retarded their progress. Wilcox dispatched one of Simmons’s regiments to create a human communication chain back to the division commander, posting a man every forty yards or so in the matted woods. Scales and Lane also engaged in spirited skirmishing, presumably with units from Russell’s division. Sometime between 4:00  p.m. and 5:00  p.m., Wilcox heard firing to his left and assumed that it emanated from Mahone’s offensive. Leaving a screen of skirmishers to entertain Ricketts, Wilcox directed the bulk of the Georgia and South Carolina brigades northward. Shortly after he began that march, a courier from Mahone’s headquarters arrived with a request from the Virginian that Wilcox move east across Jerusalem Plank Road, then turn north to attack the Second Corps’ rear, while Mahone engaged them in front. “Gen. Mahone did not, it would seem, know that my command was divided, nor did he know what were my orders from our common superior [Hill], nor did he have any knowledge of what was in my front,” wrote Wilcox. He understandably rejected Mahone’s impractical idea and directed the courier to lead him back to Mahone’s command post. Following “a blind path that could scarcely be traced,” Wilcox proceeded north, encountered Scales and Lane en route and, with his division more or less intact, arrived in the large field east of the Johnson house. Finding Mahone, Wilcox congratulated him on his success, for by this time Mahone’s assault had run its course, and placed his division at Mahone’s service. “This he declined at first,” Wilcox remembered, “but soon requested a brigade be put in position on his right.” Wilcox forwarded the Georgians, who helped repulse the last of Gibbon’s counterattacks, and then withdrew after dark to the main line, along with all the rest of the Confederates, save Harris’s rearguard. “That night every man was required to carry off as many muskets as he was able to tote,” remembered Lt. James Eldred Phillips of the Twelfth Virginia. “I carried four on my shoulders.”96 Mahone and his postwar partisans offered a decidedly different version of events. According to Mahone’s own account, he dispatched “an intelligent staff 246

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officer” (probably Pvt. J. Hamilton Blakemore) “to find Genl. Wilcox and explain to him what I was about and to request that he bear down on my firing; that he was in the right position to take the Federals in the rear.” The courier found Wilcox and delivered Mahone’s request. Wilcox ignored the suggestion and instead asked the messenger to lead him back to Mahone, explaining that his division was divided and that it would take time to get it under way. After a “tedious delay” and an unnecessarily slow march, thought Blakemore, Wilcox finally arrived behind Mahone, but refused to join in an attack absent orders from Hill.97 Less controversy surrounds events along the Sixth Corps front that evening. Once Wright had been apprised of Birney’s disaster, he ordered Ricketts and Russell to withdraw to the lines they had occupied at dawn, reaching them about 5:00 p.m. Wright advanced a brigade on Russell’s right to reestablish contact with Barlow and reported to Meade that he felt confident of his ability to hold his position; he remarked, however, that “an attack from my present lines would be very injudicious,” which comported with the defensive generalship Wright had demonstrated throughout the day.98 Meade, of course, ignored Wright’s counsel and issued his 6:00 p.m. orders to the Second and Sixth Corps to launch their redeeming attacks. Wright, to his credit, obeyed without objection, despite expressing some doubt about his ability to begin on time. Ricketts’s men had just begun boiling coffee when orders arrived to prepare for another forward movement. By then, only Wilcox’s thin line of skirmishers remained to oppose the Federals, Wilcox having ordered them to maintain an aggressive charade until dark or if attacked, at which time they were to retreat first to the railroad and then back to the main Confederate works. Consequently, when the bluecoats moved forward about 7:00 p.m. they met only token resistance. The Southern skirmishers raised a yell and fired one volley, but according to a Federal, “Our men beat them both in yell and volley, and they fled, like so many pedestrian Tam O’Shanters.”99 Both Ricketts and Russell pressed forward in the gathering gloom, traversing what one soldier considered “the worst swamp I had ever seen” and a Vermonter described as “all brush and vines.” In spite of the rough going, Wright’s men continued to forge ahead in the fading twilight, Ricketts inclining north of west and Russell—not having made as much progress—falling behind Ricketts’s front. Wheaton’s division moved up as flank support for Ricketts’s left.100 Wilcox had dispatched a courier about nightfall, instructing the skirmishers to retire toward the railroad, an order rendered superfluous by Wright’s attack. The grayclad skirmishers dashed for a road that provided the best route to salvation, with the Federals in hot pursuit. “A furious race ensued, in which Grant’s Second Offensive

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a number of vicious curs from the Federal lines participated,” wrote a South Carolina sharpshooter, “but the light weighted, clean heeled Confederates won by half a neck, and made good their escape to the main lines.” One diminutive South Carolina marksman struggled to safety, panting and laughing about the nature of his personal contest. “L—d G—d you ought to see them fat Yankees run,” he exclaimed. “The[y] run arter me, a hollin’ ‘Stop, you d—d rebel!’ . . . Says I to myself, ‘You too fat, Yankee! You get too much to eat over your side. You don’t catch me.’ And you ought to ’a seed me as I slid past ’em!” Wright reported his success to General Meade and the Sixth Corps rested on their arms in their advanced positions.101 No amount of evening redemption would change the contemporary perception that June 22 marked the low point in the proud history of the Second Corps. As many as 1,742 Federals surrendered that day, although the number of men killed and wounded proved relatively modest. The Federals lost eight battle flags and hundreds of small arms in addition to McKnight’s four guns. Four days later, the acting corps commander, David Birney, conceding there was no valid reason for Mahone’s unprecedented success, did list a range of explanations. “I attribute the failure to the extraordinary losses among the commanding, staff and other officers in this command, to the large proportion of new troops assigned to this corps to replace veterans, to the fact that the Sixth Corps did not advance simultaneously, and that in consequence my line was taken in flank, and at points in reverse, creating a panic.” General Gibbon blamed the defeat on “the bad conduct of some of our troops, who are thoroughly worn out & exhausted with marching, fighting and loss of sleep.” In contrast, many of the rank and file blamed the officers, especially Birney and Barlow, while several believed that had Hancock been present, the Second Corps would have avoided such a humiliation. “Officers folly,” thought Signal Corps Pvt. John R. Mitchell. “Commissary whiskey said to be the cause of the disaster. . . . Oh for the Maine law.”102 Confederate casualties may have numbered around 600, although the evidence is fragmentary. In Mahone’s Division, a member of the Second Georgia Battalion in Gibson’s brigade tallied thirty men killed and wounded, the highest number of any unit among those Georgians. Sanders counted six killed and 110 wounded in his command, while an officer in McGowan’s Brigade of Wilcox’s division carefully counted thirty-­eight casualties. A Georgia soldier simply wrote that “we got a heap of men killed and wounded,” while Pvt. William S. Hubbard of the Sixteenth Virginia told his family that Mahone’s attack against the Second Corps was “the hottest fire that I ever was in since the war commenced.”103 248

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While the postwar acrimony between Mahone and Wilcox reflects less creditably on the Virginian, whose divergent claims emit the distinct aroma of exaggeration if not fabrication, no one can gainsay his tactical accomplishment that afternoon. Mahone’s three brigades, numbering only a fraction of the three divisions he attacked, employed stealth, speed, sound reconnaissance, and devastating momentum to dispatch almost an entire army corps. Francis Walker, the assistant adjutant general of the Second Corps, described the operation as that of “an expert mechanician who touches some critical point with a fine instrument, in exactly the right way, producing an effect seemingly out of proportion to the force exerted.”104 Irrespective of the brilliance of Mahone’s tactics or the unspectacular competence displayed by Wilcox against the enervated high command of the Sixth Corps, at midnight on June 23 the Petersburg Railroad remained within striking distance and Birney sat ready to recover all the ground surrendered the previous day. The gunfire had barely ceased on the night of June 22 when Meade issued orders to Birney and Wright to resume the offensive at 3:30 a.m. Both corps commanders promptly conveyed these instructions to their division leaders. Meade now hoped to drive the Confederates back to their main lines and then pursue the envelopment of Lee’s right, consistent with Grant’s original, flawed conception.105 The Second Corps advanced as instructed. Mahone had withdrawn Harris’s Brigade hours earlier, so, although Gibbon encountered some spirited resistance emanating from around Battery 29, Mott and Barlow resumed uncontested possession of the forward positions from which they had been driven the previous day. The Federals suffered one serious blow when a bullet found Colonel Blaisdell out on the picket line, inflicting a mortal wound and depriving the Second Corps of yet another brigade commander. Birney reported his success by 6:35 a.m., but soon thereafter told Meade that he could not go farther until Russell’s division kept pace. Meade admonished Birney to avoid a frontal attack and instructed him to “advance your line in connection with Wright to envelop the enemy’s line,” sending the same advice to Wright. As events unfolded, the Second Corps would do little else on June 23 as the men of the Greek Cross assumed center stage on what would prove to be a minidebacle reminiscent of Birney’s disaster on the 22nd.106 Wright’s irresolute generalship prompted Meade, accompanied by Colonel Lyman, to visit corps headquarters at the Williams house at 4:30 a.m., presumably to spur his subordinate to greater exertion on the new day. Meade departed about 7:00 a.m., but Lyman stayed, accompanying the corps commander on an inspection of Wright’s deployment a few minutes later. Russell remained on the Grant’s Second Offensive

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right, Ricketts to his left, and Wheaton’s division on the corps’ left and in general reserve. Lyman considered Wright’s lines to be improperly located, flanks exposed, units facing in various directions, and the men on the picket lines “profoundly indifferent” to the whole situation, while he and Wright maneuvered through the thick woods, with Wright frequently consulting his pocket compass.107 After Wright and Lyman returned to corps headquarters, Capt. Alexander M. Beattie of the Third Vermont appeared about 10:​​30 a.m. brandishing a piece of telegraph wire that he had cut along the Petersburg Railroad. Beattie had advanced that morning with between 80 and 100 sharpshooters, scattered a handful of Confederate cavalry, and reached the tracks without serious opposition. This news prompted the dispatch of a party of pioneers along with a makeshift battalion of cavalry to destroy the tracks. Working from north to south in the vicinity of Globe Tavern, the pioneers and cavalry began dismantling the rails while Beattie’s sharpshooters peered west across the roadbed, on the lookout for Confederates. Those troopers under Col. Timothy M. Bryan of the Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry who were not engaged in the destruction, deployed facing south along a road connecting Globe Tavern with Dr. Gurley’s house, less than two miles to the east.108 Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Grant commanded the Vermont Brigade in Wheaton’s division, and he sent forward about 200 men of the Eleventh Vermont (also known as the First Vermont Heavy Artillery) to accompany the pioneers. These soldiers, led by Capt. Edward J. Morrill, reported to the corps officer of the day, Lt. Col. Samuel E. Pingree. Pingree positioned them facing north, extending in a thin line from just west of the tracks eastward to the right end of Lewis Grant’s main defense line. Thus the track-­wreckers enjoyed modest protection in all threatening directions as they went about their work, destroying about half a mile of rails and burning a culvert.109 This humble incursion had not gone unnoticed at Confederate headquarters. General Lee ordered A. P. Hill to dislodge the Yankees, and Hill turned once again to Billy Mahone. Mahone had allowed his weary brigades extra sleep that morning, but by noon he had marched them west along the Dimmock Line to the Petersburg Leadworks, a journey spotted by Union signal officers. Kirkland’s North Carolina Brigade of Heth’s Division accompanied all five of Mahone’s brigades, who were joined again by Dement’s Maryland Battery and two guns of Clutter’s Virginians. Mahone reported that he commanded 6,000 men that day, although the actual number of Confederates who marched south, west of the Petersburg Railroad, may have amounted to only half that many. Mahone followed a circuitous route that consumed almost ten 250

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miles before reaching the woods west of Globe Tavern by 3:00 p.m. Despite Mahone’s efforts at secrecy, Union signal officers reported the Confederate column to be a mile in length, while dust clouds rose above the horizon in verification of these reports.110 Meade spent the morning and early afternoon at the Jones house, sending Wright telegram after telegram imploring him to restore contact with Birney and execute the intended advance. Wright dithered—“there was some difference of opinion” between Meade and Wright noted a telegraph operator at Meade’s command post—but in response to the evidence of the approaching Confederates in the early afternoon, Wright ordered Wheaton to strengthen the force protecting the men along the railroad. Wheaton committed another 200 Grant’s Second Offensive

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soldiers of the Eleventh Vermont under Maj. Charles K. Fleming, and a division staff officer positioned them facing west, about midway between Lewis Grant’s main line of defense and the tracks. Ricketts’s pickets briefly connected with the right of Morrill’s men, facing north, but by noon they had disappeared into the forest. Skirmishers from the Fourth Vermont took position on Fleming’s left. Still, fewer than 1,000 men had advanced from Wright’s static lines, forming a hollow square facing north, west, and south, with every flank exposed.111 When Mahone’s lead elements began to appear west of the railroad, the pioneers and their cavalry compeers abandoned their tools and fled east. Lewis Grant, whose skirmishers were hanging in the breeze and ripe for the picking, attempted to persuade Wheaton to advance the rest of his division westward to strengthen resistance to what appeared to be an imminent Confederate assault. When Wheaton demurred, Grant located the corps commander and rode with Wright toward the railroad to showcase the vulnerable position occupied by the Fourth Vermont pickets and Morrill’s and Fleming’s little contingents. Officers in those commands also advocated for a withdrawal, but neither Pingree nor Fleming were willing to ignore their orders to hold fast unless explicitly instructed otherwise. Wright dismissed Grant’s concern and expressed confidence that should the Confederates attempt to overwhelm his advanced men, they could easily retire toward Ricketts, not realizing that a gap had developed between the Third Division and Grant’s Vermonters.112 General Wright also failed to anticipate Mahone’s two-­pronged attack, which swept around both flanks of the vulnerable New Englanders. Between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., Mahone sent his Virginians and Floridians eastward on the road toward Dr. Gurley’s, while the Georgians and Mississippians angled northeastward toward Morrill’s and Fleming’s right. Sanders’s Alabama Brigade and Kirkland’s North Carolinians remained in reserve. Gibson’s Georgians penetrated the gap beyond the Vermonters’ right, while Harris scattered Morrill’s forces, driving them back until some rallied at Fleming’s fence-­rail barricades. “The Yanks ran pell mell strewing the ground with guns, accoutrements, knapsacks, haversacks, and any other thing that [might] retard their progress,” exulted a Georgian. Another Confederate characterized the Union retreat as “a veritable Marathon.” Weisiger’s Virginians drove away the Federal pickets that Wheaton had advanced on Fleming’s left, principally the Sixty-­Second New York, and then continued moving eastward while Capt. Victor Girardey, Mahone’s brand new assistant adjutant general, led the small body of Floridians north behind Fleming’s line. The Vermonters, low on ammunition and now virtually surrounded, considered a fighting withdrawal, but by 8:00 p.m. faced no practical choice but surrender. The Federal 252

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defenders farther east managed to keep Weisiger at bay, and at dark Mahone ordered his victorious brigades to withdraw to the main Confederate line, prisoners in tow, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the enemy for a second consecutive day.113 Meade rushed reinforcements from the Fifth Corps to Wright’s aid and repeatedly implored his beleaguered corps commander to assume the offensive against the impudent Confederates. Wright, however, dragged his feet and at last announced his intention to withdraw to the lines occupied the previous night. “As you give me no data whatever on which to form any judgment . . . it is not possible for me to overrule your judgment,” confessed an exasperated George Meade.114 Lewis Grant would remember June 23 as “one of those sad events of which I have disliked to read or think about,” and for good reason. The Sixth Corps lost 588 men that day, most of them prisoners and the vast majority from Grant’s Vermont Brigade. Mahone suffered about 150 casualties. Most contemporary analysts agreed with historian George G. Benedict, who summarized the affair as “an inexcusable blunder” on the part of the Federals. As usual, there was a lack of consensus as to where to place the blame. Capt. Aldace F. Walker of the Eleventh Vermont ascribed the defeat to “bad management,” and singled out Pingree for special opprobrium. Hospital Steward John Henry Newton accused “incompetent subordinate officers” of being drunk on June 23, while Pvt. John B. Southard of the Forty-­Ninth New York believed Wright himself was sauced during the fighting. “Gen. Wright may be a good brigade general but good for nothing to command a corps,” railed Southard, “and if they keep on with such generals you can be assured there won’t be no discipline in the whole army.” Meade also held Wright accountable, without blaming his lackluster generalship on alcohol.115 It is hard to disagree with the army commander. From the very inception of Grant’s Second Offensive, Wright evinced little inclination to assume an aggressive posture and managed the Sixth Corps as if his only goal was to prevent the Confederates from gaining his flanks. Ironically, Mahone did exactly that on both June 22 and 23, although A. P. Hill’s report that night asserted that “we did not accomplish anything,” suggesting that the corps commander hoped for more than merely driving the Federals off the Petersburg Railroad and capturing several hundred prisoners. Lee offered a similarly muted assessment of the action.116 With combat at the Deep Bottom bridgehead limited to an exchange of picket and artillery fire, Grant’s Second Offensive at Petersburg sputtered to an apparent end. By any measure, the infantry initiative had failed miserGrant’s Second Offensive

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ably. Grant’s delusional conception of extending two army corps across the Petersburg and South Side Railroads, anchored on the Appomattox River upstream from Petersburg, lacked even superficial plausibility. Moreover, despite Meade’s best efforts to encourage Birney and Wright to pursue Grant’s vision, the corps commanders proceeded with hesitation, not only inconsistent with their ambitious mission, but unlikely to accomplish any meaningful territorial conquest. In Birney’s and Wright’s defense, dense ground cover inhibited rapid movement, and both men recognized vulnerability to surprise attacks that might burst out of the Dinwiddie jungle at any moment. Just such surprises orchestrated by numerically inferior Confederate forces found seams in the Union deployment on June 22 and 23, collecting nearly 2,200 prisoners and driving the Yankees off the Petersburg Railroad, back nearly to their jump-­off points along Jerusalem Plank Road, at a cost of perhaps 700 casualties. “The more I think on that thing,” confessed Colonel Lyman, “the more extraordinary and disgraceful does it appear.”117 Grant’s Second Offensive, frequently styled the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, may have lacked accomplishment, but it did not lack consequences. The Second Corps, Meade’s most reliable for much of the spring campaign season, underwent profound alterations as a result of June 22. Within four days, Barlow’s Second and Third Brigades were combined and Gibbon’s Second Brigade was dissolved. Gibbon’s division had suffered some 2,300 casualties since arriving at Petersburg. Eleven Second Corps regiments were consolidated because their numbers had diminished beyond tactical relevance. The equivalent of two entire brigades disappeared, most of those men heading for South Georgia’s Andersonville prison.118 Hancock’s wound discharged a piece of bone, restoring his vigor and allowing him to resume corps command on June 27. In general orders issued that day, Hancock regretted that the “disaster” of June 22 had seriously tarnished the fame of his proud organization. He condemned the officers and soldiers who surrendered that day and promised that “the guilty will not be allowed to go unpunished.” Birney interpreted these sentiments as an indictment of his leadership and requested a court of inquiry to investigate the affair. Hancock denied any intent to impugn Birney’s generalship and let the matter rest. Meade privately professed that Birney had done “very well” as an acting corps commander, although many in the army believed that the beloved Hancock’s absence had contributed to its debacle.119 If army morale had declined following the failed assaults of June 15–18, the Second Offensive plunged soldier spirits to a new low. General Miles professed that he did “not think there ever was a campaign which tried men’s power of 254

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endurance like the present one. It is only the strong that remain with us and they [are] very much worn down.” Washington Roebling admired the men who “endure day after day, with their lives constantly in danger. . . . I can’t but wonder [that] there should be men who are such fools . . . and that is the trouble we are laboring under now—the fools have all been killed and the rest think it is about played out to stand up and get shot.” A New Jersey major in the Sixth Corps wrote a family friend that the army had experienced “a devil of a time. . . . Nothing but fighting, starving, marching and cussing for 50 days with no cessation especially in the cussing.” General Crawford reported that Gibbon’s division was “in a very bad state of demoralization,” and others believed that the malaise extended to the highest levels of the army. Lamenting the refusal of the soldiers to make further assaults and the officers to expose themselves to peril, Marsena Patrick laid the blame on General Meade. “The despicable Selfishness & indifference of Meade, causing him to set aside all the rights of his Troops, both Officers & men insulting almost all who approach him, makes me very sick at heart,” wrote Patrick.120 Although Lee and Hill recognized that their victory had been merely tactical, with no permanent impact on the operational situation, many lesser Confederates took great comfort in administering another defeat to the hated foe. “I think the prospects are brighter for us now than ever,” wrote Sgt. Charles Lewis Anthony of the Tenth Battalion Virginia Heavy Artillery. “Hunter is retreating. Sherman is almost demoralized, and in a short time I hope Grant will be the most used up general that has yet been in the field. He is doing more for us than any general they have yet had.” The Virginia press indulged its favorite ploy of belittling the Federals by disparaging the quality of their soldiers. Speaking of the prisoners captured on June 22 and 23, the Richmond Examiner reported that “the privates in this batch are all foreigners, and the most ordinary, illiterate, ragged, dirty, cutthroat looking creatures we have ever seen.” Most of these despicable enemies had been compelled to join the army, claimed the correspondent, some tricked into enlisting under the influence of whiskey. Private Perry of the Seventeenth Virginia believed that the equipment and manpower garnered by Mahone’s assaults “squared the account” for the mass capture of one of Ewell’s divisions at Spotsylvania.121 The impact of the Second Offensive fell perhaps most heavily on Ulysses S. Grant. Observers such as Charles Wainwright believed that “Grant has used the army up, and will now have to wait until its morale is restored before he can do anything.” The general-­in-­chief as much as agreed with that assessment in a dispatch to General Henry Halleck in Washington at the conclusion of the fighting. Grant now referred to his campaign as “a siege” and predicted that achievGrant’s Second Offensive

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ing ultimate victory—the capture of Richmond and Petersburg—“bids fair to be tedious.” But the general-­in-­chief recoiled at the prospect of stagnation. He called on Halleck to suspend operations in all theaters except Sherman’s and his own, and asked that the Nineteenth Corps from the Department of the Gulf be sent north to reinforce his Virginia armies. “With my present force I feel perfectly safe against Lee’s army, and, acting defensively, would still feel so against Lee and Johnston combined,” wrote Grant, “but we want to act offensively.”122 In point of fact, another facet of the Second Offensive was still in progress at the very moment Grant consigned his message to the telegraph operator. Miles to the west, cavalry generals James Wilson and August Kautz were in the midst of executing the mounted portion of Grant’s grand plan, proceeding in blissful but fateful ignorance of the infantry’s defeat.

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seven

We Were Fortunate to Get Back at All

From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station Ulysses S. Grant’s plans to reduce Petersburg and isolate the Confederate capital had not gone well. His failure to capture the Cockade City between June 15 and 18 or to control the Petersburg or South Side railroads during his Second Offensive, a few days later, marked just a pair of his disappointments that month. On the 11th and 12th, two of Philip Sheridan’s cavalry divisions managed only a tactical draw with Confederates Wade Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee at Trevilian Station along the Virginia Central Railroad northwest of Richmond. A week later, Jubal Early compelled David Hunter to retreat southwest from Lynchburg, away from Richmond and his intended rendezvous with Sheridan. Hunter’s sorry fate would become evident shortly, and Sheridan, unable to continue his offensive, had little choice but to withdraw toward the large Union supply depot at White House Landing on the Pamunkey River. There, the waterborne line of communications that sustained the Army of the Potomac (until Grant moved his base to City Point) offered Sheridan succor and the respite necessary to execute his next assignment.1 Philip Henry Sheridan, who identified various dates and locations for his birth, was probably thirty-­three years old in June 1864. He grew up in tiny Somerset, Ohio, and secured an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, graduating near the bottom of his class in 1853—following a yearlong suspension precipitated by an altercation with a cadet officer. He compiled a lackluster antebellum career on the frontier, and began the Civil War as a quartermaster officer in Missouri. 257

Sheridan’s first combat command came in May 1862 as colonel of the Second Michigan Cavalry, but he began leading infantry later that year. He performed competently at Perryville and Chickamauga and distinguished himself at Stones River with the western theater’s Army of the Cumberland. Sheridan attracted Grant’s attention in November 1863 at the battle of Missionary Ridge, where his division helped storm that Confederate stronghold and executed a vigorous pursuit of Braxton Bragg’s defeated forces. When Grant came east the next spring, he brought Sheridan along as commander of the Army of the Potomac’s Cavalry Corps. “I said I wanted the very best man in the army” to lead his troopers in Virginia, Grant told President Lincoln. When Henry Halleck suggested Sheridan, Grant replied “The very man I want.” Sheridan’s performance during the Overland Campaign seemed to justify Grant’s confidence. Once freed of Meade’s conservative control, Sheridan raided the outskirts of Richmond, mortally wounding Confederate cavalry chieftain J. E. B. Stuart, and Sheridan’s tenacious fighting at Cold Harbor marked him as an aggressive personality, outside the mold of the army’s high command. “Little Phil’s” failure to reach Hunter or inflict a decisive defeat on the Rebel cavalry at Trevilian’s rankled. “I regret my inability to carry out your instructions,” he wrote the general-­in-­chief.2 Sheridan’s trip to White House Landing would not be easy. Burdened by scores of wounded comrades and Confederate prisoners, the Federal troopers also contended with hundreds of runaway slaves, who joined the column on foot or in every manner of purloined vehicle. “They are a motley crowd,” wrote Sgt. Nathan B. Webb of the First Maine Cavalry. “All ages and shades. The old infirm white haired man and the little . . . nimble wooly pate. . . . They fancy they are bound to the . . . land of Canaan.” The roads were dusty and Sheridan’s column had all but exhausted its supplies of food, fodder, and ammunition. Many of the men compensated for the shortage by wreaking havoc on farmers and planters they passed along the road to the Pamunkey. “In many places on the route of Sheridan’s Raiders they left persons who were wealthy the day before without a pound of anything to eat, destroyed their houses, household goods, crops, stock, and even down to the one suit of clothes on their persons,” wrote an outraged Virginia soldier with a touch of exaggeration. “Ladies fared in the same way, not to mention other indignities & atrocities easier imagined than a sense of propriety would allow me to describe.”3 As Sheridan gradually worked his way southeast through King & Queen County and across the Mattaponi River, the Confederate cavalry cautiously followed on parallel routes, taking care to interpose themselves between Sheridan and the main body of the Union army. The legions of Hampton and Fitz Lee 258

From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

were about as exhausted as the Federals. On June 17 Robert E. Lee sent Brig. Gen. John R. Chambliss’s brigade of Rooney Lee’s cavalry division to reinforce Hampton, whose leadership at Trevilian’s had cemented his unofficial role as cavalry commander. The next day, Lee instructed the South Carolinian that if Sheridan reached White House the Confederate cavalry should immediately cross the James and Appomattox Rivers and take position on the right of the Confederate line below Petersburg. But Hampton had hopes of striking another blow before conceding the north side of the rivers to the Yankees.4 By dawn on June 20, elements of Hampton’s troopers and horse artillery had crept into position on high ground west of White House Landing, located on the right bank of the Pamunkey a few miles upstream from where it joined the Mattaponi to form the York River. The Union depot had been managed by Brig. Gen. John J. Abercrombie, but he had been recently replaced by George W. Getty—now recovered from his Wilderness wound and en route to resume command of the Second Division of the Sixth Corps. The Union garrison, described by Sheridan as consisting of “odds and ends of regiments and batteries,” included dismounted cavalry, U.S. Colored Troops, and an almost-­ worthless contingent of 100-­day men totaling fewer than 1,500 muskets. Two Union gunboats, the Morse and the Cactus, provided the depot’s most potent defense.5 Hampton’s artillery opened fire in a thick fog shortly after sunrise, Rebel shells bursting among hundreds of parked wagons awaiting Sheridan’s arrival. Teamsters sprang to life, lashing their horses to convey their precious vehicles toward the pontoon bridge leading to the north bank, while the Federal gunboats responded with their large-­caliber ordnance. The contest, more spectacular than sanguinary, persisted with varying degrees of intensity until about noon. The outsize naval projectiles soared over the Confederate horse artillery “with enough speed when they passed us to carry them a mile further,” according to an impressed Southern gunner, “and then have momentum enough left to dig a ditch that looks like a miniature railroad cut.” The Confederates recognized an unequal contest when they saw one. Although they might have stormed the supply depot, “the sacrifice of life would have been so great that [Brig. Gen. Matthew C.] Butler advised Gen. Hampton not to assault unless a great deal was to be gained,” wrote a Georgia officer. “We could have carried the works, I really believe, but it would not have paid.” Sheridan’s column rode to within striking distance of White House, but scouts reported that Getty had the situation under control. Not wishing to “push our jaded animals,” Sheridan approached the north side of the landing in a leisurely fashion and went into bivouac across from the depot that night.6 From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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Map 20 - Union Cavalry Actions, June 13-25, 1864

Trevilian’s Station

Union Cavalry Actions, June 13–25, 1864

The Federals picked their way across the pontoon bridge in a heavy fog early the next morning. Led by the First Maine Cavalry, Sheridan’s horsemen chased away the Confederates and pursued them to historic St. Peter’s Church. “Altogether it was a spirited little affair and resulted in nothing in particular,” thought Sergeant Webb. Hampton’s soldiers withdrew to the west and eventually crossed the Chickahominy River upstream at Bottom’s Bridge with what one Confederate officer considered “inextricable confusion.”7 While Sheridan reached and secured White House Landing, Grant and Meade debated the cavalry’s next assignment. The general-­in-­chief at first considered dispatching Sheridan on a renewed mission to cooperate with Hunter. When it became evident, however, that “Black Dave” desired nothing more than to retreat from Early’s presence, Grant told General Meade on June 20 to direct Sheridan to rejoin the Army of the Potomac. By then, Meade and Grant had decided to send Sheridan’s detached division under James H. Wilson on his grand raid to destroy distant railroads in conjunction with the pending offensive by the Second and Sixth Corps. But Grant’s orders for Sheridan to disengage from Hampton by crossing the James worried Meade. “Do you not think that with the knowledge of Sheridan’s withdrawal Hampton will be drawn in to Richmond, ready to be thrown on any raiding party?” he inquired. Meade suggested that Sheridan and Wilson unite and ride to Hunter’s relief along the south bank of the James. Grant ignored this proposal, so Meade dutifully sent Sheridan the requisite instructions: “You will . . . move your command and trains from White House to City Point. There will be a bridge thrown across the James at Deep Bottom, above Malvern Hill, on which you will endeavor to cross your command.” Meade added that should the Deep Bottom passage prove impractical, Sheridan could move downstream to Douthat’s Landing on the James “where ferry-­boats will be provided for bringing you across.” The depot at White House would be dismantled and Sheridan would escort some 900 wagons from there across the James.8 Sheridan responded immediately. On June 22 he began to disassemble the base at White House and sent his First Division under Brig. Gen. Alfred T. A. Torbert to secure the crossing at Jones Bridge over the Chickahominy, where the wagons would negotiate that unfordable stream on pontoons. Brig. Gen. David M. Gregg’s Second Division trotted south, heading for roads west of and parallel to the byway leading from Jones Bridge to the James, in order to provide flank protection. Sheridan knew that he would be attacked “if the enemy had any spirit left in him,” and so arranged his 5,000 troopers to counter interference from Hampton. To Sheridan’s relief, the Confederates offered no serious resistance on the 22nd; the immense wagon train, which occupied more From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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than ten miles of roadway and carried 795,000 pounds of grain and 371,000 pounds of hay, parked safely south of Jones Bridge that night.9 Hampton learned of Sheridan’s departure for the James and sparred only briefly with Torbert’s troopers south of the Chickahominy on the 22nd. The next morning, Chambliss attacked Col. Thomas Devin’s First Division brigade near Samaria Church, a weather-­beaten structure on a country road that led southeast toward Charles City Court House, and thus toward Sheridan’s direct route to the river. Devin at first recoiled, but then succeeded in driving the Virginians back, protecting the main road on which the wagons were traveling. The Federals repulsed additional forays on Long Bridge Road. Gregg’s division crossed Jones Bridge early on the morning of the 23rd and replaced Torbert’s men along the road to Samaria Church, while Hampton concentrated his two divisions (soon to be reinforced by Col. Martin Gary’s makeshift brigade) between Salem Church and Nance’s Shop, which, respectively, lay south and northwest of Samaria Church. From there, the Confederate troopers blocked Sheridan’s routes toward Deep Bottom and were in position to assault the flank of the Federal train if it continued due south, toward Charles City Court House and the landings on the James. “Every practicable combination and effort should be made to prevent Sheridan’s cavalry from returning to Grant’s army,” ordered President Jefferson Davis, and Hampton intended to carry out those instructions the following day.10 Friday, June 24, dawned clear, with the temperature destined to exceed 100 degrees by the afternoon. Sheridan put his column in the saddle early, with Torbert leading the wagon train south toward Charles City Court House, where he expected to turn west and make for Deep Bottom. Gregg continued along the road from Charles City Court House leading northwest toward Samaria Church with orders to “hold fast until all the transportation could pass Charles City Court-­House.” About 10:​​00 a.m. the lead elements of the First Maine Cavalry arrived a mile below Samaria Church, where they joined troopers from the Sixth Ohio Cavalry, who stared placidly across open ground at a few Confederate videttes. Eventually, two companies of Maine boys dismounted and slunk into the woods opposite the Confederate flank, compelling the Southerners to retire. The Northern troopers trotted forward to the little rundown sanctuary and began to deploy into line of battle amid smoldering Rebel campfires.11 A slight ridge running across the road behind the church provided a platform for Gregg’s two artillery batteries under Lt. W. Neil Dennison and Capt. Alanson M. Randol. From there, the gunners could sweep Gregg’s entire front. The First Maine Cavalry took position at the church and across the road with the Second Pennsylvania Cavalry to its left and the rest of Col. J. Irvin Gregg’s 262

From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

brigade extending to the right, facing west with its northern flank exposed. Brig. Gen. Henry E. Davies’s brigade stretched south of the road with the Tenth New York Cavalry on the division’s far left, its flank also in the air. The troopers tore down fences and scrounged fallen logs to build a breastwork, the roadway by Samaria Church blocked with piles of brush. The First Pennsylvania Cavalry remained mounted in the rear while the rest of the division dismounted behind their crude works, every fourth man serving as a horse holder well behind the line. Heavy vegetation four feet high covered the ground south of the church while pine woods lapped around both flanks and extended beyond the small field where Union pickets could hear the unseen enemy maneuvering in the forest “getting ready to make some of us fit subjects for a funeral,” worried a New York trooper.12 Gregg realized that he was isolated and vulnerable, and he sent Sheridan requests for reinforcements by several couriers, all of whom were captured en route. Torbert had skirmished briefly with Brig. Gen. Lunsford Lomax’s Virginians along River Road, and remained in that neighborhood to prevent mischief. Gregg’s two brigades, numbering perhaps 2,200 sabres, would face the bulk of the Confederate cavalry alone.13 Hampton, whose headquarters that morning were at the Phillips house near Salem Church, about a mile and a half southwest of Samaria Church, commanded six brigades on June 24. Lomax’s failure to make headway to the south only confirmed Hampton’s decision to assail Gregg’s isolated division with the hope of opening the road to Charles City Court House. He identified the Union right flank as the weakest portion of Gregg’s developing position, sending the Hampton Legion and the Seventh South Carolina Cavalry of Gary’s command from Salem Church on a byroad north to Nance’s Shop, to gain a concealed place from which to attack. The Ninth and Tenth Virginia Cavalry regiments dismounted on Gary’s right while Young’s Brigade under Col. Gilbert J. Wright, the Laurel Brigade led by Lt. Col. Richard Dulany, Matthew C. Butler’s South Carolinians, and Brig. Gen. Williams Wickham’s Virginians extended the line to the south. The Phillips Legion, Jeff Davis Legion, Twelfth Virginia Cavalry, and Twenty-­Fourth Virginia Cavalry remained mounted in the rear as a mobile reserve. Hampton did not quantify his strength that day, but he significantly outnumbered the Federals.14 The butternut horsemen slipped into position opposite Gregg’s troopers, a pronounced drainage separating the two lines and a row of pine trees providing cover. Only irregular skirmishing disturbed an uneasy peace. About 3:00 p.m. scattered firing became audible on the right of the Union line just as the Federals began another colorless meal of hardtack and pork. Some Yankees instincFrom White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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Cavalry Actions North of the of James, 20–25, 186420-25, 1864 Prince George Map 21 - Cavalry Actions North the June James, June C.H.

tively adjusted their rail works and checked their carbines. Then the unmistakable “Hi-­yi-­yi” of the Rebel Yell pierced the sultry afternoon air as dismounted troopers burst from their hiding places to strike the Union right.15 Gary, joined by Chambliss’s Virginians, struck Gregg’s northern flank while Butler and the remaining brigades moved forward against the Federal center and left. In some places, the dismounted Rebels appeared to be four deep, rushing forward with “demonic yells . . . and discharging volley after volley right in our faces,” recorded Nathan Webb. “Only our frail breastwork separates us and we fight so near each other that we distinguish each other’s features.” The First Pennsylvania Cavalry quickly dismounted from its reserve position and rushed toward the battle line as General Chambliss also reached the battlefield, bring264

From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

4

ing with him the Thirteenth Virginia Cavalry. Col. Charles H. Smith of the First Maine Cavalry, in the center of Gregg’s line, exhorted his men to hold firm even as a Confederate ball slammed into his thigh. “Our men had muzzle-­loading rifles and the Yankees had breach-­loading and rapid firing rifles so they had a great advantage over us,” remembered a South Carolina trooper, and the first Confederate rush receded into the pines.16 But soon the Southerners returned for a second attempt. “We halted and fired at them at close range till our guns got so hot we could scarcely hold them,” wrote South Carolina private Charles Crosland. “We could tell where the enemy were by watching the tops of the bushes shaking.” Colonel Smith lost two horses and sustained a second wound while the Union artillery blasted the attacking Confederates. “The way those artillery boys fed it to the rebs . . . was terrific,” wrote a New Yorker. “The guns were discharged as fast as man could count, double-­shotted with canister, at a range not to exceed 200 yards. . . . The shrieks of the rebels when struck, followed by the cheers of our men who witnessed the work of those guns, rose above the din and roar of the artillery and to us who were striving so hard to live and fight another day, it was indeed cheering.” For a second time, the Confederates recoiled as members of the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry celebrated by lustily singing “We’ll Rally round the flag Boys.”17 But not for long. For a third time, Hampton’s determined soldiers boiled out of the woods and undergrowth, gaining the Federal left flank and coming over the rail barricades “like so many sheep.” The Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry simultaneously gave way in the Federal center, prompting the First Maine Cavalry to retire, precipitating the collapse of the entire Union position. The bluecoats briefly rallied along the ridge, where the artillery continued to pummel the attackers. “Fiercer and faster the shells scream over our head. . . . How hot it is!” recalled a horrified Federal trooper. “How full the air of gunpowder! How plentiful the sight of blood! In every direction and every manner lie dead bodies.” But this time the Yankees could not sustain their defense and fled, hoping to find their horses to hasten their retreat. “All was confusion and uproar in the rear,” wrote Lt. Wells A. Bushnell of the Sixth Ohio Cavalry. “Pack trains, ambulances, wagons, men and horses were mingled in wild confusion almost on the verge of a panic.”18 The battle had lasted two hours, and General Gregg reported that “the movement toward Charles City Court-­House was made in the best possible order, without confusion.” Not every witness agreed. One Confederate saw the landscape “jammed full of a blue mass running for dear life, shedding guns, haver-­sacks and accoutrements as they went.” Rebel marksmen shot escaping From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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Yankees in midflight. The Federals’ cries during their retreat were “music to our ears and we saw with satisfaction that many of these plunderers had met their just dues for their many outrages,” gloated an officer in the Tenth Virginia Cavalry. “After we broke the enemies line it became the question of who can go the fastest,” remembered another Virginian. “We ran the enemy until we were out of breath.”19 The Phillips Legion, Jeff Davis Legion, and Twelfth Virginia Cavalry, which had remained mounted in Hampton’s rear, led the pursuit while the First Maine Cavalry and First Pennsylvania Cavalry provided a rearguard of sorts. “I never heard such yelling in all my life as our boys done,” exclaimed Pvt. William H. Locke of the Fourth Alabama Cavalry Battalion, serving with Phillips’s Legion. “The Yankees were almost frightened to death and when we would run onto them shooting them down and chopping them with our sabres they would hold up their hands and ask for mercy.” The excessive heat prostrated men on both sides. “Our Colonel, [Richard L. T.] Beale, I saw lying exhausted by the road, overcome with heat and thirst,” testified Pvt. Leiper Moore Robinson of the Ninth Virginia Cavalry, “but he was making a tremendous noise yelling to the men to go ahead.” One Federal estimated that 150 of his comrades became prisoners because they were simply too enervated to run any farther. Gregg’s troopers made a brief stand about three miles from the battlefield at Hopewell Church, as the evening gloom gradually enveloped riders blue and gray. Between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., the Federal survivors straggled unimpeded into Charles City Court House. “Nothing saved them from destruction but the darkness,” reported Hampton.20 Lt. Col. Frederick L. Tremain of the Tenth New York Cavalry considered the battle of Samaria Church “the hardest cavalry fight any portion of our corps has ever experienced.” Sergeant Webb agreed. “Yesterday was a sad day in the history of the Second Cav. Div,” he recorded in his diary. “As I sit here on the banks of the James River, one of those who miraculously escaped capture and death . . . I feel sad, very sad, over our great calamity.” Webb considered the battle “decidedly the hottest engagement I was ever in.” Gregg reported 357 casualties of all descriptions—of whom as many as 179 were prisoners of war, transported by rail into Richmond the following day, “a dirty, ragged looking set, their whole external appearance showing the effects of a disastrous campaign,” according to a Richmond newspaper. Among the mortally wounded was Lt. Col. George Covode of the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry, son of the Radical Republican, John Covode, a member of Congress who once served on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Hampton counted six killed

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and fifty-­nine wounded in his division, although total Confederate casualties may have reached 200.21 General Sheridan termed the battle a “very creditable engagement,” pointing out that the entire wagon train reached the banks of the James unscathed. The Union high command realized, however, that Hampton’s presence posed an immediate threat to Sheridan’s security, and prohibited easy passage to Deep Bottom. Ben Butler dispatched the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois and two other regiments early on the 25th to reinforce Sheridan, and Grant directed that the cavalry make plans to ferry across the river near where the bulk of the army had crossed ten days earlier.22 The Confederate cavalry, themselves worn to a frazzle by constant campaigning, opted not to test Sheridan any further—at least north of the James. “We ought not to go anywhere if it could be avoided for the next three or four days at least,” wrote Lt. Col. William Stokes of the Fourth South Carolina Cavalry, “for we are perfectly worn out both man and horse.” The Southern troopers withdrew to Chaffin’s Bluff, and Hampton’s Division, along with Chambliss’s Brigade, negotiated the pontoon bridge there on June 26. Fitz Lee’s men and the horse artillery crossed two days later. Meanwhile, Sheridan’s soldiers and wagons gathered at Douthat’s Landing, in position to cross the James. Little Phil consulted with Grant at City Point on the 26th, and the general-­in-­chief told Meade that day to send Sheridan “such orders as you deem best. I think he should be got up leisurely to your left, where he can rest and at the same time add strength to your position.” Meade dutifully directed Sheridan to “proceed to take up a position on the Petersburg and Jerusalem plank road on the left flank of the army” once his command moved to the Southside. Neither Grant nor Meade showed concern for hastening Sheridan across the James and into position to support Harry Wilson, who, unbeknownst to those at City Point, would soon enough need some help.23 Hampton’s attack at Samaria Church would not be the only Confederate offensive of June 24. Southern infantry executed an assault between the Appomattox River and City Point Road that proved to be, in the words of one Southerner, “a fiasco,” particularly in light of its grandiose intentions.24 The plan’s origins remain murky, although General Beauregard articulated its specifics with Lee’s knowledge and blessing. On June 23 the Creole commander drafted a six-­part directive outlining an offensive, the goal of which was nothing less than to redeem all the ground lost since the initial Union attack on June 15. Artillery on the north side of the Appomattox would open the ball

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with a devastating bombardment designed to “demoralize the enemy’s troops occupying the defensive lines which were to be attacked” and “throw into confusion any supports the enemy might have concealed in the woods near his lines.” Beauregard explained that Robert Hoke’s Division would then move forward, “swing around on his right flank, so as to take the enemy’s first and second lines in flank, advancing rapidly to the attack of the enemy’s position near Hare’s house. . . . Having taken Hare’s house he will continue the movement to retake our old lines of works.” Charles Field’s Division of Richard Anderson’s First Corps would move into position overnight to support Hoke and protect his left, occupying the trenches captured by the North Carolinian and “fill up . . . the gap between the river and Hoke’s left until the whole line shall be occupied.” If opportunity presented itself, Field’s men would advance to regain Batteries 2 through 9 on the Dimmock Line. Joseph Kershaw’s and Bushrod Johnson’s Divisions would then attack in echelon following Hoke’s success and recapture the original Confederate perimeter all the way to Battery 24.25 In hindsight, this scheme appears as fanciful as Grant’s Second Offensive, but Beauregard was fond of devising such capricious programs. General Lee, however, clearly knew of the design and the brigadier general at the center of the offensive, Johnson Hagood, considered the idea feasible. “The morale of the Confederate army was at its highest,” Hagood wrote, “that of the enemy at probably its lowest during the campaign, and the great disparity of losses inflicted by Grant’s sledge-­hammer style of fighting had brought the two armies at this time to no insurmountable inequality of numbers.” George H. Moffett, a member of the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina in Hoke’s Division, thought, even in retrospect, that the offensive promised “glorious results,” including separating Grant from his base at City Point.26 The true potential of this ambitious plan will never be known, for it would sputter to a decidedly inglorious conclusion shortly after its commencement. Its failure can be traced to poor communications and a fatal disagreement between the principal field commanders as to the intended course of action. It is unclear how or even if Beauregard conveyed his orders to all four relevant division commanders. It is certain that Hoke learned of Beauregard’s intentions on the 23rd, because he contacted Hagood, who would bear primary responsibility for launching the attack. Johnson Hagood, who had played such an important role on the night of June 15–16, was a thirty-­five-­year-­old native of Barnwell County, South Carolina. He graduated from the South Carolina Military Academy in Charleston and then joined the bar in 1850. An officer in the prewar militia, Hagood participated in the reduction of Fort Sumter in 1861, and after brief service in Virginia returned to the Palmetto State, where as 268

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a brigadier general he served at Charleston. He came north with his brigade in the spring of 1864 and had performed well in Virginia, although one of his officers grumbled that he “wants to gain a big name for himself and he is going to sacrifice every one of us to get it.”27 Hagood commanded four South Carolina regiments and a battalion. His brigade occupied the far left of the Confederate line south of the Appomattox River. The Twenty-­Seventh, Twenty-­First, and Eleventh South Carolina regiments reached from the riverbank south to City Point Road, where the Twenty-­ Fifth South Carolina and Seventh South Carolina Battalion extended the line. These soldiers manned a collection of rifle pits in advance of a single set of trenches, some 400 yards west of the Union troops deployed opposite them. The level ground between the lines hosted a “rank growth of oats” and Hagood enjoyed the support of a battery of Coehorn mortars that had recently arrived in the rear of his infantry.28 On the night of the 23rd, General Hoke alerted Hagood “to be ready for movement in the morning,” although in an effort to ensure that the plans did not reach enemy ears, Hoke told none of his other brigadiers of the pending offensive, and shared few of the details with Hagood until the following dawn. Hoke’s instructions to Hagood seem to explain why the offensive unraveled. He told Hagood that, following a thirty-­minute artillery bombardment from north of the river, the guns would fall silent for five minutes, his signal to advance his three regiments north of City Point Road. These men were to capture the Union rifle pits and their first line of works, at which time “Tige” Anderson’s Georgia Brigade of Field’s Division would continue the push against the reserve Federal works. Then, as Hoke explained, Hagood would pivot to the south and, picking up his remaining two units, press toward Hare’s Hill. In Hoke’s and Hagood’s minds, success beyond the mere capture of the Union skirmishers and first line of trenches depended on Anderson’s participation. Field, Anderson, and General Lee envisioned a different tactical scenario.29 During the night, Bushrod Johnson’s men moved up from reserve and relieved Field’s brigades, including Anderson’s Georgians. Field’s troops began their march from around Baxter and Jerusalem Plank Roads to the Iron Bridge on City Point Road, behind Hagood. Forty-­four guns, including almost all of the army’s long-­range ordnance, went into position on the heights opposite the Union right flank, in splendid position to enfilade the Federal lines. The Confederate artillery was to begin its bombardment at daylight, although a heavy fog delayed it until about 7:00 a.m.30 By all accounts, the Confederate cannon made quite an impression. “It seemed an artillery carnival raging with a sort of Satanic joy,” wrote one awed From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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correspondent. “With the exception of Gettysburg the war has not afforded another instance of so many guns concentrated upon one point and firing so rapidly for such a length of time.” A New York reporter counted “shells of immense size” landing “one every two seconds . . . shrieking awfully through the air and bursting with a noise like thunder everywhere.” Several projectiles exploded near Eighteenth Corps headquarters, but overall the gunnery accomplished little. General Hoke, in fact, thought that it served only to notify the Yankees of the impending attack. Union infantry officers remembered the shelling lasting four to six times its actual length, while Federal cannoneers responded with intense counterbattery fire. Right on schedule—at 7:30 a.m.— the Confederate cannon fell silent, the signal for Hagood to commence his assault.31 Lt. Garnett Andrews Jr., an aide serving with Tige Anderson, had reported to Hoke and Hagood early that morning, announcing himself as the liaison between the Georgians and the South Carolinians. Andrews informed Hagood that Anderson’s brigade had taken position in his rear, so at 7:20 a.m. Hagood ordered Andrews to inform Anderson that the attack would begin in fifteen minutes. Hagood had divided his brigade into wings because so few field officers remained within his regiments. His left wing, containing the designated attacking regiments, would be led that day by Lt. Col. Patrick Henry Nelson of the Seventh South Carolina Battalion. According to plan, Nelson would direct about 400 picked men out of the Confederate trenches, followed by some 550 more in a second wave led by Hagood himself.32 Anderson’s men aligned behind a small rise a mere 150 yards in rear of where Nelson’s three regiments awaited orders to attack. Hagood delayed until 7:42 a.m., waiting for Anderson’s men to appear in support, but when a message from Hoke demanded that he launch the assault immediately, Hagood passed the word to Colonel Nelson. The colonel mounted the parapet in the center of his line, and “without speaking he drew his handkerchief from his breast and raised it aloft. The men sprang over the parapet with a yell” and headed for the Union rifle pits. The troops opposite Nelson’s charging infantry belonged to the brigades of Cols. Guy Henry and Edgar M. Cullen, both of George Stannard’s Eighteenth Corps division. The Federals presumed that an infantry attack would follow the artillery bombardment and sent word to their pickets to retreat as soon as any Rebels burst into the oat field: the main line would hold its fire until the pickets came in and the Confederates neared the first line of trenches, and then deliver a deadly volley. That is exactly what happened, although a few of the Union skirmishers fell captive, not receiving the word that they were to abandon their posts. “My brigade . . . opened fire so 270

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sharply that the enemy could neither advance nor retreat or remain where they were in safety,” boasted Colonel Henry.33 Nelson’s men found themselves in an impossible position. The rifle pits they had captured faced only west, and thus provided them no protection. Advancing into the teeth of two brigades presented a poor option, as did the prospect of running the gauntlet back to their own lines. With no help from supporting troops, many of the South Carolinians surrendered, while others continued the fight, only to be killed or wounded. Some lucky souls retreated to safety. Colonel Nelson disappeared while bravely exhorting his men; his fate was never determined. Unsubstantiated rumors circulated that he had been murdered by a black soldier while a captive.34 What had happened to Anderson and the rest of Field’s Division? As Hagood’s second wave of attackers lay in the oats waiting for reinforcements to reignite the stalled attack, Hoke asked Field to repeat the order to Anderson to move immediately to Hagood’s relief. Sometime later, a response from Anderson explained that the Georgians could not advance because the South Carolinians still occupied their entrenchments. Instead, Anderson undertook a remarkable detour, withdrawing to the Iron Bridge a quarter mile behind his position, turning south up the ravine drained by Poor Creek to the fortifications in front of Hare’s Hill, and then veering north to reemerge along Hagood’s line, a detour that took more than an hour, all to gain about 150 yards. In the meantime, another one of Field’s Georgia brigades, Dudley M. DuBose’s, did advance into Hagood’s abandoned fortifications.35 Field took credit for ordering DuBose to the front, claiming that he was “anxious to do more than my duty.” According to Hoke, Field brought up another brigade—perhaps Anderson’s—and expressed the desire to resume the attack. Hoke, however, advised against it. Word from General Lee for Hoke and Field to report to his headquarters terminated the debate, and, after hearing the state of affairs Lee canceled further assaults. An episode that Hagood would term “a bitter experience” and Giles Cooke called “one of the most signal failures of the war” had come to an end.36 Hagood reported 306 casualties, including 209 captured or missing. The Twenty-­Seventh South Carolina suffered particularly severely. Henry sustained three killed and eight wounded while Cullen counted fifty-­seven casualties all told. Many of Hagood’s survivors commented on the appalling attrition in their brigade since coming to Virginia in May. Sgt. James Adger Smyth of the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina wrote his wife that of the 3,500 men who arrived in the Old Dominion, 1,700 had been killed or wounded and 900 more “are sick and worn out.”37 From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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Hoke, Hagood, and the South Carolinians under their command howled in protest over the mismanagement that led to the failed attack. “It was a great blunder, and some one ought to be responsible for it,” thought Pvt. Theodore A. Honour of the Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina. Lieutenant Moffett placed the blame squarely on Tige Anderson for not coming to Hagood’s support. “His excuse for not doing so—is to be very charitable—paltry,” thought Moffett. “Napoleon would have had him shot on the spot.” Hagood agreed with this extreme evaluation. Hoke held Anderson responsible in more measured tones, asserting that “it was never expected that the intrenchments of the enemy could be held by [Hagood’s] two lines of skirmishers, but that they should occupy them until the line of battle could reach them.” Beauregard took an even less accusatory tack while absolving Hoke and Hagood of any blame. “I am decidedly of the opinion that . . . no better results could have been attained by any other plan than the one adopted, and which failed only because not properly supported,” he wrote.38 Field would defend his division after the war by arguing that Hoke had sole responsibility for subduing the first lines of Federal resistance. General Lee concurred. “I had supposed that, in accordance with the plan of General Beauregard of 23d June, General Hoke’s division was to have driven the enemy from his first and second skirmish and main lines,” wrote Lee. “General Hoke’s skirmishers reached the front line but his second line did not; nor did his division move to its right or make any room for Field to enter or occupy them.” Lee concluded that “there seems to have been some misunderstanding as to the part each division was expected to have performed,” a failure borne in part by Lee and Beauregard neglecting to assign a single officer to oversee the entire offensive.39 Moffett and Hagood agreed that the lack of a controlling hand to coordinate divisions from two separate corps led to the fatal confusion. Lt. Col. Willie Pegram, a renowned artillerist, adopted a broader view, suggesting that “Gen. Lee must feel he can put very little dependence on most of [his generals],” an opinion echoed by Capt. Francis Marion Coker, another Confederate gunner. “The attack did fail and the only cause I can assign is the incompetency of Generals,” Coker informed his wife. “The truth is the ‘Stonewalls’ are nearly all dead, and a host of Generals now in this army are woefully incompetent.” The Confederate infantry returned to its trenches, Hagood and Hoke convinced that had their assault been better supported, “a brilliant and entirely practical design . . . might have given a different complexion to the history of this famous siege.” In this assessment, they were deluded. The focus now shifted to the southwest, where James Wilson and August Kautz wreaked havoc on Virginia railroads.40 272

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The troopers of the Third Cavalry Division, Army of the Potomac, arrived on the south bank of the James River on the morning of June 17, ferrying across from Douthat’s Landing. They were among the last of Meade’s troops to reach Southside Virginia from Cold Harbor, having borne responsibility for parrying interference with the army’s march to the James and then guarding Grant’s huge wagon train. “Having had no forage, and short rations for several days, I shall delay a little while to draw supplies and rest,” division commander Wilson explained to army headquarters that morning. “I cannot urge too strongly the necessity of our having rest and getting the horses unsaddled.” Wilson’s men found a grassy respite about a mile from the shore, but soon received orders to remount and proceed past Prince George Court House, where they eventually camped for the night near Mount Sinai Church.41 Wilson was not yet twenty-­seven years old. His association with Grant at Vicksburg helped propel him from a staff position to command of the cavalry bureau and then to the head of a division, the junior brigadier in the entire Cavalry Corps. “In personal appearance he is not remarkable,” mused a newspaperman, “but he is the best horseman in the army.” Wilson possessed vast personal ambition and would hesitate at little to advance his career, including tackling tough assignments with enthusiasm and dedication. He was a gifted administrator, although his stern discipline engendered little love from the men he commanded. Wilson had never led an independent operation, but the orders that reached him on June 20 would remedy that void in his military resume.42 Grant’s directive to conduct an extensive raid against Lee’s railroad communications south of the James arrived at Wilson’s headquarters after his troopers had enjoyed three days of much-­needed rest. “My view is that the road to Weldon should be crossed as near Petersburg as possible,” advised Grant, “and the first strike made for the Lynchburg and Petersburg road; thence to the Danville road, upon which all the damage possible should be done.” After expressing his concern about mischief from Hampton unless Sheridan thoroughly distracted the South Carolinian, Meade passed Grant’s orders to Wilson, who indicated that he could be ready for action by the morning of the 22nd. Wilson requested, however, that he be reinforced by a portion of Kautz’s cavalry division of Butler’s army. Grant informed Butler of the pending operation and asked him for “all of Kautz’s force that you do not require.” Butler replied immediately, generously offering both of Kautz’s organized brigades for the mission.43 Specific instructions reached Wilson on the morning of the 21st, ordering him to leave at 2:00 a.m. the following day. Meade cautioned his young subordinate to avoid detection when crossing in front of the Confederate lines south From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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of Petersburg “and then move by the shortest routes” to the junction of the South Side and Richmond & Danville Railroads at Burkeville. Once there, Wilson would “destroy both those roads to the greatest extent possible, continuing their destruction until driven from it by such attacks of the enemy as you can no longer resist.” Meade further advised Wilson that Hampton was engaged with Sheridan at White House Landing, his unstated implication being that Wilson should move as quickly as possible to minimize Hampton’s potential intervention. A few hours later, a second message informed Wilson that Kautz would reinforce his command, but that Wilson should detach about 800 of his own men to remain behind with the army.44 Wilson dutifully acknowledged these instructions that evening (he claimed after the war that he met personally with Andrew A. Humphreys, Meade’s chief-­ of-­staff, to discuss the particulars), but in so doing he introduced a modification to Meade’s orders. Instead of driving straight for Burkeville, Wilson proposed stopping at Sutherland Station or some nearby point on the South Side Railroad “tearing up the track sufficiently to delay railroad communications ten or twelve hours.” Meade quickly agreed to this seemingly slight tactical alteration. Wilson also raised the question of his safe return to the army, an operation that depended on Union control of the roads south of Petersburg. Meade, with misplaced confidence, replied that the impending movement of the Second and Sixth Corps would place infantry across both the Petersburg and South Side Railroads by the night of the 22nd and that Wilson would, therefore, have all the help he would need to counter any attempt by Confederate cavalry to impede his trip home.45 Kautz received the orders to report to Wilson on June 20, and his two brigades, accompanied by four mountain howitzers, departed their camps at Bermuda Hundred at dawn the next day. They crossed the Appomattox on the Point of Rocks pontoon bridge and by midmorning began arriving at Wilson’s bivouac near Mount Sinai Church. Kautz’s brigades were led by Cols. Robert M. West and Samuel P. Spear. Each brigade contained just two regiments, and Kautz counted 2,414 troopers in his entire division. The First District of Columbia Cavalry was, by far, the most distinctive of Kautz’s commands. Organized originally “to serve as a kind of complex police-­spy body-­guard under the immediate eye . . . of the renowned military humbugs who perambulated Washington like ‘strutting turkey cocks,’” they were made up primarily of men from Maine, “who were more used to lying out on a topsail yard in a gale than mounting a horse.” Many in the regiment carried sixteen-­shot Henry Rifles and had only recently received their tack and mounts. Their lack of horsemanship was almost comical, and Wilson characterized Kautz’s entire command as poorly 274

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organized and “the wildest rag-­tag and bob-­tail cavalry I ever saw,” an overly pejorative assessment, except in the case of the nearly hapless First District boys.46 Quartermaster Sgt. Roger Hannaford of the Second Ohio Cavalry described the scene around Mount Sinai Church on June 21 as the troopers prepared for an operation that many thought was heading for the North Carolina coast: “Everybody seemed in a hurry. The surgeon was examining the men & all not fit for duty were being sent back to City Point; there were . . . rations to be drawn, also requisitions to be made out for clothing, then drawn and issued. The butchers were killing beeves, the Quarter M[asters] were running around wildly . . . broken down horses [were] being condemned . . . and it was plain to be seen that some move was to take place.47 Wilson detached two regiments, the Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry and the Third New Jersey Cavalry under Timothy Bryan, to remain with the army, and estimated that, including the cannoneers responsible for twelve guns in three batteries and Kautz’s four regiments, he had assembled 5,500 men for the raid. Each soldier carried 100 rounds of ammunition and five days of light rations. By 2:00 a.m. on June 22, the column was saddled, and an hour later it trotted out of darkened bivouacs heading southwest.48 Wilson rode near the head of his formation with Spear’s Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry in the lead followed by West’s, Col. John B. McIntosh’s, and Col. George Chapman’s brigades. Predictably, the First District of Columbia Cavalry presented a memorable sight as its members navigated unsteadily down the road toward the first destination, Reams’ Station on the Petersburg Railroad. “It was amusing to see the different positions the sailor lads would place themselves in,” remembered a veteran. “The forage sacks would wobble and flap and bounce until the grain sprayed and showered so systematically as to have made a grain-­sowing inventor hide himself in despair. A portable grist-­mill under sail, at the stern of the First D.C. Cavalry regiment that day, might have done the biggest business on the smallest capital of any mill in the country.” Another soldier noted that “my chum, who had followed the sea for eight or ten years, swore that ‘Richard might give his kingdom for a horse, but he would give a month’s pay for a pillow.’”49 The troopers rode briskly through the predawn gloom, following “bypaths and unfrequented ways to avoid the enemy,” and reached Reams’ Station about 7:30 a.m. Sergeant Hannaford thought that Reams’ was “a pretty little place . . . the houses were inhabited with nice yards & fruit trees around, blooming with flowers.” A handful of Rebels fled from this bucolic setting when the Yankees appeared, leaving a few of their comrades behind as prisoners. Kautz’s division From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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To Richmond

To Richmond

d lroa Rai ille anv D & Amelia ond C.H. hm Ric

High Bridge To Lynchburg

C.H. Point of Rocks City Point

Farmville

June 24 Price’s Depot

Kautz

Meherrin’s Station

Wilson’s Depot

Keysville June 25

Sutherland’s Depot

Petersburg

Prince George C.H. Mount June 22 Sinai Church

June 23 Reams’ First Battle of Station Reams’ Station June 29, 1864

Dinwiddie C.H.

Blacks & Whites

Charlotte C.H. Battle of Staunton River Bridge June 25, 1864

Railroad South Side

Ford’s Depot

Appomattox River

Wilson

Kautz

Drake’s Branch Mossing Ford Station

Stony Creek Depot

Nottoway Ri ver

Battle of Sappony Church June 28, 1864

Double Bridges

Roanoke Station

ad

June 26

Meherri n River

We ldo n) R

reek rn C kho Buc

June 27–28

rg ( &

River noke) n (Roa Staunto

Christiansville

ailr o

Bridge

Wyliesville

June 26–27

Jarratt’s Station

Wilson

Pet ersb u

Map 22 - Wilson-Kautz Raid

Battle of Nottoway the Grove June 23, 1864 C.H.

Burkeville

To Danville

r ve Ri es m Ja

N

Boydton Hicksford 0

Miles

20

To Weldon

Wilson-Kautz Raid

burned the depot, destroyed some freight cars, and tore down the telegraph line before riding south and then west toward Dinwiddie Court House. Wilson’s division mopped up, the Eighth New York Cavalry detailed to ruin the rails, taking instruction from the veteran track wreckers of the Second Ohio Cavalry. Their work had barely progressed when artillery fire erupted from the north.50 The shelling came from the Stuart Horse Artillery under William McGregor. McGregor’s guns accompanied two cavalry brigades led by Rooney Lee, numbering roughly 2,000 sabres. Rufus Barringer’s North Carolina troopers, fresh from their skirmish with the Second Corps the previous day, led Lee’s pursuit, while three regiments of James Dearing’s Brigade, on loan from Beauregard’s army, trailed behind. The Federals rode through Dinwiddie Court House, where, lubricated by some purloined apple jack, they allegedly liberated county prisoners and destroyed official documents, while Barringer’s Fifth North Carolina Cavalry engaged the First Vermont Cavalry in a running fight. Eventually, the New Englanders grew weary from their constant skirmishing, and Chapman replaced them as rear guard with the Twenty-­Second New York Cavalry.51 By then, the head of Wilson’s column had reached the South Side Railroad between Sutherland’s and Ford’s Depots, some sixteen miles west of Petersburg. En route, they had captured Reverend Theodorick Pryor, the father of the fire-­eating former Confederate general, Roger A. Pryor, and once pastor at the Second Presbyterian Church in Petersburg. The elderly preacher, on his way to minister to an ill relative in Brunswick County, accompanied the raiders to Ford’s Depot, having indulged General Wilson with a personal interview. Pryor thought the Union commander to be “a fine looking man . . . of pleasant countenance, and most urbane manners . . . jauntily dressed in black velvet pants, polished high top boots, a neat fitting jacket, and . . . an elegantly trimmed cap,” but arrogant and dismissive of threats from the pursuing enemy.52 The Federals began tearing up the tracks, and when they reached Ford’s Depot “the work of destruction began in earnest,” remembered a New Yorker. “All public buildings connected with the RR were burned; fires were built on the tracks, sufficient to destroy it in many places.” Several locomotives and numerous cars filled with salt and military supplies succumbed to the flames, making “a lurid light upon the heavens.” The work of destruction continued until after midnight. “Both men and horses bivouacked that night dirty, hungry, tired, and almost worn out,” wrote Wilson, “but success had made everybody enthusiastic and confident.” Although his operations along the South Side Railroad resulted in significant property damage, the detour cost him valuable time—hours that the Confederates would use to their advantage the following day.53 From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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That day began early, especially for Kautz’s division, which took to the road between 1:30 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. Wilson instructed Kautz to “push on with the utmost rapidity for Burkeville Junction,” and with Spear’s brigade once again leading the march, Kautz’s four regiments passed through Wilson’s Depot, Blacks & Whites, and Nottoway Court House, reaching Burkeville—some thirty miles distant from their starting point—about 3:00 p.m. Although the men did inflict minor damage at Blacks & Whites, they trotted along in the heat and dust with only the occasional rest stop, leaving further destruction of the South Side Railroad to Wilson’s troopers, who would follow in their wake.54 Whatever Confederate force had been stationed in Burkeville disappeared by the time Kautz arrived, the Federals finding only sick and wounded Rebels occupying vacant stores or lying unattended under the shade of trees. The Federals immediately began their work of ruination, laboring past midnight to dismantle the Richmond & Danville and South Side Railroads to the north and west. Spear focused on the tracks toward Lynchburg, ripping away fully five miles of rails and ties, while West’s brigade concentrated on the Richmond & Danville line, working in two shifts. “The scene presented at Burkeville . . . after dark set in, was demon-­like,” wrote a member of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry. “The burning track visible for miles; the moving figures of men carrying fuel to feed the flames, the iron rails twisted by heat into strange attitudes, were sights never to be forgotten.”55 Meanwhile, Wilson’s two brigades, with Chapman now in the van, rode slowly west along the South Side tracks, detaching regiments in turn to demolish the rails between Ford’s Depot and Blacks & Whites. There, the raiders destroyed a large quantity of government cotton and tobacco and enjoyed a rest of about an hour. Some of the soldiers cooked a hot meal and others simply collapsed from exhaustion, sleeping until roused to resume their march. The Federals followed “the direct road to Burkeville” being misled, according to Wilson, before doubling back and regaining the highway toward Nottoway Court House that paralleled the railroad. This delay further aided the Confederates and led to the first major battle of the Wilson-­Kautz Raid.56 Rooney Lee hoped to interject his small force between Kautz and Wilson and deal with the Federals piecemeal, and would succeed thanks, in part, to Roger Pryor. A native of the region having long-­since resigned his general’s commission, Pryor now served as a cavalry courier without rank. He accompanied Lee and showed him back roads that allowed the grayclad troopers to bypass McIntosh’s brigade, Wilson’s rearguard. A little before noon, Lee’s advance gained a position between the two Federal divisions. Lee had detached the Fourth North Carolina Cavalry of Dearing’s Brigade to harass McIntosh, 278

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but the rest of Dearing’s command, about 800 men of the Sixty-­Second Georgia Cavalry and Seventh Confederate States Cavalry, thundered ahead. The Second North Carolina Cavalry of Barringer’s command trotted behind Dearing, followed by the First North Carolina Cavalry, Lee’s small wagon train, and the Fifth North Carolina Cavalry in the rear. Graham’s and McGregor’s two batteries of horse artillery accompanied the column. Dearing’s two regiments, along with the Second North Carolina Cavalry and some of the artillery, halted where their road crossed the South Side tracks, near a home known locally as “The Grove.” There, in their front, stood Chapman’s troopers.57 The Seventh Confederate States Cavalry quickly dismounted and charged through some thick woods. Chapman’s men employed a railroad cut about four From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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feet deep that provided a natural breastwork. Moreover, their line described a large curve that offered them enfilade fire from both flanks, their deployment stretching well beyond the front of the attacking Confederates, even when the Sixty-­Second Georgia Cavalry joined their comrades in advancing toward the Union position. The Second North Carolina Cavalry then moved up on Dearing’s right, and several guns of McGregor’s and Graham’s batteries unlimbered in an open field to the left, signaling the commencement of a fight that would wax and wane for the next eight hours.58 The three Confederate regiments advanced twice, perhaps as far as the railroad cut, but each time Chapman’s troopers counterattacked and regained the ground. The Federals eventually seized the initiative, chasing Dearing’s two units from the field and threatening to capture all the Confederate artillery. By then, the remainder of Barringer’s Brigade had arrived and, dismounting, responded to Lee’s imploring cry of “Save the guns! Save the guns!” The First North Carolina Cavalry and Fifth North Carolina Cavalry regiments charged and drove Chapman back, but not before the First Vermont Cavalry had spiked at least two cannon. The Second North Carolina Cavalry, under the command of a young major, William P. Roberts, executed a flank attack against the Union left while the rest of Barringer’s men advanced straight ahead, compelling Chapman to retreat to the cut. Sharp firing persisted intermittently and Wilson reinforced Chapman with the Fifth New York Cavalry, but by then the sun had set, and the Union commander remained content to hold his ground until he could confirm that Kautz had done his worst at Burkeville. He dispatched a trusted staff officer, Capt. Edward W. Whitaker, to see about Kautz’s situation.59 This sharp engagement, known variously as the battle of Nottoway Court House, the battle of Blacks & Whites, or the battle of The Grove, took its toll on both forces. Wilson reported seventy-­five men killed or wounded, although Confederate sources place Federal losses much higher. Lee admitted to losing 60 to 100 men, among them Col. Clinton Milton Andrews of the Second North Carolina Cavalry, who began the day too ill to take the field, but joined the action later, only to suffer a leg wound and perish from a subsequent amputation. McIntosh’s brigade spent the battle posted in the rear, and although within sound of the engagement, did not participate other than to repulse a feeble rearguard gambit by the Fourth North Carolina Cavalry.60 Chapman’s troopers certainly distinguished themselves, but the greatest laurels belonged to Barringer’s Tar Heels. The First North Carolina Cavalry and the Fifth North Carolina Cavalry appeared in the nick of time to save the artillery from capture and, along with the Second North Carolina Cavalry, made

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sure that the Confederates would hold the field. Dearing’s two regiments performed less admirably. To make matters worse, General Dearing took counsel of his fears and sent all his supply wagons back toward Petersburg, concerned that they would be captured, thus causing his men a very hungry night. Wilson’s decision to fight indisputably bought time for Kautz to finish his destruction at Burkeville, but Lee might never have been in position to interfere had Wilson dashed straight for Burkeville, as Meade had originally ordered, rather than spending valuable time ripping up the South Side Railroad from Sutherland to Blacks & Whites. Now, the Federals would have to contend with Lee’s episodic harassment as the raid continued. The Unionists would enjoy a brief respite from their Confederate antagonists, because, on the morning of June 24, Rooney Lee reported that his artillery ammunition was low, that his soldiers and horses were tired and hungry, and that a few hours would be needed to restore man and beast and replenish limbers. While Lee would not resume the pursuit until the afternoon, Kautz’s troopers rose early once again and were on the road by 3:00 a.m. Nothing is known of the consultation between Whitaker and Kautz at Burkeville, other than that the staff officer witnessed the total destruction of the junction’s railroad assets. Circumstantial evidence, however, suggests that Kautz concluded that, with the Confederates blocking the direct road between him and Wilson, it would be best to abandon the effort to move any farther west along the South Side tracks—despite the tempting target at High Bridge, over the Appomattox River. Instead, Kautz would steer southwest, following the Richmond & Danville line. Near Meherrin’s Station, his route would intersect a country road leading from The Grove. Detaching parties along the route to destroy the tracks, West’s troopers, followed by Spear’s, burned their way through Price’s Depot en route to Meherrin’s that morning.61 By the time Wilson’s men gained the Richmond & Danville line, Kautz’s troopers had reached Keysville, where they completed their depredations for the day and went into bivouac. Wilson’s regiments trickled into Meherrin Station between noon and 5:00 p.m., having negotiated the byroad through Hungarytown without encountering any Confederate interference, eventually reaching Keysville long after sunset. Numerous Federals commented on the easy task of ruining the Richmond & Danville Railroad. Sergeant Hannaford thought that this line “was constructed differently from any road I ever saw in the U.S.” Pine stringers were notched into widely dispersed wooden ties, providing a platform on which to fasten a thin ribbon of “strap” iron. “By simply laying fence rails alongside of the stringers & putting fire to it” the wooden

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components burst into flame, “burnt the ends of the ties off, and the iron was warped & badly twisted.” Sergeant Talmage of the Fifth New York Cavalry reported that “the work of tearing up and burning could be done in half the time it would take on the ordinary roads.” By day’s end, “every foot of the road was destroyed from Meherrin to Keysville.”62 The relative ease of the day’s labors and the absence of Confederate resistance did not mean that the raiders enjoyed a carefree excursion on June 24. The heat had grown almost intolerable, and the dust and smoke proved suffocating, prompting one regimental commander to predict that his men would never recover from their ordeal. Moreover, as the raid extended through its third day, streams of runaway slaves poured out of nearby farms and plantations and joined the Union column. Estimates of the number of those fugitives vary widely, but many hundreds had appeared by the time the Unionists reached Keysville that night.63 Confederate newspapers preferred to report that the slaves had been lured away or forced to flee the homes of their kindly masters, but the evidence suggests that the vast majority of them saw Wilson’s appearance as their chance for freedom. Hannaford’s recollection provides a vivid picture of these refugees: “There were stout able bodied men; there were old grey headed ‘Uncles’ some apparently so old as scarcely able to cripple along; there were boys, some so small as to be led; then there were women old & young; many of them with children some indeed with two and three; ask any of them where they were going & the invariable answer would be ‘gwine along wid you uns sar . . . if wese can only keep long wid Linkum’s soldiers wese all right suah’ was their constant remark to one another.” “This exodus of negroes was not desired or encouraged,” explained Col. Edmund Pope of the Eighth New York Cavalry, “but it could not be prevented by us without the use of more severe measures than the commander would authorize.”64 Although the raiders may have been passive emancipators, they proved more active in liberating other forms of property along their route. “In a word,” confessed a Maine trooper, “whatever the smokehouse, or the spring-­house, or the field, or garden, or stall, or pasture of a rebel contained, which was capable of being readily converted into good food, was remorselessly appropriated without waiting for either commissary or quartermaster process.” Horses and mules became favorite targets. As Wilson’s mounts grew too tired or lame to continue, their riders would shoot them to prevent the Confederates from claiming them and restoring them to health. “Sometimes it took four or five shots to dispatch a poor brute,” admitted Sgt. Hannaford. “From about 11 o’clock until dark, it

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sounded as though we were briskly skirmishing with the enemy, for I believe I am moderate indeed when I say, we shot on average one horse every quarter of a mile.” As the operation progressed, the men opted to slit the jugular veins of their faithful mounts in order to husband ammunition.65 While food and transportation represented legitimate military objectives, some of the damage inflicted by Wilson’s troopers descended into pure vandalism. “Little respect shown private property,” confessed an Indiana soldier. Pvt. William A. Curtis of the Second North Carolina Cavalry remembered that, “besides burning fences and destroying railroad tracks, Wilson’s raiders pillaged houses all along their line of march, and along the road-­side were scattered feathers from the beds they had wantonly ripped open, and letters and a great many other things were thrown away.” Sergeant Hannaford explained that occupied homes usually avoided damage, but those abandoned by their owners fell victim to “rascals.” Private Curtis entered one dwelling recently visited by the Yankees to find “everything not taken away was scattered in the wildest confusion over the floors, bureau drawers being torn open and their contents scattered, and the ladies standing amidst the ruins apparently bewildered . . . not knowing where to commence to straighten out the mess.” Plantation owner Robert H. Allen reported that “many persons are totally ruined” as a result of the pillaging—activities that, if not explicitly sanctioned by Federal commanders, were rarely punished.66 The Federals celebrated the new day on June 25 by burning the depot and supplies at Keysville, the flames generating such heat that Hannaford claimed they “crisped the hair on our heads” as his regiment trotted past. Kautz’s division once again took the lead, and along with Wilson’s men spent most of the day thoroughly destroying the Richmond & Danville Railroad south to Roanoke Station. In addition to immolating the depots at Drake’s Branch and Mossing Ford Stations, the raiders targeted several large sawmills, including one operated by the railroad. “This mill and another private mill, with the company mill, three in all, were the only resources the enemy would have from whence to get timber to repair the road,” explained Colonel West. Detachments from the Second Ohio Cavalry and Second New York Cavalry rode west to Charlotte Court House to gather horses and inflict incidental mayhem on civilian property. The sun beat down mercilessly on the raiders, who labored ceaselessly to ensure that “every depot, turntable, freight car, wood pile, water tank, bridge and trestle” felt their wrath.67 Chapman’s brigade served as rear guard and once again had to contend with Barringer’s North Carolinians, beginning on the afternoon of the 24th.

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Rooney Lee, having accurately predicted the course of the raid, detached Dearing’s understrength brigade to ride east of the Federals’ route to hamper their return to friendly lines.68 In the meantime, a motley force of militia, Reserves, ambulatory wounded veterans, and civilian volunteers were gathering in front of the Federals. The 600-­foot covered bridge over the Staunton (or Roanoke) River represented the key target looming on Wilson’s horizon, just south of Roanoke Station. Destruction of this span would do more to cripple Confederate logistics than all the damage cumulatively wrought during the first four days of the raid. Responsibility for the bridge’s defense belonged to Capt. Benjamin L. Farinholt, a convalescing young officer of the Fifty-­Third Virginia. Farinholt learned of Wilson’s raid on the evening of June 23 and immediately dispatched couriers throughout the adjacent counties seeking reinforcements for the handful of Reserves who guarded the span. Volunteers poured into Farinholt’s ranks during the next thirty-­six hours, including prison guards from Danville, factory workers from Clarksville, and a complete class of students from a nearby boys’ academy. “My command was a heterogeneous mass . . . the rawest kind of recruits, from fourteen to twenty and from fifty to sixty-­five years of age,” confessed Farinholt. By 10:​​00 a.m. on the 25th, he had accumulated a force variously estimated between 938 and 1,238 men.69 Confederate sources disagree about all aspects of their deployment on June 25. Clearly, Farinholt prepared artillery positions on the south side of the river, both above and below the bridge, and supported the guns with some of his infantry. The best evidence suggests that four cannon defended the eastern side and two the west. Capt. William C. Marshall of the Fauquier Stribling Artillery, another recuperating veteran, took command of the artillery below the bridge, while Capt. John Willis Lewis directed the fire of the guns upstream. Capt. William W. Fraser assumed overall command of the Confederate ordnance.70 Farinholt’s infantry deployed on both sides of the river, but after consultation with Col. Henry Eaton Coleman, he decided to make his primary defense north of the bridge, with the stream at the defenders’ backs. Coleman, a Halifax County native, commanded the Twelfth North Carolina and had been severely wounded at the battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May. He left a sickbed to volunteer at the bridge and took personal command of the forces deployed behind breastworks on the upstream side of the tracks. Capt. James A. Hoyt of the First Palmetto Sharpshooters, another convalescent veteran, assumed charge of the men deployed on the eastern side of the railroad north of the river. Farinholt initially placed as many as 250 troops on the north side, protected by works 284

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anchored both upstream and downstream from the railroad. The specific identities of these troops remain in question, but Hoyt may have commanded some 150 veterans who were returning from furloughs or had reported from Danville the previous evening. Coleman’s charges consisted entirely of militia and home guards. Twenty of those men occupied a log barricade placed across the tracks at the north end of the bridge and loop-­holed for riflemen. The remainder of Farinholt’s makeshift brigade began the battle on the south side of the river.71 Farinholt used two small bands of mounted volunteers under Capt. Paul Edmunds and former colonel and U.S. congressman, Thomas Stanhope Flournoy, as scouts and flank guards. He dispatched each officer with fifty to seventy-­five men to crossing points on either side of the bridge to guard against attempts to outflank the main position. During the early afternoon, Coleman, Hoyt, and other officers boarded a locomotive and ran it up the tracks, looking for the approaching enemy. Soon enough, they spotted the Federal column winding its way south. Farinholt had removed all the small boats that might be used by Coleman’s and Hoyt’s defenders to escape to the south side of the river and expressed confidence in his ability to hold his position, intending the outcome to be either “victory, death or imprisonment.” As one of his volunteers phrased it, “we are between the devil and the deep sea.”72 Kautz’s lead regiments crested the range of hills overlooking the Staunton River Valley about 2:00 p.m. Below them stood Roanoke Station, the last depot on the north side of the river. The Little Roanoke River more or less paralleled the tracks heading south until it turned southeast at the station, toward its confluence with the Staunton River, downstream from the railroad bridge. The wagon road ended in a “T” with one route heading west to an eventual ferry crossing, while the other turned east, keeping to the north side of the river and heading toward Wyliesville. The tracks themselves coursed almost due south, becoming elevated above the flood-­prone ground as they approached the bridge. The ground was open on both sides of the right-­of-­way, bisected frequently by hedgerows and drainage ditches—some of them rather substantial, including one defended by Confederates seventy-­five yards short of the river. A wheat field bordered the eastern side of the tracks, “while on the [Federals’] right a luxuriant growth of grass and weeds, rising nearly to the height of a man’s shoulders, covered the ground.” A mile separated the hills from the river.73 General Wilson dismounted at the McPhail home, “Mulberry Hill,” on the heights overlooking the valley, and there he ordered his artillery to unlimber. Clearly, the Confederates intended to defend the bridge, and for about ninety minutes the two sides exchanged iron salutes with no particular impact other than to claim a few victims and frighten some of the youngest volunteers in From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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Farinholt’s command. The inexperienced gunners manning the pieces south of the river fired several rounds of canister, despite the range of the duel, causing Captain Hoyt to send back runners to curtail a foolish practice that promised to inflict unintended injury on comrades in the north side works.74 The Federals reconnoitered and verified the presence of a substantial force blocking their route. Wilson could hear the cheers of the enemy and the sound of engines unseen south of the river, a ploy ordered by Captain Farinholt to create the illusion of arriving reinforcements. Mrs. McPhail added to that impression by warning her Yankee guests that the Confederates had assembled 10,000 defenders at the bridge. Whether persuaded by the woman’s exaggerations and Farinholt’s subterfuge or simply as a result of assessing the strength of 286

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the defenses he could readily discern, Kautz recommended leaving well enough alone. Wilson would have none of it. “I . . . directed General Kautz to dismount his division and endeavor to push close enough to the end of the bridge to set fire to it,” Wilson wrote. West took responsibility for the upstream side of the tracks, placing the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry in the lead with the Third New York Cavalry in support. Spear’s two regiments, the First District of Columbia Cavalry in front, would move east of the tracks.75 The Confederate pickets at the base of the hills fled at the first sight of the approaching Federals. An unintimidated Farinholt immediately ordered “company after company” to reinforce Coleman and Hoyt, “notwithstanding the enemy were shelling the bridge furiously and a strong line of sharpshooters directing their fire on it.” These brave men had to pick their way across on the railroad ties in the curious absence of pedestrian planking on the span. Some 500 troops made this perilous crossing while the Federals—West’s men in the lead, and preceded by a heavy line of skirmishers—plowed through the high grass and across the ditches under intense artillery fire from across the river. “When I saw the enemy come out and form line of battle to charge the bridge, four times our number . . . my heart went out to those boys [across the bridge],” wrote a Confederate artillery officer. It was 6:00 p.m.76 “The destruction of the bridge was very desirable but was, from the first, a hopeless task with the means at our disposal,” thought a veteran of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry. “If we could have only been able to have flanked them I know we would soon have seen the Home Guards flying off to their legitimate business, that is toward home,” wrote Hannaford. But, “there was no other plan but to dismount the men and try to carry the bridge by direct assault and this was an undertaking . . . fully as desperate as charging ‘Marye’s Hill.’” Events would verify these assessments.77 Both West and Spear moved south on their respective sides of the railroad embankment, the Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry in the lead, wading through the thick vegetation under a terrific artillery fire west of the tracks. When the troopers reached rifle range—generally described as between 150 and 200 yards—the Confederates from both sides of the railroad “poured volley after volley” into the enemy ranks, “repulsing their first attack with ease.” West halted and renewed his advance as many as three times. “I thought a direct and rapid charge down the railroad would frighten them away,” he reported, and he brought up two companies of the Third New York Cavalry from reserve to make the attempt. The Empire Staters were blasted off the tracks by canister and pelting musketry. Farinholt’s unseasoned militia took heart from these results, and soon a defiant Rebel Yell echoed off the surrounding hills. Coleman’s From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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young boys “swarmed up from the ground like ‘yellow jackets,’” doing their full duty alongside greybeards, the walking wounded, and a nucleus of army veterans. West’s brigade finally abandoned its offensive and remained content to exchange fire with the Confederates for the rest of the battle.78 East of the tracks, the situation proved even less promising for Spear’s two regiments. The First District of Columbia Cavalry also stepped across the open ground, enduring “a murderous storm of grape and canister” that claimed many a victim. Slowed by the multiple drainage ditches “fringed with thick hedges of blackberry bushes, which made our movements disorderly,” the former mariners, most in their first serious combat, reached a point about 200 yards from the bridge and began to return fire. Small groups crawled along the embankment, intent on igniting the span, but none succeeded. At one point where a short railroad trestle bridged one of the larger ditches, Spear’s troops joined West’s and attempted a united approach, but this, too, fell to grief. Soldiers who advanced the farthest found themselves pinned down, taking shelter in the vegetation. “Every time we moved the grass a volley from across the river would be the result,” wrote Pvt. Joseph W. Fletcher of the First District of Columbia Cavalry. “How many were murdered there I never knew, but I do [k]no[w] that they lay all around dead and wounded.”79 In addition to enemy volleys, the brutal heat took a terrible toll on the already exhausted troopers pinned down in the open. There was little option but to maintain a sufficiently brisk fire to discourage any inclination for a counterattack and wait until darkness could conceal their escape. Just before sunset, a band of about seventy-­five men from the First Connecticut Cavalry received orders to make a spoiling assault, but before they could commence this foolhardy undertaking shots echoed in the Union rear, arresting McIntosh’s attention. Barringer’s troopers had again caught up with Wilson’s column, initiating some sharp skirmishing, but no serious fighting. Still, the appearance of a body of the enemy in their rear, the rapidly setting sun, and the carnage that Kautz’s men had endured easily persuaded Wilson to call off the attack—and with it the entire raid.80 Casualty calculations, especially for the Federals, vary so dramatically as to leave the actual number indeterminable. Kautz reported 60 losses, although other Union accounts yield a total of 100. The Confederates claimed to have buried anywhere from 42 to 135 Yankees left on the field, and estimated Wilson’s total casualties at between 300 and 400. Farinholt counted 10 killed and 24 wounded on his side of the battlefield. “The inexperienced troops to whom we are indebted for this remarkable victory . . . deserve the gratitude of both the army and the people for the gallantry and coolness displayed by them in 288

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meeting . . . the repeated charges of the enemy, so superior in numbers, equipage, and artillery,” wrote the Confederate commander. Union observers, such as Sergeant Hannaford, felt far less pride in their performance. “It has always seemed to me that a general of good judgment would never after developing the enemy’s strength and position have ordered the second attack,” he wrote. “Many a brave man’s life was uselessly lost here.” At least one Confederate participant thought that had Wilson destroyed the bridge, “the war would have been at an end so far as the Army of [Northern] Virginia was concerned.” This may overstate the case, but no one can dispute that Farinholt’s victory marked a dramatic turning point in the Wilson-­Kautz Raid. From this point forward, survival replaced destruction as Wilson’s objective, and the hunter became the hunted. The Union cavalry faced an uncertain journey of nearly 100 miles to return to friendly lines, and the Confederates would marshal every available resource to prevent them from doing so.81 Those Northern troopers enjoyed little rest that evening because Wilson had everyone in the saddle shortly after midnight. His escape route skirted the river at a distance of about a quarter of a mile, and he wanted the column to traverse this dangerous passage under cover of darkness, although Spear’s men finished torching the Roanoke depot and took the opportunity to complete their destruction of the railroad before dawn. Wilson’s division now assumed the lead, followed by West, with Spear and the no longer cartoonish First District of Columbia Cavalry serving as rear guard. The procession included a makeshift fleet of vehicles, including country carriages taken from area landowners, to transport some 200 wounded and sick who could no longer mount a horse. The Confederates lobbed a few harmless shells as the bluecoats disappeared to the east with the rising sun.82 Farinholt could not give chase. A mobile campaign lay well beyond the capacity of his unlikely band of defenders, so he spent the next extended week sending congratulatory orders to his men and Colonel Coleman, who had been wounded near the battle’s conclusion. The captain also issued a general appeal to local slaveholders to provide laborers to complete his fortifications as a “means of saving your farms and homes from desolation and the foul presence of the enemy’s vandals.” Robert E. Lee expressed concern about not only repairing the damage to the Richmond & Danville Railroad, but keeping word of those repairs out of the newspapers. “If they announce that the road is open again it will only invite another expedition of the enemy against it,” Lee advised the War Department. Secretary Seddon replied that he would do all in his power to expedite the repairs, supply the army in the interim, and keep the press mum. Lee eventually acknowledged Farinholt’s achievements, praising From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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his volunteers for their “gallantry and determination,” recognizing Coleman’s “noble example of patriotism and bravery,” and thanking Farinholt for “the skill and conduct with which you have executed the charge committed to you.” Henceforth, the Confederate spotlight would fall on not only Rooney Lee’s pursuers, but fresh forces bent on ensuring Wilson’s destruction.83 Wilson adhered to his intended route on June 26, pausing at Wyliesville for a couple of hours near dawn to forage and boil coffee, then pressing on through Christiansville before reaching his bivouac at Buckhorn Creek in Mecklenburg County, some forty miles from his starting point that day. The pace produced such straggling that the first troopers filed into camp at 5:00 p.m. and the last arrived seven and a half hours later. Although the First District boys fended off minor attacks late in the afternoon, the Federals’ greatest enemy was the weather. “This was the hottest day of the raid, the thermometer standing at 105 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade,” reported Lt. Col. George A. Purington of the Second Ohio Cavalry. Hannaford remembered that the heat was “so terrible that we had to move very slowly, yet fast enough to keep out of the way of the enemy.”84 The troopers scrounged for edibles, particularly for their animals, finding a large supply of corn and oats in Christiansville, a community that several of the Federals considered “a pretty little village.” Kautz’s division, trailing behind Wilson’s, found it particularly difficult to procure food and fodder as Wilson’s men “consumed all the provisions and forage to be found along the route.” Mounts continued to give out in every unit. “If it had not been that we were continually capturing horses fully half of the command would have been dismounted,” wrote Hannaford. “As it was a number were now footing it.” These pedestrians competed for road space with an ever-­increasing swarm of runaway slaves who, although posing a logistical complication, elicited the admiration of many of the Northerners. “To us most of them came destitute of all things except the hope of liberty,” recalled a New Yorker. The number of nonambulatory soldiers also increased with every mile, adding to the volume of wagons that slowed progress on primitive roads. “As I recall it now, the return march . . . was characterized by nothing to eat but with niggers to lend, long day and night marches along dusty roads, until [we were] more dead than alive,” wrote a Maine trooper. When the soldiers reached their evening bivouac, many simply collapsed from exhaustion. The men of the First Connecticut Cavalry, however, could not rest as McIntosh sent them forward to hold Saffold’s Bridge, the designated crossing point over the wide Meherrin River a few miles northeast of the camping ground.85 The campaign’s harsh conditions had taken their toll on the Confederates 290

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as well. “My command had started out on this expedition with some twelve hundred effective mounted men,” wrote General Barringer, “but so terrible had been the marching and so intense the heat, and so incessant the fighting, that we now found ourselves reduced to less than three hundred men and animals equal to the task of further pursuit.” Barringer assigned Capt. Noah P. Foard of the First North Carolina Cavalry to lead a select party of troopers to follow Wilson directly, while the rest of the brigade, along with Dearing’s men, paralleled the Union march to the north. Rooney Lee hoped merely to contain the Federals until help from across the James River and from his father’s infantry could confront the enemy and prevent them from reaching friendly lines.86 The Federals were in the saddle around sunrise on June 27 and made their way east to bivouacs along Great Creek and Boydton Plank Road in Brunswick County, about twenty miles from their previous campsites. They impressed local guides to direct them over a series of back roads as they angled toward the Petersburg Railroad. “When we would come to a forked road, or when we turned off into some other road, a thing we were constantly doing, a couple of rails would be laid across the road we did not go on, which would be sufficient to guide all foraging parties, stragglers, the rear-­guard &c,” explained Roger Hannaford. Some of those foragers located a cache of wine and returned to the column “rather boozy.” Once again, Captain Foard’s detachment pestered the Federals without engaging in any serious combat. Spear’s brigade trailed the column and remained busy executing exhausted horses and encouraging dispirited men to keep pace. A welcome rain late in the day refreshed the weary riders, who noted scores of additional runaway slaves emerging from “the woods and thickets” of an otherwise deserted landscape to join the march to freedom.87 Although Rooney Lee’s two brigades had been reduced to a mere annoyance, the Confederates began marshaling the rest of their cavalry to administer what they hoped would be a fatal blow to Wilson’s raiders. On June 26 Robert E. Lee ordered Chambliss’s Brigade—Rooney Lee’s missing component—to head for Stony Creek Depot on the Petersburg Railroad, eighteen miles south of the city. The following morning, Lee directed Wade Hampton to move his division to Stony Creek with Matthew C. Butler in immediate charge. Fitzhugh Lee’s Division would follow on the 28th. At Stony Creek the Confederate troopers could easily shift to block Wilson’s several options for moving east of the tracks en route to Union lines in Prince George County.88 Butler covered twenty miles by midday of June 27 and halted at Violet Bank, where the army’s commander briefed him on the situation. “He was very anxious to have me interpose my command between Wilson and the railroad as From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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early as possible,” remembered Butler. General Lee instructed the South Carolinian to ride south of Petersburg, go into camp to rest the horses, and proceed to Stony Creek as quickly as possible on the 28th. Preceded by Chambliss’s Virginians, Butler led his men in column of fours through Petersburg and encamped in a wheat field south of town, within easy striking distance of their destination.89 Federal signal stations readily spotted the southbound riders and passed the information on to Meade. Both the army commander and General Grant misinterpreted the appearance of this Confederate cavalry as the genesis of an attempt to attack the rear of the army, and Meade boasted of the precautions he had taken to thwart such an effort. As late as 6:00 p.m. on the 27th, Grant asked Meade if he knew anything of Wilson’s whereabouts and speculated that the raiders might be heading for New Bern, North Carolina. Wilson had dispatched a courier with news of his progress, but that rider had not reached Union lines. Thus, even though Meade ordered Sheridan to move across the James River and take position on the army’s left flank, no one in the Federal high command yet fully appreciated the evolving predicament facing Wilson and Kautz, and thus no one took meaningful steps to alleviate it.90 Wilson’s troopers hit the road early on June 28 and about noon reached the crossing of the Nottoway River at Double Bridges, scattering a few Confederate pickets and driving them north before they had the chance to damage the spans. Here, Wilson faced the most critical decision of the return ride. Three roads led toward the railroad from Double Bridges. One pointed east and a little south toward Jarratt Station, offering the longest trek to Union lines, but the one farthest removed from potential Confederate interference. Another led north, eventually providing a way to Reams’ Station, just a few miles south of where Hancock and Wright had struggled the previous week. The intermediate route steered northeast toward Stony Creek Station on the most direct path to Prince George Court House.91 Wilson consulted with Kautz as to the best course of action. Kautz confirmed the practicality of following any of the roads, remembering Meade’s promise to hold the Petersburg Railroad open for their return, but counseled that the column move rapidly irrespective of which option they chose. Wilson interrogated some of the still-­accumulating contrabands along with the handful of Confederate prisoners recently seized, and these ill-­informed sources reported that only a battalion of infantry and a remnant of Rooney Lee’s cavalry—no more than 1,000 men all told—occupied Stony Creek. Confident that he could overwhelm such an insignificant force, Wilson chose “to lose no time, but push as rapidly as possible toward Prince George Court-­House,” despite 292

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Kautz’s opinion that “we were in no condition to engage the enemy, and a battle should have been avoided.”92 Hampton’s Division arrived at Stony Creek about the time the Federal column reached Double Bridges. Chambliss was there waiting for them. Hampton, taking command from Butler, ordered scouts to probe the countryside for Wilson and determine his intentions, easily discovering the Yankees’ whereabouts. The road from Double Bridges to Prince George Court House crossed the highway leading to Stony Creek at Sappony Church, two miles west of the railroad. Hampton dispatched Chambliss and the Holcombe Legion—the local infantry garrison—to that crossroads to engage the Federals and buy time for his larger plan to develop. That plan involved dispatching Fitzhugh Lee’s Division along with some infantry to Reams’ Station. With Hampton to the east and Fitz Lee to the north, Wilson would be denied access to either of his northerly routes and face annihilation at the hands of a much larger force.93 Wilson assigned the Third Indiana Cavalry of Chapman’s brigade to lead the way north to Sappony Church, “to be sacrificed,” complained a Hoosier trooper that evening. The Westerners rode ahead late in the afternoon and shoved back the first Rebels they encountered. In an instant, however, a gray wave engulfed them and they withdrew in the face of superior numbers. The Thirteenth and Tenth Virginia Cavalry regiments led Hampton’s offensive. Their appearance marked the commencement of a seesaw engagement near Sappony Church in which both sides fed reenforcements into the fray piecemeal, and spirited combat persisted until well after dark.94 Chambliss brought up the Ninth Virginia Cavalry while McIntosh forwarded the Second Ohio Cavalry and then the remainder of his brigade, supplemented by Chapman’s First Vermont Cavalry. Both sides fought dismounted, the axis of battle fronting east and west with most of the action astride the Stony Creek–­Sappony Church road, somewhat west of the sanctuary. Charge met countercharge, the contending forces at times firing at ranges of less than fifty yards. Hampton called on several hundred soldiers from Holcombe’s Legion to take position across the road behind hasty barricades fashioned from “rails, boards, the stalks of green corn, any and everything we could get hold of,” explained a Virginian. The Seventh Virginia Cavalry of the famous Laurel Brigade and Young’s Brigade of Hampton’s Division, under Colonel Wright, strengthened the Confederate line, which exchanged fierce fire with McIntosh well after dark. When the Federals unlimbered some of their horse artillery, Hampton called on his artillery chief, Maj. R. Preston Chew, to respond with the only two guns he had available, from Graham’s Battery.95 Although the most vigorous fighting petered out about 10:​​00 p.m. when 294

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both sides realized that they could not breach the opposing battle line, sporadic firing continued throughout the night. “Sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes not a shot would be fired and our tired men would be all (almost) soundly sleeping, when from the rebel lines a most terrific volley would be fired,” testified Sergeant Hannaford, “and our men would spring up and would return it and then for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes there would be kept up the most intense musketry fire I ever heard excepting during the Battle of the Wilderness.” On the Confederate side, the soldiers attempted to “spell each other with naps of sleep, always, however, with their guns ready to fire at their sides.” A South Carolinian pronounced it “a most remarkable combat.”96 What seemed remarkable to the rank and file possessed a logical justification. Wilson learned of Hampton’s presence from Confederate prisoners, and the Union commander abandoned his intention to push across the railroad at Stony Creek. “It was evident . . . that we were up against a sufficient force to hold both the railroad and the Stony Creek bridges,” explained Wilson, “and that a new route must be chosen.” A glance at the maps informed Wilson that better roads crossing smaller streams en route to Reams’ Station made that village his best alternative. Accordingly, he ordered Kautz to escort the wagon train to Reams’ while McIntosh bore responsibility for occupying Hampton and preventing him from opposing Kautz’s march. McIntosh, serving as acting division commander since June 24, ordered his own brigade to fall back, while Chapman’s troopers erected a new line of temporary works a few hundred yards behind McIntosh’s fence rails, with orders to hold their position until told to disengage.97 Kautz and McIntosh embarked without incident, but Chapman endured a very rough morning. Hampton ordered a coordinated attack on the Union position at daylight, sending Chambliss straight at the Federals, while Butler’s and Brig. Gen. Thomas Rosser’s Brigades assaulted Chapman’s left flank. Led by a local trooper from the Thirteenth Virginia Cavalry, a small body of Butler’s South Carolinians managed to sneak across an intervening swamp in the darkness, and arrayed themselves in Chapman’s rear. Their attack, including artillery fire that spooked Chapman’s horses waiting for their dismounted riders well behind the Federal rail works, unraveled the Northerners. “My line gave back hurriedly,” admitted Chapman, “and many of the men were unable to reach their horses on the road upon which the column had moved off.” Confederate witnesses pronounced the Yankees “completely demoralized” and described them rushing “pell-­mell in the direction of their escape.” Hampton scooped up numerous prisoners and conducted a limited pursuit of those Federals who did gain their mounts. The near-­sighted Chapman barely escaped capture while From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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searching for his horse, but he finally managed to accumulate about 300 of his men, who would follow a circuitous route and eventually rejoin their comrades at Reams’ Station.98 The number of Chapman’s men who were captured overshadowed the other casualties incurred at Sappony Church. The Second Ohio Cavalry reported thirty-­one killed or wounded in the fighting, and the First Vermont Cavalry counted two killed and two wounded in their ranks. Losses in the other regiments of McIntosh’s brigade, although unreported, must have been equally modest. Hampton suffered even less. When troopers from the Ninth Virginia Cavalry scoured the field on the morning of the 29th, they were astounded “to find so few dead upon it. . . . Furious as the fight had seemed, and terrible in sound as it truly was, our four squadrons having used . . . thirty-­one thousand rounds of ammunition, it was barren of casualties among our men,” wrote one of them.99 Wilson’s cautious generalship contributed to the Federal failure at Sappony Church. Adopting a more aggressive posture rather than committing just one of his four brigades might have resulted in smashing through Chambliss’s and Hampton’s arriving reenforcements at Stony Creek. Failing to achieve his breakthrough there, Wilson opted to press ahead to Reams’ Station. Although Meade had promised to hold the railroad open for his return, Wilson did not predicate his decision on expecting succor once he reached Reams,’ despite the accusations of ex post facto analysts such as Roger Hannaford, who called Wilson “a double distilled ass” for relying on Meade’s presence. Wilson had no knowledge of who or what he might encounter at Reams’ but reasoned that attempting to turn east there, closer to friendly lines, made more sense than doubling back and riding south to Jarratt or Belfield, where he would face an equally perilous trek to the north in the face of an energetic enemy.100 The Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry led Kautz’s march toward Reams’ Station, departing between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on the 29th, followed by the First District of Columbia Cavalry, the wagons, and West’s brigade. They reached the vicinity of Reams’ about 6:00 a.m., and, turning east toward the tracks, received a blast of unexpected artillery fire. Guns that had accompanied the Alabama Brigade of John C. C. Sanders had unlimbered near the railroad, having just arrived from Petersburg about daylight that morning. The Alabamans advanced toward the surprised Pennsylvanians and momentarily drove them onto the main body of Spear’s mounted troopers. Spear dismounted the First District of Columbia Cavalry and sent them forward, along with a contingent of mounted men from the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry. The Federals had the advantage there, scooped up about fifty soldiers from the Tenth 296

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and Fourteenth Alabama Infantry, and then withdrew. Kautz opted to suspend his attack and erect temporary works, awaiting Wilson’s arrival and, he hoped, reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac. In doing so, Kautz may have missed an opportunity to push through the outnumbered Confederate infantry, but his caution was understandable given his separation from Wilson.101 McIntosh’s troopers, accompanied by General Wilson, arrived between 8:00 a.m. and 10:​​00 a.m. Chapman, who lost so heavily during the morning’s fighting at Sappony Church, trickled in with his 300 men at noon. Reliable Captain Whitaker volunteered to report Wilson’s predicament to General Meade and rode toward Union lines accompanied by forty soldiers from the Third New York Cavalry, leaving Wilson with the possibility of either breaking out or holding on until help appeared. Kautz briefed the commander on the situation as he knew it, and then Wilson, accompanied by McIntosh, conducted a thorough reconnaissance. Local slaves reported—erroneously as it turned out—that the railroad between Reams’ Station and Globe Tavern lay practically unguarded, and Wilson determined to mass McIntosh’s brigade on Old Stage Road and push north to reach the tracks there, beyond Reams’ Station.102 When he explained these plans to McIntosh and Chapman, his subordinates thought the situation looked “a little bilious.” Wilson recalled that “the smile of apprehension and uncertainty that passed over the faces of these two brigade commanders at that moment was rather disheartening.” Moreover, several Sixth Corps staff officers, who had attached themselves to Wilson’s entourage, expressed skepticism that any body of cavalry could best the tested veterans of William Mahone’s Division. The appearance of Confederate cavalry on his left, across the route he intended to follow, finally convinced Wilson to cancel the offensive and retire, seeking safety by riding back to the south.103 Wilson apprised his subordinates of his intentions around noon, but much remained to be done before the exhausted men and horses could hope to effect their escape. McIntosh sent the First Connecticut Cavalry and the Second New York Cavalry to protect the Federal left flank and placed the Fifth New York Cavalry and Second Ohio Cavalry on post in front of the Federal line facing northeast, supported by Lt. Charles L. Fitzhugh’s Battery E, Fourth U.S. Artillery. Kautz’s division aligned on the right of Wilson’s formation, opposing the Confederate infantry deployed along the railroad. With his northern and eastern perimeters thus apparently secured, Wilson ordered the destruction of anything that could impede his rapid retreat. Forges, caissons, and wagons were set ablaze, and every trooper drew as much ammunition as he could carry, the rest consigned to the flames. Teamsters hauled the ambulance train back to Rowanty Creek and, after placing hospital flags around it in conspicuous places, From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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left some 200 poor souls, too injured or ill to mount a horse, to face an uncertain fate at the hands of the Confederates. “It was a sad hour,” thought a New York cavalryman, made worse by what Sergeant Hannaford considered “the want of confidence in our commanding General, James H. Wilson. The feeling against him was bitter in the extreme and I considered . . . that if he had ventured to the front during the fighting of the afternoon that his life was not worth the purchase, no matter how low the rate.”104 The Federals began their withdrawal south on Old Stage Road about 2:00 p.m., when “crash, bang, bang came a volley from the pine woods in our left rear . . . while with an infernal yell here came a long line of grey backs . . . on foot running so as to cut us off from the road we had advanced on,” wrote Hannaford. Those Confederates belonged to the cavalry brigades of Lomax and Wickham, of Fitzhugh Lee’s Division. These troopers had marched as far as Port Walthall Junction on the 28th before going into bivouac. Starting south early the next morning, Lee’s horsemen arrived at midday and arranged themselves on the Confederate right, facing south and extending across Old Stage Road. Brig. Gen. Joseph Finegan’s Florida Brigade of Mahone’s Division had already deployed on Sanders’s right, so the artillery and Alabama infantry blocked the direct path to the railroad and Fitz Lee and the Floridians obstructed the avenues leading northeast. With Hampton’s victorious troopers looming somewhere to the southeast, Wilson’s situation had suddenly grown dire.105 William Mahone masterminded the Confederate battle plan. He considered his two small brigades, numbering fewer than 2,000 rifles, too weak to initiate a frontal attack. Instead, he instructed Fitz Lee to locate a means to assail the Union left and rear, after which Mahone would unleash his Alabamans and “swarthy & hatchet-­faced” Floridians. Aided by a local slave, “whose knowledge of the country notably expanded at the sight of a six-­shooter,” Lee found a “blind road” that led through the woods and to the rear of McIntosh’s left flank. Lee assigned two of Lomax’s units—the Fifteenth Virginia Cavalry and Sixth Virginia Cavalry—along with the Second Virginia Cavalry of Wickham’s Brigade, to dismount and make the assault. The Third and Fourth Virginia Cavalry regiments remained mounted in the woods, prepared to exploit any success. The infantry would move forward at the sound of Lee’s guns.106 “In a twinkling . . . the rattling fire of the carbines told that Lomax was hotly engaged,” remembered one Confederate. Lieutenant Fitzhugh pivoted his guns and unleashed a punishing fire that temporarily halted the Rebel advance. But when Mahone’s infantry erupted from its concealed positions to the east and north, and Wickham’s mounted troopers dashed onto the field, Union resistance quickly collapsed. “For a brief space the confused combat, ever re298

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ceding, went on,” but “fierce shouts of triumph mingled with the dismal cries of stricken men, ringing pistol shots, the clattering of cavalry carbines, the dull roar of the guns” soon gave way to utter chaos. The Confederates had sliced in between Kautz and McIntosh, preventing most of West’s and Spear’s men from gaining Old Stage Road and the designated line of retreat. Fitzhugh spiked and abandoned his guns, the cannoneers running for their lives. General Finegan, amid his triumphant Floridians, leapt upon the first captured cannon he encountered, shouting, “Promotion for me!” The Second Ohio Cavalry and Fifth New York Cavalry lost contact with the rest of Wilson’s division. Acrid smoke from the burning wagons fouled the sultry summer air and frantic contrabands dashed in all directions, unsure of how to obtain a safe haven.107 “In less time than it takes me to write it,” recalled Hannaford, the Confederates “were in among the wagon train capturing the ambulances & all our wounded & many who were not wounded who had not time to escape.” Wilson and the surviving artillery headed south on Old Stage Road, while most of Kautz’s division and some of McIntosh’s men had to improvise a plan. “Finding that I could not get to the stage road, I immediately determined to turn the enemy’s left flank and thus seek to reach our lines,” wrote Kautz. Riding southeast, Kautz and his followers plunged into “a tangled swampy jungle,” navigating through thick patches of immature pines “so close together that your horse would need to be almost as lithe as a snake.” Kautz would halt periodically and consult a compass and his Virginia map to determine the proper course. The artillery became bogged down in the swamps and had to be abandoned. Colonel Purington led a contingent of about 400 troopers who became separated from Kautz. Like Kautz, they contended with annoying forays launched by elements of Hampton’s cavalry, which had been positioned at all the likely crossing points along the railroad from Stony Creek to near Reams’ Station. Fortunately for the Federals, Hampton’s soldiers and their mounts were nearly as exhausted as their opponents.108 Kautz crossed the railroad between Rowanty Creek and Reams’ Station and reached Union lines well after dark, aided by a slave encountered in a cornfield who, in return for a promise of freedom, showed them the best roads to friendly pickets. When a vidette from the First Massachusetts Cavalry challenged Sergeant Hannaford, “the feeling of perfect safety thrilled through my bosom. I could scarcely for a few moments contain myself but wanted to shout forth the full gladness that pervaded my whole being.”109 Wilson’s return trip would take considerably longer. Most of his division and two regiments of Kautz’s rode south toward the crossing of Stony Creek, with Fitz Lee’s troopers hot on their heels. “As we pressed the enemy, we found From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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the roads strewn with every description of cavalry equipment, wearing apparel, dead men and dead horses, and every variety of stolen property from a negro down to a brooch,” wrote a soldier in the Sixth Virginia Cavalry. “Such a skedaddle took place as I ever saw or heard of,” shuddered a New Yorker. “I pray God will ever save me from the likes again. The road was full; and in the fields and woods where a horse or man could pass, could be seen the living anxious mass.”110 When the Federals reached the narrow bridge over Stony Creek, they found a deep stream defined by precipitous and rocky banks. General Wilson and his staff forced their way across the span near the head of the column, leaving the impression that the commander “was confoundedly alarmed.” A bottleneck occurred as the frantic aggregation of cavalry and hundreds of terrified blacks attempted to gain access to the slender bridge. The Second New York Cavalry, First Connecticut Cavalry, and Fifth New York Cavalry tried to blunt the pursuing Confederates. They inflicted a few casualties, wounding Maj. James Breathed of Lee’s horse artillery, but the mass of retreating humanity turned the entire operation into anarchy. “The men were almost completely demoralized,” remembered Chaplain Louis Boudrye of the Fifth New York Cavalry, “at least one third having either thrown away or lost their arms in the flight.” Some troopers desperately endeavored to ride their horses down the steep slope and across the wide stream, many of them tumbling into the swirling water. “Men and horses mingled in almost every conceivable shape, struggled to reach the opposite bank,” remembered Boudrye, “while bullets whizzed among the trees, and shells screamed over our heads.”111 Lomax and Wickham applied the pressure at Stony Creek. “They fired right smartly . . . & partially checked us but . . . the enemy retired rather sullenly until our sabres began to knock their caps off,” boasted a trooper from the Third Virginia Cavalry. “They then fled precipitately exposing to view about 1500 negroes scampering across the fields (of all sizes & sexes) with great bundles of plunder stolen from their masters’ houses, upon their backs. . . . Such screaming & yelling as they sent up Pandemonium itself could scarcely beat.”112 Many soldiers in blue and gray commented on the tragic abandonment of infants and toddlers, tossed aside by desperate slave mothers facing the awful choice between escaping slavery or being seized with their offspring. “Little nigger babies could be found lying in the woods nearly dead that were thrown away by the Yankees in their flight,” wrote a Virginian, choosing to blame Northern soldiers under the standard premise that few of the slaves left their homes voluntarily. The African Americans vied with Union troopers at the crossing of Stony Creek, faring poorly in the competition, and many were left stranded on 300

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the north side, to be captured or killed by the pursuing Confederates. “Negro women were seen throwing their little babies ruthlessly aside,” reported Pvt. John Gill of the First Maryland Cavalry Battalion, although it is possible instead that the mothers sought safety for their infants by placing them out of harm’s way. “Our men became greatly enraged, and it was difficult to restrain them. It was a question of quarter or no quarter, and it was mostly no quarter.” An officer in the First Vermont Cavalry confirmed that “the Rebels seemed to be inflamed with rage against the Negroes for running away, and leaving the ‘Yankees,’ would sabre the ‘Niggers’ without mercy.” Only about 200 of the runaway slaves managed to navigate the creek and keep pace with the fleeing Federal horsemen. Few Civil War scenes involving noncombatants would pre­sent greater horror.113 Wilson’s men reached Double Bridges after dark, where another delay brought on combat and casualties to both soldiers and contrabands. By 2:00  a.m. on June 30, the Federals approached the railroad at Jarratt’s Station and enjoyed their first rest in almost forty-­eight hours. About dawn, the troopers reached the railroad and crossed without resistance, Lee’s veterans themselves now too exhausted to continue the pursuit. Lee failed to notify Hampton of the tactical situation until that morning, squandering the opportunity to involve the South Carolinian in the pursuit on the 29th. Wilson encountered the unfordable Blackwater River on the evening of the 30th and had to fashion a makeshift bridge to escape renewed pursuit by a body of Hampton’s determined men, but by dawn of July 1, the Federals had placed that stream behind them; they camped that night in safety along Chippokes Creek. On the afternoon of the 2nd, Wilson’s bedraggled raiders plodded into Union lines, concluding what one soldier of the Third Indiana Cavalry called “the most terrible Raid on ­record.”114 After the war, Wilson falsely attributed his disastrous decision to ride to Reams’ Station to the premise that he would find there Meade or Sheridan or both, consistent with the army commander’s promise made at the outset of the raid. “While it is inconceivable that the probability or even the necessity of my return to the army should have been forgotten,” protested Wilson, “I found the doors [at Reams’ Station] not only closed but strongly barred by the enemy.” Despite Wilson’s postwar prevarication, he certainly did have reason to expect that the rest of Sheridan’s cavalry and elements of the army’s infantry would be in position to assist him. Their failure to do so marks yet another leadership and communication failure, typical of the errors committed by the Federal high command throughout the first two weeks of the Petersburg Campaign.115 Meade’s first intimation that Wilson needed help arrived via Whitaker’s From White House Landing to First Reams’ Station

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heroic ride on the morning of the 29th. The intrepid captain and his remaining escort reported to army headquarters about 10:​​20 a.m. Meade was absent at General Burnside’s command post, but his chief of staff, General Humphreys, immediately telegraphed the news to his boss who, rather oddly, ordered John Gibbon’s division of the Second Corps to march to Reams’ Station. Soon enough, however, the army commander realized that sending the Sixth Corps would provide Wilson faster relief, and at noon Horatio Wright received Meade’s orders to forward one division immediately, along with what cavalry he could muster from the reserve regiments left behind by Wilson at the outset of the raid. The rest of the Sixth Corps would follow.116 Getty’s division led the Sixth Corps on a march that would cover about eight miles in five or more hours, first cross-­country to Jerusalem Plank Road, then south and finally west across fields and on country roads to Reams’ Station. Lt. Col. Thomas Hyde of Wright’s staff took the lead, departing around 2:00 p.m. with a battalion of cavalry. Hyde’s troopers skirmished with Confederate outposts near Reams’ Station about dusk and ran into stiff opposition from some of Finegan’s Floridians, who had concealed themselves in the railroad cut near the depot. Getty’s lead regiment, the Third Vermont, arrived with a ringing cheer, followed by the rest of the Vermont Brigade. “Mr. Finegan heard them, too, and did not wait for them long,” wrote Hyde. The Vermonters finished chasing Finegan away from the railroad in light combat that claimed only a handful of casualties. The rest of the Confederate infantry had previously returned toward Petersburg, and Lee’s cavalry was absent in pursuit of Wilson.117 The Sixth Corps trickled into Reams’ Station through the night, the last of Wright’s troops arriving at 8:00 a.m. on June 30. By then, the Federals had made substantial progress destroying the railroad and most of the town. “When we reached Ream’s station we found quite a village with a good depot, fair dwellings, work shops and well cultivated gardens and fields fenced in,” wrote Elisha Hunt Rhodes of the Second Rhode Island. “When we left nothing remained but smoking ruins, trampled fields and a rail road useless for some days.” While most of Wright’s infantry was engaged in prying up the rails and stacking them over flaming piles of ties, others built a line of breastworks just west of the railroad. “We were in momentary expectation of an attack from the ‘Johnny Rebs’ who we supposed would object to our procedures,” wrote a New Jersey soldier, but the Federals were “happily disappointed” that no Confederates interfered with their labor. After burying some of Wilson’s casualties, Wright ordered his men to return to their lines on the evening of the 30th, having seen no evidence

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of Wilson and learning that he had ridden to the south, far beyond the ability of the infantry to assist him.118 Cavalry, of course, might have launched a pursuit, but Sheridan did not complete his trek from north of the James to Reams’ Station until the afternoon of June 30. The Union cavalry commander had arrived at Douthat’s Landing on the north bank of the James about noon on June 26 with his orders from Meade to cross the river and take position on the army’s left flank, along Jerusalem Plank Road. The next morning, Meade informed Sheridan of the movement of Confederate cavalry southward from Petersburg “for the purpose of re-­ enforcing the enemy’s cavalry that followed Wilson, or of interposing between Wilson and us on Wilson’s return,” and told Sheridan to “join the army as soon as practicable, and be prepared for active co-­operation with General Wilson to aid his return.”119 As it turned out, Sheridan’s “practicable” trip required more than three full days. The journey began by ferrying the troopers across the James to Windmill Point, “a verry tedious operation,” in the opinion of one soldier, then riding some twenty miles southwest through Prince George Court House over dusty roads on exhausted, hungry horses. Meade fumed over what he considered Sheridan’s dilatory progress. He issued orders to Sheridan on the evening of June 30 to pursue in Wilson’s wake and Sheridan, though promising to obey, protested that the operation would probably dismount his command because his horses were “worn-­out. Some of them have been without forage for forty-­ eight hours.” News of Wilson’s whereabouts on July 1 canceled Sheridan’s orders, bringing the epic Wilson-­Kautz Raid to an end. “If the roads from the south to Reams’ Station could have been covered by our army, or if General Sheridan had come to my assistance, the probabilities are that we should have got back without serious loss,” wrote Wilson after the war. “As it was, we were fortunate to get back at all.”120

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eight

The Most Disagreeable Human Habitation Left upon This Sin-­ Stricken Earth Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864 The New York Times correspondent watched with amazement as the Federal cavalry went into camp at the conclusion of the Wilson-­Kautz Raid. “More jaded troopers and horses were never seen,” he wrote. “The men were grotesque in their misery. Some had lost their forage caps, and had replaced them by women’s bonnets and feathers, and other odds and ends of female apparel, which gave them a most astonishing look.” Many of the soldiers arrived barefoot, none had preserved their coats, and the trousers of hundreds were hanging by threads to their waistbands. “So thick was the pasty deposit of mud and perspiration upon them that they were no longer troopers of flesh and blood, but had resolved themselves into the primitive elements of that dust from which they sprang.” Their mounts, thought the reporter, presented a similarly dismal picture of “wretchedness and dejection,” with drooping heads, while flies “feasted without the slightest chance of being disturbed. . . . Fill up the picture from these outlines, and you will get an idea of the exhaustive character of a cavalry raid.”1 James Wilson admitted to losing about 900 men during the operation, the vast majority of them missing or confirmed captive. General Kautz’s division accounted for more than half of the casualties. Confederate reports claimed to have corralled as many as 1,500 Federals, and both sides agreed that all sixteen of the Union cannon changed owners. Scores of wagons and ambulances along with hundreds of horses fell victim to a campaign that covered more than 300 miles in ten days. Confederate losses totaled 410 of all descriptions, half of 304

them suffered by the infantry at the battles of Staunton River Bridge, Sappony Church, and Reams’ Station.2 A full assessment of the raid extends well beyond the body count. Although General Grant regretted the outcome at Sappony Church and Reams’ Station, he pronounced the “work done by Wilson and his cavalry . . . of great importance.” Roger Hannaford of the Second Ohio Cavalry noted that “we got well away, and did an immense deal of damage, and destroyed large [quantities of ] supplies of all sorts.” Citing the injury inflicted on the transportation system in Southside Virginia and the seizure of crops—including food, fodder, tobacco, and cotton—Hannaford, like other Union troopers, believed that the material mayhem and the blow to the psyche of Virginians in and out of uniform more than compensated for the loss of horseflesh and manpower. “Many an F.F.V. family will as they shudderingly recall to mind Wilson’s raid . . . think twice before they rush blindly headlong into the vortex of Rebellion,” he concluded.3 But Grant, Hannaford, and others of a similar frame of mind represented the minority opinion among Union analysts, most of whom agreed with General Meade, who in a private letter declared the raid to have been “a serious disaster” that yielded only two discernible results: “our cavalry is no longer superior in numbers to the enemy, and, what is worse, has lost its prestige.” Cpl. Thomas Wiswall of the First Vermont Cavalry told a correspondent that he had “a hell of a time” on the campaign and considered it “the toughest soldiering I ever saw.” A surgeon in the Third Indiana Cavalry agreed, proclaiming, “I would not go on another such a raid for 2000 dollars cash & pray we may not be sent again while my time lasts.” A soldier in the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry, when asked if the raid had been worth the effort, replied “public opinion in the Eleventh said ‘No.’”4 The Confederates harbored no such ambivalence about an episode that they judged to be a complete triumph, at least in a tactical sense. Most Southerners shared the view of Lieutenant Colonel Dulany of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, temporarily in command of the Laurel Brigade, who wrote a relative that “this has been the most successful cavalry engagement of the war.” Capt. Samuel S. Brooke of the Forty-­Seventh Virginia invented his own lexicon when he told his sister that the campaign resulted in “the absolute squanderation” of Wilson’s whole command. “Throughout all the fighting and privations endured,” wrote a member of Hampton’s Division, “the men never failed to appreciate that they were handled with excellent judgment as well as with brilliancy, and that every life lost or wound received was the price paid for a more than compensating military advantage.”5 Few Federals considered the raid’s management brilliant, and several conLife in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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troversies involving Union leadership and the high command erupted in the campaign’s immediate aftermath. The most unusual surfaced some forty-­eight hours after the last of Wilson’s organized units limped into camp. General Meade had obtained a copy of the July 2 edition of the Richmond Examiner, in which Wilson’s raiders stood accused of relieving civilians of jewelry and other valuables as well as wholesale plundering. “The commanding general cannot believe that the statements of the article are well founded,” Meade wrote Wilson with uncharacteristic restraint, “but as the cases of alleged depredations are in several instances cited with particularity, he deems it due to you . . . that you should be made acquainted with the serious charges . . . and be allowed an opportunity of denying them.”6 There was no question, of course, that bad behavior flourished during the raid, the issue being to what extent Wilson and his lieutenants condoned it. Wilson took understandable offense at being accused, if tactfully, of violating the property rights of Southern civilians, when the suffering of his divisions had barely subsided. “I can scarcely realize that either my own conduct or that of my command has been seriously arraigned upon charges made in a journal notoriously venal and unscrupulous in its efforts to sustain the cause of the public enemy,” Wilson fumed. He then proceeded at length to deny any responsibility for unauthorized looting that may have been conducted by “the organized band of thieves” that he admitted made up a part of his cavalry. Kautz responded to Wilson’s inquiry about pillaging in his division in a similar fashion, noting that nothing that was done by his men, even against regulations, rose to a level beyond that perpetrated by Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan in his raid through Indiana and Ohio the previous year, an operation in which Kautz pursued the notorious Kentuckian.7 Meade willingly accepted Wilson’s explanation, taking pains to deny any intent to impugn his leadership. But the controversy did not end there. Wilson expressed his umbrage directly to General Grant, who, considering the young cavalry officer one of his favorites, listened with a sympathetic ear. The general-­ in-­chief marked this episode as yet another example of Meade’s propensity to alienate his subordinates, and he began to talk privately about the wisdom of replacing the contentious Pennsylvanian, perhaps with General Hancock.8 Meade, for his part, raised questions about Philip Sheridan’s failure to come to Wilson’s rescue. The cavalry commander’s explanation that his horses had received no forage for forty-­eight hours while at Windmill Point and were thus simply too weak to hasten from the James to Reams’ Station proved unpersuasive. Meade’s inquiries revealed that “an abundance of hay and grain” were

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readily available to Sheridan when he reached the south side and that Sheridan’s own wagons contained two days’ worth of forage. Wilson would seize on Sheridan’s disingenuous claims to build a scathing postwar case against “Little Phil,” blaming Sheridan’s tardiness for the failure of his expedition. There can be no doubt that Sheridan moved with less than lightning speed in marching toward the flank of the army, as Meade’s orders had specified. Yet in his defense, it was not until the morning of the 29th, when Captain Whitaker reported the dire circumstances at Reams’ Station, that Meade applied any particular urgency to Sheridan’s orders. Sheridan stands guilty of adopting an overly deliberate pace, the exhaustion of his horses notwithstanding, but Meade deserves a measure of censure for failing to anticipate the potential dilemma Wilson ultimately faced. No evidence exists to suggest that Sheridan deliberately dragged his feet or that Meade acted with indictable sloth in marshaling the cavalry and Wright’s infantry to rescue Wilson and Kautz. Perhaps the Federals’ most egregious error lay in dividing their cavalry, thus allowing Wilson and Kautz to be overwhelmed by superior forces, while Sheridan with two divisions of horsemen remained off the tactical map. Grant bears primary responsibility for this fateful decision, which Meade had opposed.9 No such controversy polluted the postraid atmosphere in Confederate circles. Rebel carbines had hardly cooled when General Lee recommended that Wade Hampton officially lead the army’s mounted arm. “You know the high opinion I entertain of Genl Hampton, and my appreciation of his character and services,” Lee wrote President Davis on July 2. “In his late expedition he had displayed both energy and good conduct, and . . . I request authority to place him in the command.” Lee also took steps to consolidate the defenses of the South Side and Richmond & Danville Railroads by naming Brig. Gen. James G. Martin to that new post. Martin, a brigade commander in Robert Hoke’s Division, suffered from declining health and removal from the stagnant Petersburg trenches seemed crucial to preserving the usefulness of this competent North Carolinian.10 Many Confederates, although proud of what they universally considered a decisive triumph, emerged from the raid with an unprecedented bitterness toward their enemy. Wrecking railroads and stealing horses to replace worn-­out mounts seemed comprehensible, but the depredations, verified and alleged, perpetrated against civilians struck the rank-­and-­file Johnny Reb as beyond the pale of civilized behavior. “They should be properly referred to as the largest band of thieves, cut-­throats & plunderers that ever disgraced the pages of history,” wrote Pvt. Daniel C. Snyder of the Eleventh Virginia Cavalry. “I have no

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sympathy for the cowardly wretches who come here under an organization of pretended Union Savers to pillage & plunder honest people in their honorable pursuits.”11 A lack of sympathy did not begin to describe the sentiments of staff lieutenant Murray Forbes Taylor, who blamed Wilson’s raiders for leaving his mother and “dear little sister in a starving condition after abusing them in every possible manner. . . . I owe them a debt which I will not be slow to pay if opportunity pre­ sents itself,” he vowed. Brig. Gen. John Bratton implicitly referenced rape in a letter condemning the wanton behavior of Yankee raiders. “Our blood is being chilled and flesh made to creep with horror at the recitals of outrage upon our women,” wrote Bratton. Asst. Surg. Charles W. Trueheart of the Eighth Alabama referred to Wilson’s men as “thieves and house burners . . . sent out on their hellish mission by his Satanic Majesty U. S. Grant.” The actions of one Virginia trooper illustrated the novel means by which some Confederates exacted retribution. “Our men felt in anything but an amiable frame of mind toward these plunderers,” recalled Private Robinson of the Ninth Virginia Cavalry. One of Robinson’s comrades confronted a captured Federal at Reams’ Station, who wore a new shirt that appealed to the Confederate, and was invited to swap for the Rebel’s old garment. When the “little ‘down East’ Sergeant” refused to trade, “our old Sergeant cocked his carbine and said, ‘Consound you, you have been plundering and stealing niggers all over the country. I want some excuse to shoot you anyhow, if you don’t get out of that shirt in five minutes I will blow a hole through you.” Robinson related that the Union prisoner “lost no time . . . in disrobing and making the exchange.”12 Both sides agreed that the destruction of the railroads left the raid’s largest footprint. Confederate authorities responded immediately to the crisis, dispatching Lee’s sole engineer regiment to the Richmond & Danville line literally hours after Wilson and Kautz departed. “The Yankees destroyed a great deal of the R&D RR,” confessed Col. Alfred Landon Rives, chief of the Engineer Bureau in Richmond, “but we have placed so large a force on its repair that we hope to have the trains running again & the Road better than ever in a fortnight. We can well tide over that time.” The Confederate military joined forces with railroad employees to place the cars back on the tracks in twenty-­three days. By using heavy “T” rail to replace the inferior bar rail of the original construction, the Richmond & Danville line emerged stronger than it had been before the raid. Trains from Weldon resumed service into Petersburg as early as July 12, while the South Side’s tracks took most of the month to restore.13 No aspect of the raid generated more comment than the runaway slaves who joined Wilson’s column and shared its fate. Estimates vary widely as to the 308

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number who left their farms and plantations in a quest for freedom, but some ranged as high as 3,000. A modern study suggests that between 1,020 and 1,420 fled their homes, of whom some 400 ultimately reached Union lines. The Confederates captured anywhere between 500 and 800 of them, most on June 29 following the fighting at Reams’ Station and the subsequent chaos of the Union retreat.14 While the Rebels loaded some of the refugees on trains at Jarratt’s Station southbound for Hicksford, most walked into Petersburg terrified to face their fate, an emotion interpreted as bewilderment by many Confederates. “Some of the sable ladies were in an ‘interesting’ condition,” wrote Private Perry of the Seventeenth Virginia. “Two black ‘responsibilities’ were admitted to this world of sin and sorrow on the roadside under the grateful shade of a noble oak with Yankee officers officiating.” One can hardly imagine the psyche of pregnant women so desperate for an opportunity to escape slavery that they were willing to take to the highway on foot days before their babies were due.15 The black captives represented both sexes and all age groups, including many infants. The Confederates found great delight and no little efficiency in humiliating the Union prisoners by compelling them to carry slave children in their arms or around their necks on the march into Petersburg. “I remember . . . we had a great deal of sport that night in putting the negro babies in the arms of Federal prisoners,” wrote Capt. George Clark of the Eleventh Alabama. Many of the Federals objected, thinking it an indignity, “but the guard told them they must take a baby or a bullet & they preferred the baby,” explained a Virginia artillerist. “It was an amusing sight to see all the little darkies with a leg on either side of a Yankee’s neck marching to Petersburg,” wrote Lt. Charles E. Denoon of the Forty-­First Virginia, although a more sensitive Confederate acknowledged that it was no easy task for the prisoners in the scorching June temperatures.16 Whether burdened by a black child or not, the Federal prisoners—many barefoot and most hatless—presented “the saddest sight I ever witnessed,” according to a Dinwiddie County resident. When the dismal parade reached Petersburg, marching in two ranks, one delighted Confederate considered “the scene worth fifty Dollars.” The prisoners and their colored companions tramped through town “making a very ridiculous figure” for observers unused to witnessing racial integration of this variety. The authorities placed the runaways and the captives under guard together, offering yet another opportunity for townsfolk and their Confederate protectors to ridicule the shared circumstances of white soldiers and slaves. The Federals would eventually make their way to Southern military prisons, while the would-­be freedmen “huddled in a tobacco factory” awaiting return to their owners. “Such a conglomerate mass Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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of humanity I have never seen before or since,” penned a Virginia memoirist. They presented an indelible picture “with . . . babies . . . squalling, the larger children . . . playing, men and women singing camp meeting hymns or plantation songs, some whistling, others clapping, dancing and cutting all kinds of antics. They were happy at getting out alive from that fight which had been going on around them.”17 The Confederates established the identities of the refugees as well as they could and published their names for the benefit of aggrieved masters. Some were held in town pending collection, but the majority were put on the road bound for their former domiciles. “Poor creatures, I felt sorry for them,” wrote a Virginia cavalryman. “The country is now full of them making their way homeward.” One Lunenburg County militiaman escorted a dozen local slaves from Petersburg to his father’s plantation, where many visitors dropped by to examine the captives and reclaim their human property.18 This influx of Yankee prisoners and recaptured slaves marked just another episode in a series of events in June and July that had turned life in Petersburg on its head. Although the city had confronted imminent disaster since General Butler’s arrival at Bermuda Hundred in May, Grant’s approach on June 15 marked the beginning of a new phase in Petersburg’s wartime ordeal. The citizens were aware, of course, of the proximity of Union troops, but as Confederate surgeon John H. Claiborne admitted on June 12, “We are still in the dark in reference to Grant’s movements & until they are developed we shall not know our fate.” The local newspapers professed total (and as it developed, unwarranted) confidence in the city’s security, but thoughtful residents knew better. “There has been considerable anxiety about the safety of Petersburg for the past week,” confessed one local correspondent on June 15.19 Charles Campbell served as headmaster of Anderson Seminary on Washington Street, one of the city’s leading schools, founded in 1821 to educate white children from all economic classes. Campbell, a man in his midfifties and distinguished for his scholarship, kept a wartime diary that provides the most complete picture of life in the Cockade City during the campaign. He wrote on June 15 that he and a group of women and schoolgirls ascended to the roof of the Iron Front Building, a tall structure on Sycamore Street in the heart of the business district, from which they watched General Smith’s divisions march ominously toward town. The combat to the east near sunset informed the townsfolk that the military showdown for their hearths and homes had at last arrived. Demoralized defenders streamed into the streets after dark, adding to what one South Carolina soldier, arriving with the vanguard of Johnson Hagood’s reinforcements, considered the “wildest confusion” in the city. “The enemy have all our 310

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breastworks and can easily shell the city,” wrote Pvt. Hall T. McGee, who added that there was “much gloom.”20 Petersburg residents remained in what a Mississippi surgeon termed “the most excited condition” throughout the ordeal of Grant’s opening offensive, not knowing when enemy hordes might burst through the city’s defenses and into the streets. Great relief and no little rejoicing accompanied the appearance of Lee’s reinforcements on the morning of June 18, especially when the local infantry regiment, the Twelfth Virginia, swung into town. The soldiers appeared “so worn with travel and fighting, so dusty and ragged, their faces so thin and drawn” that kinfolk found it hard to recognize loved ones. “As we marched up Sycamore Street our march was almost blocked by . . . relatives and friends,” wrote the regiment’s James E. Whitehorne. “It was pathetic to witness the meeting of wives & husbands, mothers and sons, and quite refreshing the greetings between beaux and lovely lasses.” Reuben Ragland, a prominent local businessman, parked a wagon on Sycamore Street loaded with a hogshead from which he dispensed coffee to the arriving troops, as other grateful citizens tossed various delicacies from rooftops and sidewalks for the benefit of their military saviors. Rumors swirled through town, including one that reported General Grant as being constantly drunk since the battle of Spotsylvania, and curious onlookers ventured to a warehouse near the river to gawk at some Ottawa Indians captured during the fighting.21 The arrival of the Army of Northern Virginia ended the immediate threat of Petersburg’s sudden capture, but a new and persistent menace would do more to define life in Petersburg that summer than any other factor. Right away, on June 18, the Richmond Examiner reported on the nature of the problem: “True to their fiendish instincts, which set at aught all the courtesies of civilized warfare, and following the promptings of a malignant hatred of the Southern people, [the Federals] commenced throwing shells into the city at an early hour [and] without giving the slightest notice, they hurled their shrieking missiles amidst the homes of helpless women and children.”22 The bombardment began on the morning of June 17. Batteries located along the captured Dimmock Line initiated the shelling, and although it is impossible to determine which units fired the first shots, veterans of both the Tenth Massachusetts Battery and Battery E, First Rhode Island Light Artillery laid claim to that distinction. The shelling lasted for about two hours and focused on the eastern end of Washington Street, near the South Carolina military hospital and the city’s entertainment venue, Phoenix Hall. Many of the projectiles came to rest in the Blandford neighborhood, just west of the Confederate lines. “To persons unfamiliar with the infernal noise made by the screaming, the ricoLife in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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cheting, and bursting of shells, it is impossible to describe the terror and the demoralization which ensued,” reported Sara Rice Pryor, wife of the former Confederate general.23 “The fire was at first directed toward the Old Market, presumably because of the railroad depot situated there, about which soldiers might be supposed to collect,” remembered Mrs. Pryor. “But the guns soon enlarged their operations, sweeping all the streets in the business part of the city, and then invading the residential region.” She deduced that the cannoneers focused on the city’s several tall church steeples, but one Federal gunner identified the bridges, railroad facilities, and foundries near the river as his particular targets. Other artillerists proudly honed in on the Petersburg Courthouse, the large elevated clock of which invited long-­range marksmanship. One Unionist admitted that they “threw a few shells into Petersburg in pursuance of [our] favorite amusement, to try to ‘wind up the town clock.’” A New York artillerist proudly recalled drilling the clock with three straight shots one day, accuracy that persuaded the Rebels to stop counterbattery fire against their position. “The enemy shells every day more or less,” wrote Lt. John Hampden Chamberlayne, a Confederate gunner. “The bursting of shells & falling of bricks in some parts of town are scarcely less frequent than the cries of mellon sellers used to be.”24 Union cannoneers did routinely employ the city’s several church steeples as convenient range markers. The Tabb Street Presbyterian Church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on North Union Street, and the Washington Street Methodist Church all came in for their share of iron. Shooting at houses of worship did not sit well with the Confederate officer in charge of Petersburg. “They shelled this city off & on all day yesterday,” wrote an indignant Brig. Gen. Henry Wise, “and seem to aim at the spires of the churches and have stricken the 1st Presbyterian and knocked a large hole in its walls. Such is their religion!” The spacious Customs House at the corner of Tabb and Union Streets, one of the city’s most impressive public structures, provided another convenient target. Most of the shelling affected neighborhoods east of Sycamore Street and north of Washington, although shell damage extended beyond those arbitrary limits with disturbing frequency.25 For six weeks, Union guns pounded Petersburg, usually reserving their fire for the mornings and evenings. By the end of July, the Cockade City was “literally knocked to pieces.” Federal gunners, such as Maj. Albert Brooker of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, obeyed orders to “Expend some Ammunition on the devoted heads of the Johnnies Every Day,” and did so with devastating results. “Tokens were everywhere present to the eye, of the severity of the bombardment,” recalled an Alabama soldier. “Its residences and business 312

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houses were shattered and shot through and through by shells; its streets were covered with brick, mortar, and glass; and its church steeples were shorn of their commanding height.” Pvt. George S. Thomas of the Purcell (Virginia) Artillery fretted that he knew what Petersburg could expect in the future. “I fear it is to be another Vicksburg affair as the Yanks show but little disposition to fight further than to shell the town of Petersburg almost every day,” he explained, “& are getting siege guns in position daily & there is no telling when they may destroy the Town effectually.” A Virginia cavalryman concluded that “the Cockade City is doomed.”26 The raw property damage rarely failed to stimulate comment from shocked observers. “Friday morning a shell went in St. Paul’s basement [and] broke up the seals and all the glass [on] that side of the church,” reported Eleanor Meade Platt, wife of St. Paul’s presiding clergyman. “One hissed in Judge [William T.] Joynes’ dining room the other day, broke up china, furniture and lodged in the basement among some bedding put there for safety.” On several occasions, projectiles interrupted worship service when they penetrated the walls of downtown churches. The minister at the Tabb Street Presbyterian Church, Reverend William Hoge, seeing that one such shell and the resulting falling debris had failed to injure any member of the large congregation, continued the service as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. However, the members of the Second Presbyterian Church proved less resilient when a shell hurtled through the building at the commencement of a service. “In a moment the church was empty, and Dr.[John] Miller, the pastor, was telling me that his congregation had dismissed itself without a benediction,” wrote Mrs. Pryor. A South Carolina woman trying to make her way home left a poignant account of the city’s condition in July: “The ruin was far-­spread and pitiable to behold. . . . A solemn stillness, the silence of the grave, brooded over all things. The houses might be compared to huge sentinels—some wounded, others fallen at their posts; here a roof was blown off, there a pillar was broken; now a porch was swept away, sometimes a chaotic mass of ruins; again, the charred remains of a fire alone told where a home had been. Windows were crashed in every direction. . . . Awe-­struck we gazed; we realized the horrors of war.27 The bombardment sometimes sparked fires that spread to adjacent buildings. One of the worst conflagrations erupted on the night of June 30. A member of Kershaw’s Division described the unforgettable scene: “One night after a furious bombardment the cry was heard, ‘the city is on fire; the city is on fire.’ A lurid glare shot up out of the very heart of the city, casting a dim light over the buildings and camps near about. Fire bells began ringing, and the old men rushing like mad to fight the fire. As soon as the enemy discovered that the city Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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was on fire, they concentrated all their efforts to the burning buildings. Shells came shrieking from every elevated position on the enemy’s lines, and fell like ‘showers of meteors on a frolic.’ Higher and higher the flames rose until great molten-­like tongues seemed to lick the very clouds.” Most of the city’s regular fire department personnel had entered military service, hence this soldier’s reference to the graybeards, along with young boys, who served as firefighters and displayed great heroism to save the city. A Union soldier reported that smoke from the conflagration continued to spiral skyward until noon the following day. The bravery of the firefighters impressed a Virginia gunner, who testified that “I went to all the fires and must say that the men worked with a disregard for danger but seldom seen in those who, in many cases, seek these positions for the sake of keeping out of the service.”28 Petersburg citizens and Confederate soldiers alike objected strenuously to the Yankees’ failure to provide fair warning of their intent to bombard the town. Convention suggested that noncombatants be given an opportunity to evacuate prior to the initiation of hostilities, which of course did not happen on June 17 or any later day. “Grant—the inhuman Monster—commenced shelling without giving a moment’s warning to any one,” railed Pvt. Charles McVicar of Chew’s horse artillery battalion. This violation of protocol assumed a deadly dimension as a number of Petersburg residents fell victim to Union projectiles.29 The city’s first casualties occurred during the initial bombardment on June 17. A white woman, “Mrs. Brown,” sustained a head wound near Phoenix Hall, while an African American female died when a projectile struck her in Blandford. An exploding shell near the gas works inflicted serious injuries on two slave children.30 The carnage continued on June 25, when a “Mrs. Quinn” perished near the Customs House. Three blacks fell wounded that day, and another servant died on June 26 when a projectile exploded, inflicting a mortal wound. A particularly grisly incident on June 30 decapitated a black woman in town, although the infant she had been holding escaped injury. Townsfolk took particular notice when the bombardment claimed victims who sought shelter inside their own homes. Capt. Andrew Dunn, a prominent citizen and one-­time staff officer under James Longstreet, was struck on July 22 while relaxing at his residence. Similar episodes occurred to W. Andrew Sims and businessman William E. Morrison. The slave cook belonging to the well-­known physician Dr. Thomas Stanly Beckwith died when a projectile slammed into the kitchen where she was working.31 As shocking as these civilian casualties seemed, most observers marveled at their relatively low numbers. “These much dreaded shells are not so very de314

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structive of life . . . as one unaccustomed to them would be disposed to imagine,” wrote Alabama surgeon Trueheart. Dr. Claiborne agreed that although the bombardment created great physical damage to the city, “there were few casualties amongst the citizens, or amongst the soldiers who were detained in the city on duty.” Yet scarcely any Petersburg inhabitant escaped some direct impact from the shelling, which dislocated many businesses and residences.32 The Federals succeeded in their primary goal of interrupting rail traffic into Petersburg. Trains on the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad had to stop several miles north of town, authorities deeming it too dangerous to proceed all the way to the Pocahontas Depot on the north bank of the Appomattox. Cars arriving from the west on the South Side line unloaded near Campbell’s Bridge, beyond the range of Yankee guns. Similarly, use of the Pocahontas wagon bridge diminished as the risk of being struck by a shell while crossing outweighed the inconvenience of traveling upstream to Campbell’s Bridge near the fall line. Government facilities, both military and civilian, relocated either to the city’s West End or across the river into Chesterfield County. Not until most of the houses around his office had been pockmarked by shells and a man killed in his backyard did the engineer officer, Charles H. Dimmock, relent and move his operation into Chesterfield. The city post office gave up its quarters at the Customs House when the bombardment made it difficult for customers to call for their mail, and reopened on Dunlop Street in the West End. The city’s fine library closed periodically and church services often ceased in order to spare the faithful from exposure to the shelling. Families canceled burials at the city’s premier cemetery in Blandford, forced instead to use less prestigious churchyards and other temporary locations to inter loved ones in relative peace and safety.33 Several times, the bombardment dislocated Dr. Claiborne, the physician in charge of Petersburg’s seven military hospitals, but removing the patients from vulnerable facilities proved much more troublesome for this dedicated healer. Pvt. Henry Clay Roney of the Twenty-­Second Georgia experienced firsthand the rationale behind the evacuation plans issued to Claiborne by General Lee. “The surgeons were there looking after wounded soldiers, and there was ocular evidence of arms and legs cut off and thrown into a basket,” recalled Roney when he arrived at one of the city’s hospitals to recuperate from a wound of his own. A shell crashed through the wall of the building and rolled under his cot, but the fuse had been extinguished and the projectile failed to explode. Still, the reaction from his fellow sufferers left no doubt about their sentiments. “The patients became panic-­stricken and begged to be removed.”34 Shortly after his arrival, General Lee ordered Claiborne to “empty every Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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hospital, and to remove the sick and wounded, with hospital stores, furniture, attaches, etc., and place them on the cars of the Southside R.R., their destination not committed to me,” remembered the doctor. There were then nearly 3,000 patients receiving care in Petersburg’s hospitals and, Claiborne realized, “to remove this number with the limited means of transportation at hand was no small job.” Claiborne had already accumulated some 100 wagons and ambulances to relocate patients residing in the most exposed hospitals in the city’s East End. “A long, never-­ending line of wagons, carts, everything that could run on wheels, passed by my door,” loaded with sufferers and the equipment required to serve them, remembered Sara Pryor.35 Reports reached Lee that Claiborne had failed to expedite the evacuation, and the general sent a pointed reminder emphasizing the need to secure the army’s sick and wounded. Claiborne protested that many of the men were simply too weak to travel, and he transferred those patients to the Confederate States Hospital, a former tobacco factory at the corner of West Washington and Jones Streets, or to the Fair Grounds Hospital in the city’s far West End, with Lee’s reluctant approval. Still, by June 20 the vulnerable military infirmaries had been all but completely emptied. New facilities popped up in the western precincts, generally modest tent hospitals fitted out to serve soldiers from specific brigades and marked, mostly, by small red flags. “The wisdom of keeping two hospitals open was soon demonstrated by the fact that they were kept filled by the badly wounded and the sick who could not be made comfortable in the field hospitals adjacent to the city,” Claiborne wrote, “and by the additional fact that no casualties occurred in any of them.”36 Wounded and ill soldiers represented only a portion of those displaced during Petersburg’s artillery ordeal. As soon as the first bombs began to fall, some residents relocated to safer portions of the city. Bessie Meade Callender moved her family on the night of June 17, finding lodging with friends on West Washington Street, well beyond the limits of the earliest Federal bombardment. “I took one bedstead and some beds for pallets, also a table and a few chairs, the three children and their mammy,” she recalled. “I never was so frightened in my life.” She asked her son to summon her husband, David, from the militia camp where he was quartered, hoping that her spouse’s presence would calm the shattered nerves that had her teeth chattering and her body “shaking as if in a chill.” Mr. Callender arrived in good time, gently admonishing his wife to exercise courage in this moment of crisis. Mrs. Callender took comfort from these words and asked that David pour her a glass of medicinal whiskey, “about a wine glass full, I reckon, in a tin cup, which I drank without sugar.” This tonic did the trick. “I never felt fear again,” she boasted.37 316

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As the shelling persisted with ever greater intensity, General Beauregard dispatched Giles Cooke to meet with Mayor William Waverly Townes and the city’s common council to encourage the authorities to mandate an evacuation of those neighborhoods most susceptible to the bombardment. The councilors met with Cooke and Col. George W. Brent, Beauregard’s chief of staff, and then called an emergency session to consider the matter. They ultimately opted not to issue an evacuation order, in part because the city did not possess adequate transportation to facilitate such a requirement and because many of the residents lacked the personal means to move themselves.38 Some residents, however, opted to leave town almost immediately. By the first week in July, Petersburg experienced a veritable exodus. A woman named Nell and her mother fled west on Washington Street on June 17 after the shelling commenced. “Many people had passed us on our way,” she remembered, “and we had passed many people, all running through Washington Street for dear life. Everybody seemed to be running.” Fannie Berry, a Petersburg slave, recalled that as soon as the bombs began to fall she and her white family boarded a westbound train for Appomattox County. Others loaded personal belongings on whatever vehicles they could obtain or simply walked out of the city in search of safety. “It makes my heart bleed when I think of the suffering and torture of the poor citizens,” admitted an officer on George Pickett’s staff. Virginia diarist Sgt. James W. Albright agreed: “It is distressing to see the women and children leaving their homes,” he wrote. “It is hard on all—but to see a poor woman, with a child on one arm and little bundles on the other, is enough to move the heart of any man—save a Yankee.”39 On most days through early July, the roads leading west and north out of Petersburg filled with civilians traveling to Dinwiddie County, western Chesterfield County, or even Richmond. “The people move away by a sort of contagious instinct of danger,” thought Charles Campbell. Staff officer Capt. John Esten Cooke declared the spectacle to be “a sad sight! Women toting along the roads as at Fredericksburg before—wagons full of rich furniture, pianos, marbletop bureaus, elegant sofas, moving along amid dense clouds of dust in the blistering sun.” Eventually, the army offered vehicles to refugees who owned no practical means of relocating themselves and their belongings. Georgia lieutenant John B. Evans wrote his parents on July 6 that “the people have moved out of the city all around where we are camped. A few days back there was the greatest moving I ever saw in my life. The citizens had all their wagons going & hundreds of Government wagons was hauling for them.” The Beckwiths were among the beneficiaries of army transportation, the soldier-­ driver who carted their belongings confessing to Margaret Beckwith that he Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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much preferred serving ladies than officers. Evans complained that the traffic had been so dense that he could not get back to his camp from Petersburg. “Our wagon train was engaged last Sunday in moving the women & children who were too poor to hire conveyances,” wrote Confederate Pvt. George S. Thomas. “I feel very sorry for them.”40 By July 7, many of Petersburg’s roughly 20,000 residents had evacuated their homes, particularly those whose dwellings were near the business district, north of Washington Street or east of Sycamore Street. Staff officer Giles Cooke walked through an abandoned commercial neighborhood and thought “every thing was so quiet and looked so lonely I was reminded of Goldsmith’s Deserted Village.” As early as July 2, Charles Campbell recorded that “the people of Petersburg still continue to move away. It will soon be in the main evacuated of its inhabitants.” The next day he described the town as “a deserted city,” but protested that the actual mayhem caused by the shelling did not warrant “this great panic and stampede.” Ironically, as city dwellers sought refuge in the countryside, residents of areas occupied by Grant’s forces east and south of Petersburg made their way into town, in some cases assuming temporary occupancy in recently abandoned homes. “The whole town is in a sort of trans migration state,” thought Campbell.41 The citizens who forsook their comfortable houses for life in the countryside most often found shelter in tents, although some of the more fortunate shared rooms in the private homes of friends, relatives, or generous neighbors. “Many families are living in tents a few miles out of town,” wrote Surgeon Trueheart, “but tents are as hard to get as houses; and certainly very comfortless and inconvenient to ladies & children.” Capt. Charles Minor Blackford confirmed that “every yard for miles” around Petersburg “is filled with tents and with little shelters made with pine boards, in which families are packed. . . . There must be much suffering.” Those refugees who were unable to obtain canvas often erected brush arbors to shield themselves from the sun and rain, while the most destitute simply bivouacked under the shade of trees or endured without any apparent shelter whatsoever. Dr. Claiborne reported that the refugees were “camped and bivouacked in every form & manner in the surrounding country as far as ten miles.”42 Homeowners in Dinwiddie County, between Petersburg and Richmond, and even in northern North Carolina did their best to accommodate the Petersburg refugees. “Every house is crowded,” testified the son of ardent secessionist, Edmund Ruffin, “all however seem in the best spirits.” One of those cramped homes, Cottage Grove, belonged to the prosperous McIlwaine family and sat

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just west of Petersburg on high ground overlooking Rohoic Creek. “All the floors were covered with mattresses,” remembered one of the temporary inhabitants, “if you rolled off your own mattress you rolled onto someone else’s, for they were laid so thick they touched.” Some Petersburg residents took up housekeeping in Richmond, adding to the already overcrowded atmosphere in the capital. According to newspaper accounts, Col. J. M. Heck of Raleigh accepted some thirty or forty Petersburg families on his plantation at Jones Springs in Warren County, North Carolina, seventy miles southwest of the Cockade City.43 Conditions in these makeshift dwellings were understandably spartan, but the refugees did their best to bring some comforts of home with them into the field. Georgia Pvt. William R. Stillwell noted that many of the women made their hand mirrors essential cargo when deciding what to carry to their temporary shelters. “It is remarkable that the ladies never forget the glass,” groused Stillwell, who would have preferred to see the women consulting their Bibles. An Alabama soldier commented on seeing pianos and other musical instruments stored within some tents and delighted in the “proud but saddened daughters of Petersburg” lightening the mood with stirring, patriotic music. Most refugees had inadequate space to unpack many personal belongings, which usually remained stashed in piles adjacent to whatever improvised shelter their owners might occupy. A South Carolina chaplain judged that the refugees living in tents in the yard of the home where he resided survived “very comfortably,” and the occupants of the McIlwaine home recalled participating in some diverting entertainment and adequately addressing their material needs. But for the most part, day-­to-­day life for the Petersburg refugees rarely rose above a dignified struggle to survive.44 Attorney and commissary officer, Maj. Thomas Claybrook Elder, reported on July 11 that “there are very few families in town now; not one that I know. All who could get away have gone.” Dr. Claiborne agreed. “Most every body is out of the lower part of Town & I believe two thirds of the population of the whole city,” he told his wife. “Nearly every family on High & Washington even as high up as the basin—and Sycamore—all the way up . . . and all Market & Old Streets up to Cross. This will give you some idea of the desolation which reigns here.” Charles Campbell considered Petersburg virtually empty save for the military men seen on the streets, while a Confederate chaplain noted on July 14 that “the general population is gone!” An Alabama soldier described Petersburg as “entirely abandoned,” with only “a stray cat . . . seen, now and then, gliding hurriedly across thoroughfares which had been the very heart of the business-­

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life of the city.” To this Southerner, Petersburg presented “a sad, strange sight— those desolate haunts of manufacture and commerce,” and he was reminded of the Enchanted City in the “‘Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.”45 Of course, Petersburg had not been literally abandoned. Thousands of residents either chose to remain in their homes or simply had no alternative to weathering the iron storm. Still others, along with most of the military offices, relocated to safer neighborhoods in the western precincts of town. Some, such as the relatives of an Alabama sergeant, “hooted at the idea of being driven from their home by the shells of the vile Yankees” and considered it unpatriotic to manifest fear in the face of the bombardment. Others, such as the Banister family, preferred to leave, but could not do so because a family member was too ill to travel. Free blacks and many of the enslaved household servants remained behind out of necessity, hunkering down in their own modest dwellings or those of their masters, enduring the shelling as well as they could.46 Some of the men, who for reasons of age, disability, or occupation, had escaped, or been released from military service, remained at home to watch over their property, a prudent precaution because empty dwellings provided easy targets for thieves. “A guard is kept on the streets,” reported a disgusted Dr. Claiborne, “and a fire detail to extinguish fires; but when the shelling occasionally gets so bad that the guard & detail have to shelter themselves, I suppose the cupidity of the plunderers makes them brave and they fatten on what has been abandoned.”47 Homeowners and in-­town campers alike resorted to makeshift bombproof shelters whenever the shelling became severe. Residents emulated the habits and techniques of front-­line soldiers. Dr. Claiborne described these structures as “holes dug in the ground about five or six feet deep, of dimensions commensurate with the number of persons they were supposed to accommodate, and were covered with heavy timbers, and these with earth, the door or entrance facing to the west. . . . Some of these bombproofs were made quite comfortable, and ladies could take a book or their sewing into them.” A sympathetic soldier recalled that, “whenever the enemy commenced shelling, the mother and little ones took refuge in these holes in the ground, sat there nestling close to each other, with hearts quaking, as the ground trembled beneath exploding mortars.” Some citizens piled cotton bales on their back porches in tiers, thinking naively that they would repel Union shells. Surviving the relentless bombardments was one thing, but finding the means to sustain daily life presented an even greater challenge to those who remained in Petersburg. “There has not been a store opened” testified one resident, and the lack of available provisions, the depreciation of currency, and the unceasing drought that had devastated 320

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family gardens made obtaining meals a trial. “It is difficult to see how the poor people are to live through the summer,” lamented Charles Campbell.48 Finding enough to eat also challenged many of the refugees camped safely beyond the reach of Union artillery. Conditions became so dire for some that they decided to go back to their Petersburg homes, where at least the possibility for a square meal existed. “Some are returning to the city saying that they had as soon be killed by a shell as to perish by starvation,” wrote Dr. Claiborne. But the majority of refugees remained in the countryside throughout much of the summer.49 For the townsfolk who remained in Petersburg during June and July, preserving some quality of life amid the constant threat of incoming artillery posed both a physical and psychological challenge. Though human casualties proved relatively rare, the damage inflicted on Petersburg’s beautiful architecture stunned and appalled those who witnessed it. “There is scarcely a house in the part of the city around where we lived & east that does not bear many marks of Yankee malice & brutality,” fumed Captain Dimmock. Union projectiles damaged valued public buildings, such as the new Library Hall, and destroyed the Petersburg Gas Works, depriving residents of municipal lighting. “Fears are entertained that the engine of the water-­works will be destroyed,” recorded Charles Campbell, “which would be a serious disaster.”50 Most Federal projectiles merely penetrated vulnerable masonry and wood, but periodically a bombardment would spark fires that threatened to spread damage beyond what a single shell could inflict. The ubiquitous Charles Campbell inventoried a number of homes burnt down by Union artillery along with fire damage sustained by stores, the Ladies Hospital on Bollingbrook Street, the Pocahontas railroad depot, and the Express office. When firefighters responded to such blazes, they often endured an intensified barrage, the Federals using the flames as range finders. Following an urgent request from the Petersburg common council on July 15, General Beauregard ordered Henry Wise, the city’s post commander, to use the local militia quartered in town to assist in suppressing fires. This expedient did not sit well with the old men and young boys comprising the militia, who understood too well that responding to any conflagration meant an enhanced risk of encountering a lethal Yankee shell.51 Many Confederate soldiers expressed outrage at what they considered the Federals’ inhuman strategy of targeting noncombatants. War correspondent Peter Wellington Alexander suggested that Grant intended to depopulate Petersburg, drive the refugees into Richmond, and thus overtax the food supply in the capital, rendering the city untenable. He labeled this effort “military brigandage.” Surg. John H. Kinyoun of the Sixty-­Sixth North Carolina joined AlexLife in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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ander in believing that such measures would fail but growled that the shelling “offers their fi[e]ndish souls some pleasure to lay off at a distance and throw their missles of distruction in the place, among a parcel of women and helpless children,” characterizing the perpetrators as possessed of “devilish inclinations and [a] brutish nature.” Capt. William Biggs of the Seventeenth North Carolina labeled the Federal gunners as “the most God-­forsaken wretches on the face of the earth,” a mild condemnation compared to the judgment of a Georgia soldier in Wright’s Brigade: “They are pitiless monsters whose hearts smell as if they had come from the devil,” he wrote. “Civilization implores, but the Trans-­Atlantic crocodiles weep and the Pharisee prays, while the gloomy clock of Horror pushes by the days.”52 Revenge fired the hearts of many Confederates, such as Sgt. John R. Turner, a commissary clerk in A. P. Hill’s Third Corps. Citing the Unionists’ failure to give notice of their intention to bombard the city, Turner expressed the hope that “our government will execute an officer (Yankee) for every citizen who is killed or wounded by their shells. . . . What object the vandals can have in this making war on helpless women & children I cannot divine but it is in their fiendish natures. Surely the retribution of heaven will yet overtake these wretches.” Sgt. Laban Odom of the Forty-­Eighth Georgia repeated approvingly the camp rumor that Beauregard had notified Grant that he intended to “hang ten of his men for every one of the women and children that he killed,” although no real evidence exists for such a threat. “I pity the poor people of the town,” wrote Lt. William Izard Clopton, a Virginia artillerist, “& pray God may heap retribution on the heads of the vandals who commit the crime.”53 Casting aspersions against or seeking retribution on the Northern cannoneers did little to make life more bearable for those Petersburg residents who persevered during the bombardment. Instead, these determined folks employed a combination of studied indifference and tactical avoidance to pursue their daily routines as well as circumstances would allow. The Petersburg Daily Register published a tongue-­in-­cheek column declaring “Conchology—the study of artillery shells” as a new science in Petersburg, a reference to the way pedestrians had learned to survive during a bombardment. “As the student seldom moves in a right line but practices eccentric curves around corners, forms obtuse angles, and always prefers the hypotenuse to the base of the perpendicular, we must rank ‘dodging’ as a branch of higher mathematics,” wrote the clever editor, John W. Syme. With mock surprise, Syme marveled at the “rheumatic patients [who] dart down alleys like carrier pigeons, and accomplished gentlemen [who] make unannounced entrances into private homes, without slightest apology or acquaintance. In fact, we think dodging and Conchology are twin 322

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sciences so much in request that . . . a lecture on either subject would be certain to draw a large audience to Library Hall.” In a similar vein, a sarcastic Confederate recalled that “it was amusing to see how many people had important business at the post office when the shelling began,” that facility having been relocated west of the shelled zone.54 Sometimes scurrying into a well-­built structure or dashing for protection around the corner proved impractical. Margaret Stanly Beckwith, the adult daughter of the prominent Petersburg physician, recalled that “we learned when going down Sycamore Street to make any needed purchase to fall flat on the pavement when we hear a shell coming our way and remain there until after the explosion,” but she confessed that “it was really fun to dodge.” Some citizens—Lucy and Mary Nelson, for example—began sleeping in protected shelters such as the basement of the Tabb Street Presbyterian Church, to shield themselves from the nocturnal projectiles that Captain Dimmock called “humming life-­seekers.”55 Indifference proved to be the most popular reaction to the shelling. The residents who remained in town simply grew fatalistic about the perils of living in a city under periodic attack, a reaction that unfailingly drew admiring comments from the military men who witnessed it. “The citizens of Petersburg, white and black, women and children . . . soon became accustomed to the shelling,” wrote Capt. D. Augustus Dickert of the Third South Carolina, “and as long as one did not drop in their immediate vicinity, little attention was paid to it.” A South Carolina military doctor commented that the local people had no apparent fear of the projectiles. “I would often see young ladies sitting on their porches reading quietly while shells were occasionally bursting near by,” he wrote. South Carolina quartermaster Maj. Harry Hammond agreed that the women and children seemed not to mind the shelling at all. “On one street yesterday where such a number of shells burst that I would have considered it a warm place in the field, women were passing about with little concern, dodging around a corner when they heard a shell coming, or putting their heads out of their windows to see the damage they had done when they struck near their houses.” Surgeon Trueheart watched in amazement as a shell burst about 100 yards from two Petersburg women. “I expected to see them faint, scream, run, at least dodge, but no, they only looked at it and went on without even quickening their pace.” “It was really refreshing to see the ladies pass coolly along the streets as though nothing unusual was transpiring while the 160-­pound shells were howling like hawks of perdition through the smoky air and bursting in the very heart of the city,” recalled one approving Virginia trooper. “They didn’t mind it a bit; and even the children would stand and watch, at the sound of the Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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passing shells, to see the explosion, and make funny little speeches about them, as if they had been curious birds flying over their heads.”56 Although Surgeon Kinyoun considered this nonchalance a symptom of carelessness, and others chauvinistically supposed that the ladies simply did not understand the “deadly character of a cannon ball wound,” Petersburg women fully comprehended the daily dangers and did alter their routines in keeping with the patterns of the bombardment. Lt. Col. William W. Blackford noted that the Federals targeted certain streets more frequently than others and during such shelling the ladies would merely gather on adjacent blocks, “laughing and talking and pausing at a corner to watch the course of the huge shells and listen to their deep smothered explosions. . . . In this constant presence of death,” thought Blackford, “humanity seems to have become so familiar with the dread specter that he loses his terrors.” Some residents even began to appreciate the artistry in the nocturnal bombardments. “It is very pretty [on] dark nights to see the mortar shells send up on our lines and the Yankees also, then sometimes signals like rockets go up & add to the beauty,” wrote Bessie Callender. “Is it not remarkable how one can become accustomed to anything,” marveled Captain Dimmock. John Esten Cooke considered the bravery and detachment of Petersburg’s women “a striking feature of this war. . . . Petersburg was always famous for the beauty of its ladies—now it is equally famous for their heroism.”57 Avoiding injury or death from a random artillery projectile merely posed the most dramatic challenge faced by those people who chose or were compelled to stay in Petersburg that summer. “It is perhaps—this City—the most disagreeable human habitation that is left upon this sin stricken earth,” judged Dr. Claiborne, and many who experienced life in Petersburg would have agreed. News of the victory at Reams’ Station and the appearance of the chastised captives from the Wilson-­Kautz Raid provided only a fleeting boost for Petersburg residents during June and July.58 Daily events in the city unfolded in an environment that one soldier described as “a huge camp, or hospital, or graveyard—it was a combination of these three in about equal proportions.” The absence of measurable rainfall that had elicited so much comment among the soldiers also created hardships for civilians in town. “The drought ruined kitchen gardens and affected the appearance of everyone and everything covered in a coat of dust,” wrote diarist Charles Campbell. “The dust is indescribable: it gets into the mouth, eyes, nose: we inhale it: it makes it impossible to keep cloth[e]s clean.” Domestic livestock, such as milk cows, had little grass on which to feed, and the fresh vegetables grown in backyards became scarce as the lack of moisture diminished yields.59 324

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This shortage of home-­grown components of usual diets threw the citizens wholly onto the marketplace for their daily bread, a resource that grew less reliable with each passing week. “The scarcity of provisions great & increasing,” observed Charles Campbell on July 8, “scarcely any to be got for love or money.” Rampant inflation limited the buying power at the market. Campbell provided a running commentary on prices throughout the campaign, and expressed outrage on July 6 that apples cost three dollars per dozen and tomatoes, “poor ones,” ten dollars per dozen. Captain Dimmock told his wife on July 8 that he had paid fourteen dollars per pound for butter “as strong as wagon grease,” fifty cents for a single onion, and black tea, “most execrable,” forty dollars per pound. “How the people live around here, especially the poor, I cannot determine,” he added. These inflationary prices applied, of course, only when such goods were available, which became less and less often, especially while repairs were in progress on the rail lines destroyed by Wilson. “Nothing now sold at old market,” noted Campbell on July 6, “& not much at the new.”60 Some efforts were under way to provide material relief to the city’s most needy residents, including 1,077 wives, widows, and children of Confederate soldiers living in Petersburg. Campbell took note that one local businessman had established an office at a bakery for distributing supplies to the poor on the upper end of Old Street. “He had a good pile of middling in front of the door & some barrels of flour,” Campbell explained. An organization called the “Poor Association” distributed food, some of which came from army supplies. “The Government seems to have a plenty of subsistence and no doubt will open its storehouse to save the people from starving,” hoped Dr. Claiborne. The common council formed a committee in early July to “purchase wood and sell the same to the people of this city at cost,” an effort not only to supply fuel for cooking, but to recognize that a shortage of firewood for heating would pose a serious problem in several months.61 Those who were not sufficiently destitute to qualify for public assistance used ingenuity and physical effort to fill their plates and satisfy their appetites. Charles Campbell and some children tramped four miles up the banks of the Appomattox River on July 21 searching for blackberries to augment their diets, but returned with only about a quart of fruit. “The soldiers, it appears, go every where & like the locusts of Egypt eat up everything even blackberries,” he complained. Eleanor Platt sent her sons on a similar quest, “for we are so short of meat that I must do something to fill their stomachs,” she wrote. David Callender’s cotton factory traded its fabric to residents west of the city in exchange for provisions, which Callender distributed to his employees, reserving a share for family consumption. Mrs. Pryor recalled that some of the free blacks who Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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had removed to the West End “sat all day on mats, knitting, and selling small cakes made of sorghum and flour, and little round meat pies.” She admitted to being tempted by these delicacies until she saw a dead mule lying in a nearby park “and out of its side had been cut a very neat, square chunk of flesh!” She recalled with pride that they never ate rats, mice, or mule meat. “We managed to exist on peas, bread, and sorghum. We could buy a little milk, and we mixed it with a drink made from roasted and ground corn.” Her heart broke when her uncomplaining child confessed one day that the lack of food left his stomach feeling “like a nutmeg grater.”62 Many of the shortages and much of the inflation endured by Petersburg consumers resulted from the inevitable repercussions of the wartime economy. Petersburg’s main industry, tobacco manufacturing, had all but disappeared when the Union blockade made exports to the North and abroad impossible. Army conscription deprived cotton and iron factories and Petersburg’s railroads of much of their labor force and the prosperity that accompanied those good-­paying jobs, including employment for free blacks and leased slaves. The government dominated rail traffic for military purposes to the detriment of commercial customers, and after Grant’s arrival, farmers east and south of Petersburg simply could not get their produce to market. Still, many people believed that greedy extortionists artificially manipulated the marketplace in order to realize obscene profits from citizens and soldiers. “The extremely poor are provided for by the city charity, but the middling classes of limited means are suffering keen privations so that another class may reap extortionate prices,” charged the Petersburg Daily Register. Editor Syme recommended that the common council purchase “a supply of conscience and [distribute] it . . . among the sellers and dealers in the Old market; there is evidently a great scarcity of that commodity.” Pvt. Eugene H. Levy of Louisiana’s Donaldsonville Artillery believed that “the fortunes of war have made the inhabitants of Petersburg a community of speculators. . . . The whole community seemed to scent pay day, and at that auspicious era of the soldier’s existence, the covered ways would fairly swarm with speculators, black and white, male and female, all anxious to trade articles of food and drink for Confederate scrip.” William S. Hubbard of the Sixteenth Virginia agreed: “Those free negros are making independent fortunes of the soldiers that has been payed off of late,” he wrote. Still, the situation might have been worse. Confederate chaplain John Cowper Granbery told his wife, “I have priced a few articles of food and find them on the average thirty per cent cheaper than in Richmond.”63 Slaves represented the one commodity that lost value during the Petersburg Campaign. The Union army’s presence offered unprecedented opportu326

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nities for bondsmen to abscond to freedom, a danger well understood by local slave owners. Idled agricultural chattels and surplus urban slaves were subject to conscription by the Confederate government, usually for some sort of hard labor—employment that weakened the worker and thus devalued him in the marketplace. As a result, local masters sought either to remove their human property to places of safety or dispose of them at whatever price the market would bear. “Just before the shollin’ of Petersburg, dey were sellin’ niggers for little nothin’ hardly,” remembered the slave, Fannie Berry.64 Property crime increased during the summer months, much of it perpetrated by hungry soldiers. Under the heading “Migratory Vegetables,” the wry editor of the Petersburg Daily Register called on authorities to halt “the nightly vegetable exodus” that plagued many Petersburg neighborhoods. “Soldiers are continually stealing from gardens,” clarified Charles Campbell, “rows of shallots disappeared from our garden last night probably stolen by some soldier.” Looting of homes presented a more serious problem. “One time they broke in Grandmother’s house, let the negroes in, and stole all the silver,” remembered a Petersburg woman. “Our neighbor, Miss Emma Drummond, had her house ransacked, too. The soldiers came out with all of her old things on and got on their horses and rode up the street.” The common council requested an enhanced provost guard in town to deter crime and General Beauregard responded with such orders. The local police force had its hands full, especially when the council dismissed its chief for drunkenness and misconduct and one of the officers deserted to the Federals.65 Of course, the vast majority of Confederate soldiers treated Petersburg citizens and their private property respectfully. Nevertheless, there could be no mistake that Petersburg had become a thoroughly military town, and the army’s presence dominated practically every aspect of daily life. Confederate soldiers routinely received passes to visit the city, and during quiet periods between shellings the streets thronged with men straight from the trenches who were, according to Charles Campbell, “of a yellow dust color.” Campbell suggested that these filthy souls—one Virginia soldier deemed the men “as dirty as ground hogs”—seek a bath in the river, but many chose to clean themselves instead in the city reservoir at the southern outskirts of town, an area generally known as Delectable Heights. This prompted Beauregard to prohibit the practice, suggesting the river as the better choice in order to avoid polluting the source of Petersburg’s drinking water. Military wagons rumbled through the streets at all hours, constituting almost all the vehicular traffic coursing through the city once the civilian evacuation had finished, and that traffic had been made heavier by the absence of railroad connections into the business Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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district. Even after the engineers completed repairs to the rail lines, the trains from the west and north continued to stop quite a distance from their respective depots in order to avoid the random shell.66 Many Petersburg residents consulted their calendars with dread in early July. “The citizens fear that Grant will shell the city on Monday (the 4th) his lucky day,” wrote Confederate Pvt. George S. Bernard. Charles Campbell discounted this possibility and regretted the panic that gripped the town. “The belief that Petersburg is to be burnt on tomorrow is quite common,” he recorded in his diary on July 3, “indeed the prevailing opinion but on what it is founded I cannot discover.” Citizens and soldiers alike were well aware that one year earlier, Grant had obtained the surrender of Vicksburg from its Confederate commander, and they anticipated that he would be determined to replicate the feat at Petersburg. “But Grant did not take Vicksburg on the 4th,” Campbell reminded his diary, “Pemberton surrendered it. . . . The supposition that Grant is going to capture Petersburg on the 4th seems to take for granted that Gen. Lee will be quite passive in the case.”67 As it turned out, the Union army took no special offensive action on Independence Day, although it did subject the city to a severe shelling late that afternoon and into the evening. Instead, the bluecoats celebrated in a more pacific fashion. “Yanks made quite a fuss & display with flags & bands of music,” noted a South Carolina soldier. “Martial music was more plentiful on both sides than usual,” agreed Surgeon Trueheart, “the Yankees indulged in ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ‘Hail Columbia’ etc. while our bands played Dixie, etc. The enemy made a grand display of the Stars and Stripes—typical of Federal tyranny and a consolidated government; while we threw to the breezes our little battle flags,” wrote this loyal Confederate medic.68 Although physical suffering and anxiety dominated life in Petersburg in June and July, the residents did indulge in a variety of diversions that lessened stress and mitigated their privation. Church services resumed at most Petersburg sanctuaries and continued at others, particularly those buildings that lay west of the business district. Grace Episcopal Church on High Street, and Second Presbyterian Church and St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on West Washington Street attracted the largest crowds, although there were Sundays when attendance at even these places languished. Reverend William H. Platt canceled services at downtown’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church periodically, but on other Sundays he invited his congregation to worship in the basement, where attendees would be better protected against bombshells. Platt declined to ring the bells on these occasions, however, for fear that they would attract General Lee and thus place the commander in mortal danger. Platt frequently held services 328

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at Violet Bank, Lee’s Chesterfield County headquarters on the north side of the river. On July 24 Petersburg businessman George Henry Venable attended one such service, noticing that Lee and Beauregard sat together, joined by groups of officers and soldiers, “the ladies occupying the inner circle.” Venable pronounced it “a peaceful and picturesque scene while the voice of song went up mingled with the booming of distant guns.”69 The young single women of Petersburg proved to be the city’s most socially active demographic—not an unlikely distinction given that most of the other residents were either married women, children, the elderly, or African Americans with little or no means to indulge in frivolities. The presence of a literal army of eligible young men living within a short walk of town made interaction between soldiers and local ladies inevitable. In spite of the perils posed by projectiles, “maidens coquetted and men fell in love, and told their sweet story to willing ears, as freely as in the days of peace,” remembered one of those youthful romantics. Most nights, some young female hosted an entertainment attended by her friends and many “soldier beaux.” “No beau was more merry or good-­ natured than our Confederate soldier, equally ready to flirt or fight,” testified a socially astute observer.70 Pvt. David Holt of the Sixteenth Mississippi and his friends in Company K took an early fancy to Petersburg’s distaff population, whom they collectively called “Calico.” As Holt and his regiment marched through town on June 18, they saw one particular girl “becomingly dressed in ribbons, lace and nice shoes and [carrying] a parasol.” She gave the boys a quick glance, displaying just enough interest to stimulate a response many times more ardent. “We pulled off our caps and would have followed her like Mary’s little lamb, except for a sharp command, ‘Keep your places and close up ranks!’” that came from some passionless officer. As the Mississippians marched up Sycamore Street leaving the beautiful temptress behind, one of Holt’s comrades exclaimed, “Lord, I didn’t know that there were any more pretty things like that left on earth. Just to think of owning such a layout as that. It’s too good a dream to come true.”71 Sometimes a Petersburg female would prove to be the aggressor in romantic encounters. Private Levy, the Louisiana cannoneer, found himself pursued at one of Petersburg’s finer homes by a woman whose advances surprised and perhaps even offended the upstanding Levy. “She is evidently fast, vain, and frivolous,” Levy wrote in his diary, “romantic in the extreme, fond of admiration, and disposed to hold lightly the hymenial pledge.” Not every Confederate soldier showed such restraint, and love blossomed in the parlors of Petersburg homes that summer, some of it more enduring than others.72 More typical than incidents of unrequited passion were the frequent social Life in Petersburg, Summer 1864

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events held at the homes of Petersburg’s elite population, who lived in relatively bombproof neighborhoods or were among the few people of means who refused to evacuate. “Our soldiers were treated with the greatest hospitality by the citizens,” wrote another Louisiana artillerist, “and all the ‘latch-­strings hung out.’” Captain Dunn, recovering from his battlefield wound at his home at the corner of Marshall and South Adams Streets, routinely opened his door for soldiers in need of a good meal or a friendly hearth. Like other wealthy Petersburg families, the Dunns managed to retain some trappings of elegant living, and he frequently included fine wine with the meals provided to homesick Confederate officers.73 Although Petersburg’s once-­vibrant theater scene went dark during the summer, military bands assumed some of the burden of public entertainment. “The strains of music near and distant have rendered the city very lively for some nights,” reported the Petersburg Express, “and the bands are rendering a service in performing as they do. The fair sex duly appreciate their efforts to please.” Such serenades frequently reminded Petersburg citizens of happier times, although officials at the Fair Grounds Hospital complained that the many bands that practiced their tunes nearby were “a great annoyance” to the recuperating patients who required rest. Occasionally residents would listen to the martial music while enjoying a good book borrowed from Library Hall, as that institution opened whenever the shelling abated.74 No Confederate enjoyed more local hospitality than Robert E. Lee. “My father’s relations with the citizens of Petersburg were of the kindest description,” according to Lee’s son, Robert. The general wrote his wife in late June that “the ladies of Petersburg have sent me a nice set of shirts. . . . In fact, they have given me everything, which I fear they cannot spare—vegetables, bread, milk, ice cream.” Lee discouraged such generosity, but when it could not be politely declined, he usually shared the gifts with the Shippen family, his hosts at Violet Bank, or sent them to the military hospitals. The townsfolk most often enjoyed personal interaction with Lee at church. The general attended St. Paul’s when practicable, or Grace Church on High Street, which he grew to enjoy equally well. When Reverend Platt or some other cleric held services at Violet Bank, wagonloads of women from Petersburg often rode across the river to partake in the worship.75 General Lee’s aura of invincibility provided one of the prime catalysts for Petersburg citizens to remain defiant and optimistic throughout the most difficult summer in their community’s history. Dr. Claiborne understood that the Confederates could hardly compel Grant to abandon his campaign against the city, and if the Union army maintained its pitiless bombardment of the town, 330

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“this will be a city of desolation.” Still, Claiborne, like most other Petersburg residents, intended to defend his hometown to the last extremity. “I for one am ready to see the last brick thrown down rather than the city surrendered,” Claiborne proclaimed, echoing almost verbatim the editorial stance expressed in the Petersburg Daily Express.76 This defiance merged with optimism, in hindsight badly misplaced, but sincerely believed in June and July. “No doubt the enemy can & probably will, very effectually destroy the principal part of the town, by the explosion of shells, if not by conflagration,” wrote Edmund Ruffin. “But this will not bring them nearer to the object of capturing the town, or any military success. . . . The most complete destruction of the town, or the imminent danger thereof in expectation, will not induce its surrender—for which I have not heard a voice being raised, or a secret wish entertained by any person.” The Petersburg Daily Register accused any reader who lost faith in ultimate Confederate victory as being “dunderpated and pigeon-­livered,” and a less magniloquent Charles Campbell calmly believed that because Lee’s defenses were too strong to penetrate, a period of “masterly inactivity” lay in the future, circumstances that could only benefit the Confederate cause.77 The determination and courage shown by Petersburg’s population elicited some grudging admiration from even those intent on subduing it. “It almost makes me sorry to fight against people who show such devotion for their homes and their country,” wrote Union officer Washington Roebling. An editorial in a Richmond newspaper praised the steadfast perseverance of Petersburg over the summer and summarized the general feeling that prevailed in the beleaguered houses and shell-­pocked streets of the Cockade City. “Better hunger, want and nakedness, better the bursting bomb and the midnight reveille, than the dead lethargy of hopeless and helpless submission. . . . Virginia . . . shall triumph over hired hosts, Yankee armadas, and the combination of foreign despots.”78

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nine

Strangled in Dust and Scorched in the Sun

Army Operations, Late June to Mid-­July Everyday hardships afflicted soldiers and Petersburg residents alike as the summer sun baked the parched battle lines. “Petersburg is a very nice place and a very pleasant one I should imagine to spend the winter in,” wrote Lt. William Cowper Nelson of the Nineteenth Mississippi, “but a city life in the summer is never pleasant. We have had no rain now for more than six weeks and it is . . . exceedingly hot, dry, and dusty, provisions too are exceedingly scarce and high, and as our rations are rather meager (consisting of a pound of meal and 1/3 pound of bacon per day) we cannot be said to be feasting.” A Virginia captain echoed Nelson’s sentiments in early July correspondence with his sister: “I wish I could write you a better letter but I have been strangled in dust scorched in the sun and demoralized continually by ‘bummin’ that I am completely stewed, dryed and withered up and am fit for nothing.”1 Following the almost constant combat entailed by the first two Union offensives and the conclusion of the Wilson-­Kautz Raid, the period from late June through the third week in July proved relatively quiet, with only a few small-­scale clashes to break the monotony. For the Confederate soldier, life assumed a dull and unpleasant routine marked by multiday stints in the ever-­expanding trenches, where conditions were barely tolerable. The average Johnny Reb battled not only enervating weather and inadequate nourishment, but also the deadly realities of sharpshooting and artillery exchanges that inflicted numerous casualties, albeit in small increments. The Confederates usually subsisted on two meals per day. Cornbread and 332

bacon, leavened by the occasional ration of cowpeas and irregular distribution of coffee, dominated the menu. Quantities of this uninspiring fare were adequate although occasionally the quality caused problems. “We get so much corn bread, and that gets so sour, that it keeps my bowels running off,” complained Pvt. Paul M. Higginbotham of the Nineteenth Virginia. Innovative soldiers could swap excess cornmeal for meat and vegetables, or if they had money, supplement their diets with food purchased at Petersburg’s markets. “We are much like snakes,” admitted a North Carolinian, “swallow a week’s supply of food when we have it and then starve for a while.”2 Troops rotated into the front lines, serving as many as six consecutive days before, usually, spending forty-­eight hours in reserve. The men invented various contrivances to shelter themselves from the heat of the day, stretching blankets and canvas across the ditches, burrowing into the trench walls, or digging holes in the ground behind the works, where regimental officers established command posts. “I am now dirty, black, and lousy,” confessed a North Carolinian. Lt. Samuel Catawba Lowry of the Seventeenth South Carolina condemned his entire regiment as being “as dirty as hogs and awfully lousy.” A drought-­busting storm in mid-­July transformed the trenches into seas of muck. “If we moved at all we were compelled to walk in mud ankle deep every step,” explained Lowry. “Anything, in the opinion of our boys, is better than this detestable trench life,” wrote a First Corps staff officer. “They don’t want to burrow much longer like moles in the sand, for this mode of warfare is to them very humiliating.”3 Union projectiles proved worse than humiliation. Soldiers serving on the front lines faced a ceaseless ordeal of sharpshooting and mortar bombardments that visited inglorious mayhem and death on countless Confederates, leaving “a chill of murder” among the survivors. “The sharpshooters never ceased firing, while the mortar shells rained down upon us incessantly day and night,” recalled a Tar Heel. “We have had a good many men killed by shells and Sharpshooting,” wrote Cpl. William B. Green of the Twenty-­Second South Carolina to his wife; “they are continuously carrying their mangled boddys off.” In many places, the opposing lines lay perilously close, rendering any careless exposure a risky oversight. “Their sharpshooters, the best branch, by-­the-­bye, of the Federal service, are always wide awake and always ready to pick off the rash Secesh who ventures to raise his knowledge box above the parapets, a gulp of fresh air being only attainable at the expense of a broken skull,” explained volunteer aide Richard Washington Corbin. As for mortar shells, Corbin thought that at night they became “ugly customers, and pounce upon a poor body like a hawk upon a chicken.”4 The proximity of the Federals did allow for periodically pacific relations Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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between the lines, especially when officers looked the other way. “The Yankee skirmish line is a short distance from us in full view,” wrote Sgt. Maj. Marion Hill Fitzpatrick of the Forty-­Fifth Georgia. “By mutual agreement, we do not fire at each other, there being no use of it unless an advance is made. They are quite friendly with us,” while engaged in trading newspapers, tobacco, and cornbread for “crackers, knives, soap, pockette books &c.” Lt. William A. Miller told his brother that his regiment, the Eighteenth Virginia, was “as friendly [with the Yankees] as if there had never been a gun fired.”5 The harsh conditions in the trenches took their toll on many Confederates, psychologically as well as physically. “We stand up to it as well as we can but human nature cannot endure everything and a few more similar days I am afraid will use us completely up,” thought Captain Biggs of the Seventeenth North Carolina. “This is a hard life when a man is quite well but when he is sick & suffering oh it is terrible,” agreed James Adger Smyth of the Twenty-­ Fifth South Carolina. John R. Turner, a Virginian from the northern Piedmont, disdained Southside Virginia under any circumstances: “I wouldn’t live in this country if they would give me the best farm here,” he declared.6 Despite such adversity, some Confederates bore their privations stoically or with good cheer. “I have learned to adapt myself pretty well to circumstances,” explained Lieutenant Nelson, “and do not mention our style of living in any spirit of complaint, but merely to let you know with how little we can be satisfied.” Sergeant Major Fitzpatrick agreed: “Soldiers are up to any emergency that pre­sents itself,” he observed. Sam Brooke of the Forty-­Seventh Virginia summarized his viewpoint succinctly: “if they will promise not to kill me . . . I’ll stand it as long as anybody else.”7 Perseverance and optimism went hand in hand along the Confederate lines in late June and into July. The overwhelming majority of Southern soldiers embraced a positive view of the military situation at Petersburg, convinced that ultimate victory lay just around the corner. “Our army is in fine spirits and confident of success,” wrote quartermaster Maj. Robert Taylor Scott of Pickett’s staff. South Carolina adjutant Charles J. C. Hutson concurred: “Our independence is not to be doubted,” he wrote. “I believe the Yankees are to be whipped and whipped thoroughly.” Surg. William H. Sanders told his father on July 7 that “entire confidence exists as to the final result.”8 Such conviction found a variety of origins. Trust in the leadership of Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard loomed large in the minds of many Southern soldiers. Beauregard’s chief engineer, Colonel Harris, thought that the combination of the Confederacy’s leading generals spelled certain victory. “Everybody seems confident now that Gen’l Lee & Beauregard are together,” 334

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Harris pronounced. “Gen’l Grant will receive a good whipping any time he tries it.” “We have the Great and Glorious Lee and Beauregard both here and they have never been whipped and never will,” proclaimed John Godwin, a military clerk.9 Some Confederates based this optimism on their perception that the Federals would be unable to sustain the campaign. “It is useless for them to hope to gain anything by remaining any longer here,” wrote Captain Biggs, “and anybody would see that but Grant. They have done their worst now & there is no fear felt from them.” Pvt. John Cherry of Martin’s Brigade saw the situation similarly: “The day is past for Grant taking Petersburg and he seems aware of it.” Cherry based this assessment on his belief that an unwholesome environment and lack of water plagued the Yankees’ camps. Engineer Charles Dimmock offered a more operational analysis of Union fortunes. “Grant hangs on here with bulldog tenacity but we all think his efforts feeble & rather killing time than counting effectively in crushing the rebellion,” Dimmock wrote. “He has left flanked it to this place and must retrograde or take Petersburg. The first would be an acknowledgment of defeat & prove disastrous in the extreme to the war dynasty, and the last Genl Lee has not nor does he seem ever disposed to permit.” Pvt. Rufus A. Barringer of the Eighth North Carolina felt certain that the Federals could not tolerate their current level of casualties, which he grossly overestimated at 180,000 since April 1. “If we can continue to demolish the yankey army after this style a month or two longer the war will be obliged to cease,” he concluded.10 A few dissenting voices could be heard along the Confederate lines. Cpl. Robert Cornelius Mabry of the Sixth Virginia confessed to his wife that “Petersburg I think is a doomed city . . . already much damaged by the enemies shell and it is impossible for Lee to move him from his position.” Confederate war correspondent Peter Alexander compared the Federals to an incurable disease. “When a Yankee army once imbeds itself in the ground, like a cancer in the human body, it extends its roots in every direction, until it becomes exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to expel it.” Brig. Gen. Stephen Elliott advised his wife to simply “put our trust in God and hope and pray for the best.”11 Such opinions represented the distinct minority. “Our troops are in fine health & spirits,” wrote Sgt. Hugh S. Denson of the Tenth Alabama. “The yanks can never get Richmond.” Surg. Henry Augustine Minor of the Ninth Alabama concurred, pronouncing the men “cheerful and hopeful and in the best possible plight for fighting.” Perhaps no one expressed the Confederates’ determination better than Lt. Col. Joseph Frederick Waring of the Jeff Davis Legion. “Much as I want peace, I would rather fight the Yankees all my life than submit to their Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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rule,” he confided to his diary on July 7. “Gen Lee says he wishes the Yankees were all at home. Gen Hampton says he wishes they were all dead. Gen Early says he wishes they were all dead, and in Hell. Old Chesnut wishes they were all in hell and he was at home. Any one of the above the army endorses, but I am content to let the Yankees select for themselves.”12 General Lee shared his troops’ confidence in the army’s ability to hold the Petersburg lines, but worried about his precarious supply situation. “I fear the latter difficulty will oblige me to attack General Grant in his intrenchments, which I should not hesitate to do but for the loss it will inevitably entail,” Lee explained to the president. The Wilson-­Kautz Raid did temporarily disrupt Lee’s vital connection to North Carolina, the South Atlantic seaboard, and the Lower South, where much of the army’s supplies originated. Until crews repaired the tracks damaged by the Federal cavalry, trains ran as far north as Stony Creek Depot, where wagons ferried food, fodder, and equipment into Petersburg. “It looks like all the waggons in Virginia is here,” wrote Cpl. Benjamin H. Freeman of the Forty-­Fourth North Carolina, whose brigade bore responsibility for guarding the wagon trains on their journeys into Petersburg. Lee coveted the corn supply in Alabama, eastern Mississippi, eastern Georgia, and the Carolinas, wishing to keep his Richmond stockpile in reserve for future emergencies. He also instructed Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, in command of Confederate forces north of the James, to “gather the crops of wheat, oats, and grass that are within our reach below Chaffin’s Bluff,” advising Ewell to concentrate first on portions of the countryside most vulnerable to Federal depredations.13 The Confederates also coped with a distressing shortage of horse flesh. The Army of Northern Virginia began losing heavily in cavalry mounts and draft animals during the Overland Campaign, forcing Lee to propose innovative means for replenishing them. “I think our horses might be obtained from Texas,” Lee wrote President Davis on July 5, suggesting optimistically that they swim across the Mississippi River. The army commander also advocated swapping cotton and tobacco for horses in northwestern Virginia, appealing to the North’s compelling desire for those commodities. Lee ordered the army’s exhausted horses removed from service and pastured northwest of Petersburg “where the animals may safely enjoy freedom in enclosed fields, some grazing even if thin & dry, more shade, relief from swarms of flies bred in old camps & have a sufficiency of water.”14 Lee continued to oversee army operations from Violet Bank, the comfortable estate on the north side of the Appomattox River. He eventually moved out of the mansion and into a commodious tent pitched on the lawn, but in characteristic fashion protested that it was grander than his needs required. Moreover, 336

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he observed that the tents of other officers had been reduced in size and “I do not like to be in a larger tent myself.” Beauregard maintained his headquarters in Petersburg.15 The Confederates retained a veteran force north of the James River to supplement the second-­tier troops there under General Ewell. Brigades from Henry Heth’s and Cadmus Wilcox’s Divisions alternated this responsibility. Pickett’s Division defended the Howlett Line between the James and Appomattox Rivers, while Beauregard’s two divisions, Hoke’s and Johnson’s, held the trenches from the south bank of the Appomattox around to Jerusalem Plank Road. Charles Field’s First Corps division along with Joseph Kershaw’s men occupied the Confederate right until late July, when most of Kershaw’s troops crossed the James. William Mahone’s Division retained its role as Lee’s strike force, poised on the western side of the lines in position to react to the next Federal offensive. The bulk of Lee’s cavalry continued to guard the army’s right flank, reconnoitering south of the infantry with regular patrols. The James River remained a no-­man’s-­land between Trent’s Reach and Chaffin’s Bluff, the opposing navies merely supporting their respective armies from behind obstructions across the channel. Powerful shore batteries dissuaded either navy from attempting offensive action.16 Official Confederate strength returns are available for June 30 and July 10. Richard Anderson’s First Corps counted 14,277 officers and men present on June 30 and similar numbers ten days later. Hill’s Third Corps amounted to 15,633 present for duty at the end of June, but 16,675 on July 10. Beauregard’s de facto infantry corps boasted 12,179 men present on June 30 and about 200 fewer in mid-­July. Lee’s three cavalry divisions tallied approximately 7,500 officers and men on June 30, a number that swelled to more than 9,000 two weeks later. Confederate gunners added some 6,600 men to the totals. Thus Lee had about 56,000 soldiers available to him on June 30 and more than 58,000 ten days later. Ewell’s Department of Richmond reported 6,176 officers and men present in late June, boosting Confederate strength in the Petersburg-­Richmond theater to well above 60,000, not counting the troops absent under Jubal Early who were cavorting through the Shenandoah Valley and western Maryland.17 Even in the absence of major engagements, incidental Confederate casualties still reached substantial numbers in midsummer. A soldier in the Sixth Georgia, for example, counted twenty-­four men killed and eighty wounded in his regiment between June 16 and August 14. “Day by day, two, three and even greater numbers would be killed and wounded,” he reported. “Some of our best military men think above everything else, that this campaign in the trenches has tested the courage, endurance, and patriotism of our soldiers.” No officer Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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maintained a closer calculation of this attrition than Bushrod Johnson. He recorded the exact number of men shot along his front each day, diligently quantifying the deadly environment along the works. Between July 12 and 27, for example, the Federals killed 48 and wounded 197 of Johnson’s men during routine operations. Although Johnson’s brigades occupied some of the most dangerous places along the lines, extrapolating these casualties suggests that the Confederates suffered significant losses during those static weeks of June and July.18 Although desertion certainly plagued both armies, it did not create serious problems for the Confederates that summer. Some dispirited Rebels abstained from crossing the lines out of fear that the Federals would either compel them to fight their former comrades or turn them over to the U.S. Colored Troops to face unspeakable fates. “Insulted with negroes it is hard for any person to think of such a thing [as desertion],” averred one determined Confederate. President Davis rejected calls for a proclamation of amnesty for his armies’ deserters, although he did urge Southern commanders to encourage absentees to return to the ranks, where they were likely to receive “good offices in their behalf.”19 In mid-­July, the Federals entertained rumors about a planned mass Confederate desertion, often associated with the Florida Brigade. Told by previous deserters to illuminate three rockets as a signal that it would be safe to cross over, the Yankees credulously complied, but only a handful of graycoats appeared at the designated hour. “Since then, I put those stories of rascally Rebel deserters at a very low figure,” grumbled a disenthralled Pennsylvanian.20 A relatively larger stream of alienated Northerners entered Confederate lines. “Crowds of deserters arrive daily who have never even been to their regiments and represent Grant’s men as whipped badly,” reported a trooper in Hampton’s Legion stationed north of the James. A similar situation prevailed south of Petersburg. “Our scouts and pickets bring in deserters almost every day from Grant’s army,” boasted William H. Locke of the Fourth Alabama Cavalry Battalion. “They profess to be verry tired of the war and cherish a great hatred for Grant . . . as they say that he has no feelings for the soldiers.” Secretary of War Seddon acknowledged the presence of “numerous deserters from the Federal army,” but noted that “the disposition of deserters is one of the most embarrassing subjects that has come under the consideration of the Department. Whenever they have been turned loose upon parole exacted of fidelity or good behavior they have soon proved themselves disaffected or turbulent, and been productive in our cities of serious disasters and crimes.”21 Those soldiers at the front not engaged in skirmishing usually spent a considerable portion of their time building or improving the works, usually at night when darkness shielded their labor. “One third of the company de338

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tailed each day to work on erecting another line of fortifications in rear of our Brigade straightening out the line and making it in better position than the one we occupy,” recorded diarist Sgt. George Philip Clark of the Seventh Virginia. Facilitating communication between the front lines and reserve areas also consumed a great deal of labor. “On our part of the line we had no tunnels for the troops to pass through, but we had what was known as covered ways,” remembered Pvt. William A. Day of the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina. “They were deep ditches, about six feet wide, with the dirt thrown out on each side. Through these covered ways the troops could pass in safety.” One of these “zig-­ zags,” as some of the soldiers called them, sliced through a corner of Blandford Cemetery, unearthing coffins and bones. Both armies established a series of signal stations that allowed visual communications along the Petersburg front. The Confederates could send messages as far as Richmond, while the Federals eventually manned seventy signal stations on eleven separate lines.22 The Rebels experienced a serious setback to their engineering capacity in mid-­July when Colonel Harris received orders to report to Charleston, South Carolina. “I told the General [Beauregard] I did not like it—that I was doing as important service here as I could anywhere and I do not relish the transfer,” Harris protested to no avail. This fine officer’s skill and dedication would be missed.23 With Harris present or not, the Southerners worked hard to bolster their lines with artillery. Two places turned out to be critical in the exchange of firepower during the midsummer weeks. The high ground on the left bank of the Appomattox below Petersburg, variously called Archer’s Hill or Chesterfield Heights, provided platforms for no fewer than fifteen heavy guns that the Federals dubbed the Gooseneck Battery. Rifled cannon here from Hill’s corps exchanged fire with an array of twenty-­pounder and thirty-­pounder Parrotts and large-­caliber mortars stationed in the Union emplacements between the river and old Confederate Battery  5. These guns were particularly crucial in neutralizing the Federal bombardment of Petersburg. “Whenever the enemy attempted to shell the town, a few shots from Archer’s House would produce perfect silence,” recalled a Georgian, “the enemy ceasing their fire to prevent our guns from enfilading their infantry line.” Edward Porter Alexander, commander of Lee’s First Corps artillery, bore responsibility for studding the area behind Pegram’s Salient with a number of Coehorn mortars, while placing batteries in position to sweep the ground in front of this vulnerable position. Alexander’s acumen would prove critical during the next Union offensive. “Shoot at everything you see an inch high, a foot long, or a year old,” Alexander advised the cannoneers.24 Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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The exchange of mortar fire placed a premium on the construction of ever-­ stronger bombproof shelters. On July 12 Beauregard forwarded to Walter H. Stevens, soon to become Lee’s chief engineer, drawings of a bombproof fortified with railroad iron, convinced that such structures would stand up to the intense bombardments to which his men in Colquitt’s and Pegram’s Salients were subjected. Numerous Confederates commented on the macabre beauty created by such shells fired after dark, one soldier calling them “grand beyond description. . . . Darting across with the rapidity of a meteor from side to side, in opposite directions, flew the lighted shells in almost horizontal lines, while high above all in the heavens in graceful, arching flight flew in flocks of six or eight at a time, the mortar shells, looking as if they were chasing and passing and repassing one another in their eagerness to perform their deadly mission.” Smoke sometimes obscured the muzzle blasts and the shouting of the men as the projectiles landed “could be heard like the voices of demons in the infernal regions.”25 Robert E. Lee took a dim view of this inactive situation and realized that whatever hope that once existed for English or French intervention on behalf of the South had long since fled. “As far as I have been able to judge, this war pre­sents to the European world but two aspects,” Lee told President Davis in early July, “a contest in which one party is contending for abstract slavery & the other against it. . . . As long as this lasts, we can expect neither sympathy or aid. . . . Our safety depends upon ourselves alone.” Petersburg fire-­eater Edmund Ruffin concurred: “I have long ceased to look to foreign intervention, or any other aide from abroad, or any thing else to bring us peace, other than our own hard & successful fighting,” he believed.26 Lee advocated offensive action immediately after turning back the Federal offensive west of Jerusalem Plank Road and repelling Wilson and Kautz at Reams’ Station. “The time has arrived, in my opinion, when something more is necessary than adhering to lines and defensive positions,” Lee told A. P. Hill on June 29. “We shall be obliged to go out and prevent the enemy from selecting such positions as he chooses. If he is allowed to continue that course we shall at last be obliged to take refuge behind the works of Richmond and stand a siege, which would be but a work of time.” Lee repeated this philosophy a week later in his message to Davis: “If we can defeat or drive the armies of the enemy from the field, we shall have peace. All our efforts & energies should be devoted to that object.” When Lee read a Northern newspaper that advocated attacking the Confederates whenever they left the shelter of the works, the general remarked that there was nothing he would like more “than a fair

340

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field fight.” The Confederate commander also expressed skepticism regarding his opponent’s generalship, telling his eldest son that Grant’s “talent & strategy consists in accumulating overwhelming numbers.” Studies of the Petersburg Campaign often cite Lee’s comment to Hill—and a similar sentiment allegedly made earlier to Jubal Early—to suggest that Lee believed that once the armies reached Petersburg, the Confederate cause was doomed. Nothing about Lee’s generalship throughout the rest of 1864 sustains this conclusion.27 Not every Confederate embraced Lee’s desire to adopt the operational offensive. Ruffin placed his trust in the Northern voter rejecting continued prosecution of the war. He hoped that a peace candidate would prevail at the Democratic convention later that summer and that Northern Radicals would join forces with the Democrats to defeat Lincoln. The savvy diarist acknowledged, however, that “if [William T.] Sherman or Grant should gain decisive victories & capture Atlanta or Richmond” then the peace wing of the Democratic Party would evaporate and all Northern politicians would “clamor for the subjugation of the South,” underscoring the importance of Confederate battlefield success.28 Less exalted Confederates held a variety of views regarding the proper strategy around Petersburg. Doctor Kinyoun of the Sixty-­Sixth North Carolina was “of the opinion that we will have to charge Grant out of his works and drive him from the front of Petersburg . . . for if we let them lay here and take all advantages . . . they will give us a great deal of trouble.” Lieutenant Nelson of the Nineteenth Mississippi believed to the contrary that “it would be inadvisable . . . to attack them here, as they are strongly fortified and it would be at an immense sacrifice of human life, that they could be driven.” Bushrod Johnson also rejected conventional offensive action in favor of a particularly ridiculous expedient based on a continuation of the heavy rains that began in mid-­July. Johnson suggested that “1,000 men with axes could, in a few days, cut from the banks of [the James River] and float together trees enough to sweep the Yankee fleet out into the Atlantic Ocean, and leave Grant’s army without pontoons, communications, or base of supplies,” allowing the Confederates the chance to “drive his army into the river.”29 Lieutenant Nelson did advocate the creation of diversions “which may cause [the Federals] to change their base as effectively as an attack in the Front would.” Of course, Lee had orchestrated just such a diversion when he ordered Jubal Early and John C. Breckinridge to advance north through the Shenandoah Valley, cross the Potomac River, and threaten Washington and Baltimore. Early’s force of between 15,000 and 18,000 soldiers of all arms had entered

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Maryland by July 6, defeated a Federal force along the Monocacy River near Frederick on July 9, and approached the national capital on the sultry afternoon of July 11.30 Although Early decided against launching an attack at Washington and had returned to Virginia by the 14th, his raid met with broad approval at Petersburg. “Old Jube is weeding a wide row in Yankeedom,” crowed Hospital Steward George E. Waller of the Twenty-­Fourth Virginia. “I do hope he may capture Washington. . . . I don’t think Grant knows what to do.” Maj. J. Mark Smither of the Fifth Texas expected “to hear of the Yankees raising the siege of Petersburg soon and going back home to protect their own Capitol.” He found great satisfaction in that while “the great ‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant” had been investing Richmond and Petersburg “with his hosts of Abolition Myrmidons, and the whole press of Yankeedom has been howling paeans of joy at its (supposed) certain downfall,” Early had trodden on Washington’s doorstep. Mississippi surgeon James Montgomery Holloway simply concluded that Early’s operation “makes Grant’s campaign thus far a most prodigious failure.”31 Not everyone wearing butternut or gray believed that Early’s activities altered the operational calculus around Petersburg. “Our camp has been going wild over the news from the Potomac expedition under Early,” wrote Col. William Drayton Rutherford of the Third South Carolina. “He seems to have gotten near up to the rotten Capital, but I cannot hope for any substantial results.” Another South Carolinian, brigade commander Elliott, maintained an almost unique criticism of Lee’s Petersburg strategy during July and felt that had the army been kept together, a “judicious and timely assault” might have “whipped Grant.” Visionary artillerist Porter Alexander would write after the war that Early should have been sent to Georgia, not the Shenandoah Valley, where his soldiers might have turned back Sherman north of Atlanta, echoing the previous year’s victorious strategy at Chickamauga. Then, thought Alexander, Early and a large portion of Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee could have used the South’s interior lines of communication to reinforce Lee and defeat Grant.32 General Lee indulged in some operational fantasy of his own during Early’s raid. On June 26 the Confederate commander wrote President Davis that “great benefit might be drawn from the release of our prisoners at Point Lookout,” an expansive Federal prison camp located at the mouth of the Potomac River, nearly 150 miles from Frederick. Lee hoped that a cavalry force under Maryland colonel Bradley T. Johnson could combine with a naval contingent to subdue what he believed to be an understrength garrison of black troops. The released prisoners, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 or more, could 342

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then march overland and cooperate with Early’s army to capture Washington. Johnson considered this scheme “utterly impossible for man or horse to accomplish,” but he dutifully departed from Middletown, Maryland, on July 9 with about 1,500 troopers. Although these Confederates managed to arouse consternation throughout Maryland, they made scant progress toward the prison camp. Word of the raid’s naval component leaked, and the authorities canceled that portion of the program. It is difficult to square such an unrealistic proposition with the normally grounded strategic vision of Robert E. Lee.33 Localized and relatively minor combat did embellish the casualty lists from late June through the middle of July. The first of these operations occurred between Gracie’s and Colquitt’s Salients near the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad. Here, the three Federal brigades of Brig. Gen. John W. Turner’s division, temporarily assigned to the Eighteenth Corps, faced elements of Bushrod Johnson’s Division, principally Archibald Gracie’s Alabamans. Turner’s corps commander, Baldy Smith, contemplated an assault on the night of June 24, but aborted it at the last minute. New attack orders from Smith arrived at Turner’s headquarters on June 30. Once again, the strongpoints near the two salients would be his objective, although the specific purpose of this assault is not evident beyond a desire to neutralize a close and bothersome enemy position. Col. William B. Barton’s brigade of New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians received the key assignment. Barton would be supported by Col. Louis Bell’s brigade on his left and Col. N. Martin Curtis’s four regiments on his right. “The principal element in this attack, and upon which was based the great anticipation of success, was a surprise,” reported Turner. “Our division was ordered to charge the enemy’s works at 5 p.m.,” wrote a soldier in the 115th New York of Barton’s brigade. “It was intended to be a surprise, but our brigade was marched directly over the works, and of course, were discovered by the rebels, who immediately opened on us with all their artillery.”34 Barton reacted to the fire by halting his advance, oblivious to the appearance of Bell’s brigade on his left that endeavored to draw attention from what Bell still assumed would be Barton’s assault. Pvt. Elias A. Bryant of Bell’s Fourth New Hampshire accused Barton of intentionally abandoning them “to the tender mercy of the enemy,” on account of Bell’s potential promotion, an honor Barton sought for himself. Bell’s soldiers gained a foothold near the Confederate works and held this position until 7:00 p.m., taking heavy casualties in the process, until finally ordered to withdraw. “Many were wounded on the ground unable to get back into our lines,” wrote Bryant. “Others were left to die, such as could not drag themselves along.” Bell reported 150 killed and wounded out of about 750 engaged in this fruitless attack.35 Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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Johnson lost thirty-­five men, mostly Gracie’s Alabamans, and regained the picket line that Bell’s advance had temporarily captured. A few Tennesseans from Johnson’s old brigade were engaged, including brigade commander Col. John S. Fulton. This thirty-­six-­year-­old Lincoln County, Tennessee, lawyer began the war as a private in the Forty-­Fourth Tennessee and had advanced to brigade commander at Chickamauga under Johnson. A shell burst near Fulton’s head during Turner’s little offensive, inflicting a wound that would prove mortal on July 4.36 Turner suffered a total loss of 185 on June 30. He sought a flag of truce to recover the wounded but, thought Bryant, because there were “colored troops” in the area the Confederates would not grant one. Blame for the failure fell squarely on Barton’s shoulders. Turner relieved him from command “for inexcusable dilatoriness in not having his column in position for assault” and for “gross carelessness and inattention in moving his column over the parapet in full view of the enemy’s line.” Lt. Charles Kline of the 115th New York reported that Barton had been placed under arrest and faced a court-­martial. “We will be glad to be rid of him—he was too airish,” thought Kline.37 Soldiers in both armies expected Grant to launch a major attack on July 4, emulating the success he achieved at Vicksburg the previous Independence Day. “Tomorrow is July 4th,” wrote a puckish member of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts. “I guess there will be some lengthy orations delivered here by the speakers of the times. Mr. ‘Parrot,’ Mr. ‘Mortar,’ Mr. ‘Columbiad,’ and several gentlemen from Springfield will address the multitude. Their arguments are very weighty and will undoubtedly make a great impression upon Confederate minds.” The Confederate aide, Richard W. Corbin, cited Federal deserters for his sarcastic belief that Grant “intended a grand assault on the Fourth of July,” the soldiers to be stimulated by “oceans of whiskey, the Yankee pluck-­ infusing specific” and “orations of an intensely blood and thunder order [to be] delivered by patriotic contractors and shoddy politicians who had come down to have some fun, and to enjoy at a safe distance the spectacle of a ‘right big fight.’” Residents in Petersburg—what few remained—prepared for such an attack by moving out of the city or strengthening bombproofs in the sides of hills, but their labors proved largely unnecessary. Almost everyone, soldier or civilian, expressed surprise that the day passed relatively quietly, save for festive celebrations on both sides of the lines.38 A battle of sorts did unfold involving flags and musicians instead of deadly weapons. Toward noon, the Confederates began to erect national or army standards on their forts and batteries, a gesture quickly mimicked by the Federals, “each party trying to unfurl the greatest number of banners till the parapets of 344

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each line were covered respectively with Confederate and American flags,” according to a correspondent with the New York Herald. At daylight, a number of Union bands poured forth “a perfect hurricane of national airs.” The Confederates struck up their own musical offerings, each side cheering their sectional tunes and groaning at those of their opponents. “After sundown our brass bands and those of the enemy indulged in a musical duel,” recorded Private Levy of the Donaldsonville Artillery, the Confederates jeering loudly whenever Yankee Doodle pierced the air and emitting a hearty Rebel Yell at the sound of Dixie.39 Some soldiers overindulged—the Confederates in edibles and the Federals in alcohol. “The men determined to have one great, festive occasion on this, the anniversary of American independence,” wrote a Richmond soldier. “And to further the object ten of the men subscribed each $3.00 to have one grand Fourth of July pot of soup, and such soup as the most fastidious epicure would delight in sharing. What a feast,” remembered this Virginian, “all having as much soup as they could eat and some to spare!” On the Union side of the works, whiskey became available in almost any quantity, resulting in “a more drunken, disorderly lot of boys” than had ever been seen.40 The absence of sharpshooting enticed the pickets out of their lairs and offered them a chance to relax in the sunshine, play cards, prepare food, and perpetrate a few memorable antics. Some Confederate sentries lured a large canine mascot out of the Federal trenches and into their own, where they attached a canteen to its tail and started it off between the lines, eliciting “roars of laughter and shouts of applause.” In the evening, an inebriated Northern officer “full of patriotism & whiskey” climbed atop the earthworks and commenced lecturing the Rebels about the virtues of the old Union, assuring comrades that given ten minutes he could persuade the Confederates to change their ways. The Union pickets allowed this convivial fellow to go part of the way across the no-­man’s-­land between the lines before they fetched him back and placed him under arrest. “The enemy . . . seem . . . to have been very much disappointed at our not giving them a grand Bear Dance on the 4th,” concluded Col. Ely Parker, the Seneca Indian chief on Grant’s staff.41 Grant’s passivity and rumors of Federal withdrawals in response to Early’s crossing of the Potomac River prompted Lee to test the Federal defenses on July 8. “It was thought . . . that they were moving off, as they ceased firing on our lines and also from shelling the city,” explained one Confederate. Beauregard sent orders to General Hoke to open fire with all his division’s batteries at 5:00 p.m. “in order to discover, if possible, the cause of the enemy’s present silence.” Hokes’s skirmishers and his men in the main lines were to begin shooting as well. “At the cessation of the artillery fire, all firing will cease suddenly and Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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the troops will cheer as though about to take the offensive—a few men here and there will show themselves particularly in the parapets,” Beauregard directed. The Creole commander told Hoke to watch for any perceived weaknesses in the Union lines and to have a force of reserves poised to “take the offensive should the Comd General so determine.”42 Just as Lee instructed, artillery exploded late that afternoon along the Confederates’ eastern perimeter and around to the west side of Jerusalem Plank Road. “Our men began cheering and yelling on our left which passed down the line,” wrote Pvt. Thomas L. McCarty of the First Texas. “No one knew what the yelling was about, but everybody yelled like wild Indians.” Sgt. Edward Richardson Crockett of the Fourth Texas agreed that “we make a noisy demonstration for a mile or two along our lines for a purpose known only to the great leaders.” The firing created “quite a commotion in the Yankies lines,” thought General Bratton, “and quite a cannonade” in response. Eventually, the lead and iron ceased flying and, according to McCarty, “everything got quiet & resumed its former way.” This “Chinese demonstration,” as one Confederate called it, persuaded Lee that the Federals were alert and in their previous positions and strength. This intelligence did little, however, to dampen his effort to find an opportunity to make a successful attack.43 The opposing cavalry operated on the margins of their respective armies, the Federals largely in Prince George County and the Confederates in a wide arc through Dinwiddie. Wade Hampton commanded three mounted divisions, his own (now under Matthew C. Butler), Fitzhugh Lee’s, and Rooney Lee’s, deployed in that order from the right near Sappony Church to the left, connecting with the right flank of the infantry.44 Central Dinwiddie County held few charms for the gray horsemen charged with patrolling this section of Southside Virginia. Capt. Charles Grattan, a staff officer serving with the Cavalry Corps, provided a detailed, if unflattering, description of what he called “this deserted land” in a July letter home. Dismissing the countryside as “one vast field of . . . sandy ground interspersed with slight swells . . . dignified with the name of hills” and intersected by dry beds of small branches “that flow in perfect jungles of briars, bushes & vines,” Grattan asked his reader to “imagine in every clearing a small house—one of these wells, a corn crib empty, a watermelon, black eyed pea, squash, sorghum, sweet & Irish potato patch—half a dozen little Negroes who make a shift to hide their nakedness, an old mule or blind horse and . . . a woman plowing an ox . . . & you can get some idea of the beauties of the landscapes hereabouts.” Horse artilleryman Cpl. George M. Neese agreed that Dinwiddie County “looks like . . . the land is very poor and unproductive; some of it is nothing but white sand with a few 346

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briers trying to creep over it. The woodland is composed of low squatty pines on the little ridges, with oak timber in the low places, standing in an undergrowth of bushes so thick that a twisty wind can hardly creep through it.” This was less than ideal terrain in which to conduct operations, but some of Hampton’s horsemen found productive fishing in the larger waterways and enough ripe melons and other fruit to reward diligent foragers.45 For nearly two weeks following the defeat of the Wilson-­Kautz Raid, the Confederate cavalry conducted daily picketing which, according to one South Carolina officer, “does not amount to much.” Most of the dismounted troopers had acquired horses captured from Wilson’s routed brigades, and some Confederates predicted a quiet summer for the Cavalry Corps. But the restoration of traffic on the Petersburg (& Weldon) Railroad attracted Union attention and led to a sharp skirmish near Reams’ Station on July 12.46 The repair of the Petersburg Railroad meant that one of the primary achievements of Grant’s Second Offensive had been reversed. Once the trains began to roll from North Carolina directly into Petersburg, the Federal high command ordered a reconnaissance toward Reams’ Station to determine Confederate dispositions and gauge if the tracks could be destroyed once again. The First Pennsylvania Cavalry and First New Jersey Cavalry of David M. Gregg’s Second Division drew the assignment to scout south and, if practical, damage the railroad. The rest of Gregg’s division would ride in support, along with a battery of horse artillery. The Federals broke camp on the evening of July 11 and traveled to Prince George Court House through the night. After a short rest for breakfast, the troopers proceeded southwest, crossing the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad and gaining Jerusalem Plank Road. Continuing south to Warwick Swamp near Lee’s Mill, the Federals attempted to veer west on the direct road to Reams’ Station, when gunshots erupted shortly after noon.47 Portions of Fitz Lee’s two brigades learned of the Union approach and headed east on the byway connecting Reams’ Station with Jerusalem Plank Road. It was they who provided this resistance. After a short fight, Lee captured about thirty troopers from the Second Pennsylvania Cavalry before withdrawing toward the depot. Henry E. Davies, commander of Gregg’s First Brigade, pursued with his First New Jersey and First Pennsylvania Cavalry regiments taking point. The road toward Reams’ Station was narrow and covered with felled trees, making the going slow. By 3:30 p.m. the Federals pulled up short of the rail bed, stopped by a Confederate line of battle “protected by breast-­works and secure on both flanks, about one mile in extent.” Although Davies reported the presence of only enemy cavalry, he could see dust clouds in the distance, suggesting the imminent arrival of infantry reinforcements.48 Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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Davies communicated his situation to General Gregg, who in turn informed Second Corps commander Winfield Hancock that his troopers were stymied and his horses suffering from lack of water. Hancock briefed General Meade on the situation and then transmitted to Davies Meade’s orders to retreat to Lee’s Mill, where water could be obtained; he further promised to send a division of infantry if events so required. In fact, Heth’s Division was en route to Reams’ Station to assist Fitz Lee, and the prospect arose of another major engagement around the little depot. As matters unfolded, however, Meade told Hancock after dark that Grant had decided to cancel the entire operation and to return the Second Corps infantry and artillery that had started to Gregg’s relief. Heth’s soldiers also trudged back to their lines without incident. The chaplain of the First New Jersey Cavalry declared the entire operation “an affair of no importance,” although one Confederate claimed that they had netted seventy prisoners during the day and numerous dead horses littered the road to Reams’ Station, indicating, in the words of a Union cannoneer, that “our forces had fought for every rod they had gained.”49 This evidence of Union offensive inclinations did nothing to dampen Lee’s continuing aggressive instincts. Earlier in the month, Grant had detached the Sixth Corps to confront Early near Washington, prompting the Confederate chieftain to order an attack on the morning of July 18 against a presumably vulnerable Union line. Field’s and Kershaw’s Divisions would bear primary responsibility for an assault between Baxter Road and Rives’ Salient, success to be exploited by a sweep around Meade’s left flank. Richard Anderson arranged a reconnaissance on the 17th, personally examining the relevant terrain, while regimental officers briefed their troops that evening about what would be executed at early dawn. The prospect of a frontal attack did not sit well with at least one Confederate. Capt. Joseph Banks Lyle of General Bratton’s staff confessed his trepidation to his diary that night: “I make no prediction but quietly deplore the necessity—very many will fail to go but many, I hope enough to do the work well.”50 Lyle’s prediction that some Confederates would be unwilling to make such an attack proved all too true. Two men from William F. Perry’s Alabama brigade of Field’s Division (and perhaps many others), upon learning of the assault plans, deserted during the night and reported the impending attack to their captors. These Alabamans garbled the rationale behind the attack, ascribing it to the army’s desire to drive back the Federals and shorten their lines in order to facilitate the detachment of forces to Georgia as reinforcements for the beleaguered Army of Tennessee in front of Atlanta. Meade relayed this information to Grant at 9:00 p.m. and also warned Generals Burnside and Warren to be on 348

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the alert to repulse an assault. Grant informed Ben Butler of this critical intelligence, and both the Tenth and Eighteenth Corps also took heed.51 The Union high command welcomed the prospect of defending their powerful works. “Deserters say we are to be attacked tomorrow morning and we are ready for them,” wrote Warren. “I hope they will for I believe we shall make one good step towards ending the war if they do.” Meade was almost giddy with anticipation. “We are quite on the qui-­vive to-­night, from the reports of deserters, who say we are to be attacked to-­morrow,” Meade wrote his wife. “Their story is that Johnston is so pressed by Sherman, that if he is not reinforced, he will have to succumb, and that he cannot be reinforced until we are driven back. We consider this great news, and are most anxiously and impatiently awaiting the attack, feeling confident that we can whip twice our numbers, if they have the hardihood to attack us.”52 As Anderson conducted his final reconnaissance and preparations for the predawn assault, he learned of the turncoats and the probability that the Yankees had been tipped off. “It became apparent,” wrote Anderson, “that the enemy suspected and was preparing to frustrate our design. . . . The attack in consequence [was] indefinitely postponed.” The Confederate brigades returned to their trenches and little beyond the usual skirmish fire marked the day.53 A big story did circulate through the Confederate camps, however. Union pickets told their butternut counterparts that General Grant had been wounded in the arm by a mortar shell and had just died from the effects of an amputation. “We have the news here that old Grant is dead and all the boys are rejoiced to think that he is,” gushed Pvt. Davie A. Hampton of the Forty-­Second North Carolina. “They think that if this be true that we will have peace before long or that we will have rest around Richmond for a while for him and Butler are the chaps that have been doing the work.” General Beauregard gave some credence to the story and ascribed the recent quiet along the lines to Grant’s death. “He thinks that Grant has been blown up by a shell,” wrote Captain Dimmock, “a just fate for a man who would bombard women and children.”54 Not every Confederate was so credulous. “We hear the stories you do about Grant’s death & some believe it but I do not,” Dr. Claiborne informed his wife. Captain Biggs admitted to “considerable doubt about the report,” while Colonel Waring dismissed the tale as “sheer nonsense.” Pvt. Jesse R. Bowles of the Fifty-­Fifth Virginia not only rejected the likelihood of Grant’s demise but hoped it proved untrue, “for I think he is the best general that the Yankees has ever had for us for I don’t think any other general would have made his men charge our works.” A Richmond editor agreed that “no General has ever played Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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so handsomely into our hands, has exposed the lives of his men so frankly in impossible enterprises, or obtained such small results from such enormous means. We might be worsted but could not be bettered and therefore we are unwilling to part with Grant.”55 Grant remained very much alive at the head of two armies around Petersburg, both of which suffered many of the same privations that plagued his enemies. The heat, the dust, and the rains that turned the trenches into mudholes tormented the Yankees as much as they did the Rebels. “If it was not for the hot weather and the dust we should be very well situated, “wrote a Massachusetts gunner, “but it is awful hot and ye Gods the dust. We have to eat and drink it for it is a perfect cloud all the time.” Sunstroke prostrated any number of unfortunate Federals. “It is so cursed hot I can hardly breathe and it is almost impossible to write or do anything,” explained Pvt. Andrew Jackson Crossley of the engineers. General Birney estimated that the mercury sometimes reached 100 degrees except on the occasions when a thunderstorm inundated the landscape. “It rained hard all night,” wrote Maj. Charles Chipman of the Twenty-­Ninth Massachusetts on July 25. “Our trenches were filled with water our men were obliged to stand in water nearly up to their knees all night.” Capt. Charles M. Coit of the Eighth Connecticut believed that “life in the pits in a rain storm is about as disagreeable as anything can be.”56 The Federals devised makeshift shelters similar to those erected by the Confederates. They built “dug-­outs” or “pigeon holes” in the sides of the trenches and stretched canvas over them to afford some relief from the sun. In the camps to the rear, regular rows of tents mushroomed out of the thirsty earth, sometimes shared with unwelcome companions. “Preparatory to pitching a tent, we killed a copperhead & a lizard immediately took possession of my bed,” wrote Lt. John Rumsey Brinckle of the Fifth U.S. Artillery. “I always find a half dozen huge beetles sleeping with me in the morning & have to empty the same number out of my boots. As long as they do not evince any carnivorous propensities, I can stand it. Their shells are hard & they do not mash on my blankets. I have faint hope of exterminating them.” Even more unsettling than snakes, lizards, and giant insects was the presence of the dead, particularly from the fighting on June 22 and 30. Many half-­buried corpses littered the ground, emitting an intolerable stench. No wonder one Pennsylvanian confessed that “the Army of the Potomac consider this the hardest campaign of the war.”57 Union soldiers rotated into the front lines just as the Confederates did, sometimes staying between two and four days at the front before retiring to a secondary position—although, according to Major Chipman, “the second line is about as dangerous as the first.” Lt. Col. Charles Cummings of the Seven350

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teenth Vermont explained that “it is severe work laying in the boiling sun two days when you cannot once stand up & when you must eat your hardtack & drink water that has stood in your canteen all day, & when you must creep to the sink or wherever else you find it necessary to go.”58 The Federals did enjoy certain comforts denied their enemies, such as the various victuals provided by the U.S. Sanitary Commission. These items included sauerkraut, onions, cabbage, pickles, beets, potatoes, canned fruit, and fresh lemons that helped the troops stave off the worst effects, including scurvy, of a mundane and unbalanced pork-­and-­hardtack diet. The men learned how to charm Sanitary Commission workers by giving them battlefield relics and other favors, gestures that often yielded a bonanza of fresh produce. Ice proved plentiful in the storage facilities on nearby farms and plantations, and sutlers maintained an inventory of treats available to any soldier with money. Officers’ wives frequently arrived at City Point to spend welcome time with their husbands, as travel by boat up the James had become safe and routine—a convenience unavailable to Confederate spouses.59 Conjugal visits and a better diet did nothing to alleviate the deadly nature of service in the trenches. “The bullets patter like rain at times,” remembered New York Pvt. Alfred S. Roe. “It is a continual rattle of musketry, sometimes swelling into a roar . . . and varied with artillery and mortars.” Pvt. Henry Pippitt of the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery explained, “You are in no danger in the pits if you keep your head down. Some fools want to show their bravery them is the ones get shot.” Division commander Romeyn Ayres of the Fifth Corps fell victim to this hubris in July when he refused advice to dismount while talking with a subordinate near the front line. As he indulged his habit of twirling his moustache, “a bullet clipped off the end of his little finger and induced him to reconsider.” Exposing your head above the works, even for an instant, invited a fusillade. “We find that a judicious dodge once in a while is conducive to health,” wrote a Connecticut soldier. Sometimes the men would raise their hats atop their ramrods a few seconds until a bullet pierced their kepi, then return to the rear boasting that they had experienced a very close call. “It became the custom to bestow the names of officers killed on the batteries and forts, so that is used to be said that glory consisted in being killed, having your name spelled wrong in the . . . newspapers, and having a fort named after you,” quipped New Hampshire Capt. Thomas L. Livermore.60 The Northern boys were just as likely as their counterparts to comment on the frequent if unauthorized fraternization practiced by the opposing pickets. “On our line where we do picket duty they are quite friendly,” confirmed Capt. George Stearns of the Third New Hampshire. “They come over every day and Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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exchange papers, and our men go over and talk with them and in fact they can do that without going over the line.” Meade’s aide, Theodore Lyman, acknowledged that although these truces were unofficial, the soldiers considered them “sacred” and they were “honorably observed.” Usually, only the enlisted men conducted this friendly intercourse. Curious officers were not welcome as both sides assumed that the brass sought to obtain information rather than a rival newspaper or a plug of tobacco. When on the odd occasion a soldier violated one of these informal cease-­fires, the men disciplined him themselves. “A Reb, either from greenness or by accident, fired his musket,” related Lyman, “whereupon our people dropped in their holes and were on the point of opening along the whole line, when the Rebs waved their hands and cried: ‘Don’t shoot; you’ll see how we’ll fix him!’ Then they took the musket from the unfortunate grey-­ back, put a rail on his shoulder, and made him walk up and down for a great while in front of their rifle-­pits!” Fair warning would be issued by whichever side decided to end the peace and return to sniping. “Get into your holes” could be heard echoing across the lines.61 On at least one occasion, a personal insult inspired a truce. Pvt. Michael DeLacy of the Sixty-­Third New York betrayed stereotypical Irish pugnaciousness when he shouted indignities at the Confederate pickets, calling them “a low lived lot of spalpeens,” and boasting that any Yankee could whip any Secesh. He concluded by sneering “we’ll knock the devil out of yees.” Soon enough, a feisty Confederate emerged from the trenches to accept the challenge. He and DeLacy engaged in hand-­to-­hand combat using clubbed muskets and bayonets. Predictably, for the sake of the story, the Irishman prevailed, released his defeated enemy with nothing more than a slight cut on his chin, and returned to Union lines amid cheers.62 Considerable vice prevailed behind Union lines. “Whiskey was never so plenty in the army as it is now,” reported a telegraph operator with the Fifth Corps. “Everybody gets it that wants it.” Private Crossley gleefully admitted that he was given as much whiskey as he could drink one night, something the soldiers called “Dutch courage. I was as brave and bold as a sheep after I had drank about a pint of Commissary.” Officers often issued liquor rations to soldiers who worked through the night improving fortifications, the only time that such labor could be done with any degree of safety.63 A few Northern soldiers indulged another passion that met with much less tolerance. Several incidents of rape sullied the Federal war record, but to the army’s credit the perpetrators received the harshest penalty. The summer’s most notorious case involved Mary E. Stiles, a Prince George County woman attacked by two New Yorkers. These men, Pvts. Ransom S. Gordon and Daniel 352

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Geary, faced execution by hanging. Some 3,000 troops received orders to witness the criminals’ brutal deaths and despite the heinous nature of the crime, some of these soldiers were moved to tears by the spectacle.64 The campaign that began on the Rapidan and now, two months later, seemed to settle in around Richmond and Petersburg, had taken its toll on the Army of the Potomac. “The loss of a large proportion of the best officers, the nervous prostration of the men, the immense destruction of life, all tend to injure the morale and discipline,” confessed Colonel Lyman. “I fear the greater part of this ‘heroic army’ would vote for peace at present on almost any terms,” wrote Lt. John R. Paxton of the 140th Pennsylvania.65 The soldiers manifested their disillusionment in several ways, most pointedly in their disinclination to execute frontal assaults, the standard tactic in most engagements. “One thing is certain,” averred Lt. Col. Hazard Stevens, “our men are not so ready to charge earthworks as they were, so many of the best officers and men have been killed that the remainder are rather averse to rushing in blindly.” Surg. Nathan Hayward of the celebrated Twentieth Massachusetts, a unit that had seen more than its share of savage combat, agreed that “the Second Corps will no longer charge works with the vigor and enthusiasm with which they commenced their series of charges.” Citing the death or wounding of twenty brigade commanders and seventy regimental leaders in such assaults, Hayward asserted that “the sacrifice of life was useless and the soldiers knew it.” He decried that “orders for the charges have been given in the coldest methodical official manner . . . not the presence of general to encourage and inspire the men by the example of their own determination,” and insisted that these reluctant soldiers “are not cowards; they are eager to meet the rebels on an equal field. But they have lost faith in the wisdom of generals who order assaults . . . with what they consider insufficient means.” Lt. Claron I. Miltimore of the Thirty-­Seventh Wisconsin simply concluded that “Grant and Lee are building a mighty slaughter pen for many an innocent victim as the ox who walks coolly to the slaying floor.”66 Sometimes demoralization prompted an unhappy soldier to forsake his comrades and escape to Confederate lines. Doing so entailed a distinct risk, however, as Federal pickets had grown alert to bounty jumpers, cowards, and turncoats who attempted to desert to the enemy. “One of our men went out on the picket line yesterday and watched till he thought he had a good chance, when he made a run for the rebel picket line,” wrote Sgt. Warren H. Freeman of the Thirteenth Massachusetts, “but one of our pickets saw him, and seizing his gun shot him in the small of the back; served the deserter just right.”67 It would be highly inaccurate to conclude, however, that the average Billy Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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Yank at Petersburg had given up on his cause. Lt. Hermon Clarke of the 117th New York told his father that he lost all his clothes to a thief, hadn’t eaten anything but pork, hardtack, and coffee in a month, “marched, picketed, and fought in all kinds of weather but cool. A little more than half my face has skin on it; the rest is covered with scabs where it is torn with brush skirmishing. Still I am well.” Hazard Stevens cracked that “it is rather disgraceful to be alive these times,” in reference to the loss of so many brave comrades in battle. “We laugh and joke and enjoy ourselves as if there were no death and destruction all around; in fact the danger adds an additional zest to the merriment.” Colonel Cummings finished describing for his wife the privations and disease that his regiment endured, but concluded simply that “the army is in a very good condition. It is as full of fight as ever.”68 The attitudes of the Federal soldiers often reflected their confidence in the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant. There is ample evidence that despite the hardships and daunting casualty count, much of the army continued to believe in its overall commander. “Grant will do the job if anyone can,” wrote Capt. Henry C. Hall of the Eighth Connecticut, “and I am contented to fight on as long as I am able, obey all orders, and wait for the end.” Col. Robert McAllister agreed: “I am satisfied that Grant knows what he is about and will lead us to success,” he told his wife. “The men all believe in Grant and are ready to do anything he orders,” confirmed Sgt. Henry E. Taintor of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery. “They have implicit confidence in him and have the highest hopes of soon marching into Richmond.”69 Grant often fared well when compared to a previous general in chief, George McClellan. “Grant has determination enough to match their [the Confederates’] persistency & after all he is not losing as many men in battle as McClellan did in the swamps by disease,” pronounced a woman writing to Chaplain Lemuel T. Foote of the 151st New York, employing wildly misguided statistics. Pvt. John K. Dentzer of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania assured his mother with semiliterate prose that “Old US Grant will let him no that he aint got McCleon to del with.” Lieutenant Kline acknowledged that the folks back home might lose patience with Grant, but he assured his family that “as yet the army have not lost confidence in him. He is sometimes called the Butcher, while McLellan was called the grave digger. If the folks at the North could come down here and see what we have to overcome, they would not be so fast to drive us into Richmond.”70 Still, some men in the army found Grant’s generalship wanting, especially in relation to Little Mac. “I do not like Gen. Grant [and] do not think him competent to command over 1000 men,” wrote Lt. Col. Henry C. Newton of the 354

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Ninety-­Third New York. “The taking of Vicksburg compared to the taking of Richmond would be about like Goodspeedville to New York City and he spent millions of money in taking that place.” Pvt. James Coe of the Second Michigan thought that Grant could “beat little mack a digging and that is about all he can doo.” Sgt. John W. Chase, a Massachusetts cannoneer, also judged Grant’s generalship inferior to that of McClellan’s two years earlier, and believed that had Little Mac been treated fairly by the administration, there would have been no need for the current campaign. “But I suppose it won’t do to speak your mind on the subject,” warned Chase. “If you do they will say you are a Copperhead and perhaps a poor cuss like me might get shot.”71 Most Union soldiers, regardless of their opinion of Grant, nurtured disdain for Northern civilians who failed to do everything in their power to sustain the war effort, including joining the army. There were certainly a few men who had become so discouraged that they shared a desire to end the conflict at any cost, but the vast majority looked on the “peace at any price” crowd with scorn. “If it was not for those devilish Chicken harted Peace Men as they term themselves the Rebellion would of been crushed long ago,” ranted Maj. Albert Brooker of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery. Capt. William L. Heermance of the Sixth New York Cavalry believed that “nothing is so discouraging to the soldiers who have contended from the first, to be patted on the back and glorified by those who are backward in giving the aid that we most need. . . . What we want is men, strong and willing hands to share the toil and danger of a soldier’s life.” He almost regretted that Early had failed to capture Washington, for had he done so the North would have awakened “to a sense of the importance of doing all in their power to assist the Government without finding fault about the way the war is conducted.” No less a person than George Meade reflected that “symptoms of discontent” in the North “if persisted in, must paralyze our cause.”72 The men evinced a bit more ambivalence toward the civilians they encountered around Petersburg. Captain Heermance admired their devotion to principle—“even in a bad cause.” Vermont Brigade musician Charles B. Putnam found the residents around Petersburg far superior to the Virginians he had encountered farther north. “Instead of a class of low, ignorant people with only ambition enough to raise and eat ‘hog and hominy,’ and whose buildings would not make respectable pig pens,” he wrote, “I have found an intelligent class of people, the beau ideal of the ‘F.F.Vs.’” Refined or otherwise, the local population elicited no sympathy from Colonel McAllister. “The curse of slavery has marked every acre of land, and the desolation of war has laid it all in a barren wast,” he wrote his wife. He found the women to be the most virulent secesArmy Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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sionists. The Virginians, he thought, deserved all the misery that the war could mete out.73 Union artillery continued to inflict such misery on the residents of Petersburg. Cpl. Henry E. Hall, a Maine gunner, bragged that his battery had bombarded the city when the fire engines were ringing “for the fun of the thing. . . . I suppose you would be surprised to see what soldiers will get up for amusement.” Although random shelling of the city continued throughout late June and much of July, Union artillery focused primarily on specific military targets. The Thirty-­Fourth New York Battery, for example, obliterated seven buildings of the Griffith farm, near Pegram’s Salient, in order to deny Southern sharpshooters a convenient roost.74 Federal troops shared with the Confederates a mixture of dread and fascination regarding incoming mortar fire, especially after dark. “A flash . . . was followed by the hollow boom of the mortar, and a little spark of fire could be seen rising slowly in the air, describing a beautiful curve as it reached its height,” remembered a Bay State soldier. “Beginning to descend, it moved more and more rapidly, the hissing of the fuse sounding louder and louder as it came nearer. Suddenly, coincident with the explosion, came a flash that illumined the whole landscape, and the ensuing darkness could almost be felt.” Veterans developed the ability to identify the caliber of enemy projectiles merely by their sound. Mortar shells elicited the lion’s share of comments, however, because their trajectory neutralized the strength of the works, and a soldier’s safety depended on his ability to seek cover before the bomb exploded.75 The best-­known mortar along the Union lines arrived just behind the Federal works on July 8, on the tracks of the City Point Railroad. General Butler had shipped, from Fort Monroe to City Point, a thirteen-­inch seacoast monster and a specially designed rail car on which to fire it. He had an ordinary platform car reinforced by additional beams and plated on top with iron. This giant weapon targeted the powerful and annoying batteries on the north bank of the Appomattox, firing 225-­pound shells more than two miles. A company of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery managed this piece that reputedly “excited dread among the Confederate gunners” and helped suppress the enfilading fire from Chesterfield Heights.76 Some soldiers remembered calling this huge mortar the “Petersburg Express,” but considerable evidence suggests that a number of guns bore that moniker. Variously described as a two-­hundred-­pounder, a thirty-­pounder Parrott, or a thirty-­two-­pounder, the Petersburg Express (whatever it was) maintained a fairly regular firing schedule, lobbing its iron messengers into the city about every fifteen minutes. The noise of its shell reminded listeners of “a train 356

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of cars starting, and when the engine goes chug-­chug-­chug-­chug gaining speed, the chug quickening until it is one continuous sound.” The nickname Petersburg Express was a play on words, referencing one of the Cockade City’s daily newspapers, although Major Brooker claimed that one of its projectiles had blasted the office of that periodical, thus giving the gun its identity. The large mortar and the probable weapon (or weapons) dubbed the Petersburg Express were located close to one another, contributing to the confusion over the identity of this celebrity artillery piece.77 Whereas the Confederates obtained shelter from incoming artillery by utilizing the Dimmock Line and Harris Line works, the Yankees had to create an entirely new fortification system—except in a few cases where they reconfigured captured Dimmock Line batteries to face west. “The greater portion of July was devoted to strengthening the line of intrenchments from the Jerusalem plank road to the [lower] Appomattox, constructing redoubts and siege batteries,” reported General Meade. Meade approved a scheme on July 11 to develop a series of enclosed forts, connected by infantry curtains, and located within mutually supportable intervals, although the army had been digging entrenchments as circumstances suggested for several weeks. Large details— each hundreds of men strong—labored mostly at night to create a powerful integrated defensive system, complete with rows of abatis guarding the front. “We have been very hard at work for a week back in the works,” wrote Capt. Henry H. B. Chamberlain of the Ninety-­Seventh New York. “I wish you could see them now. General Lee might mass his entire force and hurl them upon any point of our line without a particle of success. We are all anxious for him to try it.”78 The forts extended from the Appomattox River south and then bent west, ending at Jerusalem Plank Road. Here, an expansive redoubt eventually named Fort Davis anchored the left of the Union defenses. The largest of these forts arose just east of Jerusalem Plank Road, opposite the powerful cluster of Confederate batteries around Rives’ Salient. Work began here on July 4 and took nearly three weeks to complete. Digging at night and then enduring Confederate bombardments during the day, men of the Fifth Corps, led by the 142nd Pennsylvania, erected “a large redan, a portion of fortification included in a single salient angle, with another smaller redan at its right, connected by curtains with front and flanking ditches; the larger had eighteen embrasures, the smaller four.” A huge covered way, wide enough to accommodate supply wagons, led to the rear in zigzag fashion and the fort contained numerous traverses and bombproof shelters. Col. Charles Wainwright, Fifth Corps artillery chief, considered this installation—later named Fort Sedgwick—“an immense Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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undertaking, having room enough in it to hold one of our present brigades. I can hardly suppose that there was any call for quite so large a work, and am inclined to think that it was a hobby of Warren’s.”79 The Federals also destroyed trenches in July. “Please direct your engineer officer to demolish all works built by the enemy and now in rear of our lines,” Grant wrote Meade on July 14. “Of course this will not include any turned to face the enemy and now used by us, nor will it be well, perhaps, to destroy those in full view of the enemy.” Orders also arrived to shorten the lines by leveling the works previously occupied by the Sixth Corps troops that had been sent to counter Early a few days earlier. The captured and now empty remnants of the Dimmock and Hagood Lines could be dismantled during the day, but the abandoned Union trenches were flattened at night.80 In addition to all the digging, artillery bombardments, and deadly picket-­ line skirmishing, Grant had to keep abreast of an army and an organization that constantly evolved throughout the early summer. Grant’s two local armies totaled between 110,000 and 112,000 men at the end of June. That number declined by July 20 to about 93,000. Casualties accounted for some of the diminution, but so did the mustering out of a number of veteran units. “This division is dwindling away,” lamented the Sixth Corps’ Hazard Stevens. “Regiments are going out of service every week.” In fact, the enlistment terms for nine Sixth Corps regiments consisting of more than 1,500 officers and men had expired by the end of June. Attrition of this nature included 2,137 troops in nineteen Second Corps regiments and batteries. Another round of unit terminations in mid-­July affecting all regiments whose time would be up before August 25 subtracted hundreds more men as three-­year enlistments expired and soldiers declined to serve an additional hitch.81 General Grant beseeched the president on July 19 to institute a call for 300,000 new troops to address his dwindling manpower. “The presence of this number of re-­enforcements would save the annoyance of raids, and would enable us to drive the enemy from his present front, particularly from Richmond, without attacking fortifications,” Grant argued. “The greater number of men we have the shorter and less sanguinary will be the war.” Lincoln wryly replied the next day: “I suppose you had not seen the call for 500,000 made the day before, and which I suppose covers the case.” The president had, indeed, issued a proclamation on July 18 soliciting half a million new soldiers for terms of one, two, or three years. Jurisdictional quotas would be established and those governmental subdivisions failing to fill their quotas with volunteers would be subjected to federal conscription.82 Although men such as Colonel McAllister praised the quality of the re358

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cruits who joined his brigade, other officers remained skeptical, none more so than Fifth Corps division commander Lysander Cutler. Shortly after the president’s proclamation became public, Cutler wrote Lincoln expressing great dissatisfaction with the efficacy of the recruiting process. Experience prompted Cutler to predict that many of the new soldiers—volunteers, substitutes, and draftees—would be unqualified to serve. “We shall, as heretofore, receive a batch of aged paralytics, scorbutics, imbeciles, &c., to be sent to hospitals or discharged—an element of weakness instead of strength. . . . I am most firmly convinced that not two-­thirds of the conscripts and substitutes ever reached the army, and . . . not half of those who did were ever available as soldiers for the field.” Col. Delevan Bates, commander of the Thirtieth USCT, waxed sarcastic about conscription in a letter to his father, indicting the patriotism of prospective enlistees: “I see another draft is in progress through the north carrying consternation through the hearts of every able bodied man. How glad I am to be safe from the monster. No fears here of conscription. No dreams of Canadian safety, or wishes for a touch of rheumatism, consumption, liver complaints or other diseases upon which a doctor could base a certificate of disability.”83 The diminishing strength of regiments and brigades caused the army to consolidate its table of organization. Orders issued in early July eliminated all the Fourth Brigades in various divisions with their constituent regiments redistributed. This expedient went down hard with the affected men who would be forced to adapt to new commanders, routines, and comrades. “Now . . . these must be re-­learned and re-­formed but I much doubt if they ever are, to the degree that characterized the old brigade,” groused a New Yorker. There can be little doubt that reorganizations and the replacement of veterans with newcomers of whatever quality impaired the army’s efficiency.84 Grant had taken steps to strengthen his armies at Petersburg weeks before Lincoln’s proclamation. Explaining to Chief-­of-­Staff Henry Halleck on June 23 that the campaign for Richmond and Petersburg would require additional manpower, he ordered the Nineteenth Corps of the Department of the Gulf to Virginia. The next day, Halleck telegraphed Maj. Gen. Edward R. S. Canby, the commanding officer in Louisiana, to ship immediately “all available white troops in the Department of the Gulf ” to Fort Monroe. The Quartermaster Department dispatched transport ships to facilitate the transfer. The first of the Nineteenth Corps brigades embarked from Algiers, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, on July 3. Through July 20 the bulk of two divisions, all under the command of Brig. Gen. William H. Emory, left southern Louisiana to reinforce Butler.85 The Nineteenth Corps had no idea where they were heading as they Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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boarded their transports, because their orders had been sealed, not to be opened until they reached the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The voyage to Hampton Roads took a week, the first ships arriving on July 10. However, word of Early’s victory at Monocacy Junction the previous day generated orders for these soldiers to continue their voyage, arriving in Washington, serendipitously, about the same time as Early. Four of Emory’s brigades eventually reported to Bermuda Hundred between July 21 and 25, but their stay in Southside Virginia would be brief.86 Early’s campaign siphoned not only the Nineteenth Corps from the Petersburg theater; it also claimed one of the Army of the Potomac’s premier organizations. Not until July 5 did the Union intelligence apparatus inform Grant of Early’s presence in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Grant trusted General Hunter’s army to handle any threat posed by the raiding Confederates, but Grant told Halleck on July 5 that if circumstances warranted, he could detach a division “to meet them or cut off their return south.” Halleck seconded Grant’s confidence in Hunter, but told the lieutenant general that it would be useful to lend his dismounted cavalry to the forces gathering to confront Early, promising to return them to City Point with remounts once the crisis had passed.87 Grant agreed to dispatch Sheridan’s horseless troopers and upped the ante just before midnight on July 5 by offering to forward an infantry division as well. He did so not out of concern for the safety of the national capital, but as a means of eliminating a portion of the Confederate military. “We want now to crush out and destroy any force the enemy have sent north,” Grant asserted. Within an hour a courier bearing Grant’s instructions arrived at Meade’s headquarters. Meade in turn notified Horatio Wright that one of his divisions—he preferred that of Brig. Gen. James B. Ricketts—would make the trek to City Point and the voyage north. By 4:00 a.m. on July 6, Ricketts’s more than 4,500 men were on the move to City Point, and twelve hours later the last of his brigades boarded transports headed for Baltimore. Sheridan mustered some 4,000 equipped and unequipped dismounted cavalrymen for the trip, creating a force of nearly 9,000 reinforcements. Most of Ricketts’s soldiers shared the perspective of a man in the Tenth Vermont, who confessed that “we were eager for the change—nothing could be less acceptable than our present position—and we hailed the order to go back into Maryland, joyfully.”88 Ricketts arrived in Baltimore in time to participate in the delaying action along the Monocacy River on July 9. The Union defeat there and the news that Hunter’s army remained too remote to be of immediate help awakened Halleck to the reality that the national capital faced potential peril, prompting his request for the Nineteenth Corps. The general-­in-­chief assented, and then, be360

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fore he learned of the outcome at Monocacy, he informed his chief-­of-­staff that he would forward the remainder of the Sixth Corps as well. “Forces enough to defeat all that Early has with him should get in his rear south of him, and follow him up sharply,” Grant advised. He volunteered to command there in person if the president desired, “leaving everything here on the defensive.” Clearly, Grant at that moment saw more potential for military gain north of the Potomac than around Richmond and Petersburg. The transfer of the Sixth Corps should be understood as an aggressive offensive maneuver.89 The administrative machinery of the Army of the Potomac, sometimes a creaky operation, moved with remarkable efficiency to shift the Sixth Corps north. By 9:00  p.m. on July 9, Wright began to organize the 11,000 veterans of his First and Second Divisions to march from their bivouacs southwest of Petersburg to City Point. Hancock took steps to cover Wright’s section of the line (before working later to destroy it), while the quartermasters scurried to arrange boats to ferry the soldiers to Washington. The troops began the trek to City Point within ninety minutes of receiving their orders. “The night was very hot and the roads were covered almost ankle deep with dust, which was very suffocating to the thirsty and weary troops,” remembered a Rhode Islander. Hazard Stevens took the broad view of the situation and thought that it was “rather disgusting that a miserable little Rebel raid into Penn should disarrange all our grand combinations but so it seems to be.” The divisions of Brig. Gens. David A. Russell and George W. Getty began arriving at the City Point docks around 8:00 a.m. on July 10. The first boats departed two hours later, filled with men sporting the Greek Cross on their kepis. By the middle of the afternoon, the vast majority of Wright’s troops were on the James, heading for Hampton Roads, Chesapeake Bay, and the Potomac. Ely Parker reflected the feeling of the entire Union hierarchy when he wrote that “the Rebel force now north should never be permitted to escape and if they do an awful responsibility will rest somewhere.”90 Grant’s old Thirteenth Corps commander at Vicksburg, Maj. Gen. Edward Otho Cresap Ord, who had been without a command since the spring, happened to be visiting Grant when the crisis erupted. Grant tapped him to go north and command the aggregation of troops gathering to defend Baltimore. Wright would be the ranking tactical officer once the Sixth Corps was in place around Washington. Lincoln suggested on July 10 that Grant take personal charge of the situation north of the Potomac “and make a vigorous effort to destroy the enemy’s force in this vicinity. I think there is really a fair chance to do this if the movement is prompt,” thought the president, demonstrating that the commander-­in-­chief and his top general were on the same operational page. Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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Grant answered the president on the evening of the 10th, inventorying the various reenforcements en route to Washington, and expressing confidence in Ord, Wright, and Hunter. “I think, on reflection, it would have a bad effect for me to leave here,” Grant explained. “I have great faith that the enemy will never be able to get back with much of his force.” According to Horace Porter of Grant’s staff, the general expected that Lee wanted him to go to Washington, believing that doing so would signal the cessation of offensive inclinations around Petersburg. Thus, speculated Grant, the Confederate chieftain might grasp the opportunity to detach troops to reinforce the beleaguered Joe Johnston, who at that moment had his back against the inner defenses of Atlanta, or to operate against Sherman’s lines of communication.91 General Wright reached Washington by noon July 11 and his troops arrived soon thereafter. The vanguard of the Nineteenth Corps arrived the same day, and other elements of that corps trailed a few days behind. Early ultimately thought better of attacking the Washington defenses in the face of blistering heat and the gathering Union host, and drifted back across the Potomac laden with the plunder of his successful raid. To the great disappointment of the administration, Wright pursued only half-­heartedly, allowing Early to launch a new phase of the war in Virginia that would persist into the autumn. Instead of returning promptly to Petersburg, the Sixth Corps would remain in the Shenandoah Valley for five months.92 Lee learned of Wright’s departure by July 11. Changing Grant’s focus from the Southern capital to the Northern had been Lee’s primary objective in dispatching Early down the Shenandoah Valley, rather than returning him to the rest of the army once Hunter’s threat at Lynchburg had dissipated. Some writers have argued that Lee’s gambit worked exactly as he had envisioned, depriving Grant of the manpower necessary to resolve the Petersburg stalemate. This conclusion ignores events that unfolded on both sides of the James in late July, and, perhaps, overstates the significance of the 1864 Valley operations in relation to the military calculus at Petersburg. Still, Jubal Early’s storied campaigns in the summer and fall of 1864 carried immense political importance and should certainly be understood as a significant part of the overall Petersburg story.93 Grant’s focus on fighting Confederates around Washington, Richmond, and Petersburg competed for his attention with myriad personnel issues involving his senior commanders. None was more important, thorny, or controversial than the question of command in the Army of the James. The head of the Eighteenth Corps, “Baldy” Smith, lay at the center of the problem. Smith’s seemingly innate disdain for superiors and peers defined his 362

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personality. Few officers, for example, could trash as many comrades in as few sentences as did Smith in an April 1864 letter to his friend, Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin: “Meade is as malignant as he is jealous & as mad as he is either & Hancock & Warren are his right bowers now. . . . Burnside still sports on the wave of popularity & is one of those men who will never get killed in battle. Grant knows what he is but has not the nerve to put him where he belongs. Hancock is both ambitious and deceitful & now lives by Meade.”94 Smith thought even less of his immediate commander, Ben Butler. Their poisonous relationship came to a head on June 21, when Butler sent a superficially polite note to Smith calling the corps commander’s attention to what Butler considered a laggardly march by one of Smith’s divisions. Smith interpreted the admonition as a personal affront and responded to Butler that afternoon with remarkably insubordinate language: “I must call your attention to the fact that a reprimand can only come from the sentence of a court-­martial, and I shall accept nothing as such. You will also pardon me for observing that I have for some years been engaged in marching troops, and I think in experience of that kind, at least, I am your superior. Your accusation of dilatoriness on my part this morning, or at any other time since I have been under your orders, is not founded on fact, and your threat of relieving me does not frighten me in the least.” Butler replied with restraint, pleading that his criticism was directed at Smith’s subordinate, but gently chastised him for drafting such an ill-­tempered note.95 Smith promptly wrote his wife that “I can stand as much as most men, but I cannot live under this man much longer.” He forwarded the offending correspondence to his friend Grant, with a request to be relieved from further duty in Butler’s department. There is no evidence that Grant responded to Smith’s obvious ploy to prompt action against Butler. Smith and Butler continued in their respective positions for the rest of the month, quarreling particularly about the disposition of Edward Hinks’s division.96 What subsequently transpired to resolve the Butler-­Smith contretemps is a matter of record. How and why it unfolded remains a matter of historical uncertainty. Smith’s wife had grown ill and his own health continued to suffer, prompting him in late June to request a leave of absence. Grant kindly asked on July 2 that Smith remain at his post, offering any accommodation that would preserve his fragile health. Smith replied with a bombshell. After thanking Grant for his personal consideration, Smith explained that he requested leave in truth to remove himself diplomatically from Butler’s presence. He then accusatorily asked Grant how he could “place a man in command of two army corps, who is Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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as helpless as a child on the field of battle and as visionary as an opium eater in council.” Smith concluded by gratuitously recommending General Wright or General Franklin as worthy replacements for Butler.97 Despite the presumptuous tone of this message, Grant was inclined to see the matter through Smith’s eyes. He had long recognized Butler’s military shortcomings, although Grant acknowledged that he enjoyed a good relationship with Butler, who usually understood his orders and obeyed them promptly. On July 1 Grant had written Halleck suggesting that the War Department find an administrative post for Butler, perhaps in the Midwest or on the frontier, acknowledging that the relationship between Smith and Butler had reached the breaking point. Halleck, no friend of Butler’s, replied two days later stating that “it was foreseen from the first that you would eventually find it necessary to relieve General B. on account of his total unfitness to command in the field, and his generally quarrelsome character.” The chief-­of-­staff disagreed with Grant’s desire to transfer Butler to another department, fearing that Butler’s presence anywhere in the West would create “political intrigue . . . newspaper abuse,” and an endless call for reenforcements. Why not exile “the Beast” to some rear area in his own department and elevate Smith to field command of the army’s troops?98 Grant liked Halleck’s plan and on July 6 asked him to “obtain an order assigning the troops of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina serving in the field to the command of Maj. Gen. W. F. Smith and order Major-­General Butler, commanding department, to his Headquarters, Fortress Monroe.” Halleck immediately drafted the necessary orders, but on July 7 the secretary of war asked Halleck to show them, along with Grant’s justification, to the president. Lincoln’s review resulted in only a minor change in language and the draft became General Orders 225 later that same day: “The troops of the Department of North Carolina and Virginia [sic] serving with the Army of the Potomac in the field, under Major-­General Smith, will constitute the Eighteenth Army Corps, and Maj. Gen. William F. Smith is assigned to the command of the corps. Maj. Gen. B. F. Butler will command the remainder of the troops in that department, having his headquarters at Fort Monroe.”99 Almost inexplicably, neither Grant, Stanton, nor Lincoln noticed that the orders as Halleck had drafted them made little sense. Smith already commanded the Eighteenth Corps and the troops of Butler’s department serving in the field also included the Tenth Corps. Nothing suggests that Halleck or Grant wished to abolish the Tenth Corps and merge it into an outsize Eighteenth Corps or send it to Fort Monroe with Butler. Nevertheless, the broad intent of General Orders 225 to remove Butler from the field and elevate Smith 364

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to operational command could not be missed. Grant, perhaps reflecting on the firestorm the orders would unleash, opted not to disseminate them immediately, and when Butler met with him on the night of July 8, the subject of Butler’s reassignment never arose. The next day, however, Butler’s chief of staff and Washington liaison, Col. John W. Shaffer, obtained a copy of General Orders 225 and forwarded it to his boss. The offended general immediately arranged another conference with Grant. Before Butler arrived, Smith visited with the general-­in-­chief and obtained the leave of absence he had earlier requested, Grant again avoiding mention of General Orders 225. Smith then left for a ten-­ day respite in New York, ignorant of his impending promotion.100 When Butler appeared at Grant’s tent and showed him his copy of General Orders 225, Butler remembered that a surprised lieutenant general protested that the order had been a mistake. “I don’t want this at all,” Grant exclaimed. “I want Smith to report to you—you to have the full command. I was going to add the 19th corps to your department.” The next day, Grant wired Halleck suspending the orders, reaffirming Smith’s command of the Eighteenth Corps, assigning William T. H. Brooks to temporarily lead the Tenth Corps, and ordering the Nineteenth Corps to report to Butler when it arrived. He did heed one of Smith’s recommendations by asking that Franklin be assigned to the Army of the James as soon as he was fit for duty.101 Grant issued Special Orders 61 on July 18 officially retracting General Orders 225 and naming John H. Martindale as the interim commander of the Eighteenth Corps. Smith learned of ominous activities around army headquarters involving Butler and returned early to City Point on the 19th. Grant’s chief of staff, John Rawlins, met Smith at the landing and solemnly informed him that Grant wished a conference. The general-­in-­chief told Smith that he had been relieved of command and that he and his staff should report to New York to await orders. General Ord inherited permanent command of Smith’s corps the following week. “Thus did Smith the Bald try the Machiavelli against Butler the cross-­eyed, and got floored at the first round!” quipped Colonel Lyman.102 How did this happen? On July 7 Grant prepared to consign Butler to administrative purgatory at Fort Monroe and promote one of his favorites, William Smith, to de facto army command. Forty-­eight hours later, Butler remained in total control of his department, and instead of assuming an enhanced assignment when he returned from leave, Smith found himself en route to the rear, his career in shambles. Smith offered the most sensational explanation based on blackmail and Grant’s drinking. On July 30, barely a week after losing his command, Smith wrote a long letter to his political ally, Senator Solomon Foot of Vermont, “anxArmy Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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ious that my friends in my native State should not think that the reason of Gen. Grant’s relieving me from duty was brought about by any misconduct of mine.” Smith related that, in late June or early July, Grant and Butler came to his headquarters and there Grant consumed enough alcohol to become drunk. Smith recognized at the time that the manipulative Butler might use this indiscretion to his advantage. Smith added in his published memoirs the lurid detail that Grant vomited on his horse’s neck and shoulders before tottering away from Smith’s presence. He also claimed to have seen Grant drinking on July 8. He reported this matter to General Rawlins, indicting Grant’s West Point friend, Quartermaster General Rufus Ingalls, for facilitating Grant’s habit, and expressing doubt about Grant’s capacity to lead the armies. Smith concluded that Butler had threatened to expose Grant’s intoxication unless the lieutenant general revoked General Orders 225 and that Rawlins, upset by Smith’s criticism, suppressed any effort to defend him.103 Most historians reject Smith’s explanation, while acknowledging that the general-­in-­chief did occasionally fall off the wagon that summer. But there is no universal agreement on an alternative rationale for Grant’s change of heart. Butler argued that Grant simply recognized Smith’s “obstinacy and insubordination” and held him responsible for the failure to capture Petersburg on June 15, the former no doubt true and the latter highly unlikely. Historian Brooks Simpson concludes that Smith’s harsh criticisms of Meade and the renewal of the Smith-­Franklin alliance—a combination that through intrigue had managed to undermine Burnside after the battle of Fredericksburg—brought Grant to his tipping point. Historian T. Harry Williams ascribes Butler’s survival to Lincoln’s desire to placate Radical Republicans, who championed Butler and might have withheld their support for the president if one of their favorites had been demoted.104 The army’s provost marshal, Marsena Patrick, probably got it right. Patrick confided in his diary on July 21 that “Baldy’s intrigues . . . for the command of Meade . . . his intense Selfishness &, finally, his intrigues against Butler & Gilmer [Gillmore] disgusted Grant. . . . He has quarreled with Meade & every one else, ending in an attempt to thrash Grant over Meade’s Shoulders, for which Grant shut him up.” David Birney confirmed that “Smith is thought by his old army acquaintances to be an able man, but the most thoroughly selfish man, ambitious, and . . . in this case overreached [him] self.” Grant’s aid, Cyrus Comstock, confirmed that Grant had grown weary of Smith’s ubiquitous critiques of every ranking officer in the army and “did not know which to do, relieve him or talk to him.” Smith’s intolerance of both Butler and Meade left no place for him in the armies around Petersburg if the incumbent commanders 366

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remained. In Grant’s mind, it became necessary to relieve either Meade, Butler, or Smith. At his meeting with Grant on July 19, Smith rejected each of Grant’s undefined explanations for his decision. A frustrated Grant, said Smith, “turned on his heel and said, ‘You talk too much.’” Smith’s unfiltered mouth had done him in.105 Butler triumphantly visited Meade’s headquarters on July 20, impressing one of Meade’s aides as “the strangest sight on a horse you ever saw,” while Smith issued an immodest farewell to his corps. Because Smith’s petulance had been confined to the highest army echelons, many of his men regretted his departure. “Genl Smith was really beloved by all his troops & all had perfect confidence in his abilities and were ready to go where ever he ordered,” testified Captain Coit of the Eighth Connecticut. “Why he of all men should have been relieved no one can imagine.” Coit, however, had intimations of Smith’s problems with other commanders as did the correspondent to the Rochester Democrat, who admitted that the soldiers knew that Smith “manifested a spirit of fault-­finding speedily resulting in serious misunderstandings.” This soldier ascribed Smith’s indiscretions to an “ardent zeal for the good of his country” and confirmed that “he was very popular in his command and his departure is almost universally regretted by those that had served under him in this campaign.”106 General Martindale joined in expressions of regret at Smith’s exile, while announcing his assumption of Eighteenth Corps command, a position he would occupy for about twenty-­four hours. Grant’s decision to fire Smith and the resignation due to poor health of Brooks as acting commander of the Tenth Corps meant that Grant and Butler had two important vacancies to fill. Grant wanted his old friend, Ord, to take over the Tenth Corps, but the War Department had assigned that officer to the Eighth Corps in Maryland subsequent to Early’s retreat. Grant next preferred Meade’s chief of staff, Andrew A. Humphreys, for Tenth Corps command. Humphreys, however, declined consideration due to the likelihood that African American troops would join that organization. “I confess that while I have the kindliest feelings for the negro race and gladly see anything done that promises to ameliorate their condition, yet as they are not my own people, nor my own race, I could not feel towards negro troops as I have always felt towards the troops I have commanded,” Humphreys explained. “Feeling thus I would prefer not to command such troops.”107 The Eighth Corps lost its prestige once Early’s threat dissipated, and Ord suddenly became available for a more important assignment. With Smith gone, Grant opted to give Ord the Eighteenth Corps, the more important of Butler’s two organizations. Butler had suggested Franklin for that command, but Grant Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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now wanted Franklin to assume control of all the forces gathering to confront Early. “It is now open to select a commander for the Tenth Corps,” Grant told Butler. “Do you think of any major-­general available who you would like to have? Birney and Gibbon are with the Army of the Potomac, only commanding divisions.”108 David Birney had actively angled for promotion to either of Butler’s corps. Citing his senior rank as entitling him to a larger responsibility, but conceding that Butler had every right to select whomever he wished, Birney told Butler on July 16 that “it would give me great pleasure to serve under you with an assignment to either of those corps, should it meet with your approval and preference.” Birney, who sincerely admired Butler and considered him an ideal replacement for Secretary of War Stanton, harbored no small ambition and had confessed to boredom, when upon Hancock’s return to active duty he reverted to mere division command.109 Butler was pleased with Ord’s selection, but lobbied with Grant to elevate Martindale to the Tenth Corps post. Shortly after sending Grant this recommendation, Butler visited Martindale and discovered that “his health is so infirm that he must go home; so that I think you will not do better than to assign Birney to the Tenth Corps.” Special Orders 64, dated July 21, announced the formal appointment of both Ord and Birney. These officers privately expressed gratification with their new assignments, an opinion shared, at least initially, by the officers and men of the Army of the James.110 Fragile health claimed another one of Butler’s commanders when Edward Hinks left his Eighteenth Corps division on July 1 to pursue less strenuous duty. Hinks’s vacancy led to suggestions by Smith that Hinks’s black division, weakened by disease and casualties, be consolidated with the U.S. Colored Troops in the Ninth Corps and the whole aggregation reassigned under the leadership of Edward Ferrero. Butler strenuously objected to any dilution of the African American troops in his army, and the situation festered until early August, when Brig. Gen. Charles J. Paine assumed division command.111 The Army of the Potomac suffered its own internal turmoil, centered on George Meade. The War Department’s resident informant, Charles Dana, reported to Stanton on July 7 that almost every officer who came in contact with Meade disliked him. “I have long known Meade to be a man of the worst possible temper,” Dana explained. “I do not think he has a friend in the whole army.” His last assertion certainly lacked accuracy, as Grant continued to delegate authority to Meade and expressed little dissatisfaction with the administration of his army. Still, the general-­in-­chief could not ignore the toxic relationship Meade maintained with so many of his primary subordinates and, according 368

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to Dana, spoke privately about the possible need to assign the Pennsylvanian to other duty. Grant preferred that Hancock assume control of the Army of the Potomac in such an eventuality.112 Butler, Wright, Burnside, Ingalls, Patrick, and Gibbon were among Meade’s critics, and a visiting congressman reported that Meade was “universally disliked by officers of every sort.” No one, however, could compete with Gouverneur Warren in despising the army commander—and that feeling was mutual.113 Warren’s habitual questioning of his superiors’ judgment had frustrated both Grant and Meade from the outset of the campaign. Meade, it will be recalled, floated the idea of removing Warren in late June, but decided against it, as he told Warren, “in the hope the causes of disagreement would not occur in the future.” Warren would not be mollified. He considered his commanding officer “an unjust and unfeeling man” and abhorred his “personal character so much . . . that it is improbable we shall ever have again any friendly social relations. I have also lost all confidence in his ability as a general.” Warren told his wife that either Meade or he must go, echoing the malignant situation between Butler and Smith. Grant proposed Meade for the unified Shenandoah Valley command once the administration rejected Franklin, but President Lincoln demurred, fearing that the transfer would appear to the public as a demotion or reprimand for the hero of Gettysburg. Meade would remain, but the political difficulties in the Army of the Potomac continued to boil and simmer without the housecleaning that transformed the Army of the James. Somehow, amid all this internal drama, Grant managed to order a dizzying stream of operational initiatives which, with the exception of the departure of the Sixth Corps, effected almost nothing.114 Just as he had done following the failure of his first Petersburg Offensive, Grant proclaimed a desire to forbear active campaigning after Birney and Wright had been thrashed west of Jerusalem Plank Road. “Whilst this excessively hot and dry weather lasts we will give the men all the rest we can,” Grant informed Meade on June 26. John Gibbon agreed that the heat and dust hampered the operations of both armies “and the blows delivered by either may justly be compared to those of two tired-­out and nearly exhausted pugilists.” And, just as before, the general-­in-­chief almost immediately lost patience with his self-­imposed passivity and proposed a new offensive.115 On July 3 Grant sought Meade’s opinion about launching “a bold and decisive attack, to break through the enemy’s center” once Sheridan’s cavalry had recovered from its June ordeal. “If it is not attempted we will have to give you an army sufficient to meet most of Lee’s forces and march around Petersburg and Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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come in from above,” an expedient that would be deferred until the Nineteenth Corps arrived. Meade promptly promised to consult with Burnside and Warren and the next day reported that an assault into the teeth of Lee’s defenses could not work. The Confederates occupied the same line they had defended successfully on June 18 and the intervening two weeks had only made their position more secure. “The only plan to dislodge the enemy from this line is by a regular approach,” that is, to commence siege operations, Meade advised.116 On July 5 Grant agreed—but only briefly. “The best we can do now is to strengthen our present lines on Burnside’s and Warren’s front and advance by gradual approaches as you propose,” he wired Meade. Within seventy-­two hours, he modified that approval. “If the approaches are made it will be with the view of ultimately making an assault on the enemy’s lines,” Grant advised. Instead of attempting to smash through the Confederate center, Grant now favored an assault on Butler’s front, north of Swift Creek, an operation that, again, would be dependent on the arrival of the Nineteenth Corps. In the meantime, Meade could pursue his siege works “to divert the enemy from the proposed advance in General Butler’s front.” But then the lieutenant general added a new wrinkle. “We ought by all means to cut the Weldon road so as to make it useless to [the] enemy,” he instructed on July 8. “I think Wright’s two divisions should take the place of Hancock’s corps and the latter should support the cavalry whilst it destroys the road as far as Hicksford.”117 Meade, who had anticipated the need for siege operations as early as June 17 and harbored less enthusiasm for bold offensive strokes than his superior, took steps to implement Grant’s conditional permission to begin digging. “The operations of this army against the intrenched position of the enemy defending Petersburg will be by regular approaches on the fronts opposed to General Burnside’s and General Warren’s corps,” he announced on July 9. He placed the army’s acting chief engineer, Maj. James C. Duane, in charge of the operation and assigned Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt, his artillery chief, responsibility for mounting the guns. Those two officers submitted detailed plans the following day while they waited for the necessary equipment to arrive from the north.118 In the event, however, traditional siege warfare never even commenced, superseded by a series of stillborn operational imperatives rooted in Grant’s refusal to concede that conquering Petersburg would require a prolonged process, such as the one that reduced Vicksburg. On July 10 Grant ordered Meade to conduct a reconnaissance toward the Petersburg Railroad to ascertain Confederate strength, suspecting that Lee and more of his troops had decamped to reinforce Early. Meade politely replied that he had heard nothing to suggest that the Confederates had weakened their lines and, in fact, when the Sixth 370

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Corps packed up to march to City Point, they attracted so much attention that the Confederates actually launched their own sallies against the Federal pickets. Meade’s reconnaissance failed to uncover any definitive information, but he, too, became convinced that two of Hill’s divisions were headed for Maryland. This triggered the predictable response from Grant: “If they have gone to Washington we will try to carry Petersburg before detaching further from this army.” He told Meade to devote Sheridan’s cavalry along with the Second and Fifth Corps to assail the Confederate right while Burnside’s and Smith’s men ventured a simultaneous attack somewhere near the Hare house—an offensive involving four infantry corps and all the army’s cavalry!119 But this initiative withered on the vine as well. On July 12, as Grant began to entertain doubts about Hill’s departure, Meade reported receiving intelligence that a large body of Rebels was seen marching south in position to threaten the rear of the Union army. Thus Meade deferred preparing for Grant’s huge attack until he could be sure that his own flank was secure. Late that morning, the army commander admitted that he really had no idea where the Confederates might be. “Mahone’s division, of Hill’s corps, has now been positively placed in our front, on our left and rear, and on its way to Pennsylvania,” Meade wired Grant with unveiled sarcasm. This shifting operational landscape left Grant with “considerable anxiety and uneasiness.” Meade’s dispatch of the cavalry— in part as raiders and also as scouts—resulted in the indecisive clash on the afternoon of the 12th at Reams’ Station.120 Grant worried, perhaps overmuch, about Lee’s ability to detach troops— either to the Potomac front or to Georgia. He also feared that Joe Johnston would shuttle brigades north and, with the return of Early, provide Lee with the means to execute a devastating attack—just as Lee and Stonewall Jackson had done near Richmond two years earlier. To eliminate that possibility—and to again disrupt a vital component of Lee’s supply system—Grant conceived yet another offensive on July 14. This time, Sheridan would lead a massive cavalry expedition down the Petersburg Railroad as far as Weldon, North Carolina, destroying the tracks for more than fifty miles. Kautz would accompany Sheridan, barely two weeks after these tattered troopers had dragged in from their June foray with Wilson across Southside Virginia. Sheridan balked. Remembering the fate of Wilson and Kautz, the cavalry commander argued that it would be difficult for his troopers to make their way back to friendly lines from Weldon, requiring them to ride all the way to New Bern, North Carolina, and then seek water transportation to City Point. Meade agreed with these concerns and requested that Grant commit the Second Corps to the operation. But this proposed offensive also fizzled, Grant canceling it on the night of July 15. “Since Army Operations, Late June to Mid-July

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ordering the cavalry raid we have found the enemy have left Maryland,” Grant crowed, “and I have sent a staff officer to hasten the return of the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps. With them we can cover the Weldon road or make an infantry movement which will obviate the necessity of a raid.”121 Thus, within two weeks, Grant had proposed a swing around the Confederate right, an attack at Bermuda Hundred, a combined flank and frontal assault with all four corps of his infantry, and a massive cavalry raid—as well as authorizing and then ignoring a plan to conduct siege operations. Then followed the anticipated Confederate attack of July 18 that placed the Federals on a defensive footing, eagerly expecting to repulse Lee’s assault. Nothing came of any of these plans, nor did the two absent corps return from the nation’s capital. The last week of June and the first three weeks of July passed without progress—or even a creditable attempt—toward the goal of reducing Petersburg. Meanwhile, opposite Pegram’s Salient on the Ninth Corps front, one Pennsylvania regiment was engaged in a unique activity. “Major-­General Burnside is now running a gallery to a mine to be constructed under a battery on this line,” Meade informed Grant on the fourth of July. “General B. thinks when exploded [it] will enable him by a formidable assault to carry the line of works.” This odd expedient—almost ignored amid the strategic mélange of early summer—would result in the most infamous episode of the entire Petersburg ­Campaign.122

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I Have Accomplished One of the Great Things of This War Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom Henry Pleasants possessed an unusual pedigree. The son of an Argentinian beauty and a Pennsylvanian turned South American gunrunner, Pleasants moved to Philadelphia in 1846 at age thirteen to live with his paternal uncle after his father’s untimely death. He eventually earned an advanced degree in engineering and obtained employment with two Pennsylvania railroads. Gaining experience in excavating tunnels in western Pennsylvania, Pleasants later applied those talents to anthracite coal mining in Pottsville, in the eastern portion of the Keystone State. The newly widowed Pleasants enlisted in a three-­ month regiment at the outset of the war and then received a commission in the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania. He rose to command of his unit in May 1864, and by June 18 attrition had left him as the acting commander of the First Brigade, Second Division Ninth Corps.1 Pleasants’s brigade, along with most of Robert Potter’s division, had crossed the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad during the assaults on June 18. The following night, Ninth Corps soldiers moved forward under cover of darkness to entrench an advanced picket line at the very crest of a deep ravine, nearly under the nose of a Confederate strongpoint. Using sandbags and fence rails and excavating the sandy soil, the soldiers created a ditch three to five feet deep and a parapet of equal height. The line assumed a semicircular shape anchored on the main line at both ends, a position the soldiers quickly dubbed “The Horseshoe.” A draw that ran at an angle to the main ravine allowed the Federals to construct their fortified picket line about 150 yards from the Rebel fort.2 373

General Potter immediately recognized the Confederate battery, called Pegram’s or Elliott’s Salient, as a potential target. “There is a redoubt not quite 100 yards in front of our line, which I think can be approached by a sap,” Potter informed corps commander Burnside. “At any rate, its reduction seems quite practicable with the spade when we get a covered way to the ravine.”3 Potter would soon realize the impracticality of approaching the Confederate line aboveground, but an idea evolved to eliminate the fort in a different manner. It is difficult to unravel the precise sequence of events that led to this conclusion. Sometime between June 21 and June 23, Lieutenant Colonel Pleasants overheard some of the former miners in the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania comment that they could destroy the Rebel works by running a mine underneath them. Pleasants, intrigued by this concept, consulted with two friends from Pottsville, Capt. George Gowen and Capt. Frank Farquhar, both trained engineers, who encouraged Pleasants to pursue the idea. Pleasants then met with the company commanders of the Forty-­Eighth, knowing that a large number (although a distinct minority) of the regiment had mining experience. Convinced that the concept had merit, Pleasants arranged to see his division commander on June 24.4 Potter liked the idea and ordered one of his staff officers, Capt. Gilbert H. McKibben, to accompany Pleasants to examine the target. As the two officers peered over the parapet, a Confederate sharpshooter took aim at McKibben, severely wounding him in the face. With the blood-­soaked captain in tow, Pleasants left convinced that the mining plan could succeed. He and Potter visited Burnside, probably on June 25, and obtained that officer’s approval for the project. Burnside quickly notified General Meade’s headquarters that the mining was under way and requested heavy artillery and sandbags to support the endeavor.5 Meade immediately replied to Burnside’s request, promising to provide him with a headquarters engineer, a company of sappers, sandbags, and siege guns. “I am delighted to hear you can do anything against the enemy’s line, and will furnish you everything you want, and earnest wishes for your success besides,” Meade wrote with a tone of enthusiastic collegiality at odds with the rocky relationship between the two men.6 Burnside later described Meade’s reaction to the mine proposal as “assent rather than . . . approval of the work.” He remembered that he discussed the project with Meade shortly after endorsing Potter and Pleasants’s scheme and that the commanding general deferred the matter to General Grant. Meade, for his part, told the lieutenant general on June 26 that Burnside “having expressed the opinion he could successfully advance against the enemy by opening trenches, 374

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I have directed him to be furnished with engineer officers and troops and the necessary . . . materials.” Meade’s description of “opening trenches” and “siege operations” raises a question as to his initial grasp of Pleasants’s undertaking, although Burnside averred that he kept Meade closely informed. In the meantime, Lieutenant Colonel Pleasants, anticipating Burnside’s blessing, had put his men to work at noon on June 25. The Ninth Corps commander concluded that Pleasants’s tunneling “certainly could do no harm . . . and that it was probably better that the men should be occupied in that way.”7 Pleasants’s target harbored certain strengths that offset the inherent weakness of its proximity to the Union lines. In fact, Capt. Richard G. Pegram had mislocated his battery of four twelve-­pounder Napoleons on the night of June 17, placing it in advance of where Colonel Harris had staked it. Pegram’s men completed their entrenchments before the captain became aware of his mistake, and he considered the hour too late and his gunners too exhausted to pull back and start afresh. From that point forward, the Confederates developed their defenses and deployed their troops to compensate for Pegram’s error.8 As the Southern defenses evolved, Pegram’s Salient turned out to be almost the opposite—a reentrant angle or concave position relative to the surrounding defenses. The battery captain had chosen the ground because it occupied the topographical crest of a small ridge atop the western flank of Taylor’s or Poor Creek, which ran parallel to and some 700 yards east of Jerusalem Plank Road. The battery’s adjacent landscape dipped rapidly to the north and gradually to the south. Infantry and artillery that eventually buttressed Pegram’s flanks obtained an oblique cross fire to cover the ground leading to the Virginian’s guns, although the angles were sufficiently subtle that one Union brigade commander mischaracterized Pegram’s position as a projection, “like the ugly horn of a rhinoceros.” It is easy to understand that interpretation because nowhere along the Union line did the Federals lie closer to their opponents than here— about 133 yards—and that created the illusion of a salient.9 Pegram’s Battery, a part of Maj. James C. Coit’s Battalion of Beauregard’s command, had been formed largely from the Twelfth Virginia Infantry, an outfit recruited primarily in Petersburg. Its commander belonged to the Virginia family that produced a more famous Confederate cannoneer, Lt. Col. Willie Pegram, Richard’s cousin. Pegram began strengthening his position almost immediately, while the Ninth Corps peppered his gunners with a “constant and often furious musketry fire.” The rifle pits that emerged around the battery were anchored with gabions as were the stout embrasures through which Pegram’s guns protruded. Cotton sacks holding about two bushels of sand topped the works, creating loop holes through which sharpshooters—such as the man who Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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wounded Captain McKibben—could fire. The Federals managed to mangle these barriers with their own rifle fire during the day, but each night the Confederates would replace the sandbags. Because Jerusalem Plank Road, behind Pegram’s Salient, was elevated, the Confederates built a covered way that ran underneath the road and then continued east for three-­tenths of a mile before ending several hundred yards north of the salient. A natural ravine then angled toward Pegram’s position, completing its connection to the rear. By the end of the month, a cavalier trench arose behind the gunners, and over time a plethora of communication trenches, traverses, and sleeping holes dug into the sides of the works turned Pegram’s position into a maze that could be navigated only by soldiers intimately familiar with its engineered eccentricities.10 376

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Those soldiers belonged to Stephen Elliott’s Brigade. Elliott, a thirty-­three-­ year-­old native of the South Carolina Low Country, sprang from good stock, received his education at South Carolina College and Harvard, and succeeded as a cotton planter and militia officer. He earned a prewar reputation as a boatman and fisherman, and served in the state legislature. The accomplished Elliott began service as a captain in the Eleventh South Carolina and spent the first three years of the war along the coast of his native state. He came to Virginia in 1864 at the head of the Holcombe Legion. The commander of his brigade, Brig. Gen. William S. Walker, was captured on May 20 in an engagement near Ware Bottom Church, and Elliott inherited his post. On May 28 he received a promotion to brigadier general.11 Elliott’s outfit was best known for its checkered career under Brig. Gen. Nathan G. “Shanks” Evans. The soldiers called it the “Tramp Brigade” because it had so often shifted theaters and organizations. At Petersburg, it consisted of five Palmetto State regiments: the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-­Second, Twenty-­Third, and Twenty-­Sixth. The South Carolinians numbered between 1,500 and 2,000 muskets and occupied a portion of the line measuring about 350 yards behind and on either side of Pegram’s guns. General Elliott suffered periodically from ill health, reporting in early July that “my liver was completely knocked up, just by sitting still and eating bacon and corn bread for two weeks under a sun which Col. Harris says is the hottest that has been known here for twenty-­three years.”12 The South Carolinians enjoyed infantry and artillery support on both flanks. To the south, stood Wise’s Virginia Brigade, commanded by Col. John Thomas Goode of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia, while Wise acted as Beauregard’s nominal district commander in Petersburg. Goode’s left, held by the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia, rested about 100 yards from Pegram’s Salient and adjacent to Elliott’s right flank. The Forty-­Sixth Virginia and Thirty-­Fourth Virginia stretched Goode’s line south of Baxter Road with the Fifty-­Ninth Virginia in reserve. Matt Ransom’s North Carolina Brigade deployed north of Elliott with five Tar Heel regiments occupying the edge of a woodland on the shoulder of the ravine across from Elliott’s left. Col. Lee M. McAfee of the Forty-­ Ninth North Carolina led the brigade in the absence of Ransom, who had been wounded on May 14 near Drewry’s Bluff.13 The artillery that gradually took position around the salient would prove even more critical to the Confederate defense than the three proximate infantry brigades. The most important ordnance belonged to Capt. Samuel T. Wright’s Halifax Artillery, like Pegram’s Battery, a part of Coit’s Battalion. Wright commanded four Napoleons in what one of McAfee’s men called “a masked battery.” Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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These guns occupied a knoll behind the North Carolinians 555 yards north of Pegram’s position. A small grove of trees shielded them from the enemy’s view and the angle of their fire would perfectly rake the ground in front of the salient. Col. Hilary Jones, Beauregard’s artillery chief, carefully positioned Wright’s Battery for just this purpose, recognizing Pegram’s vulnerability. E. P. Alexander considered the placement of Wright’s Battery as “the most important work done on our side during the month of July.”14 Three batteries assumed relevant positions south of the salient. Four Napoleons of Battery C of the Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery—the Lynchburg Battery, or Davidson’s Battery, a part of Maj. Wade Hampton Gibbes’s First Corps battalion—unlimbered 373 yards south of Pegram’s guns, with its left piece 100 feet south of Baxter Road. Unlike Wright’s cannon, this battery stood on exposed ground, protected only by the traverses and parapets of its works. Still, the leftmost of these guns enjoyed a splendid location from which to shower the ground in front of Pegram with canister and shell. Lieutenant James C. Otey commanded this battery.15 Next in line to the south, two Napoleons of Battery A of the Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery—the Richmond Otey Battery—stood about 100 yards beyond Battery C. Capt. David N. Walker commanded this section. One hundred yards farther south, Capt. Crispen Dickenson of the Ringgold Battery— Battery B of the Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery—placed four Napoleons in position, two of which had the ground in front of Pegram’s Salient within range.16 An array of guns eventually supported the salient from positions to the west. Sixteen mortars, most belonging to Maj. John C. Haskell’s Battalion, deployed near Jerusalem Plank Road between Baxter Road and Blandford Cemetery, or in concealed positions between the plank road and the salient. Six of the mortars occupied the plank road between the Gee house, immediately west of the salient, and the point where the covered way crossed the road at the base of Cemetery Hill. Capt. James N. Lamkin’s Nelson County (Virginia) Battery handled most of the mortars, although detailed men from the Otey and Ringgold Batteries were assigned to the others, including three twelve-­pounder Coehorns styled “Langhorne’s Battery” after its nominal commander, Capt. John B. Langhorne, of Otey Battery. Capt. Henry G. Flanner’s Battery, Company F, Thirteenth Battalion North Carolina Artillery, manned six Napoleons near the junction of Jerusalem Plank and Baxter Roads, 500 yards from the salient. All these guns belonged to the Army of Northern Virginia’s First Corps. Thus, in addition to Pegram’s four cannon, eighteen guns and sixteen mortars were poised to support the nearly 6,000 infantry that defended the salient and 378

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its neighboring works. Pegram and Elliott may have offered a tempting target, but no conventional frontal assault would likely carry their portion of the line.17 Of course, Henry Pleasants, Robert Potter, and Ambrose Burnside had no conventional attack in mind. Pleasants began his excavation near the bank of Poor Creek beside a clump of bushes and a spring. His men dug with their bayonets, “burrowing like rabbits.” Within twelve hours, the Pennsylvanians completed fifty feet of the shaft. By June 28 the mine extended some 130 feet, a pace of 40 feet per day that Pleasants predicted would be his standard.18 Pleasants delegated direct oversight of the excavation to Sgt. Harry Reese of Company  F, Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania. A comrade described Reese as “one of those men whom once having seen you could not forget.” Like so many Pennsylvania miners, “Boss Miner Reese” was a Welshman with extensive experience underground. In his late twenties with a burly 5 foot, 10 inch frame and red hair, Reese established his bivouac at the mouth of the mine and controlled all access during the entire construction process.19 Pleasants kept the shaft relatively small in order to conserve shoring materials. As it developed, the tunnel measured four feet wide at the base, two feet wide at the top, and averaged four and a half feet in height. “At first I employed but a few men at a time,” Pleasants testified, “but the number was increased as the work progressed, until at last I had to use the whole regiment, noncommissioned officers and all.” Sgt. Samuel Beddall of the Forty-­Eighth reported, however, that as early as June 26 “our Regt is purty much all out on detail at the drift.” The men worked in shifts lasting two and a half or three hours, receiving a whiskey ration at the end of each rotation. Some of the soldiers hoarded their liquor allotment and then consumed their stash in one sitting, producing the desired inebriation. As many as 210 men each day worked in some fashion on the mine, although only a pair could actually excavate the earth at the end of the tunnel. When the diggers emerged from the mine, they resembled “so many brown gophers” or “lumps of mud,” most dressed only in shirts and drawers.20 Constructing the mine presented a number of practical issues—the physical challenge of removing the excavated earth and then concealing it from Confederate eyes, providing shoring to stabilize the shaft against collapse, and ensuring adequate ventilation for the miners—all met with Pleasants’s innovative solutions. He modified hardtack boxes into barrows, reinforcing them with iron hoops from pork and beef barrels, and fashioned handles out of hickory. Despite these precautions, the boxes often broke under a load that displaced three or four cubic feet. Eventually, wheelbarrows supplemented the removal process. The men used some of the dirt to fill sandbags for the fortifications and concealed the rest in depressions behind the line, covering the raw earth Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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with brush. Regulation army picks proved too large to swing inside the mine so Pleasants had the oversized flukes of the standard picks straightened to a suitable size.21 Wooden bracing for the gallery at first came from cannibalizing a nearby bridge on the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, supplemented by materials scoured from the countryside. Eventually, two companies of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, assisted by some of the Ninth Corps’ black troops, appropriated a stockpile of lumber at an abandoned sawmill five or six miles distant and then hummed out additional timbering. The soldiers assembled the bracing outside the mine and then installed it at appropriate intervals inside the gallery. The shoring consisted of two side props capped by a heavy crossbeam, all set on a sill. The props were angled outward at the base, sloping to match the pitch of the wall.22 “The work progressed rapidly until the 2d of July, when it reached extremely wet ground,” reported Pleasants. “The timbers gave way and the gallery nearly closed, the roof and the floor nearly meeting.” Pleasants replaced the shoring, shortened the distance between the supports, and planked over the floor to distribute the weight more evenly. From that point, some 250 feet from the tunnel’s mouth, the miners encountered “a stratum of marl, whose consistency was like putty, and which caused our progress to be necessarily slow,” wrote Pleasants. The colonel reoriented the trajectory of the mine, moving up at the rate of 131/2 feet per 100 to avoid the difficult soil. The soldiers amused themselves by fashioning the malleable clay into pipes, replica corps badges, and “also many designs of forts, cannon, and other contrivances,” some of which they offered for sale.23 The miners illuminated the tunnel by placing lanterns or candles every ten to twenty feet along the walls. The two men actually digging at the head of the shaft brought candles in bottles to light their work or affixed the luminaries to their caps with pieces of mud. Pleasants circulated fresh air to those men at the back of the mine, employing a relatively simple ventilation system commonly used in the Pennsylvania coal mines. His task was complicated, however, by the length of the shaft and the need to conceal his work from the Confederates. Pleasants’s design involved two iterations, both depending on a two-­foot-­ wide vertical shaft excavated from just inside the Union picket line 22 feet down to a point 100 feet inside the mouth of the mine. The soldiers built a grate just above the tunnel floor at the base of the shaft, on which they maintained a hot fire. A wooden tube extended from the base of the vertical shaft back to the head of the mine through which the stale air was drawn by the fire and then up the ventilation shaft. As the mine’s length increased, Pleasants modified his 380

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system by erecting an airtight canvas door just outside the ventilation shaft and extending the wooden duct outside the tunnel’s mouth. By this means, fresh air from outside the mine traveled through the duct to the head of the shaft while the fire’s heat continued to pull the foul air out through the chimney. The escaping smoke looked like one of any number of campfires kept burning behind the Union lines, masking the significance of the ventilation chimney. Apparently, the constant entrance and exit of soldiers removing the excavated material from the tunnel by breaching the airtight canvas door did not disturb the circulation as no evidence exists of serious breathing problems in the mine, although the shaft was hot and the air foul.24 Ensuring that the mine terminated at precisely the right position presented Pleasants with his most important challenge. Making those calculations with the mid-­nineteenth-­century version of a transit—an instrument called a theodolite—would normally be simple for a trained engineer. Taking readings to multiple points of observation would yield the proper angles and distances required to locate the end of the gallery precisely under Pegram’s guns. The trick would be acquiring a modern theodolite and then obtaining the proper calculations without becoming an easy target for vigilant sharpshooters—Captain McKibben’s fate providing a vivid object lesson. Pleasants knew that army engineer headquarters possessed the needed equipment, but Major Duane ignored Pleasants’s requisition. Eventually, Burnside obtained what Pleasants called “an old-­fashioned theodolite” from a friend in Washington, which served the purpose. The colonel crept to the front lines, concealing the instrument under a burlap cover. Several soldiers accompanied him a short distance from where Pleasants wished to make his readings and raised their caps (and Pleasants’s own) on bayonets above the parapet to mimic a careless group conference. This show drew Confederate fire, allowing the nearby colonel to rise above the lines and complete his measurements, further concealed by burlap and a bit of sod. He repeated this procedure four more times until he obtained all the necessary data, along with “a rather ragged and bullet pierced hat to show the accuracy of the enemy sharpshooters.”25 Throughout the entire construction process, army headquarters remained essentially aloof, an attitude that Pleasants characterized as “masterly indifference.” The colonel blamed Meade and Duane, quoting Burnside as saying that these two officers considered the project “all clap-­trap and nonsense,” and predicting that the mine could not be sufficiently ventilated or protected against collapse. Not only was headquarters unwilling to lend its theodolite, but Pleasants complained about having to modify his own picks and scavenge the lumber for shoring. Duane had authored a treatise on mining and inventoried a Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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complete list of necessary equipment, almost none of which Pleasants could obtain through usual army channels. Duane would claim in August that Meade ordered him to remain uninvolved because Burnside wished to garner the project’s glory exclusively for the Ninth Corps. More likely, Meade maintained a hands-­off policy because, in addition to his technical skepticism, he retained fundamental doubts that exploding the mine could achieve anything worthwhile, even if Burnside completed his project as envisioned. How much of the disconnection between the mining endeavor and army headquarters found its origin in the poor relationship between Burnside and Meade cannot be quantified, but it probably contributed to the absence of enthusiastic cooperation. The long-­standing antipathy between Duane and Burnside, dating back to the debacle at Antietam’s Lower Bridge in 1862, likewise should not be discounted.26 Grant’s chief engineer, General John Barnard, displayed a bit more interest in the mine. On July 3 he wrote Pleasants requesting detailed information about its design, construction specifics, and how the mine would be ignited. It took three days for Barnard’s note to reach Pleasants, who responded tersely on July 7 with barely concealed contempt; he referred to the regular army engineers as “wiseacres” in private correspondence, betraying his own bias. By then, the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania and its commander carried a chip on its collective shoulders.27 Pleasants and his superiors in the Ninth Corps did their best to keep the mine a secret. Col. Stephen M. Weld, commander of the Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts in Burnside’s First Division, heard rumors of the mining throughout July, but did not learn definitively of its existence until briefed by his brigade commander on July 29. “Such was the secrecy with which it was conducted that for a long time the project was unknown even to those at whose side it was going on,” recalled Sgt. Daniel F. Branson of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania. “It is true that reports were in circulation concerning it, but nobody could speak with certainty of the matter.” Knowledge of Pleasants’s work, however, did spread throughout the army, albeit unevenly and largely anecdotally. A soldier in the Tenth Corps’ 112th New York remembered, for example, that “though intended to be kept secret, [the mine] was well known six weeks before it was finished.” An artillerist recalled that although “efforts were made to keep this mine a profound secret . . . soldiers will talk, and so . . . it was well known all along our lines that the mine was being driven, and its exact location was known to many of the troops.” The men of the Twentieth Michigan routinely referred to Pegram’s Salient as “the mined fort,” in conversation with comrades.28 It stands to reason that other regiments in Pleasants’s brigade learned of the digging almost immediately. A soldier in the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania 382

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as early as June 26 recorded the mining operation with notable accuracy and speculated that the army would launch an attack against Pegram’s Salient following the explosion. Pvt. George A. Spencer of the Seventh Rhode Island wrote his parents on June 29 that “our folks are digging under a fort here with the intention of blowing it up. They work night and day,” adding the inaccurate detail that the powder had already been placed underneath the target. Pvt. John Wesley Ringler of a Ninth Corps battery also wrote home on June 29 describing the mine and predicting that Grant intended to explode it on July 4, something many other Yankees aware of the mine also believed. “If there has been nothing of the above in the papers don’t make it public,” Ringler warned, “as I guess old Grant don’t want it known.”29 As time progressed, word of Pleasants’s project circulated throughout the army in a wider arc. Lieutenant Colonel Cummings of the Seventeenth Vermont, one of Potter’s units, told his wife on July 3 that “our troops are engaged to some extent in mining . . . and one of these days somebody will be astonished for I understand that our mine under a fort will contain 15,000 lbs. of powder.” Cummings explained that the work is “kept quite still & of course correspondents of the press cannot mention it, but since I have been at Burnside’s Head Quarters on Court Martial I have heard the thing talked up.” He, too, assumed that the explosion would coincide with Independence Day as a dramatic symbolic gesture. Another one of Potter’s men told his father on July 6 that the Rebels would be astonished “when they find themselves getting raised into the air a couple hundred feet or more and before they have time to come down there will be some Yankee bayonets waiting for them.”30 The farther from the actual mine the less precise were the rumors and the less certain were the soldiers of their veracity. Colonel McAllister wrote home on July 8 that he thought that Burnside was mining, but confessed he knew few details. “Even the persons that are engaged in it are not to divulge anything,” he added. Sgt. Charles T. Bowen of the Twelfth U.S. Infantry, a Fifth Corps outfit, misunderstood from reports of Pleasants’s mining that all the strongest Rebel forts had been undermined and primed for explosion. Even Colonel Wainwright could only repeat tales of a mining operation, confessing on July 17 that “I have heard nothing particular about it yet.”31 The men of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania understood the need to keep their labors secret. Pvt. Henry C. Heisler, for example, admonished his sister in multiple letters not to discuss the mining he had described, “for if it gets among the Copperheads it will soon find its way into the Rebel lines and then our plans [will] be known.” Heisler assured her that the project had been kept secret from many of the troops in the Union army and that “there are regiments laying close Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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by us that know nothing about it. The way times are now we can’t trust our friends at home with any news of importance.” As late as July 28, Colonel Weld admitted that rumors of the tunnel continued to swirl but “we could get very little accurate information.”32 In general, those Federal soldiers who learned something of the mine and its purpose thought that it would be effective, although some began to think the story was a hoax. “We don’t know when to expect the grand splurge,” wrote Sergeant Bowen, “but expect any moment to feel the shock & hear the rumble of a homemade earthquake got up for the benefit of Johnny Reb.” Telegraph operator Luther Rose predicted that, when the mine exploded, “we expect to see the Rebels a flying.” Colonel McAllister believed that the mine and the Union artillery would “level Petersburg to the ground,” and Lt. Col. Richard S. Thompson of the Twelfth New Jersey compared the shock that the mine would inflict on the Confederates to what an explosion of firecrackers on his back porch had done to the family cat. “Engineers call this their masterpiece, during this war,” wrote Capt. William B. Barker of the Thirty-­Second Maine. “Not much confidence was had of its success at its inception—but all seem confident now.” There were naysayers, such as the Second Corps’ Brig. Gen. P. Regis De Trobriand, who thought that the rumors of the mine “inspired little confidence” and that Pleasants’s undertaking “was generally regarded rather as a subject for pleasantry than an object of interest.” But the majority of Billy Yanks placed great stock in the mine.33 Soldiers in the Ninth Corps maintained a particularly intense sharpshooter fire along The Horseshoe “to guard against indiscretions on the part of the pickets and prevent any meeting of our soldiers with the rebels, whereat the secret of the mine might be boastingly or imprudently disclosed,” remembered Sergeant Branson. However, similar precautions were not in vogue along other portions of the line, and Lieutenant Colonel Pleasants would blame Fifth Corps deserters for informing the Confederates of the mine’s existence. In reality, Southern suspicions sprang from several sources.34 Porter Alexander usually receives credit for alerting the Confederate high command to the probability of enemy mining at Pegram’s Salient. According to his own testimony, Alexander found the intense musketry focused on the salient unusual, and when no evidence of a sap appeared, he deduced on June 30 that the Federals were probably constructing a mine beneath the position. His reconnaissance, however, exposed him to a Federal sharpshooter, whose bullet ricocheted into Alexander’s shoulder causing a painful wound, serious enough to earn him a furlough. En route to the train that would take him to his recuperation in Richmond, Alexander stopped at Violet Bank to report his sus384

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picions. Finding General Lee absent on a reconnaissance, Alexander discussed his conclusions with Col. Charles S. Venable of the commander’s staff. The British correspondent to the London Times, Francis Charles Lawley, was present in Venable’s tent as Alexander spoke. Lawley expressed skepticism based on the distance between the Union lines and the salient, asserting that to his knowledge the longest military mine that could be ventilated had been measured at 400 feet several years earlier during the Sepoy Rebellion in India. Alexander protested that the Union army contained experienced coal miners who could overcome such obstacles and boasted that, as soon as Lee received word of his suspicions, the general ordered countermines to commence at Pegram’s Salient.35 Alexander’s assertion, though uncorroborated by other witnesses, may have credibility. Several other Confederates, however, claimed to have discerned Union intentions earlier. General Beauregard urged Bushrod Johnson on July 2 to expel the Yankees from his front with artillery and a night sortie “for should he not be speedily driven therefrom, the configuration of the ground is such that he can easily carry on mining operations.” Capt. William Henry Harder of the Twenty-­Third Tennessee remembered noticing that “on the deep cut near where the Baxter Road and the railroad crossed there seemed to be an accumulation of fresh earth that [is] continually augmented and that the Federals were undermining to hide it from our view. I at once concluded that there must be tunneling on hand to cross our line under it so I placed my ear against the ground and could distinctly hear the picks cutting under our fort.” Harder reported his suspicions to General Gracie, who, he said, had local control of the area at the time. This account smacks of postwar romance, although Gracie’s son obtained testimony indicating that his father did, indeed, inform Lee of the possibility of a Union mine. A Virginia artillerist also reported seeing excavated earth from the shaft, and there can be little doubt that prisoners and some talkative pickets along The Horseshoe made statements to their grayclad counterparts, such as we are going to “send you to Heaven soon,” or we are “going to blow you up next week.” Perhaps Alexander’s report, if we can believe his recollection, became the most persuasive of several voices that intimated Federal subterranean subterfuge.36 Alexander did admit that “Gen. Lee seems . . . to have only about one half believed my report that the enemy were mining,” because, in fact, a number of days transpired before concerted countermining activities commenced. As early as July 4, however, large details were assigned to Pegram’s Salient to strengthen the works. Under the direction of an engineer officer, soldiers widened and deepened the trenches along the front of the position, built a Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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double line of palisades and a line of abatis, and excavated additional covered ways and traverses. Although General Beauregard may have been uncertain of any mining activity, by early July he clearly appreciated the likelihood that any Union assault on his front would target one or more of his three prominent salients—Pegram’s, Gracie’s, or Colquitt’s.37 Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill held the anomalous position of inspector-­ general of trenches in Beauregard’s sector in early July and he reported in personal correspondence on July 7 that countermining operations had commenced at Colquitt’s and Pegram’s Salients, based on unconfirmed assumptions that the Federals had begun mining there. It is unclear who had actually undertaken these operations because it was not until two days later that orders from the army’s chief engineer, Maj. Gen. Martin L. Smith, went to Capt. Hugh Thomas Douglas to report to Petersburg and start organized excavations. The Virginia-­born Douglas had enjoyed a successful career as a civil engineer before the war and began his military service in an artillery battery. Transferred to the engineers, Douglas suggested that a specialized unit be trained for bridge and road construction, and he took command of what became Company F of the First Confederate Engineers. Described as “an intelligent active and practical man,” Douglas and his company managed the pontoon bridge over the James at Chaffin’s Bluff when Smith’s orders arrived.38 Douglas and his small band of engineer troops crossed the Appomattox early on the morning of July 10 and established camp in a ravine near a spring behind Blandford Church. Douglas reported to Smith, and Smith referred him to Colonel Harris of Beauregard’s staff who, in turn, delegated responsibility to Lt. John Postell, one of Harris’s engineers. Postell would serve as liaison between Douglas and headquarters. The captain then embarked on an inspection tour, examining the lines between Colquitt’s Salient and Goode’s troops south of Pegram’s Salient. In addition to finding the fortifications inadequate in several regards, he noticed that shafts had been sunk at both Pegram’s and Colquitt’s Salients.39 Col. Walter Stevens, who would soon replace Smith as Lee’s chief engineer, formally placed Douglas in charge of the countermining on July 11 and the captain started work with enthusiasm and energy, despite a lack of experience in this kind of endeavor. While labors progressed on strengthening the defenses, Douglas completed the vertical shafts at both salients with the aid of a handful of men from Thomas Clingman’s Brigade, assigned to supplement his own small company. A second shaft at Pegram’s Salient flanked the first, 250 feet to the south, so that the excavations there bracketed the artillery position. Once the vertical digging reached an appropriate depth—fourteen to eighteen feet 386

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into the earth—Douglas began creating lateral galleries out from the Confederate line. His intention, of course, was to intercept any Union shaft coming toward the two salients.40 Although the high command believed the greatest threat existed at Colquitt’s Salient, Douglas continued to advance his tunnels at both locations, submitting daily reports to Stevens regarding his progress. Douglas had to deliver all his materials at night because the areas behind the vulnerable points could be seen from Union lines. By the 15th, he issued comprehensive orders guiding the work, facilitated by the addition of sixty men from McAfee’s and Goode’s brigades detailed to assist the undermanned engineers. Douglas’s sixteen-­point instructions called for an earthen berm to be built around each shaft to protect them from flooding, the addition of a windlass above each shaft to facilitate the removal of excavated dirt, framing and sheeting to shore up the horizontal galleries—the galleries to slope down at the rate of one foot in every ten—and the miners to stop work every fifteen minutes to listen for the sound of Federal boring.41 Separate orders described the organization of the work crews. Douglas placed a noncommissioned officer in charge of each of two detachments assigned to the two mines at Pegram’s Salient and the one at Colquitt’s. Each detachment would work a twelve-­hour shift, three hours on and three hours off. Every shift would include a miner, a shoveler, one man to carry the dirt to the base of the vertical shaft, another to operate the windlass, a man to dump the earth, and two men removing the excavated material either into sandbags or spread across the fortifications. Thus each shift would require seven men, each detachment fourteen men, and each mine twenty-­eight men, plus a noncommissioned officer to supervise every detachment. The first shift ran from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and the second from 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m.42 The countermining required wood for the shoring and candles for lighting the galleries. Good candles were in short supply, and Douglas used about a pound of them each night. General Lee provided three pounds of sperm candles from the army’s reserve supply, but after that Douglas had to rely on inferior tallow candles. He had these infused with beeswax to prevent the soldiers from eating them, for “a good tallow candle would have been the foundation of a pretty good meal in those days,” recalled a North Carolinian. The miners constructed their shoring at two-­foot intervals to guard against collapse and eventually fashioned wheelbarrows aided by a wooden strip on the floor of the galleries to expedite the removal of dirt.43 Steady progress continued for the next two weeks, the galleries reliably lengthening farther out from the Confederate works. Unlike Pleasants, Douglas Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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enjoyed the support of army headquarters, limited only by its inability to supply all the materials as rapidly as Douglas would have preferred. The army did grant Douglas’s July 19 request that a whiskey ration be issued to the diggers who, like the men of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, worked in hot, claustrophobic—and, after the occasional heavy rain—muddy conditions. Bushrod Johnson provided 50 fresh workers from Elliott’s and Gracie’s Brigades on the 18th and the next day assigned 100 more soldiers to reinforce Douglas. That manpower helped facilitate the construction of another countermine at Gracie’s Salient, between Colquitt’s and Pegram’s. General Gracie had seen a Union sap roller inching toward his lines and wished to intercept the Federal effort, be it above or below ground.44 Although on one occasion the miners thought they heard digging at Colquitt’s Salient, none of Douglas’s work yielded proof that the Yankees had undermined any Confederate positions. The explanation was simple: the Confederate countermines were not deep enough to locate Pleasants’s gallery. Douglas employed various expedients to probe beneath his mines to search for evidence of the Union work. He used an auger to bore down at intervals, but he did not drill sufficiently deeply to intercept the Union tunnel. The South Carolinians at Pegram’s Salient employed a device concocted by General Gracie that attached a sharp iron ring to a ten-­foot pole. Soldiers penetrated the earth with the ring in the hope that the sounds of digging would be detected. An even more unorthodox method involved driving pegs deep into the earth and assigning a “peg biter” to clench the device between his teeth to identify subterranean vibrations. Predictably, none of these imaginative expedients succeeded.45 By July 29 Douglas had excavated 368 feet 9 inches of galleries in his futile attempt to detect any Union mine. While E. P. Alexander considered the countermining “badly planned & . . . slowly executed,” the Confederates should not be so harshly judged. Douglas and his men had very limited experience with mining operations and proceeded entirely on speculation at three separate locations. Credit certainly belongs to the Federals for masking their work so well by maintaining a constant harassing fire aboveground, while the Pennsylvanians worked silently and efficiently at least ten feet below the deepest penetration of a Confederate probe.46 Although the Rebels could not be sure about the Union mine, the Federals learned early enough that their adversaries were looking for one. Reports began to surface from multiple sources by July 17. A North Carolina deserter, who had been detailed to assist with the work at Pegram’s Salient, reported Douglas’s mission. Burnside passed the word to Pleasants, who ordered the work stopped that night. He and two companions silently crept to the end of the galleries and 388

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listened for evidence of Confederate excavation. “Our men at work in the mine under the rebel redoubt could hear a noise of pounding,” reported Burnside. Other soldiers witnessed the Confederates laboring with spades behind the works. The Federals built little listening galleries where a soldier would bring a tightly stretched drum head on which he would place a few gravel pebbles. Any disturbance from above would cause the stones to shift and vibrate across the drumhead.47 The average Confederate remained dubious about the rumors of a Federal mine, a skepticism that grew as the days passed with no hard evidence of Union chicanery. Casual mention of possible Federal digging and Confederate countermining predominated, although one published report claimed that Grant had undermined the entire city of Petersburg. “My informant has seen a diagram of the miles, which, when completed, will extend the length of Bollingbrook, Bank, Sycamore and Old streets, and perhaps as far as the old Fair Grounds, on the south of the City,” wrote this credulous correspondent.48 By the last week of July, skepticism had turned to ridicule within the Confederate ranks. Pvt. William G. Morton of the Fifty-­Third Virginia reported to his parents that the rumors of Grant’s mining were false. “It is impossible,” he assured them. A Confederate classicist considered the story that the Federals were “trying to dig old Uncle Robert out of his trenches . . . a herculean task, too great even for the Mighty Ulysses.” No one exceeded Lee’s adjutant general, Walter Taylor, in sarcastic rejection of the possibility of a Union mine—one of any number of rumors circulating among the troops including the story of Grant’s death and reports that Meade intended to defect. “Burnside has some thousands of negroes underground—not dead & buried—mining our works,” Taylor wrote to his fiancée, his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. “He is said to have gotten as far as Sycamore St. and is believed to be running a train of cars underneath—as smoke is constantly seen to exude through paving stones . . . by gentlemen returning to camp after night, who have been entertained by kind people who treat them to ice water and straws. These with the secession of Illinois & the burial of Grant are the only items of news that have reached me up to this hour. As Grant has been buried, I presume it is his ghost that is undermining Petersburg and this makes the matter only the more terrible.”49 Pleasants’s reconnaissance on the night of the 17th convinced him that the Confederates “know no more of the tunnel being under them than the inhabitants of Africa.” By then, he had completed the main gallery to a length of 510.8 feet. His next task involved constructing lateral chambers branching right and left from the mine in which to place the explosives. This work commenced on July 18.50 Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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Pleasants encountered several minor problems during the five days required to complete the lateral galleries. “The ground is full of springs where I am now mining,” he explained to Potter, “but I could have made better progress in the last three days if I had not stopped the work frequently to prop it securely, and in order to listen and ascertain if the enemy was mining near us.” While digging the right chamber the miners could plainly hear the Confederates at work above them, so Pleasants altered the trajectory of his gallery “a little beyond and in rear of their work and gave it a curved line of direction.” By July 23 both lateral chambers were finished, the left one measuring thirty-­seven feet and the right twelve inches longer. Pleasants estimated that he had excavated at least 18,000 cubic feet of earth. “I have worked harder of late with body and brain than I ever did in my life before,” the colonel confided to his uncle. “I have projected, undertaken, and completed a gigantic work; and have accomplished one of the great things of this war.”51 Pleasants deserved to be proud. He felt keenly the skepticism of “the regular army wiseacres” who had told him that his mine could not be ventilated for that distance and that he “would either get the men crushed by fall of earth, or have them smothered.” His final task would be to charge the mine with black powder—Pleasants requested 12,000 pounds—and then “reap the fruits of the work. It is terrible . . . to hurl several men with my own hand at one blow into eternity,” he mused, “but I believe I am doing the right thing.”52 Pleasants built eight wooden boxes outside the mine and then brought them inside the lateral galleries to be assembled in place. They consisted of a square base with a hopper fit on its top through which the powder would be poured. He securely stabilized each gallery with shoring that he also fashioned outside the mine, then silently fit together underground. Pleasants had become so involved with the mining that Burnside relieved him of brigade command, naming Col. Zenas R. Bliss of the Seventh Rhode Island as his temporary replacement.53 The next job entailed filling the magazines with black powder, an exercise that Grant authorized on July 25. Burnside agreed with Pleasants that 12,000 pounds would be the proper amount, thinking that such a blast would create a larger crater with gentler slopes, and advocated this approach in several conversations with Meade. Meade, however, reduced the amount by one-­third, sustaining the opinion of Duane and others that a larger explosion might rain debris on the attackers. Meade notified Burnside of his decision on the evening of July 26, promising also to send the 8,000 sandbags that Burnside had requested.54 The powder had arrived at City Point on July 15 and orders reached the 390

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ordnance officer there to provide the explosives early on the morning of the 27th. Burnside instructed Potter to detail 180 men to move the powder to the mine, thinking that the material would arrive in 100-­pound kegs. In fact, the explosives appeared in much smaller barrels, weighing 25 pounds each. Troops unloaded these 320 kegs more than a mile behind the entrance to the mine and at 4:00 p.m. the detailed soldiers lugged the containers forward using a sling placed over their shoulders with two bags at the ends, a keg being placed in each bag. From there, the miners transferred the powder down the tunnel and into the galleries, filling the hoppers, which were connected to one another with wooden troughs, in which they spread more powder. Of course, this entire process entailed great peril. The men laboring under their fifty-­pound yokes had to move quickly through the covered ways, hoping that the odd enemy mortar shell would not strike nearby with fatal results. Great care was taken to ensure that whatever illumination existed in the mine did not come in contact with the powder. Pleasants completed this task in a mere six hours, reporting that by 10:​​00 p.m. the job had been done, leaving him to tamp the end of the galleries to ensure that the blast would be directed up and not diluted by flowing back through the mine.55 Pleasants put another 150 men to work on the tamping as soon as the powder kegs had been emptied. They packed the main tunnel thirty-­four feet back from the entrance to the lateral galleries and into each of those galleries some ten feet, leaving the space between the magazines open. The men used the sandbags that Burnside had requisitioned, stacking them loosely on top of one another from floor to ceiling, interspersed with long logs placed diagonally across the tunnel and galleries “so as to be driven into the sides by the recoil of the explosion.”56 The final job required creating the mechanism for igniting the powder charges. Burnside and Pleasants had hoped that long fuses, supplemented by wires connected to batteries, would supply ignition. The best product for this type of operation was safety fuse, resistant to moisture and available in long lengths. Artillery chief Henry Hunt informed Burnside that he had ordered 1,000 yards of this material on June 29. What actually arrived fell far short of what Pleasants and Burnside had requested. Common blasting fuse appeared, some in lengths as short as ten feet, requiring numerous splices to extend it sufficiently out from the tamping to provide enough time for the soldier lighting it to escape the mine before the powder exploded. No evidence explains the origin of this inferior fuse. Perhaps Hunt had regarded the mining project as so speculative and unimportant that he failed to specify the desired material.57 Pleasants seethed when he saw the second-­rate fuse, and while his men Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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busied themselves with splicing, he sent emissaries to army headquarters to request the proper material. Told that it was not on hand but would be ordered, Pleasants completed the splicing by 6:00 p.m. on the 28th, the fuses having been attached as well as possible to achieve the desired length. Pleasants had laid two troughs along the floor extending out from the junction of the galleries into the main tunnel. He half-­filled these two troughs with powder and, for redundancy, laid three of his spliced fuses in those troughs. At the end of the troughs for a distance of ninety-­eight feet the three fuses ran toward the entrance to the mine. Assuming that the fuses worked, the sparks would travel down their length, through the powder-­filled receptacles, under the tamping, into the troughs connecting the magazines, terminating in a giant explosion when the fire reached the 8,000 pounds of powder resting in the hoppers.58 In only thirty-­four days, Pleasants had created a remarkable weapon. Although the Pennsylvanian and his postwar adherents would claim that the army’s hierarchy evinced hostility toward their project—when only apathy and skepticism predominated—still all the credit for the endeavor belongs to Pleasants, Potter, Burnside, and the men of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania. The question now remained when, and how, the mine would be used. General Potter urged Burnside to trigger the explosion as soon as possible, since any delay “increases continually the probability of its being detected and defeated,” not to mention the ever-­strengthening Confederate works and the limited time that the powder would remain dry enough to ignite.59 Grant maintained his enthusiasm for the offensive, although the various plans he had endorsed then canceled or allowed to go unexecuted in early and mid-­July had left the operational situation essentially unchanged since the conclusion of the Second Offensive. On July 24 he informed Meade that his engineers recommended that Burnside’s front offered the best opportunity for a successful attack. He provided Meade with general directions on how to conduct the assault, implying, however, that the final decision remained with Meade. “This should be done by Tuesday morning [July 26], if done at all,” he advised. Should Meade opt not to launch this attack, he should implement Grant’s former plan to dispatch Sheridan on a cavalry raid against the Petersburg Railroad as far south as Weldon. Almost as an afterthought, and without any strategic context, Grant added that “whether we send an expedition on the road or assault at Petersburg Burnside’s mine will be blown up,” as Grant believed that the Confederates were bound to learn of its existence in short order.60 Grant’s conception of Meade’s potential attack in no way referenced the mine as integral to the operation. Meade, however, assumed that any assault 392

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along Burnside’s front would be preceded by its detonation and on July 24 expressed “no doubt” of its successful explosion and the resulting degrading of that portion of the Confederate line. Fearing, however, that Confederate artillery would sweep the captured position and that the Confederates maintained a reserve that would be unaffected by the blast, he allowed that “I do not . . . deem the assault expedient.” Meade, who based this conclusion on a report by Duane, dutifully agreed to carry out the attack if Grant insisted, allowing that the plan was not “hopeless,” while inserting a gentle plug for pursuing formal siege operations or waiting for Wright’s Sixth Corps to return in order to attack along Jerusalem Plank Road in conjunction with the explosion of Burnside’s mine. Grant explained later that day that Wright would be engaged in the Shenandoah Valley for a period of time and quickly acquiesced to Meade’s concerns, being unwilling “to attempt a movement so hazardous . . . against the judgment of yourself and your engineer officers. . . . I will let you know . . . in the morning what determination I come to.” Once again, Grant deferred to Meade in what for the first six weeks of the Petersburg Campaign had become a familiar pattern. Moreover, the utility of Burnside’s mine remained uncertain even as Pleasants prepared to charge and tamp the galleries.61 True to his promise, shortly after sunrise on the 25th Grant informed Meade of his latest plan. This scheme called for two of Phil Sheridan’s divisions, Kautz’s cavalry from the Army of the James, and the entire Second Corps to cross the James River at Deep Bottom and launch a massive raid against the Virginia Central Railroad as far northwest as the South Anna River. Breaking that iron connection with the Shenandoah Valley would inhibit Early’s rapid return to the Petersburg-­Richmond theater. Hancock’s role would be to ensure that the cavalry would not be stranded as it had been the previous month. By advancing toward the Confederate works at Chaffin’s Bluff, Hancock could dissuade Lee from detaching forces to block the troopers’ return. Grant added two contingencies: first, if Sheridan found it possible to “surprise the little garrison of citizen soldiery” in Richmond, he should make the attempt to capture the city. Second, should this grand raid lure “such a weakening of the enemy at Petersburg as to make an attack there possible,” Meade should be prepared to spring Burnside’s mine prior to the assault. However, if the mine could not be used in conjunction with any other operation, Grant recommended that it be blown up on the afternoon of July 27 without reference to any larger operational purpose.62 Meade promptly passed Grant’s orders to Hancock that afternoon, but more so than the general-­in-­chief, he continued to explore the mine’s tactical potential. At noon on the 26th, as plans for the movement across the James Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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were well under way, Meade reported that further examinations along Burnside’s front suggested that the Confederates did not have a connected reserve line behind Pegram’s Salient. Expressing concern that fresh Southern troops moving across the James boded ill for Sheridan’s impending raid, Meade suggested that the opportunity to make Burnside’s mine the centerpiece of a Federal offensive now appeared more feasible. Grant expressed continued confidence in Hancock’s and Sheridan’s success, but agreed for the first time that the mine might play a central role in breaking through a weakened Confederate defense at Petersburg. Meade, however, balked again, professing reluctance to hazard an attack south of the Appomattox without Hancock’s presence, and warning of the vulnerability of his own left flank. On the night of the 26th, Grant again heeded Meade’s advice, acknowledging that if the enemy indeed detached significant troops across the James to meet the threat from Sheridan and Hancock, he would withdraw those troops to Petersburg and thus provide the reassurance Meade required to make an assault on Burnside’s front. To characterize the Union high command’s vacillating strategic vision as “fluid” at this point in the campaign would be charitable.63 While Grant and Meade pondered these various operational schemes, Burnside had been busy preparing for orders to explode the mine and follow with an attack. Meade had first inquired as to the feasibility of such an assault on July 3, irrespective of Pleasants’s mine. Burnside advised that any attack by his men should be predicated on the detonation of the mine and be done in cooperation with the Second and Sixth Corps, which at that time occupied the trenches adjacent to the Ninth Corps. Burnside inadvertently ruffled Meade’s feathers—which didn’t take much provocation, considering their testy relationship—by implying that he should be given authority to coordinate the entire assault. Meade replied by reminding Burnside that he had not ordered the construction of the mine and that any multicorps cooperation rested with him as army commander. Burnside hastily apologized for the apparent misunderstanding and the affair blew over, yet it offered a reminder of the short leash that Meade maintained on his bewhiskered subordinate.64 It must have been immediately after this exchange that Burnside’s staff officer, Lt. Col. Charles G. Loring, reported that Burnside’s three white divisions were in no condition to undertake a perilous frontal attack. Their experience during the Overland Campaign, their assaults during the First Offensive, and their constant service along the front lines since June 18 “was enough at least to weaken the zeal of the men.” This left the Fourth Division, composed of nine regiments of U.S. Colored Troops, as the logical unit to spearhead any assault. Burnside met with its division commander, Edward Ferrero, who, along with 394

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his officers, “expressed to me their utmost confidence in his troops, and especially his confidence in their ability to make a charge, or in other words a dash.” Ferrero examined the ground and began his plan to assault the Confederate line following the explosion of the mine. Others in the Ninth Corps learned of Ferrero’s assignment as early as July 8.65 Ferrero’s status as a general officer stood in doubt that July. Born thirty-­ three years earlier in Granada, Spain, Ferrero had immigrated to New York as an infant, where his father, a native Italian, taught ballroom dancing. Ferrero followed in his father’s footsteps (so to speak) and was teaching dancing to West Point cadets at the outbreak of the war. Having attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in the New York Militia, Ferrero garnered a commission in 1861 as colonel of the Fifty-­First New York. “Quite a well-­looking man” with a stylish beard and the reputation as a fashionable dresser, Ferrero served under Burnside in all that officer’s 1862 campaigns, earning a promotion to brigadier general. The Senate failed to confirm his appointment, however, and it lapsed in March 1863, although he was reappointed two months later. This promotion also expired without Senate validation, despite his August 1863 rise to division command. Ferrero’s reputation as a dandy generated muffled chuckles from many of his fellow officers, although the opinionated Colonel Lyman considered this derision somewhat undeserved. Grant thought enough of Ferrero to strongly recommend confirmation of his generalship to Secretary of War Stanton. “If Ferrero is taken from his division I do not know how he is to be replaced,” wrote the general-­in-­chief on July 15. Ferrero received a leave of absence six days later to travel to Washington to lobby for his promotion, temporarily leaving the division without its full-­time commander.66 Ferrero’s division contained two brigades, led by Lt. Col. Joshua K. Sigfried and Col. Henry G. Thomas. Their soldiers had been recruited primarily among free blacks in the North and numbered about 4,300. They had taken the field in April 1864, occupied with guarding wagons or performing labor during their three months in service. Very few of the men had ever fired a shot in anger and none had been engaged in a pitched battle.67 Whenever Ferrero’s troops made an appearance along Burnside’s lines, they generated unparalleled Confederate venom. “The rebels would never allow the negroes, or the troops immediately associated with them, to rest in peace, and on the front held by the 9th Corps there was a constant, distressing, deadly dropping fire of musketry and artillery kept up,” reported a Massachusetts soldier. Many Confederates believed that the blacks would show them no quarter in battle and vowed to retaliate with equal mercilessness. “The negro soldiers are no doubt incited to give no quarter from the fury with which they Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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are excited by the enemy’s accounts of Fort Pillow,” wrote General Wise. “We certainly will show them & their white officers no quarter.”68 Part of this animus stemmed from the creditable performance of the Eighteenth Corps blacks on June 15. The respect that Hinks’s men earned that evening spilled over to Ferrero’s troops among many of the white soldiers in blue. “The colored boys are brave and loyal soldiers and they look as fat and sleek as Henry Clay’s slaves,” wrote Pvt. David Coon of the Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin. Col. William Wirt Henry of the Tenth Vermont agreed. “In these fights around Petersburg,” he wrote, “they have fought nobly and if there was prejudice among some before it is all gone now in this army,” although he patronizingly referred to them as “whitewashed Yankees.” Henry may have overstated the case as a good deal of bias remained among the Federals. Private Crossley of the engineers wrote that he had spent his first night working with the blacks on a battery near the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad on July 17 and “Lord save me from them for [the] future. They have white men for Officers but no amount of money could hire me to serve with niggers.” Capt. Josiah Jones of the Sixth New Hampshire simply concluded that “the negroes do us no good.” Some of the Federals adopted a wait-­and-­see attitude toward their African American comrades. “We have the 4 div. colored for our support but have not given them any chance to show their grit as yet,” admitted Pvt. Elon G. Mills of the Seventeenth Michigan. “A great many of them are anxious to have a chance at the Johnnys & stated they will never take one of them as a prisoner.”69 Should Meade and Grant authorize his attack, Ferrero proposed to charge immediately after the explosion, hitting the enemy line just south of the resulting crater, using the debris as flank protection for his right. The leading regiments would then move behind the Confederate works and peel off to the left and right, widening the breach, while the rest of the division dashed forward toward the commanding ground at Cemetery Hill, 533 yards to the northwest, on which stood the relic Blandford Church. The white divisions would then follow, securing this high ground and thus controlling with artillery the rear of Lee’s lines from the Appomattox River south and west beyond Jerusalem Plank Road. From there, the city itself would be at the mercy of the Federals and their cannon. Burnside approved this choreography, and Ferrero provided his two brigade commanders with a rough map of the ground, instructing them to examine the terrain over which they would make their assault.70 Burnside’s affirmation came “fifteen or twenty days, if not more, before the assault was made.” After endorsing Ferrero’s tactics, the corps commander ordered Ferrero to drill his troops in the evolutions required to execute their

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important assignment. The extent to which the blacks discharged this order remains one of the more puzzling aspects of the entire Petersburg Campaign.71 There is abundant evidence to sustain the conventional wisdom that Ferrero’s men trained extensively for their offensive operation. Burnside and his Third Division commander, Orlando B. Willcox, both told the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War that the black troops had prepared for their mission. Robert Potter testified that “I had seen them drilling.” Both Colonel Sigfried, whose brigade had been tapped to lead the assault, and Colonel Thomas averred that they ran their men through the paces to teach “certain movements to be executed in gaining and occupying the crest.” Capt. James H. Rickard of the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops of Thomas’s brigade wrote after the war that the regiment “had been for several weeks drilling our men” in preparation for leading the assault. Capt. William H. Harris of Burnside’s staff recorded in his journal that the blacks had been learning “their duty by constant application . . . for the previous month,” while Sgt. Maj. Leander O. Merriam of the Thirty-­ First Maine, a unit in Potter’s division, remembered watching “the niggers drill . . . for many an hour” near the Shand house “day after day.” Capt. Ervin T. Case of the Ninth New Hampshire, also of Potter’s command, wrote that “the colored division . . . were kept in reserve and in constant drill.” Ferrero himself assured Burnside that his troops had been properly schooled.72 There remains some disagreement among those who document the training as to its extent. In contrast to those who testified to weeks of practice, Colonel Bates of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops, one of the units designated to lead the assault, wrote after the war that he did not even learn of the mine’s existence until July 22. Told that his regiment would be responsible for leading an attack when ordered, Bates recalled that Sigfried’s brigade drilled for several days “in just the movements that we were expected to go through when the explosion should come. Time after time did my regiment go through the imaginary advance, the turn to the left and the advance along the line of the breast-­works.” Lt. Col. H. Seymour Hall, commander of the Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops—the other of Sigfried’s units selected to lead the assault—­ insisted that he “practiced these movements till they could have been executed as perfectly in the dark as in the light,” without specifying the duration of this training. Capt. Rees G. Richards of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania recalled that Ferrero’s soldiers drilled “for almost three weeks . . . in the movements necessary to familiarize them with the work to be done in leading the charge.”73 It is almost certain, despite these assurances, that little if any training occurred more than ten days before the mine’s eventual explosion. Ferrero re-

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ported on July 14 that of his more than 4,000 men, 1,000 were on picket duty and the rest were “at work on the redoubt and intrenchments and felling timber.” Ferrero lodged complaints with corps headquarters on July 17 and 19 that “the whole command has been constantly at work, day and night, on our own front; at the same time large details have been made for work on other portions of the line.” General Warren, who had earlier been granted authority over Ferrero’s men as fort builders, again requested the blacks for labor on his front on July 18, a request that army headquarters denied, stating that Ferrero’s men should be employed on the fortifications only along their own lines. Robert K. Beecham, a lieutenant in the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops of Thomas’s brigade, cast doubt on whether any discernible drilling occurred at any time before the detonation of the mine. “I was on duty with my company and regiment every day from the 22nd day of June until after the battle of the Mine on the 30th day of July. . . . I am prepared to say from actual knowledge derived from personal experience with the Fourth Division that the only duty assigned to the said division for more than a month before the battle . . . was work upon our trenches and fortifications.” Beecham denied that the Fourth Division had ever been together until the day before the explosion, let alone for the purpose of organized training. His own brigade had only one drill between June 22 and July 29 that “lasted three or four hours, and consisted of the most common and simple of brigade movements.”74 Ferrero’s own after-­action report, written on August 1, contained no mention of any special training by or for his men. Similarly, during his testimony to the Court of Inquiry held in August, Ferrero praised the performance of his troops during the fighting under investigation, especially in light of their raw nature and lack of training. Various sources that should have referenced drilling for the attack do not, while there is abundant evidence documenting the fatigue duties that dominated the division’s time. Witnesses such as Lt. Freeman S. Bowley of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops complicate the matter even more. Bowley discussed holding daylong drills “ending in a terrific bayonet charge” in late June, before Burnside had assigned Ferrero any combat responsibility, then documented exhaustive fatigue duties in mid-­July, finally stating that not until July 29 did Colonel Bates inform him of the existence of the mine and his role in the pending attack.75 While it is impossible to reconcile these disparate accounts, it seems plausible that most of Ferrero’s men received no extensive training and perhaps no drilling at all. Postwar claims by contemporaries or assertions by modern historians that the African American troops had become a finely honed unit ex-

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pertly schooled on the tactics required for the assault should be treated with skepticism.76 On July 26 Meade wrote Burnside inquiring as to the likelihood of the mine being discovered or intercepted by a countermine. If such an eventuality seemed probable, Burnside was to explode the mine the following afternoon at 4:00 p.m. “It is not intended by the commanding general to follow up the explosion of the mine by an assault or other operation,” Meade explained, but if Burnside’s endeavor had remained undetected by the Confederates it should “be preserved for use at some early future day when circumstances will admit of its being used in connection with other operations.” Those circumstances would arise within forty-­eight hours thanks to the fate of Grant’s expedition to the north side of the James.77 Despite Grant’s postwar assertion that this offensive had always been designed to lure Lee away from Petersburg and enhance Burnside’s potential success, it is clear that the lieutenant general initially placed his strategic priority with Hancock and Sheridan. His July 25 orders to Meade identified the “real object” of the offensive as “the destruction of the railroad” north of Richmond. However, Meade’s report regarding the vulnerability of Confederate defenses in Burnside’s sector prompted Grant to revise his thinking. He confessed that the presence of the Second Corps and Sheridan’s cavalry might compel Lee to “weaken Petersburg, so that we can break through . . . with the force left behind.” By the next evening, both Meade and Grant, cognizant of a Confederate buildup north of the James, began believing that Hancock’s primary contribution would be to serve as a decoy and that an attack following the detonation of the mine offered the best chance for meaningful results. In the meantime, however, the Hancock-­Sheridan offensive across the James held the key to military events at Petersburg.78 Meade dutifully relayed Grant’s orders to Hancock and Sheridan on the afternoon of July 25. The general-­in-­chief asked for an additional bridge across the Appomattox so that the infantry and cavalry could use parallel spans to expedite their crossing of that river. A second bridge across the James below Deep Bottom had been erected a few days earlier terminating on the north bank at Tilghman’s Wharf, adjacent to a large cleared area known as Strawberry Plains. Hancock’s infantry would use the span at Point of Rocks across the Appomattox and the original or upper bridge at Deep Bottom that led to the Union foothold maintained there by Robert S. Foster’s brigade of the Tenth Corps and a recently arrived unit from the Nineteenth Corps. Sheridan would cross the Appomattox at Broadway Landing and then utilize the new or lower bridge to

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Strawberry Plains, providing the cavalry access to their route toward the Virginia Central Railroad. When the infantry and cavalry operated together, Sheridan would take his orders from Hancock. The movement would commence so that the river crossings would occur after dark to shield them from prying Confederate eyes. Foster received instructions to cover both bridges across the James with hay to muffle the sounds of tramping feet. Hancock and Sheridan would commit 24,500 men to the operation.79 On July 26 Hancock set his troops in motion, with General Barlow’s division in the lead, followed by Gershom Mott’s brigades and John Gibbon’s. Eight batteries accompanied the infantry, with the remainder of the corps’ guns trailing behind Gibbon. Hancock warned against straggling and admonished any soldier who fell captive to reveal nothing about the strength or intent of the mission. The Second Corps commander dispatched his aide, Maj. William G. Mitchell, to scout the route and General Butler cleared the road and prepared fires to illuminate the way. The Second Corps departed its camps behind Warren on the army’s left at 4:00 p.m.80 Some Second Corps soldiers speculated with eager anticipation that the movement presaged a voyage to join the Sixth Corps in northern Virginia, but it soon became evident that the docks at City Point were not in their future. The head of Barlow’s division reached Point of Rocks about 9:00 p.m., supplied with four days’ rations. Once across the Appomattox, the soldiers followed the eerie roadway, guided by Butler’s fires. “This was one of the most interesting marches we ever made,” remembered a surgeon in the Seventh New York Heavy Artillery. “There was no dust, it was pitch dark, we marched quite rapidly . . . and the red fires gleamed, sometimes you could see one, sometimes a dozen ahead, like irregular lamps on a crooked streeted city.” Pine trees lined the path some fifty feet above the ground so that the branches, illuminated by the guide fires “looked like some solemn old cathedral with a never ending roof.”81 Mott began crossing the Appomattox about 11:​​00 p.m. with Gibbon’s brigades right behind him. “The boys agree in calling this the most tiresome march of the campaign,” wrote Wisconsin private George C. Hand. The head of Barlow’s column reached the James, some fifteen miles from their starting point, about 2:00 a.m. on July 27. Hancock had preceded the troops and crossed to the north side on the upper bridge shortly after midnight, where he met with Foster and Sheridan at Foster’s headquarters. Foster reported that seven Confederate brigades, well entrenched, blocked Hancock’s designated route toward Chaffin’s Bluff. After contemplating a daylight attack against this apparently daunting position, Hancock suggested that his infantry use the lower bridge, where

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no meaningful opposition would contest his crossing. Meade quickly acquiesced and, between 3:00 a.m. and daybreak, the Second Corps tramped across the hay-­strewn pontoons, going into camp on Strawberry Plains.82 Sheridan’s horsemen with General Torbert’s division in the lead, followed by David Gregg’s brigades and then Kautz’s units, crossed the Appomattox at the new Broadway Landing bridge and rode through Bermuda Hundred, coming to a halt about 2:00 a.m. Ordered not to unsaddle but to lie down holding the reins of their mounts or tying them to their legs, the troopers were now forced to wait while Hancock’s foot soldiers preceded them across the lower bridge.83 Hancock’s recommendation to use the lower bridge, endorsed by Meade without Grant’s explicit consent, substantially if not irredeemably altered Grant’s plan. Sheridan’s progress toward the Chickahominy River and the railroad targets beyond would now be delayed by many hours. Moreover, Hancock’s mission of driving the Confederate opposition into their fortified camp at Chaffin’s Bluff—a necessity if Sheridan was to effect a timely return following his raid—would now require a crossing of Bailey’s Creek, behind which the Rebels could mount a formidable defense. Although the outcome of an attack by Hancock against the Confederates above the upper bridge at Deep Bottom must remain an open question, Hancock and Meade had traded an unopposed breakout from the James for a challenge of equal or greater difficulty in reaching Chaffin’s Bluff.84 The Confederates who prompted Hancock’s fateful decision consisted of six brigades of infantry and Martin Gary’s ill-­disciplined cavalry brigade from Ewell’s Department of Richmond. Ewell had authority over the Confederate defenses north of the James, but his military force consisted merely of some 5,000 second-­tier troops, whose reliability extended only to manning the city’s fixed defenses. Lee had bolstered Ewell’s firepower by sending two of Cadmus Wilcox’s Third Corps brigades north of the river at the end of June— McGowan’s South Carolinians and Lane’s North Carolinians numbering nearly 2,200 men. Brig. Gen. James Conner commanded this demi-­division, as both veteran brigade commanders were absent recuperating from wounds. On July 23 Lee dispatched the 4,200 men of Joseph Kershaw’s Division to reinforce Conner. Kershaw’s four brigades—along with a battery of four twenty-­pounder Parrott rifles of the First Rockbridge Artillery under Capt. Archibald Graham, Conner’s Carolinians, and Gary—sought to realize Lee’s long-­cherished desire to drive Foster from his toehold at Deep Bottom and restore unfettered Confederate hegemony north of the river. Lee gave Kershaw responsibility for this

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assignment, although some command confusion persisted—Ewell would call it “a mixed sort of concern”—as the theater of operations technically belonged to Ewell.85 The Confederates’ fortified camp at Chaffin’s Bluff on the James anchored their pontoon crossing there. They extended their defenses with a line of works running east along New Market Road to Bailey’s Creek, to neutralize Foster at Deep Bottom. From there, an incomplete line turned north and paralleled the western bank of the creek, terminating near Fussell’s Mill. For most of July, Graham’s Rockbridge Artillery and other ordnance harassed Union shipping along the James. One of their firing positions—an intersection east of Bailey’s Creek called Tilghman’s Gate, where New Market Road met the farm lane heading south toward Strawberry Plains—came under Union attack beginning July 21. The Eleventh Maine of Foster’s brigade captured the position with a trifling loss and held the ground until it was relieved by the newly arrived Nineteenth Corps brigade of Col. Leonard D. H. Currie, fresh from Louisiana. Col. John Henagan’s brigade of Kershaw’s Division regained the position on the night of July 25, scattering Currie’s regiments. Foster’s counterattack at Tilghman’s Gate failed the next morning, but his Tenth Connecticut and three companies of the Eleventh Maine maintained a position within fifty to seventy-­five yards of the Confederates on the evening of the 26th, so close that they could hear the Confederates as they brought Graham’s big Parrotts into position along New Market Road. This was the tactical situation that Hancock inherited when his weary soldiers reached Tilghman’s Wharf and sought a brief rest at sunrise on July 27.86 Early that morning, Hancock directed a skirmish line drawn from all three of his divisions to face north in front of his bridgehead. Two regiments from Regis De Trobriand’s First Brigade of Mott’s division, the Ninety-­Ninth and 110th Pennsylvania, under the command of Col. Edwin R. Biles of the Ninety-­ Ninth, shook out on Hancock’s right. Col. James C. Lynch of the 183rd Pennsylvania led Barlow’s skirmishers on Hancock’s left, which included Lynch’s command, the Twenty-­Eighth Massachusetts, and the Twenty-­Sixth Michigan drawn from Nelson Miles’s First Brigade. One of Gibbon’s regiments advanced near Four Mile Creek. This thin line commenced its advance mostly across open ground about 6:15 a.m., supported by artillery fire from some of Maj. John G. Hazard’s Second Corps artillery and the gunboat Mendota.87 Henagan’s 800 South Carolinians in direct support of the Rockbridge Artillery rested in their positions at the edge of the woods along New Market Road. Gary’s cavalry remained in supporting distance east and north of Henagan, while Bryan’s Georgia Brigade under Col. James P. Simms and Brig. Gen. 402

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Map 27 - First Deep Bottom, July 26-27, 1864

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Benjamin G. Humphreys’s Mississippians extended the line west to Bailey’s Creek. Kershaw was temporarily absent, so Humphreys assumed tactical control of the field. Graham’s Virginia cannoneers expected nothing more than target practice against Union shipping that morning when they spotted scattered blue figures moving toward them up the gentle slope in the early morning sunlight.88 The five regiments from Barlow’s and Mott’s divisions double-­quicked across the shelterless ground, eventually drawing fire from Graham’s guns and another battery opposite Mott’s skirmishers. The fire in the Third Division’s front was sufficiently severe that De Trobriand called on the Seventy-­Third New York to bolster his line. In Miles’s sector, the Rockbridge Artillery’s shells passed over the heads of the approaching Northerners, who found defilade under the crest of the hill close to the Confederate front.89 Now, elements of Mott’s, Barlow’s, and Foster’s commands combined with the Union artillery to deliver a staggering blow to the defending Confederates. The 110th Pennsylvania occupied De Trobriand’s left. As the Seventy-­Third New York and Ninety-­Ninth Pennsylvania contended with the artillery fire in their front, the 110th Pennsylvania noticed Graham’s guns to their left front and turned to fire obliquely at the cannoneers. The Tenth Connecticut and three companies of the Eleventh Maine, who had remained in their concealed positions near Bailey’s Creek, also opened fire on the Virginia gunners. General Miles arrived at the head of his three stalled regiments, declaring, “Men, let a general lead you.” The Twenty-­Eighth Massachusetts executed a left wheel and poured a devastating fire into the artillerists, while Colonel Lynch charged toward the guns with the 183rd Pennsylvania and Twenty-­Sixth Michigan.90 This determined onslaught caught Graham’s cannoneers by surprise. One section of the battery shifted out of its works and began to fire the small supply of canister that usually accompanied rifled artillery. Their salvo, although largely high, temporarily halted the Federals’ progress, causing the hesitation that Miles would correct. Henagan tried to adjust his line to face the imminent threat, but did so clumsily, leaving a large gap between his troops and the guns. Whether under orders from Humphreys or merely reacting to the unfolding crisis, the South Carolinians turned and fled northwest, leaving Graham’s gunners helplessly exposed. Kershaw had earlier ordered the battery horses to the rear and fire from the Tenth Connecticut ensured that they could not safely return. When the Union attackers reached to within fifty yards of the battery, Graham’s men understandably skedaddled, abandoning their pieces. “It was a disgraceful affair,” wrote Pvt. James M. M. Davis of the Rockbridge Artillery. “Had the Infantry thrown out a line of skirmishers, they might easily have 404

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kept the Yankees in check until our horses which were already on the way, had arrived.” Davis ascribed Henagan’s departure to ill-­timed retreat orders from Humphreys, a plausible explanation since this brigade had a sterling reputation and never evinced an inclination toward cowardice. Humphreys admitted that “having no assurances that the artillery horses would be brought up to enable the artillerists to carry off their guns I made no attempt to retake but immediately gave orders for the withdrawal of all my command.”91 The Confederates departed so quickly—the entire affair lasted between fifteen and twenty-­five minutes—that Graham lost but one man captured, Pvt. Andrew M. Darnall. Henagan’s losses went unreported, but must have been modest as well. Hancock would count ninety-­five casualties, including seventeen men killed by artillery fire while crossing the open ground. The Federals secured Graham’s four twenty-­pounder Parrotts, which had been captured from Union forces earlier in the war, and quickly brought them to the river amid great cheers, where they were loaded onto boats and taken triumphantly to City Point, treated as trophies. “Never, I think, did the men of the Second Corps so greatly enjoy riding Confederate cannon into camp,” thought Hancock’s adjutant, Francis Walker. They were considered “as full compensation for McKnight’s Napoleons,” lost on June 22 during the fighting near Jerusalem Plank Road.92 Mott disposed of Gary’s cavalry and a battery of twelve-­pounders that arrived as Henagan and Graham collapsed. Gary sent the Seventh South Carolina Cavalry toward Mott’s skirmishers and blasted the Yankees with artillery fire. Mott gave as good as he got, and a fierce exchange of rifle and cannon fire marked this short-­lived encounter. Ewell soon ordered Gary to disengage and the gray troopers withdrew through a thick woodland known as “The Slash,” heading northwest for Bailey’s Creek. Humphreys tried to place the blame for the loss of Graham’s guns on the tardiness of Gary’s assault, but in truth the cavalry’s modest (and forlorn) attack drew hardly a mention from the Federal commanders, one witness dismissing it as just “lively skirmishing.”93 Humphreys rallied the Confederates on the west side of Bailey’s Creek and Kershaw, who now appeared and assumed command, recognized that he faced the imminent possibility of being flanked on his left. Kershaw asked Ewell for help, but the lieutenant general declined, concerned about his own thin defenses near Chaffin’s Bluff. Ewell did ask to activate the Local Defense troops in Richmond, a request initially denied by the secretary of war. At this moment of crisis, the fractured Confederate command apparatus north of the James failed to respond to what appeared to be a serious threat to Richmond.94 When Kershaw informed General Lee of the dire situation on his front, the Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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Confederate commander did not hesitate. “A dispatch just received from Genl Kershaw has determined me to send Genl Heth’s division to reinforce him,” Lee informed Richard Anderson. “I wish you to proceed to Deep Bottom & take command of the troops belonging to this army there. Examine the enemy’s position, endeavor to ascertain his strength, and if practicable drive him away and destroy his bridges.” Anderson received Lee’s instructions early that afternoon and by 2:00 p.m. Henry Heth’s brigades were en route to the bridge at Chaffin’s Bluff, some riding the train as far as the turnout near Drewry’s Bluff. Lee saw opportunity in the exigency north of the James. With Kershaw’s, Heth’s, Conner’s, and Ewell’s troops east of Richmond, Lee hoped that these nearly 20,000 men could at last eliminate the omnipresent threat presented by the Federal presence at Deep Bottom. Heth and Anderson filed across the pontoon bridge to Chaffin’s Bluff late that night.95 In the meantime, Hancock and Sheridan faced a golden opportunity to execute Grant’s offensive plan. Hancock enjoyed substantial numerical superiority over Kershaw’s reeling division and its supports to the west, and the road to the Chickahominy remained open for Sheridan’s arriving troopers, who began crossing the lower bridge as soon as Hancock’s infantry had cleared the span. Hancock wired Meade at 6:35 a.m. informing his superior of the capture of Graham’s Battery. “I am making preparations to continue my attack . . . my troops are now advancing,” he wrote. Less than an hour later, however, the Second Corps commander’s tone drastically changed. “Since all chances of surprise have failed it is a question now whether the cavalry shall endeavor to break through at once or wait until I advance farther up the creek.” Meade responded immediately if a bit equivocally. “You and Sheridan must exercise your discretion as to the best movement for the cavalry,” he replied, reminding Hancock of Grant’s orders and informing his subordinate that Grant was en route to Deep Bottom. “It is extremely probable [Grant] will send orders direct to both yourself and General S. One thing is very certain,” Meade concluded, “if you cannot advance this morning you will not be able to do so this evening or to-­morrow, as the enemy undoubtedly will re-­enforce at once.”96 Hancock directed his men to turn west toward Bailey’s Creek, a maneuver that required hours to execute, where they discovered what Hancock’s aide, Major Mitchell, described as “a heavy line of intrenchments . . . apparently extending for a great distance to our right and left.” Hancock considered the Rebels “posted on the opposite bank in well-­constructed works, in a position offering great advantages for defense.” A cleared space of nearly 1,000 yards stretched from the west bank of Bailey’s Creek to the Confederate line atop 406

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New Market Heights and Hancock judged that the “works appeared to be filled with men, and a number of pieces of artillery were in position.” Hancock balked at assailing such a formidable place and opted instead “to maneuver to the right, with the view of turning the position.” He sent orders to the division commanders to advance to the east side of the creek, Mott’s troops on the right refusing their right until Sheridan could provide flank protection. “The major general commanding [Hancock] does not desire any advance but a temporary one, with a view of ascertaining the enemy’s position,” advised Adjutant Walker at 9:15 a.m.97 Colonel Comstock of Grant’s staff had arrived at Deep Bottom at 7:00 a.m. He met with Hancock and Sheridan, who had established a command post near a redan held by the Eleventh Maine and sat their horses, contentedly puffing on cigars as Miles and De Trobriand completed their successful advance. Comstock was appalled to learn that both major generals seemed content to defer any further action until Grant arrived to clarify his intentions. The staff officer reminded them of Grant’s explicit desire for the infantry to push ahead to Chaffin’s Bluff and the cavalry to ride swiftly toward the railroads north of Richmond, and hastened back to inform Grant of this unexpected passivity. General Butler believed that Hancock and Sheridan lacked confidence in their ability to crack the Confederate defenses “and that is fatal to any movement. If men think they can’t succeed they will not.” An army surgeon ascribed Hancock’s refusal to test the Confederate line to “a reform policy of Grant not to attack entrenched lines,” and Comstock thought Hancock remembered too vividly the disaster that had befallen the Second Corps on June 22. For whatever reason, Hancock’s caution all but doomed the army’s plan.98 Sheridan’s leading regiments began to cross the lower bridge at 7:40 a.m., after he and Hancock had decided against testing the Confederate line west of Bailey’s Creek. Kautz would not complete the crossing until noon. Hancock’s decision early that morning to use the lower bridge had thrown Sheridan’s timetable for a loop, and the cavalry commander explained to Meade that this “unexpected delay may materially interfere with the success of the cavalry operations, as I cannot get away from here for some time.” As it turned out, Hancock ordered Sheridan to suspend any notion of beginning his raid and instead told him to feel his way north searching for the elusive left flank of the Confederate line—another substantial departure from his intended mission. Gibbon’s division held New Market Road close to Bailey’s Creek near a manufactory called “The Potteries,” while Barlow and Mott extended the line northward. At midday, Hancock briefly considered throwing Gibbon against the Confederate defenses, but ultimately decided to err on the side of caution once again.99 Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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Grant determined to visit Deep Bottom and ascertain the tactical situation for himself, a departure from his habit heretofore of deferring to Meade on such occasions. He boarded a steamboat at City Point in the company of Comstock, Horace Porter, and Quartermaster Rufus Ingalls, among other staff and orderlies. A second and faster steamer pulled alongside Grant’s boat partway up the James, and the party changed vessels. Grant and his entourage proceeded rapidly upstream as far as the lower bridge, clambered onto a rowboat, reached the pontoons, and walked to the north bank about 1:00 p.m. Obtaining mounts, Grant and his companions rode to Foster’s headquarters, then embarked on a thorough inspection of the area, searching in vain all the while for Hancock. The general-­in-­chief reembarked for City Point about 3:30 p.m., leaving word for Hancock that he doubted that much could be done under the prevailing circumstances. “If, however, you can push past the enemy’s flank and double him back on Chaffin’s Bluff, so as to let the cavalry out to perform their part of the expedition, do so,” he instructed. “If you do not find this practicable, remain on the north side of the James until you receive further orders.”100 While Grant reconnoitered, two small encounters accompanied the relentless bombardment from Federal gunboats that afternoon. Butler ordered Foster to make a demonstration in his front to occupy the Confederate defenders should Hancock decide to risk an attack. Foster sent the Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts and the 100th New York forward about noon, driving the pickets from Lane’s Brigade back into their main lines before withdrawing at dusk. Col. John D. Barry, commanding the North Carolinians, suffered a wound and Col. Robert V. Cowan of the Thirty-­Third North Carolina replaced him at the head of the brigade. Sheridan, in response to Hancock’s instructions, sent Torbert’s division across New Market Road to Long Bridge Road, where he scattered a small contingent of enemy cavalry. Riding forward, the blue-­coated troopers discovered that the Confederates held the Darbytown and Charles City Roads, meaning that their line extended nearly five miles along Bailey’s Creek. Torbert broke contact but remained along Long Bridge Road on the army’s right. Later in the day, the Twenty-­Sixth Michigan probed toward Fussell’s Mill on Bailey’s Creek, generating an exchange of fire and confirming a strong Confederate presence: that, and nothing more. The high point of the Union offensive on July 27 had been reached before 7:00 in the morning.101 Hancock returned to his headquarters shortly after Grant’s departure and contacted the lieutenant general. He confirmed his effort to locate the Confederates’ left flank, and, without the least bit of conscious irony, assured Grant that he intended to “be as cautious as possible to avoid any bad luck.” Hancock confessed that he doubted his ability to accomplish much, although he hoped 408

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he might “frighten the enemy into abandoning his line or re-­enforcing it.” Sensing that the day’s meager results required justification, the corps commander explained that the overnight march had too badly fatigued his troops to permit them to achieve more that day. Grant did not question Hancock’s judgment or explanation. This meant, however, that Sheridan could not begin his raid and hope to return by way of Deep Bottom until Hancock confined the Rebels to their Chaffin’s Bluff compound. Grant, therefore, withheld permission to begin the raid. Still, Grant told Meade that he hoped that Hancock and Sheridan could turn the Confederate flank and drive the enemy back toward Richmond, perhaps renewing the feasibility of Sheridan’s mission.102 Word from Butler arrived at City Point early that evening that twenty-­nine carloads of Confederate troops had been seen moving from Petersburg northward. Meade would accurately identify them as Heth’s Division. Remarkably, Grant saw no reason that this news should alter Hancock’s assignment to turn the Confederates’ left flank the next morning, although he admitted that when Hancock did so he would have to determine if it made sense to push farther toward the Confederate capital. Meade suggested that Hancock’s chances would be enhanced by sending him some of Butler’s troops, and Grant agreed to solicit Butler for help. By 10:​​30 p.m. Butler reluctantly agreed to release Brig. Gen. Henry Birge’s sizable brigade from the Nineteenth Corps. Birge started immediately, expecting to cross the James by daylight, thus releasing more Second Corps men for the impending turning movement.103 Birge arrived at dawn with nearly 2,600 troops. At 6:30 a.m. these soldiers relieved Gibbon along New Market Road, freeing the Second Division to assist the cavalry with its envelopment. Despite these developments, Hancock still harbored doubts about the wisdom of resuming the offensive. He feared that removing Gibbon would risk his lifeline across the James via the lower bridge. “Is the turning movement an absolute one, or am I to make the movement at my discretion?” Hancock inquired of Meade at 7:00 a.m. Meade, understandably, referred his subordinate to Grant’s instructions. “It is impossible for me at this distance, and in ignorance of the ground and position of your troops, to give you detailed orders,” Meade replied, no doubt exasperated by his position in the middle of this operational maze. The expedition would proceed.104 While Torbert’s division remained near Long Bridge Road opposite the Darby house on the Union right, Sheridan sent Gregg’s two brigades—Henry Davies’s and J. Irvin Gregg’s—east on Long Bridge Road toward Riddell’s Shop, where they would be, presumably, beyond the Confederate left. From there, they could execute the turning movement and, if all went well, proceed up Charles City Road, cross the Chickahominy River, and commence the raid Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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Deep Bottom, July 28,July 1864 28, 1864 Map 28 -First First Deep Bottom,

against the railroads that had been the purpose of the entire operation. Kautz’s division would follow, and Foster’s troops would mount a diversionary attack from Deep Bottom in order to draw attention away from Sheridan’s offensive. These plans, however, did not account for the Confederates, who would seize the initiative on the morning of July 28 and bring the battle to the Federals. Anderson decided to deploy Heth’s road-­weary brigades in the New Market lines and make his attack with Conner’s demi-­division of Carolinians, along with Brig. Gen. William T. Wofford’s Georgians and Henagan’s South Carolinians—a force of something more than 5,000 men. Driving an entire Federal infantry corps and two cavalry divisions across the James River would be a tall order for such a modest contingent, made even more unlikely by Anderson’s 410

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inability or unwillingness to include Wofford in the final attack formation, reducing his strike force by a thousand men. The three remaining brigades began their march around 8:00 a.m., passing behind Kershaw’s Division and enduring some random shelling before reaching their designated positions north of the Darby house two hours later. General Conner assumed direct tactical command. Colonel Cowan, in charge of Lane’s Brigade, took the right; McGowan’s Gamecocks occupied the center under the leadership of Col. Isaac F. Hunt of the Thirteenth South Carolina, and Henagan deployed on the left.105 The line moved forward through “swamp and tangled underbrush” and at 10:​​00 a.m. encountered a country road that forked in divergent directions. Cowan and two of Hunt’s regiments bore right while the remainder of Hunt’s units joined Henagan in moving to the left. This would lead to twin engagements, pitting the charging Confederate infantry against Sheridan’s two cavalry divisions.106 As Cowan and the South Carolinians advanced on the right, a gap opened between them, the Tar Heels on the right slowed by marshy ground along their route. The Union skirmish line, manned by members of Brig. Gen. Wesley Merritt’s Reserve Brigade of Torbert’s division, scattered in the face of the Confederate advance. Eventually, the North Carolinians emerged from the marshy woods that had so impeded their progress, but their ranks had become badly disordered. Thus far, the Confederates had succeeded in driving their opponents, but the chaotic condition of their battle line provided an opportunity that Torbert did not squander.107 The division commander told Col. Thomas Devin to shift left and gain a position astride the right flank of Cowan’s Carolinians. Devin designated the Ninth New York Cavalry and Seventeenth Pennsylvania Cavalry for this task, ordering the Sixth New York Cavalry to charge the enemy in front. The three dismounted regiments struck Cowan’s disarranged brigade with devastating results. The Ninth New York Cavalry “moving quickly through a field of woods dashed up on the enemy with a yell & a volley,” recorded Pvt. William G. Hills. “They stood a moment then faltering some holding firm, presently all broke and close behind the fleeing rebels was our thin line of skirmishers dealing their well-­aimed shots into them.” The men of the Sixth New York Cavalry felt equally responsible for dispersing the Southerners, taking advantage of their breach-­loading carbines to maintain a superior rate of fire. “It was a pleasant sight to see those great, tall Carolinians go across that field on a hen canter,” gloated the regimental historian.108 Conner tried to refuse his right flank to pre­sent a solid front against Devin’s troopers, but to no avail. “How I escaped I can’t tell. Nothing but the Providence Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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of God saved me, for the bullets were flying thick and fast, and I was pretty conspicuous as I rode forward waving my hat,” recalled the general. “It became necessary to retreat in order to prevent their cutting us off and capturing us,” reported Capt. William J. Callais of the Thirty-­Third North Carolina. Cowan’s collapse also swept the two regiments of Hunt’s brigade off the field, aided by a strong shove from Merritt’s troopers. “A few volleys from our carbines make the line of Rebel infantry waver,” wrote a soldier in the Second U.S. Cavalry, “and in an instant the cry is heard along our entire line, ‘Charge! Charge!’ We rush forward, firing as we advance.” The defeated Carolinians withdrew to where they had begun the attack and slowly re-­formed, leaving nearly 300 casualties on the field along with the battle flags of the Twenty-­Eighth North Carolina and Eighteenth North Carolina. Pvt. Augustine E. Shore of the Thirty-­Third North Carolina succinctly summarized his brigade’s experience: “we had our asses whip off us if the truth was knone.”109 Events were not so one-­sided on the eastern half of the battlefield. Here, the remaining three regiments of Hunt’s brigade, with Henagan’s men on their left, negotiated the uniformly difficult terrain and emerged into a cornfield northeast of the Darby house, near where Long Bridge Road bent north from its easterly trajectory. “It was a splendid sight,” recorded a Federal trooper. “Their colors were flying, drums beating and the officers could be heard dressing the lines. They knew only cavalry was opposed to them and doubtless counted on an easy and bloodless victory.” Indeed, in their path lay the dismounted troopers of Davies’s brigade, along with a section of three-­inch ordnance rifles from Battery A, Second U.S. Artillery under Lt. W. Neil Dennison. David Gregg took initial control of the evolving situation. He advanced two of Davies’s regiments to a thumb of woods separating the Confederate forces and opened fire with Dennison’s guns, supported by the First Pennsylvania Cavalry. The surprised Rebels, who had approached without skirmishers, melted back into the trees.110 General Davies had accompanied his leading regiments and ridden beyond the scene of this fighting, but now returned to the sound of the guns and deployed the remainder of his brigade to Dennison’s right. As he did so, the Confederates reappeared and began a determined push, aiming straight for the guns. Hunt’s Twelfth South Carolina and Thirteenth South Carolina bore down on the ordnance with such fury that Gregg ordered the pieces withdrawn, and Davies directed his troopers to fall back. One of the cannon made a clean escape but the other gun, which kept firing in order to cover Davies’s withdrawal, was not so lucky. Sgt. Adam Ballenger of Company C, Thirteenth South Carolina, dashed ahead of his unit, leapt onto the barrel of the piece, and survived a 412

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brief attempt by some Federals to retrieve their gun. Ballenger then jumped off and cut the traces connecting the rifle to its crippled team, securing the prize. Ballenger’s effort stands out as the most remarkable individual performance of the entire engagement.111 This victory proved fleeting. Looking to their right, the South Carolinians could see that Conner’s half of the attack force had fled and Federals were now advancing to positions beyond their right flank and into their rear. Colonel Gregg’s brigade had arrived to add its firepower to the Union battle line, but before it could get substantially engaged the South Carolinians conducted a precipitate and not altogether organized retreat. “The rebels, after at first gaining an advantage, quickly retired, leaving their dead and severely wounded on the field; of the latter there was a very large number, more than equaling our entire loss,” recalled a Pennsylvanian. “This was one of the finest things our cavalry has ever done,” wrote the son of prominent Ohio Senator Ben Wade, an aide on Sheridan’s staff. A South Carolina soldier confessed, “We had to fall back, which was done in considerable confusion. When we got back to the woods we had advanced from, there seemed to be a dozen different stands of colors. Scarce two men of the same company together. All was confusion.” General Anderson managed to sort out his shattered brigades and organize a creditable position behind Bailey’s Creek. “It is the first time I ever was under Anderson, and he is a regular trump, cool as an ice box, calm and serene,” thought a relieved General Conner.112 The Confederates paid dearly for the capture of Dennison’s gun, losing 268 men—about 15 percent of their attacking force. Gregg suffered significantly, as well. His division tallied 166 killed or wounded troopers, the vast majority in Davies’s brigade. Thus the fighting between 10:​​00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. that July day claimed more than 560 Confederates and some 200 Federals, a sizable engagement by any standard. “We got dead rebels for dead horses,” summarized an Ohio trooper, “which pay equally well.” The North Carolinians referred to the battle as “the Gravel Hill fight,” while Sheridan called it “the victory of Darbytown.”113 Sheridan, who arrived on the battlefield after the fighting ended, showed uncharacteristic reluctance to exploit the victory. A regiment or two from Gregg’s division pursued the retreating Confederates for more than a mile, but eventually gave up the chase when they encountered the thick woods through which Conner had navigated. Anderson’s new line would not be tested. Most of the Federal troopers busied themselves with preparing to ship the Confederate prisoners and wounded to City Point, burying the Rebel dead near where they fell, and tending to comrades.114 Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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Gibbon’s division did not arrive near the battlefield until well after the Confederates had vanished. Hancock told Grant at 11:​​30 a.m., while the combat still raged, that he was sending “a division of infantry to support the cavalry,” but a misunderstanding between Gibbon and Hancock caused the delay. Hancock had instructed Gibbon to hold his division “ready to move on short notice, and in the meantime to send out staff officers to explore the roads leading to Sheridan’s position,” according to Gibbon’s testimony. The corps commander believed that he had actually ordered Gibbon to move rather than simply to prepare to do so, and berated his subordinate when he discovered the Second Division still in place after calls for help arrived from the cavalry. Major Mitchell of Hancock’s staff confirmed Gibbon’s version of events, sowing seeds of dissent between the two generals that would germinate the next day.115 With Gibbon on the scene, Kautz’s cavalry arriving, and Barlow’s division en route, the Federals enjoyed overwhelming numerical superiority on the northeast side of the opposing lines. But the afternoon would pass without incident. Hancock had learned from a prisoner that not only were Kershaw and Wilcox opposite his right, but that Charles Field’s, George Pickett’s, and Bushrod Johnson’s Divisions were also arrayed against him. Faced with such intelligence (which was, of course, in error), Hancock thought of nothing but saving his command. “If a formidable attack is made on me by the enemy this p.m. I shall fight in the intrenchments which I took yesterday,” he told Grant, “because my present line is too long to guard.” He ordered Sheridan and the infantry to prepare to defend his escape route across the lower bridge, although Gregg left the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry and First Maine Cavalry behind as pickets. Hancock and Sheridan now extended from The Potteries near Bailey’s Creek to Long Bridge Road and then east beyond the Darby house “and breaking off from that point in the direction of Malvern Hill.”116 As a further precaution, Hancock requested that Foster send a force to guard the lower bridge and engage in a demonstration at Deep Bottom to divert the Confederates from their anticipated offensive. Foster dutifully advanced, supported by fire from the gunboats Mendota and Agawam, engaging brigades under Brig. Gen. John R. Cooke and Col. William MacRae in brisk skirmishing. A portion of Foster’s Eleventh Maine took position at the lower bridge. The rest of the afternoon passed quietly.117 General Lee followed events north of the James as closely as possible, sending Ewell a message at one point inquiring, “Are you directing operations?” The one-­legged general was active on July 28, one diarist recording that he “came riding down the line this morning by the time the sun was up, and seems to be everywhere at the proper time.” Ewell told Lee that Sheridan’s cavalry force was 414

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“formidable” and that Anderson was engaged and needed more troops. Lee assured him that additional cavalry was en route, news that must have reached Anderson once he retreated behind Bailey’s Creek. “Learning that reinforcements were coming further operations were deferred until their arrival and to guard against any attempts which the enemy might make,” Anderson later reported. Sheridan, Hancock, Ewell, and Anderson all shared a defensive mindset on the afternoon of July 28.118 Grant, Meade, and various staff officers made a return trip to Deep Bottom that afternoon, arriving at 5:00 p.m. Grant had earlier told Meade that “if Hancock does not crush the enemy this morning I think it will be well to withdraw him during the night . . . keeping the cavalry and Butler’s troops to occupy the attention of the enemy,” and during his meeting with Hancock he terminated the expedition north of the James. Grant told Hancock to remove Mott’s division after dark, but to remain with the rest of his corps and the cavalry in his fortified position the following day in order to draw and retain as many of Lee’s units across the river as possible. Grant confessed upon his return to City Point that “we have failed in what I had hoped to accomplish—that is to surprise the enemy, and get on to their roads with the cavalry near to Richmond and destroy them out to South Anna.” But, he added, “I am yet in hopes of turning this diversion to account, so as to yield greater results than if the first object had been accomplished.” In other words, Burnside’s mine now moved to the front and center in Union strategy—at last.119 Before Hancock could begin implementing his new orders, word arrived that General Barlow’s wife had suddenly died of “malignant typhus.” Barlow applied for leave to attend to matters in Washington, but Meade initially declined to spare him given the nature of events on the ground. The next evening, however, the army commander relented, and the grief-­stricken Barlow departed, his place filled by General Miles.120 Mott’s division began withdrawing from its works at 7:30 p.m., and ninety minutes later crossed the lower bridge heading for Point of Rocks and the right bank of the Appomattox. Foster, who oddly had not learned the details of the partial withdrawal, saw Mott’s men crossing the river and sent Butler a near-­ frantic message under the assumption that he was about to be abandoned by the Army of the Potomac. General Birney responded with the rather shallow reassurance that Birge’s brigade and the gunboats would remain to assist him in case of Confederate attack, also failing to mention that, at least for the moment, the bulk of Hancock’s and all of Sheridan’s men would remain north of the river.121 That was not perfectly accurate. Hancock indulged in a little deception Construction of the Mine and First Deep Bottom

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shortly after midnight. He sent Torbert’s division across the lower bridge to Jones Neck, where the troopers left their horses. Then, at dawn, he directed the cavalrymen to march back over the bridge, accompanied by a train of 400 empty wagons and a show of noisy steamboats, hoping that alert Confederates would interpret this charade as evidence of reinforcements.122 Foster and Hancock had good reason to be concerned. Lee had reacted just as Grant hoped he would and ordered Fitzhugh Lee’s and Rooney Lee’s cavalry divisions across the river along with Field’s Division of the First Corps. He also instructed his artillery chief, General William Nelson Pendleton, to ensure that Anderson had all the support from the long arm he would need to conduct an offensive that would, once and for all, sweep the Yankees from the Richmond side of the James. Field’s brigades received orders for the movement around 4:00 p.m. They pulled out of their trenches at Petersburg after dark and marched through the city, some eventually boarding trains to take them to the turnout opposite Drewry’s Bluff. Their departure left only Hoke’s, Johnson’s, and Mahone’s Divisions in the Petersburg lines.123 As the sun rose on July 29, Hancock withdrew to a more compact defense line centered along New Market Road. Gibbon held the right, Miles with Barlow’s division the left, and Birge’s brigade snuggled between Miles and the swampy margins of Bailey’s Creek. Gregg’s cavalry, dismounted, guarded Hancock’s right with a picket line advanced parallel to Long Bridge Road, while the Union gunboats continued to lob shells over the heads of the Federal infantry. “The day of the 29th was one of great anxiety to the little column on the north bank of the James,” wrote a Second Corps staff officer. “Two small divisions of infantry, supported only by cavalry, were there face to face with the larger half of Lee’s army.” Foster continued to hold his diminutive bridgehead at Deep Bottom and conducted a brief demonstration during the afternoon.124 Hancock also ventured out near his picket line while overseeing the construction of fortifications along Miles’s and Gibbon’s fronts. While inspecting Gibbon’s handiwork, he detected a weakness and angrily reprimanded his subordinate for this apparent negligence. Gibbon, “hurt and mortified” by Hancock’s upbraiding in front of many witnesses, accompanied his superior to the allegedly flawed section of works and explained that artillery would cover the dead space that so bothered the corps commander. Mollified but not chastened, Hancock reminded Gibbon that he would be held responsible for anything that occurred in his sector, to which Gibbon tartly replied that “I am perfectly willing to be so held responsible and I regret you had not come to that conclusion before insulting me . . . before half a dozen General officers of the Army.” Han-

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cock would eventually retract his criticism, but irreparable bad blood had arisen between these two officers.125 Meanwhile, the Confederates remained idle, waiting for Field and the two cavalry divisions to arrive. Ewell did succeed in gaining permission to activate the Local Defense troops from Richmond, explaining to the secretary of war that “the enemy were within ten miles of our lines, and we cannot trust always to his want of enterprise.” Other than the meaningless sparring with the Union cavalry pickets, the most exciting occurrence within the Rebel ranks that day involved the voting for governor and other state offices among the North Carolina troops, who overwhelmingly rejected candidates opposing the continuation of the war. Field’s Division and the cavalry eventually filed into position behind Anderson’s lines near Fussell’s Mill during the evening, and Anderson laid plans for his attack the next morning.126 That assault would not occur, because by dawn the Federals were gone. In accordance with Grant’s orders, Hancock began shifting back toward the lower bridge after sunset. He had hoped to dismantle the upper bridge and shift it to Tilghman’s Wharf, to expedite the crossing, but that could not be accomplished in time. Gibbon led the procession that evening, followed by Miles with Sheridan’s troopers in the rear. Birge’s brigade provided security at the tête de pont. Butler had the road across Bermuda Hundred swept clean of obstructions and illuminated, as it had been four days earlier. Gibbon started across at 8:30 p.m. and Miles reached Jones Neck at 11:​​20  p.m. The head of Hancock’s column gained the south side of the Appomattox at 3:45 a.m. on July 30. Sheridan’s cavalry followed, taking all night to make the trek. A number of soldiers commented on the difficulty of that march, many falling out of line en route, simply unable to stay awake.127 The odd man out remained General Foster who, as Hancock’s evacuation was about to commence at 8:00 p.m., received instructions from General Butler. “As you have already learned, General Hancock has been ordered to move in another direction,” explained Butler. “This will leave a vastly superior force in your front, which may, probably will, attempt to assault your works.” The Massachusetts politician advised Foster to “make it cost them all your post is worth” and reminded him with debatable logic that “a good defense, even with loss, is better than an attempted retreat.” As it developed, Foster would not have to choose between annihilation or ignominy, as Hancock’s departure marked the end of the First Deep Bottom operations.128 The next morning, with Field and Rooney Lee in place to support Conner and Kershaw in the attack, Confederate skirmishers discovered that the Feder-

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als had vanished. The rank and file were “agreeably surprised,” but Dick Ewell did not know what to make of the Union strategy. “The movements of the Yankees are incomprehensible on any grounds I can give,” he wrote his wife, “and I have a half sort of feeling . . . that they are about to try some previously unheard of plan of taking Richmond, by balloons or underwater.” Gen. John Bratton came closer to the mark when he wrote his wife that “the Yankies line from Petersburg here is much shorter than ours, and he may have made this demonstration here to draw us over and has gone back to make the attack there.” With hindsight, Porter Alexander thought that Grant’s misdirection had been a “complete success” and left “our 6 divisions at Deep Bottom with their thumbs to suck.”129 To interpret the Union effort north of the James between July 26 and 30 as a diversion is, however, to misread its intent. Grant considered Sheridan’s raid and Hancock’s facilitation of it his primary initiative when the shift across the James began. Only after Hancock’s failure to gain any traction on July 27, did Grant begin to focus on Burnside’s mine, a decision that became final once Sheridan’s effort to turn the Confederate flank failed on the 28th. As David Birney wrote on August 4, “Hancock & Sheridan were sent north of the James, not as a feint but as a near thing.” Birney considered the operation a failure and Col. Luigi di Cesnola, the colorful commander of the Fourth New York Cavalry, bluntly advised a friend that “no matter what the papers say, we were badly whipped.” The operation cost the Federals nearly 500 total casualties while inflicting some 635 losses on the Confederates. Two of the Union’s finest officers, Winfield Scott Hancock and Philip H. Sheridan, failed to add any luster to their reputations at First Deep Bottom, nor did any of the ranking Confederate commanders distinguish themselves. The significance of their performances would now depend on what occurred southeast of Petersburg.130

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eleven

This Day Was the Jubilee of Fiends in Human Shape, and without Souls The Union Attacks on July 30 As generals Winfield Scott Hancock and Philip H. Sheridan prepared to cross the James and threaten Richmond in late July, George Meade laid contingency plans to exploit Burnside’s mine. As early as July 26, the army commander notified Gouverneur Warren that the movement toward the Confederate capital would “induce the enemy to send a considerable part of his force now in our front toward Richmond, and that an opportunity will be presented to attack him here. Should it occur, an assault will be made from Burnside’s front, preceded by the springing of his mine, which is now being prepared for explosion.” The failure at Deep Bottom gave life to Meade’s conception, abetted by General Grant’s unreserved blessing.1 On July 29 Grant informed Meade that he had ordered General Ord with the Eighteenth Corps “to report to you for the attack on Petersburg” and authorized Meade to develop specific plans for the offensive. Meade promptly complied, and chief-­of-­staff Andrew A. Humphreys translated Meade’s instructions into written orders that were circulated to the corps commanders and General Butler. Ambrose Burnside, of course, would be responsible for the primary attack, while Warren would strip his front in order to provide as much support on Burnside’s left as possible. Ord was to move his reinforced divisions to Burnside’s rear for further firepower, with Hancock replacing Ord on the army’s right, south of the Appomattox River. Sheridan, in accordance with Grant’s wishes, would endeavor to move his entire corps against the Confederate right to distract the enemy from the point of assault, while the artillery of 419

every corps shifted into firing positions. Meade set 3:30 a.m. on July 30 for the mine explosion to facilitate Burnside’s seizure of the crest of Cemetery Hill before sunrise, while Ord and Warren advanced as flank support. Grant met with Meade at 4:00 p.m. on the 29th, reviewed Meade’s directive, and expressed his “perfect approbation” of it.2 Hancock crossed the Appomattox on schedule, but the cavalry did not undertake its mission, in part because Sheridan had fallen ill. Gershom Mott’s Second Corps division relieved Ord, allowing the Eighteenth Corps commander to dispatch his four divisions to their support locations behind Burnside. These troops did not begin moving, however, until shortly before midnight, prompting Meade to authorize Burnside to creep into position for his attack prior to Ord’s arrival. Ord’s command consisted of his First Division, as of the evening of July 29 under Hiram Burnham, his Second Division now led by Adelbert Ames, the Third Division of U.S. Colored Troops, commanded that day by Brig. Gen. Joseph B. Carr, and John W. Turner’s division of the Tenth Corps. Only Turner and Ames would be involved in the offensive, as Burnham would remain in the trenches previously occupied by General Willcox’s men and Carr relieved Robert Potter’s troops—although he managed to get lost along the way.3 Meade relied on Warren to provide primary assistance to Burnside, and the Fifth Corps commander expressed perfect willingness to do so. As early as July 27, Warren identified Romeyn Ayres’s division and one brigade of Lysander Cutler’s as available to support a Ninth Corps assault. Meade instructed Warren the next day to prepare to act on that eventuality, and on the 29th Warren committed Ayres’s division and Cutler’s rear brigade to Burnside’s attack, even suggesting that two brigades of Samuel Crawford’s division might also participate. The often-­contentious Warren’s only dissent involved his professed inability to feign a withdrawal to further deceive the Confederates. At 7:30 that evening, Warren circulated orders to his subordinates “to support the columns of attack [i.e., Burnside’s divisions] whenever it may be required.”4 Meade placed great reliance on his artillery, and Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt proved equal to the challenge. Hunt had assumed responsibility for all the guns south of the Appomattox on June 27 and throughout July he arrayed his ordnance at various advantageous points. When the orders for Burnside’s assault reached his headquarters, Hunt began rolling his siege artillery into position alongside the field batteries. On July 28 he visited each gun deployed behind the Fifth, Ninth, and Eighteenth Corps, followed by the issuance of specific orders on the 29th that upon the explosion of the mine, all the batteries would commence counterbattery fire, taking care, of course, to avoid firing on the 420

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attacking infantry. Hunt ultimately emplaced 110 guns and 54 mortars in firing positions, including some of the most powerful ordnance in his siege train, for the heaviest concentration of artillery firepower in the army’s history. “General Hunt had been everywhere and arranged his artillery like clockwork,” thought an officer at Meade’s headquarters, “each chief of piece knew his distances and his directions to an inch.”5 Hancock, Ord, Warren, and Hunt would play only supporting roles in the impending drama. Ambrose Burnside and his subordinate officers were the leading men, but this cast presented problems beyond the absence of General Ferrero, who would not return to division command from his lobbying mission in Washington until the eve of the attack. Brig. Gen. Julius White led the Fourth Division in Ferrero’s absence. White had commanded a division under Burnside in East Tennessee earlier in the war, but was best known for surrendering the Harpers Ferry garrison to Stonewall Jackson during the 1862 Maryland Campaign. When Burnside transferred to the East, White went to Springfield, Illinois, where he commanded a draft rendezvous. He appeared at Meade’s headquarters in early July seeking a position, and the army commander instructed him to report to Burnside for assignment. With Ferrero’s post temporarily vacant, Burnside placed White in command of the black troops. Ferrero’s return left White, once again, without a job. Maj. Gen. John G. Parke, Burnside’s chief of staff, had been ill for some time and now, on the eve of the offensive, Burnside made the unfortunate decision to place White in Parke’s slot. One Ninth Corps staff officer pronounced White “a humbug of the blackest dye,” and his performance on July 30 would justify that harsh assessment.6 James Ledlie remained the weakest link in Burnside’s organizational chain. Ledlie attempted to resign in early July, citing poor health, although some suspected that problems stemming from his fondness for the bottle offered more plausible motivation. Burnside pocketed Ledlie’s request, however, one observer speculating that he retained Ledlie lest the notoriously incompetent White be appointed in his place. Many officers in the First Division hoped that their newly minted brigade commander, Brig. Gen. William Francis Bartlett, would rise to division command. Bartlett, however, had only assumed his position on July 23, having earned his star a month earlier. Barely twenty-­four years old, Bartlett had lost a leg at Yorktown in 1862, suffered two wounds at Port Hudson, Louisiana, the following year, and endured yet another injury at the Wilderness. This intrepid member of the Harvard class of 1862 hobbled about with the aid of a cork leg and enjoyed enormous popularity among his troops.7 On Thursday July 28, Meade exacerbated the Ninth Corps’ command challenges. Burnside had journeyed to army headquarters that morning to discuss The Union Attacks on July 30

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the impending attack when Meade calmly informed him that the Fourth Division could not lead the assault. A shocked Burnside inquired as to Meade’s rationale, and the Pennsylvanian explained that leadership responsibility was simply too daunting for such inexperienced troops. Burnside protested vigorously, arguing that his three white divisions had been weakened by constant combat and, moreover, had developed the habit of “covering themselves by every method within their reach,” a tendency incompatible with the task at hand. Meade relented a bit, agreeing to place the matter before the general-­in-­ chief that afternoon and promising to abide by Grant’s decision.8 The rest of the day and most of the following morning passed at Ninth Corps headquarters with no word from Meade. Burnside reached the conclusion, unjustifiably as it turned out, that no news was good news and that Grant had sustained his plan. About 11:​​00 a.m. on the 29th, as Burnside conferred with division commanders Potter and Willcox, Meade and Ord arrived at corps headquarters. Meade informed his host that Grant agreed that the Fourth Division should not spearhead the assault. Ignoring another protest from Burnside, the army commander departed, and a disappointed Burnside began discussing with Potter and Willcox the implications of Meade’s directive. One of them— probably Willcox—suggested that Ledlie ought to be part of the conversation, and Burnside summoned the First Division commander, who appeared in midafternoon.9 The four men debated the proper course of action, Burnside acknowledging that both Willcox’s and Potter’s men lay closer to the intended target, but that Ledlie’s division suffered marginally less from exhaustion. Potter would claim after the war that he expected and desired to be chosen to lead the attack, but Burnside insisted that none of his subordinates so volunteered, all concurring that the black division was best suited for the task. Burnside opted to resolve the impasse by lot, perhaps using scraps of paper drawn out of a hat, to determine the outcome. As fate would have it, Ledlie drew the designated piece and thus assumed responsibility for the complex and perilous endeavor with less than twelve hours lead time to prepare. The crestfallen black troops would not receive official notification of their tactical demotion until 11:​​00 p.m.10 It is hardly possible to overstate Burnside’s dereliction in this affair, decision making that Colonel Lyman characterized as “inconceivable fatuity.” Ledlie’s reputation and bad habits, according to Colonel Weld of the Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts, “were well known to all officers and men, and ought to have been known to Burnside.” Lyman, at Meade’s headquarters, considered Ledlie “a wretched, incapable drunkard, not fit to command a company.” Burnside

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clearly should have chosen either Potter or Willcox rather than allow a blatantly deficient officer to command such a critical and difficult undertaking.11 In addition to vetoing the African American soldiers, Meade also altered the tactical plan that Burnside had submitted to army headquarters on July 26. Rather than use part of the leading division to widen the breach created by the explosion and hold open its shoulders, Meade decreed that the foremost brigades should head straight for Cemetery Hill. “This operation which we had to perform was one purely of time,” Meade explained, because “if immediate advantage was not taken of the explosion of the mine, and the consequent confusion of the enemy, and the crest immediately gained, it would be impossible to remain there.” It is doubtful that “the bad blood that exist[ed] between Meade & Burnside” alone motivated these last-­minute alterations. Meade sincerely believed that Burnside’s plan required modification, but there can be little doubt that the army commander, if not spitefully, reflexively questioned any of Burnside’s military endeavors. Moreover, Grant’s continued willingness to delegate command authority to Meade—a pattern that had prevailed since the army’s arrival at Petersburg—may have influenced his decision to sustain Meade, despite his knowledge of Meade’s bias against Burnside. In any case, by blessing Meade’s eleventh-­hour adjustments, General Grant shares responsibility for undermining Burnside’s offensive.12 Ledlie left the meeting of the Ninth Corps leadership “in a very cheerful mood” with orders from Burnside to gather his brigade commanders and accompany staff officer Charles Loring to explore the ground Burnside designated for their deployment. Burnside instructed Potter and Willcox regarding their positions as well. That evening, Burnside circulated written orders outlining the assignments for each of his divisions. In accordance with Meade’s directive, immediately upon the explosion Ledlie was to move toward and occupy Cemetery Hill. Willcox would follow Ledlie as soon as practicable, bearing to his left and protecting the First Division from a position on Jerusalem Plank Road. Potter would advance after Willcox toward the crest of a ravine several hundred yards north of the mine and guard Ledlie’s right flank. Ferrero’s division would charge last, waiting until the white troops had completed their missions, then, following Ledlie’s path, continue into Petersburg. The mine would be detonated at 3:30 a.m., and Burnside would move his command post forward to the Fourteen-­gun Battery immediately opposite the mined salient, a few hundred yards east of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad.13 Meade still expressed skepticism about the impending assault despite

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Burn­side’s adherence to both of his modifications and his own substantial authorship of the refined offensive plans. “To-­morrow we make an attack on Petersburg,” Meade informed his wife. “I am not sanguine of success, but hope for the best.” Even broader misgivings prevailed at Tenth Corps headquarters, where Maj. Gen. David Birney wrote a confidant on the eve of the attack that “the mining will not amount to much. Our clever old friend Burnside has been amusing himself but no one has felt much interest in the hole, except to know when the explosion was to take place so that they could be far enough away.” General Warren wavered between optimism and pessimism. “Tomorrow morning another assault is ordered and if it is boldly made we shall have a success or another slaughter,” he wrote his wife. “General Burnside has the lead and in fact it is mainly his plan. He deserves credit for the determination to keep trying even if he and we fail.”14 Burnside did ignore one aspect of Meade’s attack orders. The commanding general directed that Burnside “prepare his parapets and abatis for the passage of the columns,” but the Ninth Corps commander did little to facilitate the rapid navigation of his earthworks and made no attempt to remove the obstructions. “It was not expected by any one that any considerable success could attend any work of that kind without serous loss to the command and discovery on the part of the enemy,” explained Burnside. He further testified that his abatis had been so shattered by enemy fire that it presented but a scant obstacle. “Every arrangement was made that it was possible to make under the circumstances,” agreed General Ferrero, “as it was necessary that we should do everything without giving information to the enemy. Nothing more could have been done without exposing our plans.” More problematically, Burnside neglected to remove a fringe of trees that partially obstructed cannon fire focused on Confederate positions south of the salient, despite several requests by artillery officers to do so.15 Burnside’s soldiers discerned that their moment of truth lay mere hours away. “On the evening of July 29, 1864, we of the Ninth Corps in front of Petersburg knew that an important movement was to take place,” remembered a regimental officer in Ledlie’s division, “as we were ordered out for inspection and dress parade, and soon after returning to our place in the trenches, orders came to prepare three days’ cooked rations, and ammunition was distributed.” Knapsacks, haversacks, and all other accoutrements except canteens would be left behind and “magazines in our forts filled to overflowing.” Some of the troops penned letters home, others scrawled their names, companies, and regiments on slips of paper and attached them to their shirts, so as to be identified if they fell. Conversations proceeded at a whisper. The men of the Forty-­Eighth Penn424

The Union Attacks on July 30

sylvania, exempted from taking part in the attack, took great pride in the upcoming event that their hard labor and ingenuity had made possible. “There will be sum hard fighting in a few days but by the help of god we will dew our doughty,” confided Pvt. John K. Dentzer in a letter home. “I think we will captcher Peatersburg in a few days.”16 Anticipation in the Confederate ranks assumed a more speculative tone. A wag in a Texas regiment transferred north of the James told his comrades, “Well boys, hit’s a d—d sight more comfortabler ter be stannin’ here on good ole Virginny terror firmer than ter be danglin,’ heels up an’ heads down, over that cussed mine, not knowin’ whether you’d strike soft or hard groun’ when you lit.” A Mississippi surgeon thought that “Grant’s apparent inaction is ominous—it means something and it would not surprise me any day to hear of a sudden onslaught upon some part of our lines.” So successful had the Federals been in masking their preparations that none of the men resting above or around the loaded mine expressed any particular dread about the impending dawn.17 James Ledlie enjoyed little time for idle speculation. After exploring the terrain with Colonel Loring, he assembled his two brigade commanders and select members of their staffs near the Fourteen-­gun Battery shortly before dark. Capt. Thomas W. Clarke, assistant adjutant general in Ledlie’s Second Brigade, was among those officers present. Clarke served under Col. Elisha G. Marshall, who had been wounded during the June 17 assaults and had only recently returned to active duty. Marshall’s brigade contained four regiments, including the outsize Provisional Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, the diminutive Third Maryland Battalion, the understrength 179th New York, and the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery, Marshall’s own outfit. Colonel Lyman dismissed Marshall’s command as “a brigade composed of dismounted cavalry and demoralized heavy artillery (!), the whole good for nothing” and Marshall as “a severe and courageous man” who had been elevated to brigade leadership “in the vain hope of beating . . . some discipline” into his troops. Bartlett’s First Brigade included five Massachusetts regiments and the 100th Pennsylvania.18 Clarke asserted that Ledlie’s orders that evening contradicted Meade’s final instructions as conveyed by Burnside. Burnside, repeating Meade’s orders, told Ledlie to “immediately upon the explosion of the mine move his division forward as directed by verbal orders this day, and if possible crown the crest at the point known as Cemetery Hill, occupying, if possible, the cemetery.” Instead, wrote Clarke, Ledlie directed Marshall’s brigade to “move forward and occupy the enemy’s works on the right of the crater, skirting its edge, but not going into it. The First Brigade was to follow with about the same front and occupy the works on the left of the crater, not going into it. When the lodgment The Union Attacks on July 30

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had been made, it was to be secured and connected with our lines by our engineer regiment, the Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts.” Potter would extend the incursion to the right and Willcox to the left, and then the Fourth Division would charge through the expansive gap for Cemetery Hill. “Marshall’s distinct instructions were that the security of the lodgment was the prime duty of the First Division and the hill was a subordinate object,” claimed Clarke. Lt. Col. Joseph H. Barnes, commanding the Twenty-­Ninth Massachusetts in Bartlett’s brigade, agreed: “It was not part of the plan of the battle for [our] division to advance after reaching the crater. The orders issued to the division were distinctly, ‘not to advance.’”19 Ledlie reported four days after the battle that he had instructed his brigade commanders to “move through the breach to be made by the mine and then to press forward and occupy the hill beyond, when the Thirty-­fifth were to be set at work throwing up intrenchments.” Colonel Weld of the First Brigade remembered that General Bartlett so instructed his regimental leaders. It is difficult at this distance to determine precisely what transpired at the division meeting on the evening of July 29 as Ledlie left no written orders to substantiate his version of events. Meade would testify that he had personally explained to Burnside’s division commanders the need to rush immediately to the crest of the hill. Potter and his brigade leaders understood their mission, but some confusion persisted with Willcox. Perhaps the postwar claims of Clarke and Barnes stemmed from a desire to justify their failure to advance beyond the crater the following morning, or maybe Ledlie garbled his instructions sufficiently as to leave varying interpretations of his intentions. Apparently, Ledlie’s conference with Marshall and Bartlett occurred prior to the arrival of Burnside’s clear written instructions, and that may have contributed to a misunderstanding. In any event, the last-­minute nature of the tactical planning for the assault, thanks to Meade’s intervention and Grant’s acquiescence, presented a sufficient challenge without adding such confusion among the key commanders.20 Ledlie, with Colonel Loring as Burnside’s liaison, began shifting his division out of its trenches about 10:​​00 p.m., sending it first to rest well behind the front. A soldier in the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery remembered passing a long row of ambulances with blood-­stained stretchers strapped to their sides. “They move to the side of the road to allow us to pass, and our feelings are not improved any by the unusual number of surgeons and attendants with their cases of surgical instruments, and known in the army as ‘Jewelry peddlers,’” he recalled. “All this indicating the terrible work on hand for to-­morrow.” During the wee hours of July 30, the division arose again with Marshall’s brigade in the van, using the southernmost of two covered ways—simply passageways dug 426

The Union Attacks on July 30

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The Federal Attack Plan, July 30, 1864 Map 29 - The Federal Attack Plan, July 30, 1864

into the earth—that led from the main Federal works to the advance line of The Horseshoe. “We marched with the stillness of death; not a word was said above a whisper,” recalled an officer in the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery. Marshall’s regiments were in position by 3:30 a.m. The Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery deployed in the first line, the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery behind them, and the two smallest units, the 179th New York and Third Maryland Battalion, in Marshall’s third line.21 Bartlett’s men moved out in Marshall’s immediate wake. Some of his troops managed to grab a brief nap until 2:00 a.m., when they began filing through the covered way behind Marshall. Bartlett’s command totaled some 1,800 rifles deployed in two lines. The Fifty-­Ninth Massachusetts, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, and Twenty-­Ninth Massachusetts formed behind the Third Maryland Battalion and 179th New York, while the Twenty-­First Massachusetts, Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts, and 100th Pennsylvania created a second line. The division’s resident engineers of the Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts took position in the rear. Ledlie’s division crammed into the limited space between the very front of The Horseshoe and the ravine drained by Poor Creek. “Little groups of the boys gathered and talked in subdued tones of the coming day and the imThe Union Attacks on July 30

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pending battle,” remembered Lt. John W. Morrison of the 100th Pennsylvania. “Thoughts of home and the dear ones there crowded in upon us. Before leaving the trenches letters innumerable were written.”22 Robert Potter fretted that there would be inadequate room to deploy his division once Ledlie assumed his advanced positions. “We will have to hold ourselves in readiness to make our formation as soon as we see what ground General Ledlie leaves to us, and adapt accordingly,” he informed corps headquarters. Simon Griffin’s brigade embarked around midnight and by 3:00 a.m. had fallen in to Ledlie’s right on the far side of the northern covered way. The troops extended from the advanced works back into the cut of the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad. “It was an anxious night to us,” reported Sgt. John Hilling of the Thirty-­Second Maine. “Few guns were fired along the picket lines; all was comparatively still. Occasionally might be heard the ‘clinking hammers . . . giving dreadful notes of preparation.’”23 Col. Zenas R. Bliss, recently returned to high command in the Ninth Corps, commanded Potter’s other brigade. General Carr had responsibility for relieving Bliss but, having lost his way, he did not appear at the appointed hour. One regiment of Carr’s division finally arrived after midnight, prompting Bliss to dispatch a portion of his troops, while leaving the rest to guard his trenches. Men of the Fifty-­First New York, Fifty-­Eighth New York, and Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania marched into position behind Griffin between Poor Creek and the railroad bed. At 3:00 a.m. Carr arrived with the balance of his division, and Bliss began to shift his remaining units toward the front. The Seventh Rhode Island served as Potter’s engineer force in Bliss’s rear, and the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania would observe the action as the provost guard for the corps. Maj. James L. Van Buren of Burnside’s staff accompanied Potter.24 Willcox sent John Hartranft’s First Brigade into the valley to Ledlie’s left and rear, forming it in one- or two-­regiment fronts. Col. William Humphrey’s Second Brigade rested behind Hartranft. “The night was warm, the sky was clear, the men spread their blankets on the ground and lay down under the open sky, in line just as they had halted,” remembered a member of the Twentieth Michigan. The Michiganders stacked their knapsacks, one soldier commenting sardonically “I guess boys we shall not all want these again.” Between 2:30 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., officers roused Humphrey’s troops, and cooks distributed hot coffee. By 3:30 a.m. they began creeping through the jammed covered way behind Hartranft in two columns, the First Michigan Sharpshooters, Second Michigan, and Twentieth Michigan on the right and the Forty-­Sixth New York, Fiftieth Pennsylvania, Sixtieth Ohio, and Twenty-­Fourth New York Cavalry (dismounted) on the left. Willcox completed his deployment by 4:00 a.m. 428

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and, with his staff, waited for the explosion near Capt. Jacob Roemer’s Thirty-­ Fourth New York Battery.25 The Fourth Division would be the last of Burnside’s units to deploy. It shifted from the far left of the corps’ alignment around 2:00  a.m., and despite its attempts at silence, the Confederate pickets heard the men stirring. As was their habit whenever African American troops caught their attention, the Southerners opened a brisk fire. The black troops waited until this malevolent spasm blew over and then proceeded to the head of the covered way that connected the trenches south of the Fourteen-­gun Battery with The Horseshoe. “Here the regiment closed up, and we halted and rested until about 3:30 o’clock,” remembered Lieutenant Bowley of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops. The men enjoyed a “soldiers’ hasty breakfast” of hardtack and salt pork, stacked their knapsacks, and listened to officers explain their new role in the assault. Sigfried’s brigade took the lead, with Thomas’s in support.26 While Carr’s and Burnham’s Eighteenth Corps divisions struggled to relieve Burnside’s men from their trenches, General Ord consulted with Burnside, placing himself under Burnside’s orders for the attack. Turner’s and Ames’s divisions, 4,000 and 3,500 strong respectively, tramped into line behind the Ninth Corps, occupying the brow of the hill north of the Fourteen-­ gun Battery. Thus at the appointed hour for the explosion, six Federal divisions lay in wait immediately east of Pegram’s Salient, while the Fifth Corps to the south and elements of the Second Corps to the north prepared to exploit any advantage gained by Burnside’s attackers. Cannoneers assumed their posts by 3:00 a.m., their “guns shotted and lanyards ready to pull the moment the explosion took place.”27 General Potter informed acting chief-­of-­staff White at 3:15  a.m. that Colonel Pleasants intended to ignite the fuse in twenty minutes and to expect the explosion five or ten minutes later. Word arrived from Meade that because it was so dark, Burnside had permission to delay the explosion, but the Ninth Corps commander responded that the mine would be ignited at the designated time. Pleasants testified that he entered the shaft along with Sergeant Reese and Lt. Jacob Douty of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania at 3:15 a.m., Potter’s communication notwithstanding, and put fire to the fuses. Lt. Joseph J. Scroggs of the Fifth U.S. Colored Troops spoke for thousands of Union soldiers that morning: “The suspense became painful and strong hearts beat audibly and brave men trembled more from the fearful anxiety than a dread of the approaching conflict.”28 Remarkably, these preparations went unnoticed in the Confederate lines and the Rebels conducted routine business throughout the night. “I had been The Union Attacks on July 30

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July 30, 1864

out on picket all night and had heard nothing unusual on the other side,” confessed a North Carolinian near the salient. Captain Pegram, who had been on duty with little rest for two consecutive days and nights, retired on the evening of the 29th to his rear-­area headquarters near the William Cameron mansion at the head of Adams Street in Petersburg, “where my presence was required in the supervision of the preparation of my muster-­roll,” he recalled. Lts. William B. Hamilton and Christopher S. Chandler stepped up to lead the battery in Pegram’s absence, entirely innocent of what awaited them.29 General Elliott established his command post at a spring near the junction of two ravines, one connecting with the covered way leading back to Jerusalem Plank Road and the other running south nearly at right angles and into the 430

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field several hundred yards west of the salient. The Eighteenth South Carolina deployed in immediate support of Pegram’s guns, a significant portion of the regiment resting exactly above the mine. Capt. R. H. Glenn commanded the Eighteenth while the regiment’s permanent commander, Col. William H. Wallace, was absent on leave. The Seventeenth South Carolina occupied the works immediately north of the salient with the Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina on the brigade’s left, having been recently relieved from duty in the salient by the Eighteenth South Carolina. They connected with McAfee’s North Carolinians. South of the salient, the Twenty-­Second South Carolina and Twenty-­Third South Carolina extended the line and linked with Wise’s Virginians. The action north of the James had drawn away all but Hoke’s Division extending south from the Appomattox River, Johnson’s brigades at and around the salient, and Mahone’s Division on the army’s right, positioned from Battery 25 at Rives’ Salient to Battery 35, known as Fort Walker, a mile to the west. Bushrod Johnson considered his line “extended to an attenuation that was deemed barely secure against an ordinary assault.”30 Elliott admitted that his brigade “has not a good reputation in this army,” created, in part, by a weak set of subordinate commanders. The absent Wallace was his best regimental leader, “placid but firm,” according to Elliott. Elliott considered the senior colonel present, Fitz William McMaster of the Seventeenth South Carolina, “a hypocrite” whose “regard for his hide is paramount.” The next ranking colonel, Alexander D. Smith of the Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina, had been suspended by court-­martial for much of 1864, and his temporary replacement, Lt. Col. Joshua H. Hudson, reminded Elliott “of the party who set Othello, Cassio, Desdemona, and the rest of them so much together by the ears.” Smith would be in charge of his regiment again on July 30. Col. David G. Fleming, who had been promoted less than two months previously, led the Twenty-­Second South Carolina. Elliott characterized him as “steady and slow and reliable, but you must not crowd him with ideas.” Col. Henry L. Benbow of the Twenty-­Third South Carolina suffered from poor health and, according to his commander, was “not a very thorough officer.” He would be absent on July 30, and Capt. Edwin R. White would succeed him temporarily.31 About 3:00 a.m. orders arrived for the soldiers around Elliott’s Salient to take their positions in line along the breastworks, only minutes before Pleasants, Douty, and Reese entered the mine and ignited the fuses. Some anxious Federals stood on their tiptoes, mouths agape as an antidote to the concussion of the anticipated explosion. Grant waited in the rear, “looking intently in the direction of the mine,” sharing an almost unbearable expectancy with thousands of blueclad soldiers.32 The Union Attacks on July 30

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By 4:00 a.m., when the mine had still failed to explode, Grant rode forward to Meade’s command post at Burnside’s old headquarters near the Shand house. Meade guessed that there had been a problem with the fuses and dispatched Capts. William Jay and William W. Sanders to verify the cause of the delay. At 4:15 a.m. and again five minutes later, Meade telegraphed Burnside about the status of the mine, to which he received no reply. Of course, Burnside also wondered about the mine’s failure and sent two staff members, seriatim, to determine the cause. In the meantime, Captain Sanders arrived at Burnside’s command post near the Fourteen-­gun Battery and anxiously posed the question of the hour, Burnside responding that he was in the process of ascertaining an explanation.33 No one’s nervous anxiety exceeded that of Colonel Pleasants. He perched on a nearby earthwork, watch in hand, “like a maniac,” waiting for the culmination of more than a month of his labor. Reese and Douty suspected that the problem resided at a place where the fuses had been spliced and presented this theory to Pleasants. The colonel considered this likely, but hesitated to allow his subordinates to reenter the shaft until he could be reasonably certain that the charge would not blow. That time came at 4:15 a.m. The two intrepid volunteers plunged into the shaft and discovered that near the tamping at about the halfway point of the fuse trail, where splices connected two lengths, the fire had, indeed, sputtered out. Reese may have rushed out of the mine to retrieve a knife to repair the damage and then returned to relight the fuse, scrambling back out again with no little haste.34 Major Van Buren learned of the problem through Pleasants, who added that the fuses had been reignited. The major rushed back to Burnside’s command post and so reported in the presence of Captain Jay, who promptly left to inform Meade. By then, however, Meade had turned nearly apoplectic, sending repeated inquiries to Burnside regarding the situation at the front. Burnside, evincing, perhaps, petulance toward his disputatious army commander, replied to none of them, explaining afterward that “there was nothing possible for me to report, because I could not answer questions which General Meade propounded to me . . . except by saying that I did not know the reason for the delay.” About 4:35 a.m. Grant told Meade to order Burnside to attack even absent an explosion, a remarkably reckless impulse. The imprudent general-­ in-­chief stood, his right hand against a tree, with an expression of “profound anxiety” on his face, silently awaiting the sounds of the blast, and, or, Burnside’s attack.35 At 4:44 a.m. he heard it. So did Burnside, who was on the verge of ordering his men forward in suicidal compliance with Grant’s instructions. Not surpris432

The Union Attacks on July 30

ingly, nearly every soldier who witnessed the explosion attempted to describe it. The first indication emerged as a dull rumbling and a shaking of the ground that many likened to an earthquake. “There was a rocking to and fro of the earth under us, as if some great force were working its way upward,” recalled a musician in the Fourth New Hampshire. Maj. Claudius Buchanan Grant of the Twentieth Michigan remembered that “I felt the ground sway a little and then came the report but not so loud as I anticipated.” A Pennsylvanian compared the noise to “muffled thunder,” while a Rhode Islander felt “the earth give one great throb.”36 When the subterranean explosion broke the surface, the unforgettable spectacle left many Yankees searching for their most vivid adjectives and descriptive metaphors. Some soldiers familiar with the ocean compared the scene to a waterspout. A Connecticut man thought the mass resembled a mountain, and Pvt. Francis Knowles of the Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts defined the displaced earthen elevation as “conical.” Lt. David F. Ritchie, a New York artilleryman, thought the explosion resembled “a huge fountain,” but a soldier in the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts only considered it comparable to “the Boston Frog Pond fountain.” Grant’s aide, Horace Porter, described the eruption as “a mighty inverted cone.”37 Irrespective of how the Federals defined the shape, the cloud that soared skyward elicited their most eloquent portrayals featuring a rainbow of colors. A New Yorker saw “a cloud of red sand and earth,” while the Connecticut fellow detected “a blue sulphurous flame [that] issued from every crevice and fissure.” An artillerist thought the ascending mass was black, a correspondent saw “a column of yellow earth,” and Lt. Col. Byron M. Cutcheon of the Twentieth Michigan marveled at “a column of white smoke” that rose from the center of the plume. Witnesses also disagreed about the height obtained by the ectopic material. At one extreme, Asst. Surg. John B. Culver of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania estimated that the debris cloud soared 300 feet. Elias A. Bryant of the Fourth New Hampshire thought that it attained only 60 or 70 feet, and Col. Stephen Weld estimated as little as 50 feet. Most agreed that the explosion ranged from 100 to 200 feet in height.38 All concurred that the uprooted earth contained a horrific amalgam. “A huge roar, as if from the bowels of the earth, belched forth, and the occupants of that fated fort . . . started heavenward,” recalled Capt. Horace H. Burbank of the Thirty-­First Maine. “Earth, stones, timbers, arms, legs, guns unlimbered and bodies unlimbed, amid clouds of dust and smoke, ascended in fearful confusion and havoc. It was a spectacle never to be forgotten.” Capt. Frank Kenfield of the Seventeenth Vermont testified that “the air was literally filled with men, The Union Attacks on July 30

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timbers, dirt and every thing the fort contained. . . . No words of mine can give you an idea of the terrible sight!” Sgt. Howard Aston of the Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry stared incredulously at disembodied arms and legs mixed with broken cannon carriages and “great clods of earth,” a sight that left him “very weak and pale.”39 The levitated redan poised in the air “like a giant umbrella,” “spreading out like a great fan,” resembling “the crest of a huge wave,” and reminding one soldier of “a huge monster over our heads.” Colonel Porter thought that “the mass seemed to be suspended for an instant in the heavens” before descending back to the ground with, according to Simon Griffin, “a dull, heavy thud, which I should say might have been heard, or felt, or both, for miles around.” As the admixture plunged downward it fell, according to Lt. Martin L. Warson of the Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops, in “a confused mass of earth, muskets, cannon, men; an awful debris.” Porter described “great blocks of clay, rock, sand, timber, guns, carriages, and men whose bodies exhibited every form of mutilation” in the horrid heap. Many Union soldiers feared that the detritus would “bury the troops which were formed for the charge,” or as one soldier put it, “entomb our whole line.” The explosion had, in the words of Sgt. Waldo Turner of the Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, “reduced the once impregnable work to a heap of ruins in about 1 minute.”40 The Confederates’ perceptions of the explosion mirrored, in many ways, those of the Federals. Witnesses such as cannoneer Eugene Levy recalled that “the ground reeled and throbbed beneath our feet as the volcano burst from the bowels of the earth, hurling upward men, cannon, logs and vast boulders obscuring the light of day. The fiends had launched their mine. Like a funeral pall the inky cloud hung over the scene of devastation.” Artillery officer John C. Haskell stated that “from nearly a mile off we could see in the light of the flashes men being blown in the air.” Positioned just to the south of Elliott’s Salient, Sgt. William Russell of the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia “herd a tremendous dull report and at the same time felt the earth shake beneath me.” On the north side of the salient, a soldier in the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina testified that “the mine . . . raised the ground and sent men whirling in the air lumps of earth as large as a barrel were thrown a hundred yards.” Pvt. Thomas H. Cross of the Sixteenth Virginia, a unit of Col. David Weisiger’s brigade of Mahone’s Division, felt “a perceptible quaking” and saw the debris cloud lifted “more than a hundred feet into the air while the lurid flames shown above and below through the awful fissures,” despite his vantage point several miles to the southwest. A panic-­stricken Mississippian confessed to a comrade, “It’s the end of the world and I ain’t repented yet!” while another Johnny Reb remembered, “we thought 434

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the devil had bursted out of hell and was going to take both armies.” Residents of Petersburg, awakened by the “most awful thunder,” poured into the streets to escape what they thought was an earthquake. “No words can adequately describe this horror!” shuddered Sara Rice Pryor.41 The Eighteenth South Carolina, positioned near or immediately above the mine, experienced a unique perspective on the explosion. Elihu Toland, the unit’s assistant surgeon, recalled “a deep, dead sound and quiver of the earth” before the blast sent “a cloud of dust and smoke, and timbers, men and muskets, and all manner of shapes and fragments . . . flying in every direction.” Lt. J. Warren Pursley of Company G had just lain down to sleep when he felt a jar that he thought might have been a shell landing squarely atop his bombproof. His bunkmate, Pvt. John Jackson, screamed to evacuate their shelter just as a second explosion rocked the salient. “God only knows how high it sent me,” swore Pursley. “I spread my wings to see if I could fly but the first thing I knowed I was lying on top of the works.” Not every South Carolinian was this lucky. Division commander Johnson reported that “the astonishing effect of the explosion, bursting like a volcano at the feet of the men, and the upheaving of an immense column of more than 100,000 cubic feet of earth [fell] around in heavy masses, wounding, crushing, or burying everything in its path.”42 For Pegram’s gunners and the soldiers of the Eighteenth and Twenty-­ Second South Carolina, that hyperbolic assessment came frighteningly close to reality. Five companies of the Twenty-­Second South Carolina, holding the south end of the salient, lost the bulk of their manpower, the regiment as a whole suffering 170 troops killed or wounded out of a total strength of 300. “Our regiment is nearly all destroyed and taken prisoners,” lamented Cpl. William B. Green. “The Yankees blowed up three companys and part of the fourth company.” Four companies of the Eighteenth South Carolina on the north end of the fort accounted for most of the 163 casualties suffered by that regiment. Pegram reported 17 of his cannoneers and 2 officers killed and 3 others buried and captured of the 30 men who manned the guns that morning. The explosion tossed the left section of Pegram’s Battery completely out of the works. Some 352 Confederates fell immediate victim to the blast.43 The nature of these casualties as much as their number impressed Confederate survivors and the Federals, who would encounter the scene a few minutes later. Men such as Capt. John Floyd of the Eighteenth South Carolina were fortunate. Despite being knocked unconscious by the blast and waking up covered from head to foot by a blanket of earth and timbers, Floyd managed to extricate himself. Numerous accounts paint grotesque scenes in which soldiers were interred amid the rubble. “Half buried guns, carriages, wheels, swab sticks, & The Union Attacks on July 30

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countless artillery appurtenances were lying about in the greatest confusion,” wrote Pvt. Don E. Scott of the Eleventh New Hampshire. “But the greatest sight was to see men half buried alive—some with their heads downward & their feet & legs protruding—others with their feet down & buried to their waists & even shoulders with one arm out—and some with neither. Very many were very likely buried entirely while alive & others were mangled and torn to pieces.” An Alabaman recalled seeing “sticking out of the ground here and there . . . the bodies of the poor fellows, so suddenly launched into Eternity by the explosion. Some of the men were thrown . . .75 yards.”44 Spectacular sagas of survival emerged from the tumult. Lieutenant Pursley reported that one man, interred five feet below the surface, managed to live thanks to a plank that protected him from the deluge of earth and debris. Sgt. Franklin Burnham of the Ninth New Hampshire remembered rescuing a Confederate whose head and hands were all that appeared amid the rubble. “His hair literally stood on end, and he was the most complete picture of fright I ever saw.” Sgt. A. H. Smyth was in one of the countermines when the explosion occurred. Miraculously, although the blast threw Smyth to the ground, he and three other engineers managed to escape the shaft and emerge into the turbulent scene aboveground. The most incredible tale of escape involved Capt. Willard Hill and Sgt. Charner S. Greer of the Eighteenth South Carolina. The two men had climbed into their bombproof just to the left of the salient about 1:30 that morning and were sound asleep when the mine detonated. Protected by the support timbers of their shelter, but now buried under eight feet of debris, Sergeant Greer began to dig frantically with his bayonet. “Nobody but God can ever know the sweetness of the first breath of air that came to me with the little opening that I made in the mass of earth,” remembered Greer. When Hill emerged from his would-­be tomb, his coal black hair had turned completely white.45 The resulting hole where Elliott’s Salient had once stood resembled “a vast wash basin” shaped like “a long Irish potato, the sides of loose pulverized sand piled up precipitately, from which projected huge blocks of clay.” Soldiers provided various dimensions for the crater, but a Confederate engineer, Lt. E. N. Wise, carefully measured the chasm after the battle and found it to be 126 feet long at the surface, 69 feet long at the bottom, 87 feet wide at the surface, and 38 feet wide at the bottom. Wise, like most of the analysts, determined the pit to be 25 feet deep. A stretch of some 150 yards of the Confederate line had been destroyed by the blast.46 So, too, had the fighting capacity of its defenders—at least temporarily. “Our company was totally demoralized,” admitted Lieutenant Pursley. Capt. 436

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B. Lewis Beaty of the Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina remembered his comrades being “filled with consternation at the terrible calamity and awful destruction caused by this, to them, new and powerful mode of warfare. Some, partly stunned . . . came rushing down the line covered with earth and wild with fright.” Colonel McMaster of the Seventeenth South Carolina confessed that “for some minutes there was the utmost consternation among our men. Some scampered out of the lines; some paralyzed with fear.”47 The Confederates’ disorganization and panic only increased as a cacophony of fire erupted from the Union guns within seconds of the explosion, “a regular ‘Gettysburg cannonading’” thought one Georgian. Sources disagree as to the actual number of cannon and mortars involved in this bombardment, one twentieth-­century study counting 203. To the unusually eloquent Thomas Cross, “the grand chorus of artillery which immediately succeeded the explosion was such a roar as would fitly herald the introduction of fiends from the lower regions, and was played by an orchestra that combined in its awful diapason all the notes from the shrill treble of the whistling shell to the heavy bass of the Dahlgren or mortar.” Another Virginian considered the fire “a great gun battle with thundering, booming, flashing, blazing, smoking, shrieking, thudding, crashing, majestic terrors of war,” while an Alabaman thought that the noise “would have drowned out the report of the largest thunderbolt.”48 Union soldiers, who did not suffer as targets of this unprecedented display of firepower, described the spectacle with equal fluency. “The ground fairly shook at times, the reverberations of the reports surging like a mighty sea of sound among the pines,” wrote engineer Cpl. Gilbert Thompson. Captain Richards of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania recalled that the artillery “crashed their thunders and belched forth their hissing and screeching missiles until it seemed as if the vaulted dome above us was bursting asunder.” Lieutenant Scroggs compared the noise of the “hurtling missiles” to “ten thousand devils . . . holding high carnival in mid air, or forty thousand juvenile hogs [attempting] a passage through a fence and [becoming] stuck.” Even the semiliterate Cpl. Daniel Graham of the Eighty-­Fourth Pennsylvania offered a compelling description in a letter to his sister: “The artilerey opend just at day light & the air was soon filled with iron hail & I thot a while that heaven & earth was coming to gether.”49 So many cannon and mortars firing at once soon reduced visibility. “Great masses of white powder-­smoke, hugging close to the earth or reluctantly rising and resting on the treetops, obscured the view,” wrote correspondent Charles Page. “The flashes of the guns in the haze, projecting many feet from the muzzles, could be seen—nothing else.” Charles Wainwright agreed that “very The Union Attacks on July 30

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quickly the whole of our front was covered with a dense cloud of white smoke, so that all objects were obscured from my view save a dim view of the men handling their immense ten-­inch shells.” Nevertheless, the Fifth Corps artillery chief thought “our fire was splendid.” He boasted that the infantry sustained not a single casualty from friendly fire. Col. J. Albert Monroe, Wainwright’s counterpart in the Ninth Corps, credited this accuracy to each gun having been aimed at a specific mark before the explosion. Capt. Augustus C. Brown of the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery praised Wainwright’s thorough preparation. Wainwright had produced maps showing the locations of each target and “so full and accurate were his descriptions of distance and direction, that although I could see but a small part of the enemy’s line . . . I had no difficulty in dropping my heavy shells just where the general desired, and avoiding our own charging columns at or near the crater.”50 Witnesses disagree about the duration of this intense barrage. Lieutenant Scroggs wrote that it lasted one hour, Col. Alexander Piper of the Eighteenth Corps claimed his guns fired for two hours, while Col. Henry L. Abbot, commanding the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, reported that his batteries remained active until 10:​​30 a.m., more than five hours after the explosion, an estimate shared by the men of the Third Vermont Battery positioned near Burnside’s command post. The cannoneers of the Fourth New York Heavy Artillery claimed that they continued to shoot until 2:00 p.m. Abbot expended precisely 3,833 rounds from his siege-­caliber pieces, some 75 tons of iron! Batteries along the Eighteenth Corps front fired 1,776 times.51 Confederates such as Captain Beaty testified that the bombardment inflicted significant damage, “burning several houses in the city, tearing up the earthworks and ground all around us . . . and killing and wounding many of our men.” A shell hit the back of one North Carolina soldier’s head, tearing him to pieces, “a handful of his intestines falling on my head, ten feet away,” recalled a horrified comrade. “His remains were taken up by the shovel full and carried away.” Most Union accounts confirmed that the artillery accomplished its mission splendidly. “We knocked down and practically levelled many yards of the enemy’s breastworks in our front, dismounted or silenced every gun bearing on our part of the line, except one whose very heavy traverse defied all our efforts,” boasted Captain Brown. Colonel Wainwright reported that “with regard to the damage inflicted by our artillery practice, I can only state that the face of their works was much injured, several of the embrasures destroyed, and at least three chests of ammunition exploded in the great salient.” Artillery chief Hunt summarized his gunners’ performance by stating that “the firing from each piece

438

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[was] slow, deliberate, and careful, partaking of the nature of target practice, and was very effective.” However, as the Union infantry would soon discover, the Federal gunners failed to neutralize all the Rebel artillery.52 Before facing Confederate fire, the Northern infantry brigades needed to extricate themselves from their own trenches. Much has been made of the delay caused both by scaling the Union works and the shock of witnessing the explosion’s unfathomable results. Widely cited accounts by Bvt. Maj. Charles H. Houghton of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery and memoirist Horace Porter describe significant difficulties experienced by Ledlie’s soldiers as they attempted to clear their own parapets and abatis. General Meade, in his testimony to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, stated that twenty or twenty-­five minutes expired before the troops managed to advance. Washington Roebling claimed that “for half an hour the men refused to go forward, and the most-­favorable opportunity was lost for taking advantage of the surprise.”53 Most witnesses, however, describe only a slight interval between the explosion and the initial assault. “Hardly had the rubbish reached the earth when was sung out in a voice that never wavered, ‘Forward, 14th!’” remembered another soldier in the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery. “Away we went yelling like fiends.” “In an instant every man was scaling the breastworks and pressing on the heels of the 14th New York,” claimed a soldier in the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery. Cpl. Caleb H. Beal of the Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts merely reported a few days after the event that, “As soon as the fort was blown up our troops charged on it.” His comrade, Waldo Turner, explained in a July 31 letter that “at the moment of the explosion our first line charged reaching the enemies lines before the dirt and dust of the explosion had returned to the ground.”54 This may have overstated the case, but the evidence suggests that perhaps only five minutes transpired between the blast and the rush of the first blue wave, about the length of time required for the debris cloud to dissipate and restore functional visibility. Certainly, some of the soldiers were left “awestruck” by the explosion and momentarily “recoiled involuntarily, human nature [being] unbalanced by the terrible spectacle,” but this delay was brief and the demurral affected a distinct minority. Soldiers employed the narrow sandbag ramps that facilitated their movement out of their works or used their bayonets as makeshift ladders. The abatis had been so damaged by artillery fire as to pre­sent little impediment. The Union assaults would soon encounter serious problems, but starting the attack promptly proved to be the least among them.55 Marshall’s two heavy artillery regiments advanced first, the men emerging from the trenches in small groups and plowing forward devoid of unit cohesion

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or discernible formation. According to Sgt. Schuyler Gardner, the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery planted its flag on the detritus of the ruined fort, while soldiers in the Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery probably pushed past the New Yorkers into the enemy line. Lt. James W. Beller, commanding the Pennsylvanians’ Company E, received the surrender of most of the remaining cannoneers from Pegram’s Battery. The New Yorkers seized the Virginians’ two guns that had not been dislodged by the blast and readied them for service against their former masters. The Third Maryland Battalion and 179th New York came up in due course and occupied an intact covered way on the right of the crater.56 No sooner had Marshall vacated the trenches than General Bartlett led the First Brigade toward the crater. It, too, drifted to the right of the rift, and many of the soldiers joined Marshall’s men in the cavity itself, “becoming intermingled so that from that time it became impossible to separate them.” Regimental officers attempted to establish some degree of order, with soldiers from the 100th Pennsylvania in particular establishing flank protection using sandbags from the Confederate defenses.57 Ledlie’s engineer regiment, the Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, was the last of the First Division troops to leave the earthworks and move toward the ruined Confederate line. When it arrived, it seemed as if the assault had already terminated. Instead of units rushing toward Cemetery Hill while reinforcements widened the breach created by the explosion, most of Ledlie’s men busied themselves extricating half-­buried Confederates or seeking shelter amid the rubble. South Carolina Captain Floyd recalled the shouts of soldiers combined with the groans of the wounded and dying constituting “a perfect pandemonium, not inferior in intensity to ‘Dante’s Seven Circled Hell.’” Scores more Confederates struggled to free themselves, attracting the attention of Union soldiers who, yielding to the instincts of humanity, employed any available tools to extricate the entrapped Rebels and then take them prisoner. Some of these captives arrived in the Union lines “in almost a ‘state of absolute nudity’ all more or less buried, broken & powder burned,” according to a New York surgeon. Both Marshall and Bartlett, referencing Ledlie’s instructions, assumed that holding the breach created by the blast accomplished their mission. They made little effort to advance toward Petersburg or expand the gap. Even if they had attempted to do so, the First Division had now forfeited cohesive command and control. Colonel Marshall sent an aide, Lt. William H. Powell, back to Union lines to report on conditions at the front and to seek Ledlie’s instructions, the division commander having remained behind despite the presence of his entire division in the captured Confederate works. Powell located the genThe Union Attacks on July 30

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eral “in a protected angle of the works” and received orders to have Marshall and Bartlett resume their advance. The staff officer returned with these instructions, but by then the window of opportunity for doing so had begun to close.58 Ledlie’s failure to exploit immediately the dislocation of the Confederates at the salient squandered the Federals’ best chance to achieve their goal of seizing the commanding heights overlooking Petersburg, a fact that became apparent only in hindsight. Additional Union troops now poured to the front, compounding the confusion that already existed in and around the crater. Griffin’s brigade of Potter’s division had advanced almost simultaneously with Ledlie’s men, hitting the Confederate works to Ledlie’s right.59 Potter, without consulting Burnside, ordered Griffin forward once Ledlie’s men advanced, steering this brigade north of the crater. Col. Daniel White of the Thirty-­First Maine led the Ninth New Hampshire, Second Maryland, and his own regiment forward in what one Granite State soldier described as “a helter-­skelter charge, each one for himself to see who cod get over the ground the quickest.” Sergeant Hilling informed a correspondent that “our columns poured over the breastworks, and with cheer upon cheer . . . we rushed into the ruins. It was some time before we could see many feet in advance, the smoke of powder being almost blinding as well as nearly suffocating.” When Griffin’s troops reached the crater, the human debris halted them as it had Marshall and Bartlett. “There were a number of rebels in the crater, sticking out of the ground in every imaginable shape; some with heels in the air, and buried head downward, and others buried feet downward,” recalled Sgt. Newell Dutton of the Ninth New Hampshire. This regiment claimed to be the first to plant a flag on the Confederate works, but in the caliginous pandemonium of the crater it is likely that they could not have seen any of Marshall’s triumphant banners.60 Griffin promptly led the rest of his brigade forward, except for the last of his regiments in line, the Sixth New Hampshire, which halted at the advanced Union trenches. Although Griffin was supposed to keep north of the salient, his men drifted almost magnetically to the cover of the crater, now filling with Ledlie’s disorganized troops. Griffin tried mightily to prevent his men from plunging into tactical irrelevance, but only a handful responded. “Finding the First Division not likely to advance from the crater, I ordered my troops forward, but on attempting to advance, they were compelled to pass through the confused ranks of the First Division, and consequently became themselves broken and confused,” he reported. Nevertheless, Griffin managed to pro­gress farther than any of Ledlie’s soldiers, the Seventeenth Vermont and Thirty-­Second Maine in the forefront, before falling back. Two spent bullets struck the brigade commander, and his attempt both to widen the breach and move toward Cemetery 442

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Hill succeeded only in extending the Federal occupation a few yards to the north.61 Some fifteen minutes after Marshall, Bartlett, and Griffin advanced to the crater, Hartranft’s brigade of Willcox’s division moved forward. Five of Hartranft’s seven regiments dashed across the increasingly hazardous ground between the lines with the idea of expanding the breach to the south and supporting Ledlie’s left, led by the Thirty-­Eighth Wisconsin and 109th New York. Just as with Griffin’s brigade on the other side of the crater, Hartranft’s men migrated toward the crowded depression, only extending the Union zone of control some ninety feet south of the ruined fort. Hartranft expedited the excavation of the two buried guns from Pegram’s Battery and assigned soldiers from the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery to man them. Hartranft, his staff officers, and regimental commanders urged the troops to move forward, but “the regimental organizations were more or less broken up by reason of the irregularity of the surface of the crater, the mass of troops, and the enfilading fire of the enemy,” reported Hartranft.62 Hartranft’s Eighth Michigan and Fifty-­First Pennsylvania halted in rear of the Union works, unable to advance due to the flesh-­and-­blood traffic jam that paralyzed the Union assault. A soldier in the Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry (dismounted) estimated that fully 2,000 troops now huddled in the crater, devoid of leadership or organization and intent only on avoiding Confederate fire. Only a fraction of those men gained a position from which to offer return fire. “The remainder seemed to be bewildered and oblivious to orders,” despite the efforts of brigade and regimental officers to prod them forward. At 5:15 a.m. Willcox, who had moved his command post up to within seventy yards of the crater, sent Hartranft orders to advance without reference to Ledlie’s immobile division, deploying at least one regiment southward to widen the breach. Willcox hoped to form his division at right angles to the line of advance with its right flank resting on Jerusalem Plank Road and its left on the captured Confederate line, as foolproof protection on the left for the intended charge toward Cemetery Hill. The Twenty-­Seventh Michigan pivoted left and started southward only to encounter a firestorm that severely wounded Col. William B. Wright, the unit commander. Progress halted and Hartranft’s men joined the other three brigades involved in the initial Union assault—frozen in, and a few yards on either side of, the crater. “There was never a more gallant soldier than General John F. Hartranft, and there were no braver men than he commanded,” wrote a Michigan soldier. “Their failure to take the line was not for the want of a good commander. . . . It was the consequence of the manner in which the assault was directed piecemeal against the labyrinth of the Crater and its surroundings.”63 The Union Attacks on July 30

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Thus, by 6:00 a.m., the first wave of Federal attacks at the Crater had ended. Two white Ninth Corps brigades had not yet been committed, nor had Turner’s or Ames’s poised divisions or the black soldiers of Ferrero’s command. No officer above brigade level had ventured to the front. Although Marshall, Bartlett, Hartranft, and Griffin endeavored to wring order out of mayhem, they could not organize their immobile and nearly ungovernable regiments to resume the advance. “It was as utterly impracticable to re-­form a brigade in that crater as it would be to marshal bees into line after upsetting their hive,” thought Lieutenant Powell.64 The blame for this disordered situation that, perhaps, cost the Ninth Corps the chance to capture Petersburg, typically falls on James Ledlie, and understandably so. Although neither Potter nor Willcox went to the front with their troops, Potter received detailed reports from Colonel Pleasants, who entered the crater early in the attack, and Willcox moved his division headquarters up to the advanced Union line, where he could at least observe the tactical situation. The First Division committed all its force to the assault and led the attack. Moreover, the circumstances of Ledlie’s absence add special emphasis to his dereliction. At some point after Hartranft’s advance—perhaps around 5:15 a.m.—Ledlie moved from his protected position along the line to a bombproof about fifty yards in rear of the Federal works. The shelter had been used as a regimental headquarters, but Surg. Orville P. Chubb of the Twentieth Michigan appropriated it as an aid station. According to Chubb, “shortly after I took up that position General[s] Ledlie . . . and Ferrero came up to the front of the bomb-­proof, and shortly afterward came in and took seats.”65 While there, Ledlie received orders from Burnside to push his troops forward, but the division commander relied on an aide to relay those instructions to Bartlett and Marshall. Ledlie claimed that he had been struck by a spent ball, forcing him to seek medical attention and a safe place to recuperate, although it is difficult to understand when and how he would have been in the line of fire. Subsequently, when Surg. Hamilton E. Smith of the Twenty-­Seventh Michigan, serving as the head of Willcox’s medical apparatus, occupied the bombproof, Ledlie requested “stimulants,” citing the injury from the spent ball and his chronic malaria. Smith provided the general with a dose of rum. One witness stated that when he entered the bombproof, Ledlie and Ferrero were “sitting as unconcernedly as though nothing were taking place.” Nothing of the situation at the front could be discerned from the bombproof, as its entrance faced east, away from the crater, and by all accounts Ledlie made no effort to venture out to ascertain for himself the condition of his men.66 Although Ledlie’s abdication of duty stands out as the most egregious fail444

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ure of the Union high command that morning, both Burnside and Meade deserve their fair portion of censure as well. The smoke surrounding the crater obscured the corps commander’s vantage point from the Fourteen-­gun Battery, where he remained for the bulk of the morning, opting not, with one exception, to venture forward to untangle his divisions. Similarly, Meade, who had earlier made clear that he had no intention of delegating control of the overall offensive to Burnside, remained in the rear attempting remotely to decipher the situation at the front and coordinating the action of Hancock and Warren with all the uncertainty commensurate with his imperfect grasp of the situation. That is not to say that Meade remained aloof from the offensive. He bombarded Burnside with an unending series of messages seeking updates and gratuitously urging the Ninth Corps to resume its advance, while communicating with his other corps commanders to determine what role they might play. It would be an understatement to suggest that the offensive lacked a steady guiding hand at either the tactical or operational level. Burnside had taken steps to communicate indirectly with his division commanders. He assigned staff officers to each of the white divisions to serve as liaisons with corps headquarters, and it was largely from their reports that he based his instructions that morning. His inspector general, Charles Loring, described Ledlie’s progress—or lack thereof—and one of his messages created a firestorm. Burnside’s order to Ledlie, received by that officer in his snug bombproof abode, instructed the First Division to renew its assault because Loring, who remained at the front, reported to Burnside about 5:45 a.m. that Ledlie’s men could not be persuaded to go forward. This accurately assessed the situation given the disorganization and absence of leadership then current in and around the crater. Loring handed this unflattering report to a courier with instructions to deliver it to Burnside. That man, however, had forgotten that the corps commander had moved his command post to the Fourteen-­gun Battery and rode instead to permanent corps headquarters, where Meade now held court. Thus the army commander read the distressing news that Ledlie’s men were beyond control, leaving a decidedly less optimistic impression of the situation than he had gleaned from Burnside’s messages. An outraged Meade, upset to learn that affairs at the front were not going as well as Burnside had implied, ordered his subordinate to push all the Ninth Corps troops to Cemetery Hill immediately and to call on Ord to employ his units as well. The already rocky relations between Burnside and the army commander would only deteriorate throughout the forenoon.67 Meade retained sole control over the troops that might aid Burnside and alleviate the desperate situation on the Ninth Corps front. Shortly after Loring’s The Union Attacks on July 30

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misdirected message arrived at army headquarters, Meade contacted Hancock advising the Second Corps commander to prepare for a possible advance and inquiring about the situation on the Union right. Hancock replied that Ord had left word that circumstances there looked unfavorable for an attack, but that he would instruct Mott to observe the enemy line for signs of weakness. Similarly, Meade advised Warren that “if there is apparently an opportunity to carry [the enemy’s] works take advantage of it and push forward your troops.” Warren responded that although it was difficult for him to evaluate the strength of the enemy opposite him, he could discern no diminution of the Confederates as a result of Burnside’s offensive. Meade and Warren maintained an ongoing exchange in which both officers equivocated about the wisdom of committing to an assault.68 At 7:00 a.m. Meade clarified his thinking with Hancock. If Burnside, with Ord’s assistance, broke the stalemate at the crater and succeeded in reaching Cemetery Hill, then the enemy opposite Hancock could no longer remain for fear of being assailed from the rear. In such circumstances, Meade wished Mott to advance. Meade also predicated Warren’s action on Burnside’s progress. Apparently, it did not occur to Meade to consider the situation in reverse. Rather than waiting for Burnside’s success to trigger supporting attacks on his flanks, might not such attacks have weakened the resistance at the salient and facilitated a favorable outcome at the crater?69 Meade’s one explicit order to assist Burnside, a 6:00 a.m. dispatch to Ord, yielded no immediate results. In response to Meade’s directive to “at once move forward your corps rapidly to the crest of the hill independently of General Burnside’s troops and make a lodgment there,” Ord wrote, “General Turner, in my front, reports that the only place I can get out of the line is opposite the crater. It is already full of men who cannot develop. . . . It is impossible, by reason of the topography, to charge in the manner you indicate.” Warren did visit Burnside at the Fourteen-­gun Battery shortly after the arrival of Meade’s order to advance Ord, and the two officers crept through a covered way attempting to ascertain what might be done to disperse the logjam. When they returned to Burnside’s command post, the Ninth Corps chieftain advised Meade that “if General Warren’s supporting force can be concentrated just now, ready to go in at the proper time, it would be well. I will designate to you when it ought to move.” This message rubbed Meade the wrong way: “Warren’s force has been concentrated and ready to move since 3:20 a.m.,” he wrote. “My object in inquiring was to ascertain if you could judge of the practicability of his advancing without awaiting your column. What is the delay in your column moving?”70 The dialogue between these two men became even harsher a few minutes 446

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later. Burnside responded to Meade’s pointed inquiry by assuring the army commander that he was “doing all in my power to push the troops forward, and if possible, we will carry the crest. It is hard work,” Burnside admitted, “but we hope to accomplish it. I am fully alive to the importance of it.” Meade, his nerves frayed and his impatience boiling to the surface, sent Burnside a petulant and accusatory reply. “What do you mean by hard work to take the crest?” he fumed. “I understand not a man has advanced beyond the enemy’s line which you occupied immediately after exploding the mine. Do you mean to say your officers and men will not obey your orders to advance?”—a notion inspired by Loring’s maladministered message. “If not, what is the obstacle? I wish to know the truth and desire an immediate answer.”71 The patient and genial Burnside, the tension of the moment no doubt weighing heavily on him as well, could not let this pass. After stating that some of Potter’s men had advanced beyond the crater and clarifying that his problems were not rooted in disobedience of orders, Burnside unleashed his own verbal volley. “I have never in any report said anything different from what I conceived to be the truth,” he averred. “Were it not insubordinate I would say that the latter remark of your note was unofficerlike and ungentlemanly.” Of course, this language was insubordinate, and Meade answered by requesting that Burnside send him a copy of his previous message as he had not retained his own facsimile, signaling that this bitter exchange might result in disciplinary action. If Burnside needed evidence as to who would be blamed if the offensive failed, Meade’s message supplied it. The army commander tried to moderate the intent of his message in his December testimony to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. “I did not mean to impugn General Burnside’s veracity, or to suppose for an instant that he would tell me what was not true,” he dissembled. “I considered it natural that General Burnside would be indisposed to make [the reason for the delay in advancing] known, so long as he had hopes of overcoming the difficulty.” But on July 30 Burnside’s pique was well justified, if imprudent, and Meade’s tone improper and counterproductive.72 There can be little doubt that the fractured relationship between these two officers contributed to the contretemps that morning. Meade felt uninformed of events at the front, but chose not to venture forward to relieve his anxiety and develop a comprehensive operational plan. He did retain Captain Sanders at Burnside’s command post, and Sanders posted a steady stream of reports to army headquarters. Burnside’s acting chief of staff, Julius White, failed to maintain the standard level of communication with army headquarters, a fact that probably exacerbated Meade’s irritation, but the record is replete with Burnside’s own replies to Meade’s inquiries. Meade justified his decision to remain The Union Attacks on July 30

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in the rear as a requirement for facilitating facile communication with the entire army. While that explanation has merit, by the time that Burnside and Meade exchanged their unseemly messages it should have been apparent to the army commander that the situation required a directing hand to untangle the stalled offensive by properly employing the entirety of the army. The only man qualified to provide that direction remained at his command post, too remote from the front to comprehend the situation, and unwilling to initiate action by the Second and Fifth Corps through discretionary authorization.73 General Grant, “very desirous of always seeing, and quite regardless of his own exposure,” watched the explosion of the mine with Meade. Some thirty or forty-­five minutes later he rode toward the crater, accompanied by Colonel Porter and an orderly. Advancing as far as he could safely go on horseback, the general-­in-­chief dismounted and walked toward the front, encountering Colonel Thomas’s brigade poised in their covered way awaiting orders to advance. Grant inquired as to the delay, and Thomas explained that his instructions required him to follow the brigade in his front. “Will you give me the order to go in now?” Thomas asked. Grant, wisely, declined to intercede at such a tactical level and returned to the rear. He notified Butler of the situation on Burnside’s front and instructed him to be alert for any departure by the Confederates at Bermuda Hundred. “If they do, follow in and seize and hold the road [between Richmond and Petersburg] to the last, informing me that I may take steps to strengthen you in time.” Beyond these events, Grant—in keeping with his command style during previous offensives—abstained from offering advice or issuing orders to Meade.74 Confederate resistance made Burnside’s problems with Meade pale by comparison. The explosion had destroyed Pegram’s Battery beyond redemption, but Elliott’s South Carolina infantry proved more resilient. The approximately 1,200 surviving Carolinians offered stout opposition to the four Union brigades that made the initial attack. Colonel McMaster stated that his men recovered from the panic incident to the explosion in less than five minutes. Captain Floyd, officer of the day in the Eighteenth South Carolina, agreed that “those of us who were not struck by flying timbers, emerged from the debris and attacked the enemy at once. . . . The air was so filled with smoke and dust that we could not see ten feet away, but I was satisfied the enemy were upon us,” remembered Floyd. “I ordered the men to commence firing over the breastworks.”75 The Seventeenth South Carolina exchanged fire with unidentified Federals and then engaged their opponents in brief hand-­to-­hand combat. The Confederates gradually withdrew from this uneven contest, “walking backwards, fight448

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ing as we fell back, the officers using their revolvers, while the men fought with their rifles.” Floyd thought that nearly half the men engaged became casualties before they reached “a cross ditch that had been laid off and prepared by our engineers to fight from in case of disaster.” General Elliott ordered these men to hold their positions while he sought as many regimental officers as he could to rally his survivors for a counterattack. When the Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina appeared in some strength, Elliott emerged from the reserve trench about fifty yards from the crater, leading that regiment and portions of the Seventeenth South Carolina back toward the Federals. Almost instantly, a ball lodged in Elliott’s upper body. The brigade commander collapsed thirty yards from the crater, and his men bore him from the field. Only a handful of Carolinians reached the abyss, most of them taken prisoner for their effort. The rest of Elliott’s Brigade, now under the direction of McMaster, held its ground, the colonel abandoning the idea of another fruitless charge. “Men, you hold this place or die in the effort,” admonished McMaster, a directive well executed. “To Elliott’s South Carolina Brigade belongs the glory of the Battle of the Crater and the maintenance of the integrity of Lee’s line of battle around the city of Petersburg,” asserted Capt. William H. Edwards of the Seventeenth South Carolina. “If Elliott’s Brigade had been driven from its position that day the integrity of our line of battle would have gone, and with the weight of Grant’s army against us our whole line would have been untenable.”76 While there can be no gainsaying the contribution of the South Carolinians to the Confederates’ initial defense, much credit belongs to the grayclad cannoneers located north, south, and west of the breach. Major Coit had established his battalion headquarters at a spring some 600 yards northwest of the crater at the head of the ravine that led to the front. He awoke with a start at the sound of the explosion, remembering that the blast created “a sensation of being rocked in a cradle.” Suspecting what had occurred, Coit hastened toward Pegram’s Battery, learning en route from survivors of its grim fate. Seeing Elliott’s men offering a creditable resistance to the Union onslaught, Coit hurriedly repaired to Wright’s Battery north of the crater, arriving a few minutes after 5:00 a.m. The battalion commander, who now enjoyed a splendid view of the unfolding drama, ordered Wright’s Halifax Battery to open fire on the approaches to the crater, the precise purpose for which its location had been chosen. “The position of this excellent battery was perhaps unknown to the enemy, and the superior manner in which it was served, the rapidity of the fire, and the terrible effect on the enemy’s forces no doubt greatly astonished and demoralized them,” thought General Johnson. Coit believed that Wright’s guns were the first Confederate ordnance to respond to the Federal attack. Pegram The Union Attacks on July 30

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soon arrived and Coit instructed the distraught Virginian to return to his headquarters in town and prepare his remaining section for orders to move. Pegram departed, destined to play no further role in the battle that would forever define the legacy of his command.77 South of the crater, the Confederate artillery response did not enjoy such initial success. The battery closest to the salient, Davidson’s Lynchburg Battery, soon became leaderless and all but abandoned. The unit’s captain, George Davidson, was on leave awaiting approval of his resignation and the acting commander, Lieutenant Otey, lost his nerve when the Federals unleashed their bombardment. Otey and most of his cannoneers fled, leaving their two Napoleons impotent. The battalion commander, Major Gibbes, learned of this shameful behavior and personally repaired to the battery to take command of the one gun that bore precisely on the Federals’ approach to the crater. Gibbes would thus be the second of a series of commanders that morning who assumed responsibility for this critical cannon.78 Major Gibbes enjoyed an admirable pedigree. A South Carolinian and graduate of West Point, Gibbes attended the academy with E. P. Alexander and married one of Alexander’s sisters. He is credited with firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, when the romance of Edmund Ruffin is not invoked. Gibbes had befriended one of Petersburg’s wealthiest citizens, William Cameron, and benefited financially when Cameron provided him with the proceeds from a bale of cotton sold during one of the successful blockade-­running operations financed out of Petersburg.79 En route to the front, Gibbes ordered David N. Walker, commander of the Otey Battery next down the line from Davidson’s, to round up an officer and some cannoneers to serve the abandoned guns. Gibbes received the assistance of an unlikely collection of ersatz artillerists. Col. Frank Huger, acting First Corps artillery chief, along with three members of his staff—Capts. Steven Winthrop and Joseph Cheves Haskell and Lt. William Taylor Mason— joined Lt. Edward Norvell of the Otey Battery and Pvt. Lewis T. Covington of Pegram’s company in manning the guns. Gibbes managed to bring the left piece of Davidson’s section to bear on the Federals at and approaching the crater, with devastating results. Gibbes, however, fell with a severe wound after overseeing the firing of about forty rounds, leaving the section leaderless again for a short time.80 What happened next remains a matter of debate, although in fairly short order the valuable gun, subject to determined but unsuccessful counterbattery fire, again roared into action. Some accounts suggest that Colonel Goode, whose infantry remained in the neighborhood after the explosion, sent Capt. 450

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Samuel Davis Preston and Company C of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia to replace Gibbes and the valiant but inexperienced headquarters officers. These Virginians had previous artillery experience and knew their away around a fieldpiece. Captain Walker insisted in a postwar account that with Gibbes’s removal from the field, he became the acting battalion commander “and I at once went to the point of most importance and took Maj. Gibb[e]s’ place at Davidson’s battery.” Lee’s artillery chief, General Pendleton, had Huger, Winthrop, and Haskell arriving after Gibbes’s fall and credited them with reopening fire. Whatever the precise sequence of these chaotic events, Captain Preston arrived and sustained a disabling wound as did an aide on Colonel Goode’s staff, Pvt. Edward Bagby, whose head injury would prove fatal. Goode then dispatched Bagby’s cousin, Capt. Alexander F. Bagby, who arrived with another company of former cannoneers from the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia. Captain Walker believed that Lieutenant Norvell now assumed control of the piece, using troops from his own Otey Battery rather than, or in addition to, the foot soldiers.81 The other two batteries south of the crater, Walker’s Otey Battery and the Ringgold Battery, contributed to the Confederate defense, but not nearly so critically as did Wright’s and Davidson’s guns. Only two of the four guns in Crispen Dickenson’s Ringgold Battery could fire toward the crater, but Lt. W. P. Robinson recalled that “we completely enfiladed the enemy . . . and fired shells right into them.” This effective fire drew a response from “at least fifty cannon and mortars,” but Robinson’s section persevered. Only one of Walker’s guns had the range to resist the attack, but it too maintained a steady and telling fire throughout the morning.82 About 100 yards behind Otey Battery, Capt. “Jack” Langhorne established a firing position consisting of three twelve-­pounder Coehorn mortars. Manned by a baker’s dozen cannoneers from Gibbes’s Battalion, these little engines of destruction had been pre-­sited to fire on the most likely targets around the salient should rumors of the mining prove true. They contributed their fair share to arresting Burnside’s progress. When Walker returned Langhorne to Otey Battery subsequent to the command changes necessitated by Gibbes’s wounding, Sgt. A. Whit Smith assumed competent control of the mortars.83 Two batteries of Major Haskell’s First Corps battalion located west of the crater completed the artillery response to Burnside’s initial assault. The larger, known as Lamkin’s Battery, had arrived in Virginia in early 1864, having left its ordnance back in South Carolina. The unit had served as infantry for a number of weeks and then received sixteen mortars, eleven of which they deployed along Jerusalem Plank Road between the Gee house, due west of the crater, and Blandford Cemetery, or in ravines closer to the front lines. Captain Lamkin’s The Union Attacks on July 30

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gunners had predetermined the fuse length and powder charge to various targets and thus their mortars located in the road inflicted havoc on the Federal infantry, dropping shells “with remarkable precision upon the enemy’s masses clustered in disorder in front of and in the crater,” boasted General Johnson. One of the gunners averred that his pieces “rained a pitiless fire into the Crater and the enemy’s works beyond.” The mortars used the eastern shoulder of the road as a ready-­made parapet, keeping them relatively safe from incoming shells, although one of the gunners remembered repairing the earthworks in front of his piece three times. Still, without infantry support, Haskell’s guns remained vulnerable to a Federal surge, and the major prepared for “seeing the war end for us right there.”84 Captain Flanner’s Company F, Thirteenth Battalion North Carolina Artillery, enjoyed even less protection than Lamkin’s mortars. Flanner’s six Napoleons unlimbered just east of Jerusalem Plank Road, near its intersection with Baxter Road. Flanner considered his position a second line of defense, although no foot soldiers supported his guns. Flanner’s twelve-­pounders, already loaded with canister, “fired two rounds into [the enemy] which so astonished them, that those who were not killed or wounded broke and fled back to the works,” remembered a battery man. Flanner would claim that his guns played the key role in the Confederate defense.85 In truth, a number of Confederate units combined to stem Burnside’s initial assault, including the infantry brigades that flanked the crater. To the north, Lee McAfee’s two right regiments reacted to the crisis with alacrity. The Twenty-­Fifth North Carolina immediately abutted Elliott’s left from a position south of the ravine that separated Wright’s Battery and the rest of the North Carolina brigade from the salient. Almost immediately after the explosion, Colonel McAfee, the acting brigade commander, ordered the Twenty-­Fifth North Carolina, under Maj. William S. Grady, to take position along the first ridge west of the salient, poised to meet any Yankee attempt to push through toward Petersburg. Soon the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina joined them, and, together with the Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina and Seventeenth South Carolina, the Tar Heels participated in Elliott’s aborted counterattack. Although this maneuver failed to evict the Federals, it did result in the Carolinians’ occupation of the cavalier trench located behind the ruined salient. The quick reaction of McAfee’s two regiments, along with the prompt recovery of Elliott’s survivors, not only helped halt the Union offensive, but also served temporarily to seal the northern shoulder of the breach, although the effort cost the life of Lt. Col. John A. Fleming, commanding the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina. “Our troops were clinging to the works with the tenacity of despair, and fighting with 452

The Union Attacks on July 30

the fury of madmen,” recalled one North Carolinian. “Wherever the attempt was made by the Federals to form in line for an advance movement, Elliott’s rifles and grape and canister from Wright’s Battery would mow then down like wheat in a harvest field,” boasted Captain Edwards. The remaining three regiments of McAfee’s brigade shifted south to cover the ground evacuated by their comrades, and here they would remain for the rest of the day.86 A similar situation prevailed south of the crater, although the Federal pressure there proved somewhat less sustained than on the opposite side of the breach. Two of Elliott’s regiments, the Twenty-­Second South Carolina and Twenty-­Third South Carolina, remained reasonably intact, and they garnered support from the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia, Forty-­Sixth Virginia, and Fifty-­Ninth Virginia of Wise’s Brigade, which were positioned on the Carolinians’ right before the explosion. The Gamecocks fashioned a barricade behind which they could fire at any bluecoat who attempted to venture to his left, aided by the Twenty-­Sixth Virginia. “This day was the jubilee of fiends in human shape, and without souls,” thought a member of the Forty-­Sixth Virginia, validating both the intensity of the combat and its unorthodox prelude. “In the events of the 30th of July there will perhaps be found nothing more heroic or worthy of higher admiration than the conduct of the Twenty-­second and Twenty-­third South Carolina Regiments,” wrote Johnson in praise of these two stalwart units. Behind the crater and to its south, Colonel Goode sent the 100 soldiers of the Fifty-­Ninth Virginia to establish another traverse that enabled them to thwart any Federals who attempted to venture west beyond the breach. “The musketry fire, which at first was scattering, was constantly increasing, with deadly effect,” admitted an officer in the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts. “The crest in our front was now occupied by a strong force, while the batteries . . . were delivering a raking fire.” Another Yankee confessed at this point that “our men in the crater were checked, felt the enemy’s fire, sought cover, and began to entrench.”87 After dispatching a part of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia to serve as gunners, Goode sent a message to division commander Johnson, urging him to come to the lines and “give us the benefit of his judgment. [Johnson] sent his aide, Lt. [John E.] Saunders, to say that my arrangements were very good or excellent. And to hold the works at all hazards. That was the last I heard of him until the battle was practically over.” Johnson did not enjoy a particularly warm relationship with his direct subordinates, in part because he so rarely ventured from his headquarters, located in a house along Jerusalem Plank Road near the northwest corner of Blandford Cemetery. His brigade commanders considered him aloof, and retained limited confidence in his abilities. Johnson’s actions on the morning of July 30 did little to improve his reputation. The Union Attacks on July 30

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That is not to say that the adopted Tennessean remained idle during the opening moments of the crisis. “I immediately communicated with the brigades in both wings of the division and directed them to extend their intervals and re-­enforce the wings of Elliott’s brigade, so as to give as great strength as possible to the forces on which the weight of the enemy’s columns must first fall,” he reported. This is, of course, exactly what McAfee and Goode did, although these officers likely acted on their own prior to receiving Johnson’s sound advice. Johnson also sent aides to the division commanders on his flanks, Hoke and Mahone, to request whatever assistance they could dispatch. Mahone replied that help was on the way, but Hoke declined, citing an imminent threat to his own position. Beauregard then journeyed to Hoke’s command post and, explaining his conviction that the Union offensive imperiled Johnson’s front alone, ordered the North Carolinian to send a regiment to Johnson’s relief. Hoke released the Sixty-­First North Carolina from Clingman’s Brigade and later a regiment each from Hagood’s and Colquitt’s commands.88 Other members of the Confederate high command proved more mobile than Johnson. Pleasants’s explosion shook the buildings in Petersburg, including the two housing Col. Samuel Paul of Beauregard’s staff and corps chieftain A. P. Hill. Paul rushed across the Appomattox River to Beauregard’s headquarters on Dunn’s Hill, and his excited manner immediately informed the general that this was not his aide’s standard early-­morning update. After insisting that Paul take a seat and compose himself with a glass of water, Beauregard heard enough about the mine to realize that the situation in Elliott’s sector demanded his attention. He instructed the colonel to proceed the 300 yards to Violet Bank, inform Lee of the crisis, and ask the commanding general for help from Mahone’s Division, the only infantry around Petersburg not under Beauregard’s direct authority. Beauregard then quickly departed, telling Paul that Lee could meet him at Johnson’s headquarters at an early hour. The Creole commander hastened across the river and rode up Cemetery Hill, learning additional details after consulting with Johnson. Confident that his subordinate had given all the necessary orders to his own division and Hoke’s, Beauregard then proceeded south to the Gee house, a one-­story frame affair on Jerusalem Plank Road that provided an unobstructed view of the crater.89 Hill’s command post was near Halifax Street in the city’s southwest quadrant. Suspecting the origin of the jolt that awoke him, Hill dressed hastily. He told his chief of staff, Col. William H. Palmer, that he intended to ride to Mahone’s headquarters at Dr. Branch’s house—west of the Wilcox farm and due south of the city—and order that officer to detach as many troops as he could spare to the point of the explosion. A hastily scribbled note arrived from 454

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Beauregard that confirmed Hill’s suspicions regarding the situation. The general sent an aide, Lt. Murray Forbes Taylor, directly to Mahone, while he and other staff headed for the Gee house, the favorite vantage point for Confederate commanders, in order to gain a firsthand look at the Federals. Hill left Palmer alone at corps headquarters. Despite this brief detour, Hill may have reached Mahone before anyone else and, with the division commander, ridden along Mahone’s five-­brigade front discussing options for how to respond to the emergency several miles to the northeast.90 General Lee reacted with equal energy when at 6:10  a.m. Colonel Paul galloped up to his headquarters as Lee sat down to breakfast. Lee absorbed Paul’s report and immediately summoned Colonel Venable, asking him to ride to Mahone’s headquarters with instructions to detach two of his brigades to Johnson’s assistance. Time would not permit Venable to observe proper protocol and stop at Hill’s command post en route. Lee then mounted Traveller, crossed the Appomattox River, and headed for Hill’s headquarters, arriving fifteen to thirty minutes after Hill’s departure. Palmer briefed the gray commander on Hill’s whereabouts and then joined Lee as the commanding general made for Mahone’s Division, utilizing a route that Palmer knew would shield them from view.91 According to Mahone, neither Taylor, Hill, nor Venable were the first to apprise him of trouble along Johnson’s lines. A “hatless and shoeless” soldier, remembered Mahone, rode past his headquarters early that morning shouting the ominous if vague news that “He-­l has busted.” Mahone said nothing about seeing Hill, but recalled meeting with Venable, who communicated Lee’s orders. “Without delay, the Virginia and Georgia brigades were withdrawn from their places in line, with such care, as not to disclose denuding our front,” wrote Mahone. Mahone’s old Virginia brigade, now under Colonel Weisiger, and Brig. Gen. Ambrose R. Wright’s Georgians, commanded that day by Lt. Col. Matthew R. Hall, held the division’s right. Mahone told these troops, who, along with the rest of the division had been under arms since before dawn, to saunter to the rear in small groups and take cover in some shrubbery so as to mask their mass departure. He then directed them toward the fractured salient over a roundabout route of some two and a half miles that veiled them from enemy observers.92 Mahone personally led his two brigades, fewer than 2,000 men, northward at the double-­quick, with the Virginia brigade’s sharpshooter battalion in the lead, taking care to keep them concealed, although a Fifth Corps signal station spotted them. “While we were hurrying in the direction of the unusual noise,” recalled an officer in the Sixty-­First Virginia, “the sun was rising in the most The Union Attacks on July 30

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grand and majestic beauty and brightness. Was it mocking the dreadful carnage already begun [?]” After stopping at an apple orchard to discard all equipment save for rifles, ammunition, and canteens, the column safely reached the covered way that led to the front. There, Mahone continued the short distance north on Jerusalem Plank Road to Johnson’s headquarters under the impression that his immediate superior, General Hill, would be there—suggesting that Hill and Mahone had not met earlier. Instead, he encountered Beauregard, who asked Johnson to cede command of his troops at the front to Mahone. Johnson agreed almost too readily, and when Mahone asked Johnson to escort him to the front and show him the lay of the land, Johnson summoned instead a staff lieutenant, who departed with Mahone for the salient.93 While at the Gee house, Beauregard observed the dynamic drama at the salient for some time, joined eventually by members of his staff, one of whom informed him that General Lee was at Johnson’s headquarters and wished to see him. Lee and Palmer had encountered Mahone’s troops en route to the front, so those two officers aborted their trip to Dr. Branch’s house and made instead for Rives’ Salient, where the general asked Palmer to count the number of Union battle flags waving above the crater. Palmer saw eleven, confirming for Lee that the Federals occupied the position in great strength. Palmer departed under orders from Hill to assist Mahone, while Lee turned north to consult with Johnson at his headquarters, reaching there prior to Beauregard’s return.94 The precise time of Lee’s arrival at Johnson’s headquarters is in dispute, estimates ranging from “a bit after 7 a.m.” to 8:30 a.m. In any case, the little house near Blandford Cemetery was a busy place that morning. Beauregard had been there, so had Mahone, and now the commanding general made his appearance. Lt. Col. Willie Pegram, an artillery battalion commander in Hill’s corps, had just left Johnson’s command post, having, at Hill’s suggestion, brought with him two Virginia batteries—the Crenshaw Battery and the Letcher Artillery—to bolster the Confederate defense. Pegram’s adjutant, William Gordon McCabe, remained behind and was present when Lee arrived.95 When Beauregard returned, he found Lee in conversation with Johnson—that officer, however imperfectly, now having briefed the entire Confederate high command. “After staying at Johnson’s Hd Qrs long enough to send, or have sent, all necessary orders to the front, I proposed to Genl Lee that he should accompany me to the Gee House where we could have a better view of the struggle,” wrote Beauregard, “although it was in the direct line of fire from the Federal batteries.” Lee readily agreed, and the two highest-­ranking Confederate field commanders in the eastern theater picked their way south through ravines and broken ground, avoiding exposure along Jerusalem Plank Road. 456

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At least one member of Wright’s Battery spotted “the frosty locks of an aged man,” whom he identified as General Lee, “quietly smiling” as he rode toward the front. Beauregard remembered that en route they encountered Mahone’s troops, who had begun moving toward the crater. Once Lee and Beauregard reached the Gee house, they entered the dwelling’s brick basement, and there they would stay for the bulk of the subsequent fighting.96 While the Confederate high command, Johnson’s three beleaguered brigades, and the grayclad gunners responded to the initial Union offensive, Burnside readied a second wave of assaults. Colonel Bliss, commanding Potter’s First Brigade, was the first to respond to renewed attack orders received before 7:00 a.m. “As soon as the fire became general, I was ordered to move to the front, through one of those covered ways,” stated Bliss. “I had not gone far before I discovered the covered way packed full of men.” Bliss sought Potter’s permission to march across the landscape at grade, but the division commander demurred, instructing his subordinate to “fix bayonets and drive those men out.” Bliss obeyed and the troops in their way, soldiers of Louis Bell’s brigade of Turner’s division, plastered themselves against the walls of the northern covered way while Bliss’s men pushed through toward the Confederate works.97 Nearly an hour passed before Bliss reached the scene of combat, due in part to erroneous instructions received from a staff officer. When Bliss finally appeared, General Griffin asked him to position his troops between his brigade and the Federal line to protect Griffin’s right flank north of the crater. Griffin thought that three regiments should accomplish this task, and Bliss designated the Fifty-­Eighth Massachusetts, Fourth Rhode Island, and Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania for the job.98 However, General Potter had a different idea. “Finding . . . that he could not get on in consequence of the stoppage of the troops in front and the great confusion arising from the great crowd of troops thrown into such a limited space, I ordered him to move a portion of his force to the right, down the enemy’s line of works, and also to attack the enemy’s line at the ravine,” explained Potter. Bliss designated the Second New York Mounted Rifles (dismounted) and the Fifty-­First New York to assault at the ravine while the other three regiments would move north, behind the Confederate line, in support. This combined movement targeted Wright’s Battery as its ultimate objective.99 Both wings of Bliss’s brigade encountered problems. The three regiments that advanced west to the Confederate trenches became jumbled as they approached the crater and its mass of humanity. General Griffin, not privy to Potter’s new instructions, halted their attempt to move north. Then General Bartlett told the commander of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania to charge due The Union Attacks on July 30

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The Crater, Second Attack,Attack, July 30, 1864 Map 32 - The Crater, Second July 30, 1864

west toward Flanner’s Battery—instructions also obeyed, in part, by the Fifty-­ Eighth Massachusetts. “There was evidently a misunderstanding as to which battery it was intended to capture,” concluded the historian of that regiment. The Fourth Rhode Island did advance toward the northwest as Potter and Bliss intended, facing “the hottest fire we ever experienced.” Capt. Sumner U. Shearman recalled that “the few of us that were together at that time, followed the colonel and the color bearer out beyond the enemy’s works towards Cemetery Hill, but we encountered such a hurricane of shot and shell that it was impossible to face it.” With no support, they halted a mere 100 yards from their point of origin, “digging our noses into the ground, to escape the fire.” The result, predictably, left these three regiments pinned down just north of the crater, having 458

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accomplished little more than adding to the chaos at the front. The Second New York Mounted Rifles and the Fifty-­First New York, in carrying out their portion of the advance, found themselves on opposite sides of the ravine, separated not only from each other but from the rest of the brigade. Their sacrifice, too, had little salutary impact on the tactical situation.100 Ord’s two divisions contributed even less to Federal fortunes. Ord’s assessment that it was impossible for his units to advance found its origin in the pandemonium prevailing at the front. He had placed Turner’s three brigades— under Colonels Bell and Curtis, and Lt. Col. William B. Coan—in the northernmost covered way, “feeling an anxiety to get my men as far forward in support of the assault as possible,” as well as to shield the troops from incoming artillery fire. After waiting for Bliss to squeeze by, Ord directed Turner to move forward.101 General Turner boasted a West Point education and a long record in staff positions in the trans-­Mississippi theater and in the Departments of the South and the Gulf. The thirty-­year-­old native New Yorker had grown up in Illinois and served creditably in Oregon, Florida, and at various garrisons before the war. His experience in command of infantry, however, had been limited to the current campaign. This otherwise undistinguished officer would be the only Union division commander to visit the crater during the day. His personal observation convinced him that “every point that would give cover to a man was occupied,” that there was no movement toward Cemetery Hill, and that “any effort to get out of our lines . . . would have been futile.” Unless Burnside’s troops advanced, it would only add “to the confusion and loss of life to put more troops out.”102 Ames reported that Turner’s troops blocked his advance to the front. These discouraging messages prompted an agitated Ord, “impatient at the bad state of affairs,” to examine for himself the situation at the crater. Joined by General Ames en route, Ord encountered Turner, and, persuaded by Ames and confirmed by Turner’s eyewitness testimony that nothing could be done short of launching a suicidal attack to the right of the crater and into the teeth of the unshaken Confederate line, Ord returned to the safety of the Fourteen-­gun Battery to await a better opportunity to employ his men. Eventually, some of Turner’s units would participate in the battle, but not until Ferrero’s division finally entered the fray.103 The combat had raged for more than an hour when word finally arrived for the Fourth Division to advance. Sigfried’s four regiments filed into the southern covered way, across the railroad embankment, and into the valley of Poor Creek. Here, they halted, stymied by idle white troops, a steady parade The Union Attacks on July 30

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of wounded Federals heading for the rear, and Confederate prisoners. The Rebel captives caught sight of the black soldiers and beseeched their guards “not to let the niggers bayonet them,” indicative of the conventional wisdom among the Southerners that African American troops would grant them no mercy. Thomas’s Second Brigade followed Sigfried into the covered way, the men forced to press against the walls as “the constantly increasing throng of wounded . . . many, out of their senses through agony . . . moaning or bellowing like wild beasts,” made their way toward medical treatment. “There could be no greater strain on the nerves,” admitted the brigade commander. “Every moment changed the condition from that of a forlorn hope to one of forlorn hopelessness.”104 Burnside sent Ferrero multiple instructions to join the offensive, but each time the division commander demurred from the comfort of his bombproof, citing with some justification the overcrowded conditions in his front. Pressured by Meade’s caustic communications, Burnside immediately conveyed peremptory orders at 7:30 a.m. for the black troops to advance. Ferrero emerged from his shelter prepared to execute this directive, but Colonel Loring advised him to wait until he could return to the Fourteen-­gun Battery and advise the corps commander of the jam-­packed conditions at the front. Loring met with Burnside, who fully appreciated that adding Ferrero’s two brigades to the mix might simply exacerbate the command confusion at the crater. But, said Burnside, Meade’s order must be obeyed.105 Some disagreement exists as to which of Sigfried’s regiments led the advance. Officers of both the Thirtieth and Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops would claim the honor. In either case, it took about thirty minutes for the blacks to reach the foremost Union works. There, instructions rang out to fix bayonets, trail arms, forward, double quick, march. Colonel Sigfried then turned to Maj. Oliver C. Bosbyshell, his old comrade in the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, and, leaping over the Federal works, shouted “Come on, Bosby!” Immediately after negotiating some tricky sandbag ramps leading into the open ground of the former no-­man’s-­land, Sigfried’s men were greeted by a vicious fire as they dashed the 100 yards toward the mangled Confederate line. Canister ripped into the attackers, creating a sickening sound “like that made by a butcher when he strikes a piece of meat with his cleaver.” One round annihilated half of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops’ color guard, the color sergeant’s blood and brains besmearing the banner. Seymour Hall, in command of the Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops, characterized the environment as “a tornado of shot and shell,” although every witness praised the poise and determination of the inexperienced African Americans as they traversed this deadly landscape. Mine 460

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boss Harry Reese felt “furious to see a division of colored soldiers rush[ing] into the jaws of death with no prospect of success; but they went in cheering as though they didn’t mind it.” Capt. Charles F. Stinson of the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops in Thomas’s brigade considered “the slaughter . . . fearful” and recounted that “the bullets come in amongst us like hailstones.” White soldiers, some no admirers of the Africans, nevertheless described their black comrades’ initial approach as “splendid” and “gallant,” admitting that they “went forward with great impetuosity.”106 Colonel Sigfried attempted to lead his men through the crater, but found it filled with the living, wounded, dead, and dying, which made it “very difficult to make a passage through.” General Bartlett and others tried mightily to keep the newcomers from descending into the hole, but many stumbled in, “making a mess generally,” thought a Massachusetts officer. Sergeant Aston of the Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry remembered that this “surging mass of black humanity, pushing and crowding each other” reached the crest of the crater and “came tumbling over each other down upon the troops already there, crushing and wounding many, both by trampling and with their bayonets.” One disgusted officer in the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops noted that “our corps and division commanders being either asleep or drunk did not put in an appearance.”107 Ferrero’s arrival attracted the attention of the steadfast survivors of the explosion and their Tar Heel comrades, just to the north. “Oh but they looked black and ugly,” thought Pvt. William Day of the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina. “It was said that they were drunk, but I don’t know whether they were or not.” Day shared the impression that being captured by them meant death, an assumption reinforced by the cries of “No Quarter!” and “Remember Fort Pillow!” shouted by many of the blacks. Day claimed to have witnessed the African Americans bayoneting some of the unfortunate Confederates still alive around the crater, and he vowed to fight them to the death. “We had no cowards,” he wrote. “Every man stood square to his post and fought with the heroism of men reduced to desperation.” The Federals shared this brutish sentiment with their opponents that crimson morning. “It is the only battle I was ever in where it appeared to be just pure enjoyment to kill an opponent,” admitted Colonel Bates of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops.108 Sigfried managed to extricate many of the men from his leading two regiments, the Thirtieth and Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops, and led them out of the crater to a trench behind what remained of Pegram’s Salient. Finding this landscape filled with immobile troops from the earlier assaults, Sigfried directed his men to their right along the outside of the Confederate works. The colonel identified the Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops as leading the way, The Union Attacks on July 30

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but officers of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops insisted that they started the movement northward. These accounts credit Bates with directing the charge, his hat on the point of his sabre in one hand and a pistol in the other. The Federals moved some 200 yards, then leapt over the works. Here occurred some of the most vicious fighting of the morning. Many of the South Carolinians in Sigfried’s path had just fired, allowing the attackers an opportunity to engage them between shots. The combat became intensely personal. Some Confederates were “ruthlessly bayoneted” as they begged for mercy, while other surrendered Southerners were spared such atrocities by the intervention of white Union officers. Many graycoats remained defiant, rallying their outnumbered comrades by reminding them that “they are nothing but niggers.” Eventually, troops from the rest of the First Brigade joined their determined comrades, helping to round up between 100 and 250 prisoners, many from the Seventeenth South Carolina. Capt. Albert D. Wright of the Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops captured a Confederate flag, and Lt. Robert W. Armstrong recovered a stand of national colors lost earlier in the morning.109 This is not to suggest that all Confederate resistance north of the crater evaporated with Sigfried’s first assault. The Southerners farther up the line maintained an unrelenting fire, Private Day boasting that “we had the whole field full of negroes to shoot into, at about seventy-­five yards distance. . . . We made every shot tell.” This concentrated cloud of lead delayed Thomas’s Second Brigade from shifting north to support Sigfried. “The fire was so hot that half the few who came out of the works were shot,” reported Thomas. Lt. Col. William Ross, commanding the Thirty-­First U.S. Colored Troops, fell dead, and other officers were killed or wounded, leaving that regiment leaderless. In fact, of the officers in the Second Brigade who attempted to lead their troops to the right, only Thomas and Capt. Marshall L. Dempsey of the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops emerged unscathed.110 Twenty minutes of relative calm transpired before an officer from Ferrero’s staff appeared with a message for his brigade commanders: “Colonels Sigfried and Thomas, if you have not already done so, you will immediately proceed to take the crest in your front.” Thomas understood the folly of such an assignment, particularly because destructive fire from his right would greet any attempt to cross the open ground west of the captured works, but he vowed to try. At about the same time, Major Van Buren found Colonel Bates and conveyed identical instructions. “A charge must be made on Cemetery Hill at once,” said the major. Bates would later remember that Van Buren pointed to a white house, identifying it as his immediate objective. This building, likely the 462

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Gee house, still provided Beauregard and Lee a remarkably perilous vantage point from which to observe the action. Specific times for events in the crater are difficult to determine, but it appears that Ferrero’s order arrived at the front shortly before 8:30 a.m.111 By 8:45 a.m. Bates and Thomas had organized perhaps 500 of their men to execute the patently pointless attack ordered by their disconnected division commander and his superiors. Little unit integrity remained among the nine regiments at the front, although the distance between the brigades afforded each of them a different experience. “The surroundings were such that a line of battle could not be formed and all that I could do was to order an advance to the front,” confessed Colonel Bates. “We reached the open plain beyond the line of breast-­works in which we were partially protected. . . . How far we went I do not know, for a volley from our front and right disabled about one-­half of our officers and one-­third of the privates.” The colonel took only five or ten steps before a minié ball penetrated his skull near the right ear, passed above the roof of his mouth, and exited near his left ear. Members of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops collected their wounded commander and passed him to the rear on a rubber blanket, thinking him a dying man. At the same time, the regiment’s major, Robert Leake, fell mortally wounded along with many other officers. Lieutenant Colonel Hall of the Forty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops was among those badly hurt. The First Brigade’s survivors jumped back into the shelter of the captured trenches, dragging their injured comrades with them.112 The Twenty-­Ninth U.S. Colored Troops led Thomas’s brigade forward, closely followed by the Twenty-­Eighth U.S. Colored Troops and a few men from the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops. Thomas’s other regiments—the Thirty-­First and Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops—had been so decimated by their initial assault that they had lost combat effectiveness. Lt. Col. John A. Bross of the Twenty-­Ninth U.S. Colored Troops led Thomas’s attack. Colonel Bross had carved out a distinguished position in Chicago society before the war as a lawyer and federal marshal. His brother served as lieutenant governor of Illinois and played an instrumental role in recruiting Bross’s regiment, made up almost exclusively of African Americans from the Prairie State. Bross had served in the Army of the Cumberland before accepting a position with his new command, where he became a much-­respected leader. Wearing his full dress uniform, Bross sprang over the works holding the regimental banner aloft. “Boys, I want you to follow this flag,” he shouted. “We’ll show the world today that the colored troops are soldiers. Forward, my brave boys.” At that moment, a ball struck the left side of his head, killing him almost instantly.113 Laudatory witnesses commented on the remarkable bravery of Ferrero’s The Union Attacks on July 30

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officers as they did everything possible to rally their men. “Although almost certain death to mount this parapet, they showed no shrinking or hesitation,” remembered a New Englander. But it was of little use. “Never in my experience did I see artillery do such awful execution as was done that morning in the ranks of those black men,” remarked Capt. John McMurray of the Sixth U.S. Colored Troops, who observed the attack from inside Ord’s lines. “It looked as if one side of hell had been opened, and fire and brimstone were belching forth.” The combination of leadership attrition and this virtually insurmountable volume of fire drove the surviving blacks back into the trenches after progressing perhaps 150 yards beyond the captured Confederate works, the farthest advance of any Union units that morning. At least one black soldier ran in the opposite direction, not stopping until he reached Blandford Church. “It would be ungracious to question this colored soldier’s motives, but he certainly was complying with his orders,” quipped a sarcastic Confederate officer. Another Southerner thought that “the characteristic Yankee philanthropy was exhibited in self-­security which induced the vile hypocritical negro worshippers to put the negroes in front to shield their own vile carcasses in their charge on us.”114 The aborted progress of Sigfried and Thomas provided General Turner with the misguided rationale to enter the fray. Turner had explained to Ord that, in his view, “it is murder to send more men” toward the crater, to which Ord replied that if the Colored Troops moved forward, Turner should do so as well. “A very few moments after I thought [they] had started to make a rush towards Cemetery hill, I immediately ordered my leading brigade, which was massed by regiments, to charge to the right of the crater,” explained Turner.115 Colonel Bell, in charge of that unit, dashed across no-­man’s-­land, and despite taking severe fire from McAfee’s North Carolinians and Wright’s Battery, hit the Confederate line to the right of the black brigades, extending Federal control another 100 yards north of the crater. Turner ordered Coan to angle his regiments to Bell’s right. Earlier, General Carr had somehow inserted himself into the picture by sending a portion of Coan’s brigade to fill the gap between Bliss’s two regiments ensconced on opposite sides of the ravine. Turner’s instructions then directed Coan to occupy a small belt of trees a short distance southeast of the ravine. Turner hoped that by doing so he could broaden the Union reach all the way to where Bliss’s men maintained their foothold at that gully. Turner told Curtis to mass his troops in reserve “in readiness for any exigency.”116 Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the line, the last Ninth Corps brigade launched its assault. William Humphrey had positioned his seven regiments

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The Union Attacks on July 30

behind the forward Union lines, with the First Michigan Sharpshooters farthest north and on their left, in order, the Second Michigan, Twentieth Michigan, Forty-­Sixth New York, and Fiftieth Pennsylvania. The Sixtieth Ohio and Twenty-­Fourth New York Cavalry (dismounted) assumed a reserve role behind the New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians. Between 8:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., the three Michigan units pushed off toward the crater and the Confederate line to its south. Canister rounds from Davidson’s Battery cut deadly swaths through the Michiganders, but in short order they reached their objective, scooping up thirty or forty Rebel prisoners. The left of the Twentieth Michigan halted perhaps seventy-­five yards south of the crater.117 Humphrey’s attack made no more southward progress. After clearing the Federal trenches, the Forty-­Sixth New York hesitated, losing contact with the Michiganders to their right. Absorbing fire from their left flank, the predominantly German regiment collapsed, taking the Fiftieth Pennsylvania with it and preventing Humphrey’s two reserve regiments from moving forward. “Had it not been for the causeless breaking of the Forty-­sixth New York there is no doubt but the whole line would have been carried and the troops occupying it captured,” lamented an overly optimistic Colonel Humphrey. Willcox termed the retreat “disgraceful,” and Lieutenant Colonel Cutcheon, who had temporarily commanded the brigade earlier in the campaign, recalled that “I never knew them to behave decently. . . . Most of the men could speak but little English and they had been drilled in their native tongue.”118 By 9:00 a.m. the Union assaults at the crater had ended. The Federals controlled nearly 500 yards of the Confederate line, extending from the ravine north of the pit southward to the left flank of the Twentieth Michigan. Some Federals, notably the African American troops, had temporarily advanced toward Jerusalem Plank Road and Cemetery Hill, but Confederate firepower had essentially confined the conquered real estate to the captured trenches. Estimates are that some 10,000 men in blue occupied the ground with as many as 8,000 more in immediate supporting distance.119 Warren’s Fifth Corps provided the most important of those potential reinforcements. From 5:30  a.m. until the conclusion of Humphrey’s advance, Warren maintained a steady communication with army headquarters regarding the employment of his corps. Warren frittered away much of that time probing the possibility of attacking the far Confederate right near the Petersburg leadworks. When he finally concluded that such an assault would be impractical, he recommended targeting the artillery positions on Burnside’s left. Permission for that attack arrived at 8:45 a.m. Circumstances, however, would alter

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the tactical situation before Warren went into action. Thus Meade and Warren squandered four hours during which a coordinated assault on Burnside’s left might well have achieved the breakthrough denied the Ninth Corps alone.120 Similarly, on Burnside’s right, General Hancock received instructions to look for an opportunity to assault in his sector. Hancock unleashed Mott’s division to test enemy resistance, which he found to be undiminished, leading Hancock to conclude that Burnside’s efforts had not drawn Confederate troops from his front. Thus the Second Corps contributed nothing to ending the stalemate at the crater. Meade predicated the participation of Warren and Hancock on Burnside’s success, whereas, conversely, Burnside’s success was probably dependent on the participation of the troops on his flanks.121 General Grant reappeared near the front before 8:00 a.m. to examine matters for himself. Assessing the situation as hopeless, the general-­in-­chief encountered Ord somewhere between the Fourteen-­gun Battery and the covered ways leading to the salient. He instructed Ord to tell Burnside to forego any more offensive action in favor of simply entrenching the ground already captured. Grant wired Henry Halleck at 10:​​00 a.m. that the offensive had failed. He then left the field for his headquarters at City Point, content in the belief that the decisive fighting on July 30 had run its course. William Mahone, however, cherished a different opinion.122

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twelve

A Perfect Hell of Blood

The Confederates Regain the Crater Ulysses, the mole, Dug a great hole, And blew up our fortification, But the digger of dirt Got himself hurt, And met with a mortification1 While William Mahone led his Virginia and Georgia brigades northeastward, the remainder of his troops expanded to cover the division’s weakened right flank. Nathaniel Harris’s Mississippians, now occupying the right of the thin Confederate line south of Petersburg, merely “stretched out in one rank to fill up the space vacated by Mahone,” recorded Sgt. James Johnson Kirkpatrick of the Sixteenth Mississippi. Kirkpatrick and his comrades would endure mortar firing throughout the day, but face no significant challenges, one of several Federal tactical blunders this day.2 Meanwhile, Mahone and his guide arrived at the place along Jerusalem Plank Road where a covered way sliced eastward toward the fractured Confederate works. The head of Colonel Weisiger’s brigade arrived shortly after its division commander. Mahone dismounted and, accompanied by General Johnson’s staff officer, proceeded down the covered way to a seamless connection with a natural ravine leading to the former Confederate front that now teemed with blue uniforms. The staff officer informed Mahone that by walking a short 467

distance up the slope the general would be able to see the situation for himself. When Mahone crested the rise, he “could scarcely take in the reality, and the very danger to which I was at the time exposed.” He viewed the “portion of the salient which had been blown up, and of that part of the works to the north of the salient, and saw that they were crammed with Federal soldiers,” who, according to one account, appeared “huddled together like benumbed wasps, on a frosty day in autumn.”3 Mahone counted eleven Union battle flags in a cluster of less than 100 yards, demonstrating that the enemy, though perhaps disordered, was present in large force. “I sent back to my own front for the Alabama brigade of my division, although I had been directed to send but two brigades to this field,” explained the general, “for it was plain to be seen that in the event of any reverse to the two brigades of my division, the head of whose column had now appeared within one hundred fifty yards of the enemy’s position . . . the most vital consequences to, if not the very safety of our army would be involved.” A member of Mahone’s staff, Capt. Robert R. Henry, dashed back down the covered way with Mahone’s orders, passing Weisiger’s Virginians, who just then began to arrive at the point where the covered way connected with the natural ravine.4 “The appearance of this infantry was balm and solace to the artillery blazing away upon the crest just above them,” wrote one Confederate. The soldiers passed quickly, though often in single file, some acknowledging the sweating cannoneers whose joy at their arrival was palpable. “To our immense relief we found it was Mahone’s Division, and that he was with them,” remembered Major Haskell. “There was no better division and no better commander. Everything changed at once.” Still, the Virginians well understood that their footsteps brought them closer to a serious, if yet undefined situation. “We knew that a desperate and terrible struggle was in store for us,” confirmed Lt. John T. West of the Sixty-­First Virginia.5 The picture grew clearer as Weisiger’s troops, followed by Matthew Hall’s Georgians, came within view of the captured works, although while en route the occasional fugitive from the front had filled them with dread. “It’s the worst place you ever saw. You’ll never be able to take it,” intoned one demoralized Confederate survivor to Cpl. John O. Hillsman of the Sixty-­Fourth Georgia. “The groans and cries of agony of these poor fellows we were obliged to pass, was enough to sicken the hearts of the bravest among us,” thought Hillsman. Nothing, however, prepared them more viscerally for the impending struggle than the knowledge that U.S. Colored Troops awaited them. “Ah boys, you have hot work ahead,” warned some South Carolinian as the Virginians marched passed him toward the front. “They are ‘niggers’ and show no quarter.”6 468

The Confederates Regain the Crater

“When we first set out on our expedition we did not know that we should be called about to ‘lock horns’ with negro troops, and that they had charged our works with the exultant cry ‘No Quarter!’” recalled the Sixteenth Virginia’s Private Cross. “The information gained, a stranger would . . . have noticed a quickening of the step and each eye burned with a brighter glow and each gun received a more than casual examination to see that it was properly loaded and ready for action.” Cross and his comrades had never faced black soldiers in battle and “did not know whether we should be met by a sort of savage ferocity or . . . that cool imperturbable bravery which characterizes men fighting for freedom.” Lt. Col. William H. Stewart, commanding the Sixty-­First Virginia, recalled that this was the first intimation that they would be confronting U.S. Colored Troops “and it seemed to infuse our little band with impetuous daring as it pressed forward to the fray.” Stewart recalled that “I never felt more like fighting in my life. Our comrades had been slaughtered in a most inhuman and brutal manner, and black slaves were trampling over their mangled and bleeding forms. Revenge must have fired every heart and strung every arm with nerves of steel for the herculean task of blood.”7 At some point, Colonel McMaster called Mahone’s attention to a draw that intersected the ravine being used by Mahone’s troops to approach the front. This depression, then inhabited by some of the explosion’s survivors, ran almost due south, parallel to the captured Confederate lines at a distance of roughly 200 yards, growing increasingly shallow along its course. Still, it provided sufficient length and depth to shelter most of the two arriving brigades in addition to its current occupants. Mahone directed his assistant adjutant general, Capt. Victor Girardey, to steer the Virginians and Georgians into this little hollow as they arrived.8 Mahone commanded the respect of his division, and the personal attention he showed his officers and men as they appeared on the field demonstrated why he had earned their esteem. Colonel Weisiger marched at the head of his brigade and saw Mahone and another officer bending over a diagram depicting the tactical situation. “Mahone looked up & asked me if I understood,” remembered Weisiger. “I told him I did [;] he then ordered me to move my brigade out of the covered way into the open field in front of our lines . . . and inform him when I was ready to move.” Mahone instructed each regimental commander where to position his unit and cautioned them to rely on the bayonet. As the rank and file moved up and turned right to enter the shallow ravine, Mahone spoke to them, greeting the soldiers, thought one Virginian, “as if he were inviting us to breakfast.” “Men our lines have been broken, we must retake them,” he told members of the Twelfth Virginia. “If you don’t do it the first trial, you The Confederates Regain the Crater

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will go in again. You shall retake them.” The general advised the Sixty-­First Virginia to “remember your homes, remember old Norfolk. You have got to fight negroes. Die before you give an inch.” Mahone then played his motivational trump card by informing the men that both Generals Lee and Beauregard were only a few yards away in the Gee house and would observe their every move. “There was not a man in the brigade knowing that Gen. Mahone was present personally superintending and directing the movement that did not feel that we were to be properly and skillfully handled, and would be put in just when and where the most effective service could be rendered,” thought Pvt. George Bernard.9 Weisiger’s soldiers, perhaps 800 effectives, filed down the shallow ravine with the brigade sharpshooters on the far right followed by the portion of the Sixth Virginia that had made the march, the Sixteenth Virginia, Sixty-­First Virginia, Forty-­First Virginia, and the Twelfth Virginia on the brigade’s left. The right of the line did not extend as far south as the crater itself. Hall’s men, just then arriving, would extend southward to rectify this flaw. Once in position, the Virginians advanced about twenty yards to the crest of the ditch and lay down, faces on the warm ground, joined at that juncture on the left of the line by the Sixty-­First North Carolina of Hoke’s Division. Major Haskell already had three light mortars in the ravine that could play on the crater at short range. The clocks in Petersburg read nine o’clock.10 The men waiting for the inevitable word to advance could clearly see the situation before them. “To my right front was the Crater, crowded on the inside and outside by the enemy,” testified Lieutenant West. “More directly in our front, works were everywhere crowded with the blue coats, and I counted eleven battle flags in the space, indicating an opposing force many times the 800 Virginians, now about to make one of the most terrible and gallant assaults recorded in the history of war. I concluded (and probably every man in the Brigade did also) that this would be my last day on earth, and therefore in a short prayer commended myself to God and resolved to die as a man and a soldier.” West was not alone in seeking spiritual comfort. Sgt. David Meade Bernard of the Twelfth Virginia counted twenty-­one Union banners and, like the lieutenant, “got back into my position in line feeling that my earthly career was approaching its close.” He offered “the most earnest and fervent prayer” he ever uttered “to spare my life, or, if not, to save my soul.” Pvt. John Edgar Foreman of the Sixty-­First Virginia fell on his knees “and prayed the best I knew how. I was scared,” he admitted, “because I thought we all would be killed.” Sgt. James Whitehorne tallied fourteen Federal flags and less piously concluded simply that “we had indeed serious work.”11 470

The Confederates Regain the Crater

Once the Virginians had assumed their positions for the assault, Mahone summoned Weisiger and his regimental commanders to the far left of the brigade. There, he delivered tactical instructions for the attack with, as Capt. Richard W. Jones commanding the Twelfth Virginia remembered, “such peculiar emphasis and under such impressive circumstances that the sentiments were indelibly inscribed on my mind.” Jones and his fellow regimental leaders then returned to their units and conveyed their own heartfelt orders. Jones called on his troops to fix bayonets and ensure that their rifles were in order. Informing his charges, many of them residents of Petersburg, that their brigade was all that stood between the Cockade City and the enemy, he assured them that if they attacked with “vigor and spirit” the Yankees could only squeeze off one volley before they reached the enemy line. “I reminded them that we were literally fighting for our homes, and that every man was expected to do his whole duty.” Mahone himself prowled up and down the line, “commanding the men to reserve their fire until they reached the brink of the ditch, and after delivering one volley to use the bayonet.” Lt. Drury A. Hinton, an aide on Weisiger’s staff, repeated these directives, while ranging from one end of the brigade to the other, telling the troops to “reserve their fire until they could see the whites of the enemy’s eyes.”12 Now, the head of Hall’s brigade began to appear, moving behind the Virginians to take position to their right. Led by the Forty-­Eighth Georgia and 125 men in four companies of the Third Georgia, Hall’s men listened as Mahone gave instructions for their deployment. Fragments of the Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina, Seventeenth South Carolina, Forty-­Ninth North Carolina, and Twenty-­Fifth North Carolina remained in position to the left of the Virginians in the deepest part of the ravine. Thus, in addition to the Virginians and Georgians from his own division, Mahone could count on support from portions of five other regiments, perhaps 1,600 infantry all told, about twice the number usually credited to the impending assault. Still, whatever strength Mahone brought to the equation at this hour paled by comparison to the serried Federal brigades confronting him.13 Controversy swirls around the orders authorizing the assault, a dispute that may never be resolved. Colonel Weisiger, who stood at the far right of his brigade formation in the little ravine, contended in an 1872 letter to Mahone that he had received word from his commander to “Wait for orders from me (yourself) or Capt. Girardey which reply had been scarcely delivered to me when Capt. Girardey, who was then acting on your staff, came up to the right of my line.” Weisiger had seen evidence of the Federals’ intent to launch an attack and told Girardey that the Confederates should advance at once or “all The Confederates Regain the Crater

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would be lost.” Girardey protested that his orders from Mahone were to defer an assault until all of Hall’s brigade had taken position, but seeing the imminent danger posed by the impending Union attack “assented to my views. I therefore requested him to state my reasons to you for so doing, and immediately charged with my brigade.”14 John Sargent Wise, who heard stories of the crater secondhand from his father, General Wise, and other veterans, confirmed Weisiger’s version of events. “Weisiger . . . a grim, determined man . . . saw . . . a vast throng of Union troops [and] determined to anticipate the threatened movement by charging. Cautioning his men to reserve their fire, he ordered them forward.” Weisiger would consistently adhere to his story well after the war. “I have never claimed to be the hero of that occasion,” he wrote in 1880 in response to published reports denying his responsibility for ordering the counterattack, “but do claim that I gave the order to ‘forward’ at the opportune moment, when it was observed that the enemy was preparing for a charge.”15 Lieutenant Hinton, a principal player in the event, recalled delivering Weisiger’s message to Mahone and then returning to the brigade’s right to join his boss, repeating Mahone’s instructions to “wait for an order from me or Capt. Girardey” before attacking. In short order, Girardey appeared and just then “a magnificent looking Federal officer stepped out from our works, and as we could perceive by his gesticulations, was calling upon his men . . . to . . . charge.” Hinton remembers Weisiger suggesting to Girardey that the time had come to charge and Girardey objecting, reminding the colonel that Mahone wished to position all of Hall’s brigade prior to launching an assault. “A few moments later, however, Capt. Girardey authorized him to charge” and Weisiger gave the order to attack. Hinton’s and Weisiger’s accounts agree except that in Hinton’s version, Girardey, acting on Mahone’s authority and Weisiger’s advice, specifically granted Weisiger permission to advance.16 General Mahone told a completely different tale. He also placed himself at the far left end of the brigade formation, busy directing the arriving Georgians into position, when Girardey, about midway along the line, “sang out, ‘General, they are coming!’ whereupon . . . I saw the Federals jumping out of the Confederate breast-­works and coming forward in a desultory line.” Mahone claimed that he promptly shouted to Girardey “in a tone of voice so raised that the whole of the Virginia brigade might hear me . . . Tell Weisiger to forward.” Girardey seized the moment and with uplifted sword, moved to the front of the formation and led the brigade on the charge, relying on his actions to apprise Weisiger of the order.17 The commander of Mahone’s Forty-­First Virginia, Maj. William H. EtherThe Confederates Regain the Crater

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edge, agreed that “the order [to attack] came from General Mahone.” Major Haskell, whose mortars had been playing on the Yankees from the shallow ravine, testified that “Mahone told me that he thought the enemy were in a proper state of demoralization, and he ordered the charge, directing me to stop firing.” Most common soldier accounts either remember hearing the order to advance without specifying who directed them to do so or, receiving no command at all, simply advanced with the crowd, a vagueness quite understandable from the perspective of the rank and file. Cpl. John E. Crow of the Twelfth Virginia perhaps came as close to the truth as any Johnny Reb when he speculated that although he believed Girardey offered the initial attack order, “there was a spontaneous impulse felt by every man and officer alike, and that the command was given by several at the same moment; for, under the inspiration of this impulse, the entire line rose as one man.” Such an explanation renders moot a debate that reached bitter proportions after the war, and suggests that Weisiger, Mahone, and perhaps Girardey reached the decision to attack independently and virtually simultaneously.18 Victor Girardey, a native of France, immigrated to Georgia, attended school in New Orleans, and in 1861 at age twenty-­four volunteered for Confederate service in a Louisiana unit. Of fair complexion with light brown hair and of medium height, Girardey spoke with a pronounced “provincialism found among the Creole population of New Orleans and his manners were strongly impressed by the French blood that coursed through his veins,” according to an acquaintance. Most of his wartime experience came as a staff officer in Wright’s Georgia Brigade, where he earned numerous commendations for bravery and efficiency. This handsome, strongly built young captain had served on Mahone’s staff since early May, first as an aide-­de-­camp and, since June 22, as chief of staff. Girardey’s testimony would have been decisive in this debate but, sadly, there is none: he would be killed on the battlefield within weeks. His whereabouts at the time of the attack are the critical factor that differentiates the competing versions of events in a polemic that endured until the deaths of the disputants.19 Irrespective of who ordered the attack, it is clear that Lieutenant Colonel Bross’s appearance at the head of a relatively small, but clearly discernible aggregation of black troops triggered the Confederate assault. “The enemy made a movement as if to charge us,” recalled Lieutenant Colonel Stewart, “and then our line swept forward in most marvelous alignment.” Pvt. Richard B. Davis of the Twelfth Virginia served with the brigade sharpshooters that morning and occupied a position on Weisiger’s far right: “Suddenly we heard to our front and left a shout as if the Federals were about to charge, and looking in that direction we saw, or thought we saw, the enemy charging down on our lines. The men 474

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sprang to their feet and cried ‘Charge boys!’ and away we went.” Major Etheredge remembered hearing an order for the blacks to fix bayonets and prepare to charge, while a South Carolinian “heard a shout, as if the enemy was about to charge us.” Instincts triggered by these visual and audible cues, combined with explicit orders from Girardey, Weisiger, and Mahone, launched the Confederates forward.20 The first Confederate counterattack, involving all or parts of a dozen regiments, plus Weisiger’s sharpshooters, faced an advance of between 200 and 300 yards coursing slightly uphill across a shelterless field. The captured works controlled by large numbers of ostensibly threatening Federals could be clearly seen. The flanks of Weisiger’s brigades were slightly advanced, lending the Virginians’ line a somewhat concave shape. The Sixty-­First North Carolina, along with survivors from the Seventeenth South Carolina, Twenty-­Sixth South Carolina, and Forty-­Ninth North Carolina, formed the far left of the Confederate formation. The Twenty-­Fifth North Carolina faced more south than east, providing flank protection from the crest of an extension of the east-­west ravine down which the Virginians had marched. The Forty-­Eighth Georgia and the fraction of the Third Georgia aligned on Weisiger’s right and rear. Weisiger’s rightmost regiments started a bit ahead of their comrades, but in short order the entire line advanced with the rebel yell piercing the morning air. “I never saw such a grand sight in all my life,” marveled an officer in the Twelfth Virginia.21 Beauregard would later testify that both he and Lee regretted that Mahone had not waited until more of his division had arrived, but only in hindsight could anyone be sure that the Federals were not poised to launch a determined renewal of their stalled offensive. Moreover, the Confederates possessed motivation to assault beyond the sterile calculus of battlefield tactics. “The Petersburg boys knew that they were the only line between their homes and the thousands of drunken negroes making that cry and they must be stopped or life would not be worth living,” explained one local Rebel. The presence of black opponents differentiated this attack from all others previously launched by any element of the Army of Northern Virginia. “The sight of the Negro troops inflamed them,” according to Porter Alexander, “& without waiting for the Georgians who were coming up, the whole line charged.” Facing black soldiers for the first time “excited in the troops indignant malice as had characterized no former conflict,” creating in the men “a hot rage.” An officer in the Forty-­First Virginia was “infuriated at the idea of fighting negroes,” and Colonel McMaster described the soldiers’ “exasperation against a government which sent slaves to destroy them,” leading to “fiery indignation on the sight of the negroes.” Under The Confederates Regain the Crater

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such circumstances, it is little wonder that Mahone authorized an assault at less than full strength.22 All the witnesses agree that the graycoats advanced at trail arms and with fixed bayonets, screaming an awe-­inspiring battle cry audible even over the roar of artillery and rifles. Most Confederate accounts boast romantically of a rapid advance in near or absolutely perfect alignment, rendering “a spectacle of unsurpassed grandeur.” Colonel McMaster demurred, admitting that the assault “had not the precision of a West Point drill, but it exhibited the pluck of the Grecians at Thermopylae,” a more plausible description, the classical analogy notwithstanding. Some Federals remembered the advance as being “leisurely” and at “an easy pace,” inducing the impression of a mass desertion rather than a desperate attack. The line stretched about 150 yards as it started forward, but before long it had expanded by perhaps 200 feet. The troops on the right had a longer run than those on Mahone’s left, so when the Confederates reached the captured works north of the crater, they did so in staggered sequence.23 The attackers withheld their fire as they crossed the open ground, but their artillery continued to thunder at the huddled Federals in the captured works. Captain Wright’s Battery on the high ground northwest of the crater played havoc on the Yankees. “I was astonished at the splendid handling of a piece of artillery to our left and rear,” wrote Sergeant Whitehorne. “It was throwing grape and canister, and every shot seemed to strike the works occupied by the enemy.” Captain McMurray of the Sixth U.S. Colored Troops agreed: “Never in all my experience did I see artillery do such awful execution as was done that morning . . . by a Confederate battery that stood in an apple orchard.” Haskell’s mortars added to the chaos as the butternut infantry closed on their enemies. Mahone had instructed Haskell to lob shells over the heads of the attackers during the assault. Haskell would then advance his mortars closer to the crater and rain unrelenting terror upon its defenders.24 Confederate ordnance may have diminished Union resistance to Mahone’s advance, but did not entirely suppress it. It is not possible to quantify the volume of Federal fire emanating from the captured works, although one Ohioan estimated that about 600 bluecoats shot obliquely at the Virginians and Georgians as they raced toward their goal. Confederate accounts vary widely in describing the intensity of the fusillade they endured. Pvt. William Pate of the Sixty-­First Virginia remembered that the Yankees fired one volley “but the bullets went over our heads.” Colonel McMaster characterized the Union fire as “moderate” and George Bernard recorded in his diary that his Twelfth Virginia received “but little fire from the enemy.”25 Other Confederates, after a passage of years during which their perfor476

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mance at the battle had assumed legendary proportions, recalled a much more gruesome experience. “They poured into our advancing column a destructive fire from the front and a fire from each flank, so that our men fell with such rapidity that to those of us whose hearts were in the struggle and whose sympathies were with these brave fellows, the scene lost some of its grandeur in the pathetic sense of our terrible losses,” wrote Captain Jones. Major Etheredge, another regimental commander, estimated that half the brigade became casualties during the passage toward the captured works. Pvt. Henry Chase of the Twelfth Virginia recalled receiving “a withering fire” that left a line of bodies resembling “a windrow in a wheat field,” while Private Day of the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina witnessed “a trail of dead and wounded” in the wake of the assault. Several Union sources refer to the destructive fire from well-­positioned cannon, but few claim that it staggered the first Confederate counterattack. To be sure, Weisiger’s men suffered horrific casualties on July 30, but how many of them occurred during the charge rather than during the vicious combat that followed is impossible to determine.26 Virtually all the attackers adhered to their general’s instructions to refrain from shooting until they reached the enemy. “Mahone’s men, like Putnam’s at Bunker Hill, reserved their fire until they saw the whites of their adversary’s eyes—not a difficult matter since many of the combatants were contraband of a sooty hue,” snarled a Richmond newspaper. A reserve position, the “cavalier trench,” provided the initial target for many of the Confederates. This secondary line extended parallel to and twenty-­five yards west of the destroyed main line of Confederate works. Here, in the ditches and along the parapet north of the crater waited the Federals, the U.S. Colored Troops mostly in front supported by the hodgepodge of white soldiers who had managed to avoid descending to the depths of the hole. As soon as the Southerners reached this position, they unleashed a massive volley that, according to an officer in the Sixty-­First Virginia, crashed “into a mass of humanity, for the ditches and parapets were so crowded with men that they were in each other’s way.” Pvt. Amnon Peek of the Sixty-­First Virginia remembered that “it was not necessary to take any aim, because they were so crowded that we could not miss.” His kinsman, Sgt. Calvin Peek, believed that every Confederate’s shot hit its target and killed a man. Some Virginians, in mock imitation of the African Americans’ war cry, shouted “Remember Beast Butler.”27 Now with empty muskets, the Confederates leapt onto the works and into the ditches to commence some of the most dreadful close-­quarters combat of the entire war. Although their Federal opponents were of both races, the overwhelming Confederate testimony concentrated on encounters with the blacks, The Confederates Regain the Crater

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who likely constituted the majority of the Union troops along the front line and the cavalier trench. The outrage harbored by these Southerners over what, to them, amounted to a slave rebellion, found expression in brutality that often exceeded the boundaries of conventional warfare. “For many minutes, which seemed like hours,” recalled a Virginian, “amid the roar of artillery and musketry, the groans of the wounded, the prayers of the dying, and the imprecations of the living, men pierced each other’s hearts and crushed each other’s skulls until the place seemed a veritable hell.”28 Much of the fighting involved the bayonet, a weapon more often employed passively in camp than with deadly intent on the battlefield. “During the preceding years of that bloody war, it was the first time I had ever seen or ordered the bayonet to be used,” averred Col. George Rogers well after the war. “To think of it makes me recoil even now.” An officer in the Twelfth Virginia saw soldiers “slam their bayonets in the enemy and fire their guns off into them.” Another Virginian thought that the scene in the ditches “beggars description; our men would drive the bayonet into one man, pull it out, turn the butt and knock the brains out of another, and so on until the ditch ran with the blood of the dead and dying.” Private Pate alone killed three black soldiers with his bayonet.29 Many Confederates transformed their rifles into clubs with which they mercilessly pummeled their opponents. Colonel Stewart remembered the “butt thud” that brought countless Yankees to their knees. Private Day recalled that “negro skulls cracked under the blows like eggshells” and Pvt. Virgil H. Dunford of the Forty-­First Virginia simply boasted that “I got along better with the butt than with the bayonet.”30 There is abundant evidence that many Confederates reloaded their weapons and dispatched Federals with multiple shots, despite traditional emphasis on the hand-­to-­hand nature of the combat during Mahone’s initial attack. Pvt. Julius Tyler of the Sixteenth Virginia ascended the west bank of the captured trenches and fired musket after musket as comrades below handed them up, a tactic that Amnon Peek also employed. Pvt. Edmund Curling of the Sixty-­First Virginia discharged his rifle in the initial volley, jumped into the ditch, and “as soon as I could load fired at another, whom I also killed.” Private Foreman worked with two other soldiers who loaded rifle after rifle, while Foreman “fired through a porthole as fast as they could load for me. I am certain I killed eight or ten in this manner.” Pvt. J. Thomas Dunn of the Forty-­First Virginia started the attack with forty rounds in his cartridge box and had only four remaining when the combat concluded.31 Resistance to Mahone’s assault, at least initially, proved formidable. Capt. Theodore Gregg of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania described a “desperate hand-­ 478

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to-­hand conflict” during which a Confederate officer grabbed him around the throat and, aiming his pistol at Gregg’s temple, ordered the captain to surrender. “I succeeded in taking his revolver from him, and after a sharp struggle left him dead on the spot,” wrote Gregg. Lt. George C. Barton of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts boasted that his regiment “fought like tigers.” Capt. William Harris of Burnside’s staff admitted that the rebels “fought like devils and in many places it became hand to hand—bayonets, sticks, fists & everything of the weapon kind were brought into requisition but they were repulsed.” Sgt. James A. Coats of the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops shot a Confederate color-­bearer, while men of the Eleventh New Hampshire regained most of their regimental banner seized earlier by a group of Confederates. Capt. William H. Seagrave of the Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops, despite suffering a bullet wound to the leg, dispatched half a dozen Rebels with his pistol and officer’s sword, while being shot again and stabbed seven times with bayonets.32 Ferrero’s two brigades, having advanced farther than the white regiments, naturally provided most of the initial opposition for Mahone. The resulting combat left a gruesome legacy of atrocities rarely equaled during the Civil War. Colonel McMaster would boast in later years, “We slaughtered hundreds of whites and blacks with decided preference to the Ethiopians.” Colonel Weld of the Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts heard one Confederate shout, “shoot the nigger, but don’t kill the white man,” as a black soldier was summarily dispatched beside him. While many of the African Americans fought valiantly, others, overwhelmed with fear in their first battle, surrendered with sometimes tragic results. George Bernard encountered one cowering black, who immediately began begging for his life. “Master, don’t kill me!” the man repeated, pledging that if Bernard spared his life, “I’ll be your slave as long as I live.” Bernard told the poor fellow that he deserved to die, but declined to murder him, at which the relieved captive began fanning a wounded Southern soldier as if to demonstrate his transformative fealty. Other Confederates were not so kind. “My heart sickened at the deeds I saw done,” Bernard shuddered. “Casting my eyes up the line towards the Crater I saw Confederates beating and shooting at the negro soldiers, as the latter, terror-­stricken, rushed away from them.”33 One episode stood out among all the others. A black noncommissioned officer had been captured and was pleading for mercy as one Confederate struck him with a ramrod while another fired his rifle at the captive. The bullet only wounded the man, who clutched at his hip and continued to implore his captors to spare him. While the first Rebel continued whipping, the other calmly reloaded, placed the muzzle of his rifle into the prisoner’s stomach, and pulled the trigger. “It was a brutal, horrible act,” thought Bernard. Although The Confederates Regain the Crater

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some Confederates exhibited commendable restraint, most confessed no regrets as they coldly murdered black soldiers. “How the negroes’ skulls cracked under the blows,” exulted a North Carolinian, who reveled at the ground being “covered with broken-­headed negroes.” A Georgian who participated in the initial assault explained in a letter home that because these were the first African American troops they had ever confronted “you may rest assured ‘no quarter’ was shown. An indiscriminate butchery commenced, and hardly a negro remained to tell the story. ’Twas awful to think of, but I suppose ’twas perfectly right. Not a single negro ought to have been captured.” Equally chilling was the report by one Federal that white Union soldiers bayoneted retreating blacks in order to gain favor with Confederates who were about to capture them.34 The landscape north of the crater had turned into a charnel house. Colonel Rogers testified that “the trenches were filled with the dead—in many places they lay heaped, and there was literally no place on the ground for the feet.” Major Etheredge and Colonel Stewart detailed a dozen men to move the corpses to the side of the ditch to allow troops to maneuver. “The blood was running nearly shoe sole deep in the trenches,” explained Etheredge. Stewart agreed: “Men fell dead in heaps, and human gore ran in streams that made the very earth mire beneath the tread of victorious soldiers.” Pvt. John C. Miller of the Sixty-­First Virginia recalled that bodies lay in the trenches “as thick as railroad ties,” and after they were thrown out “their blood made red mud in the bottom of the ditch, and the stench was almost unbearable.” One Virginian summarized the scene in almost poetic prose: “The blood of whites and blacks, of friend and foe, combined to form rivulets which should bear down to future generations the testimony that men can forget mercy and that human wrath is stronger than human love.”35 As this soldier suggested, the blood spilled during Mahone’s initial attack had not been confined to those wearing blue. The Confederates suffered losses as well, both during the race across the field and in the close-­quarters combat that followed. Two of those casualties were singularly noteworthy. Capt. Wallace Broadbent of the Sixteenth Virginia commanded the brigade sharpshooters during Mahone’s attack. Broadbent was a popular leader, “gentle and noble but like a lion when roused.” Athletic and skilled as a swordsman, Broadbent led a contingent into the works, determined to rescue Colonel Rogers, who had fallen into enemy hands. The captain plunged into the fray (or was dragged into the works by the Federals) not to be found until the following day, when Confederates recovered his body, “hacked in a horrible manner” and perforated with fifteen bayonet wounds.36

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David Weisiger proved to be the assault’s most prominent Confederate casualty. Eyewitnesses time his wounding variously, ranging from shortly after the assault commenced to when the Confederates recaptured a portion of the works, or even subsequent to the appearance of a second wave of attackers. Weisiger told one postwar correspondent that “shortly after we had possession of our works I received a serious wound across my stomach which caused me to retire,” but he wrote another that “a short time after leaving the works I was wounded.” In any event, Weisiger turned command over to Colonel Rogers and left the field with assistance, accompanied by staff aide Hinton. Weisiger judged, incorrectly as it turned out, that his wound would prove mortal, and this led to an impolitic exchange with Mahone, who was still busy in the covered way directing the arriving Georgians. Mahone, in apparent jocular acknowledgment of Weisiger’s sacrifice, told the colonel, “Weisiger, you and Joe Johnston are always getting yourselves shot,” clearly a complimentary reference to one of the Confederacy’s best-­known commanders. Weisiger misunderstood the benign intent of his superior’s remark and replied, “Yes, General Mahone, and if you would go where General Johnston and I go, you would get shot, too.” Weisiger would later declare that Mahone never ventured forward from the protection of the covered way, an obvious falsehood and indicative of the rancor that developed between the two men after the war.37 Lieutenant Hinton stated that, en route to the rear, he and Weisiger encountered General Beauregard and his aide Colonel Paul. Paul approached Weisiger, remarking, “Colonel, you all have covered yourselves with glory,” while Beauregard gave the wounded Weisiger a “profound bow.” Shortly thereafter, General Pendleton appeared and offered his courier’s horse to Weisiger, who mounted and continued into Petersburg for treatment. When General Lee learned of the success of this first assault, the commander replied, “That must have been Mahone’s old brigade,” and when someone confirmed that fact, Lee murmured, “I thought so.”38 Shortly after his exchange with Weisiger, Billy Mahone left the shelter of the covered way and advanced to the front, encouraging the troops and helping Rogers sort out the organizational chaos that inevitably followed such an assault. Mahone managed to gain some appreciation for conditions along the line, which from the Federal perspective, had become disastrous.39 By all accounts, many of the African Americans retreated shamelessly at the near approach of Mahone’s veterans. “A panic seized the colored troops, and they went pouring through and over our men,” reported General Simon Griffin. E. P. Alexander thought that the black soldiers “recognized the coming

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of the Day of Wrath, & turned and fled.” A Michigan quartermaster believed that “abject terror had infused itself into every one of them,” and an observer reported to General Butler simply that “the black troops are not doing well.”40 Explanations varied for why the African Americans succumbed to such fear. Capt. Henry F. Young of the Fifth Corps’ Seventh Wisconsin believed that the Confederates shot the white officers of black regiments, knowing the U.S. Colored Troops would collapse without their leadership. “We can’t blame the Negroes,” counseled Young, because “the Rebs have learned that all that is necessary to defeat coloured troops is to Shoot down their officers.” Col. William S. Tilton, commanding a Fifth Corps brigade, believed that many of Ferrero’s officers simply ran away, leaving the blacks without direction. Moreover, “it seems the niggers had no caps on their guns” and believed that when Weisiger’s men approached at trail arms they intended to surrender. “What folly and imbecility,” scoffed Tilton. A clerk from the Fifth Corps offered the most cynical explanation: “There is no use talking about them, they will not stand the fire.”41 Yet many of Burnside’s white troops joined in the rapid withdrawal. “The black and white troops came pouring back together,” testified Colonel Thomas, a scene corroborated by Union surgeon Chubb, who at that time shared his bombproof aide station with General Ferrero. A soldier in Colonel Curtis’s brigade saw men “trampled down like grass” by terrified troops, who “ran like cows and but for the bravery of the few . . . would have been slaughtered like sheep.” “Looking in front, only for a moment,” wrote Lt. William Fielding Baugh of the Sixty-­First Virginia, “I saw more Yankee soldiers than I had ever seen before— as far as the eyes could reach . . . one fleeing & retreating mass which I will remember caused a sense of pleasure to observe the direction.”42 This wave of receding humanity swept up large numbers from Potter’s regiments and virtually destroyed whatever integrity General Turner’s division had established north of the crater. Joseph Carr estimated that 2,000 troops joined in the retreat. The general remembered being “lifted from my feet by the rushing mass and carried along with it ten or fifteen yards in the covered way.” The frightened horde swamped Bell’s, Coan’s, and Curtis’s brigades, despite their commanders’ best efforts to arrest the panic. “My heart sunk within me as I saw the utter recklessness of men and officers in that stampede,” wrote Pvt. Orrin Sweet Allen of the 112th New York. A regimental comrade confirmed that their brigade had just taken its position when the onrushing mob appeared. The officers did what they could to stem the tide, but their efforts were in vain. “One man told me that a huge nigger came tumbling over him and almost broke his back!” recounted one stunned soldier. Fixed bayonets managed to decelerate some of the distraught soldiers, several of whom fell wounded in the process, 482

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and at least one regiment received orders to fire at the fleeing men, while other whites killed their terrified black comrades on their own initiative. “Our loss was heavy but a large portion of it was caused by the white troops firing into the retreating niggers,” wrote Capt. Edward L. Cook of the 100th New York. “We used our sabres freely on the cowards but could not stop them,” lamented Colonel Bell.43 The departure of Turner’s troops gave Colonel McAfee’s North Carolinians a clear shot at the Federals still in place north of the crater. The retreating Yankees also endured punishment from artillery and small arms south of the crater. “Upon this fleeing mass, in full view from our works on the right of the Baxter road, the left regiments of Wise’s brigade poured a raking fire at the distance of 150 to 500 yards, while the left gun of Davidson’s battery . . . discharged upon them several rounds of canister,” according to General Johnson. The space between the battle lines became carpeted with dead and wounded bluecoats as, wrote Colonel Rogers, “the artillery played heavily on those seeking safety in flight. . . . The deadly work was fearful to look upon.” Many Union soldiers who had occupied the trenches south of the crater now abandoned their positions as well.44 Large numbers of Ferrero’s men who had not hastened to the rear jumped instead into the trenches still occupied by the white troops, or into the crater itself, creating a new kind of mayhem. General Griffin wrote that “the colored troops . . . went . . . plunging into the pits with fixed bayonets in frightful confusion,” inflicting unintentional injuries on fellow Federals and adding to the crowded, unmanageable conditions in the occupied works. Here, too, exasperated and equally frightened whites attempted to rally the blacks by shooting at them. “Give the black devils a dose, and then take the bayonet to the rebels,” screamed Pvt. James Barnes of the Ninth New Hampshire, who himself fell wounded. Pvt. Warren S. Gurney of the Fifty-­Sixth Massachusetts explained by letter to his parents that “I think that many of the colored troops were killed by our men purposely on account of the darks rushing back into the trenches occupied by the whites. One of our Regt told me that he fired twenty rounds at them and thinks he killed a nigger every time.” Gurney suggested, without passing any moral judgment on this behavior, that killing one’s own comrades was “not a very good way of crushing this rebellion.”45 Of course, the hand-­to-­hand combat so eloquently described by the Confederates demonstrated that not all the front-­line Federals had become demoralized. Many—black and white—fought valiantly. “A few, more gallant than the rest, without organization, but guided by a soldier’s instinct, remained on the side of the pits nearest our line and held the enemy at bay some ten or fifThe Confederates Regain the Crater

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teen minutes,” boasted Colonel Thomas, “until they were nearly all shot away.” The Confederates hurled abandoned rifles into the pits “like pitchforks,” but that only elicited more return fire, as did the trick practiced by the Sixteenth Virginia of hoisting headgear onto ramrods lifted above the parapets to draw enemy fire in order to rise up and deliver an unopposed volley. “These empty hats [were] immediately riddled with bullets.”46 At this point, perhaps twenty or thirty minutes after Mahone’s assault reached the captured works, the brutal, intense clash north of the crater degenerated into an exchange of fire from sheltered locations. The Confederates had successfully cleared these captured works and compelled most of the Federals south of the crater and opposite the ravine to the north to abandon their positions. Yet fierce opposition emanated from around the crater itself, offered by an estimated 1,000 Union defenders. The Confederates shuffled prisoners, including some blacks, to the rear, while surviving officers arranged their powder-­ stained veterans in the most advantageous spots. Mahone ventured back to the shallow ravine, where the rest of Hall’s brigade now waited, and deployed them to meet a potential Union counterattack. He then returned to the captured works and positioned his sharpshooters so they gained a clear shot at any Yankee attempting to escape to the main Union line.47 Mahone could not know that his initial assault had severely dispirited the Ninth Corps soldiers and, more importantly, persuaded Grant and Meade that further efforts to break the Confederate line would be futile. “Being satisfied that the moment for success had passed, and that any further attempts would only result in the useless sacrifice of life,” Meade would explain, “with the concurrence of [Grant], who was present, I directed the suspension of further offensive movements, and the withdrawal of the troops in the crater when it could be done with security, retaining the position till night, if necessary.”48 The battle of the Crater was won, but all that Mahone knew at that moment was that a large number of Federals, full of fight and protected by the jumbled earth at and around the crater, remained defiant in the captured works. He must evict them and restore the integrity of the Confederate defenses. To do so, he now called on the remainder of the Georgia brigade, which had arrived fully prepared to enter the contest. Lt. Col. Matthew Hall was twenty-­eight years old and typical of many volunteer officers in the Confederate army. Innocent of formal military training, Hall attended New York University medical school and in 1857 returned to his home in Warrenton, Georgia, to practice his profession. As a prominent local citizen, Hall raised a company, the Warrenton Rifles, and became its captain. Assigned to the Forty-­Eighth Georgia, Hall worked his way up to lieutenant 484

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colonel and assumed command of his regiment and then the brigade following the departures of Col. William Gibson and Brig. Gen. Ambrose “Rans” Wright on sick leave.49 The Forty-­Eighth Georgia and a few companies of the Third Georgia had arrived in time to participate in Weisiger’s attack, but the bulk of the brigade continued to file into the ravine while the first assault unfolded. By 10:​​00 a.m., about an hour after Weisiger’s advance, Hall’s demi-­brigade received Mahone’s order to go forward as well. “I hurried back to the Georgia brigade and explained to the men and officers the situation of affairs, and how they must make the move to retake that part of our main line still occupied by the enemy,” recalled Mahone.50 Hall led the Twenty-­Second and Sixty-­Fourth Georgia regiments forward, along with the bulk of the Third Georgia, perhaps 500 men all told. Mahone instructed them to aim directly for the crater so as to hit the works south of where the Virginians and Carolinians had reestablished control. The division commander ordered those soldiers to support the Georgians with a blistering fire so as to suppress the Federals’ rifles and cannon, but to no avail. Hall’s men ran into a blizzard of lead and iron. Most witnesses thought the Georgians advanced with “splendid gallantry.” Pvt. William J. Murphy of the Forty-­First Virginia watched as Union projectiles created gaps in Hall’s line, only to have the Georgians close ranks and continue forward. Yet the Yankee firepower, including canister belching from one of Pegram’s captured Napoleons, now firing under the direction of New York sergeant Wesley Stanley, decimated Hall’s ranks. “We went in under Rather the heavyest shelling that I ever seen & under most unfavorable circumstances,” remembered Pvt. Richard Asbury Whitworth of the Sixty-­Fourth Georgia. Major Etheredge grimaced as the Georgians “fell like autumn leaves.” “My men gallantly mounted the works and poured their shot into their line, which, together with the canister given them by Sergeant Stanley, almost annihilated the column,” reported General Hartranft, “so that but few of the enemy came up, and they only for protection.”51 The Georgians veered left, away from their intended targets, and many of those who survived took shelter among Weisiger’s men north of the crater. At best, they expanded the recaptured works southward by about forty yards. The rest of the Georgians retreated to the shelter of the shallow ravine, their attack a bloody failure. The best casualty figures suggest that nearly half of Hall’s men fell during their brief assault. The loss among officers proved particularly severe. As many as sixteen captains went down in the fusillade. The Sixty-­Fourth Georgia alone lost nine company-­grade officers killed and several others wounded The Confederates Regain the Crater

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or captured, including the acting regimental commander. The unit’s permanent leader, Col. John Wesley Evans, had been absent recuperating from wounds and had not yet been officially reinstated to command. Nevertheless, the thirty-­ six-­year-­old South Georgia attorney decided to share the fate of his men and went forward in a volunteer capacity. Evans managed to cross the open ground and, ascending the works waving his hat, yelled, “Remember, boys, you are Georgians,” when a Federal bullet laid him low.52 Several accounts state that Hall repeated his attack at 11:​​00 a.m., but the bulk of the evidence suggests otherwise. Perhaps the Georgians’ participation in Weisiger’s first foray, followed by Hall’s solitary assault, caused confusion. There is also no agreement as to why the Georgians failed, but without question, Federal resistance in the crater played the key role in diverting Hall’s men toward the shelter of the Virginians’ enclave. Mahone thought so: “the terrific fire of the enemy to which this brigade was subjected while passing over the intervening ground caused it to slide in this way north and fail of the object its charge was designed to accomplish,” he wrote, an opinion shared by the ubiquitous Crater analyst, Colonel Stewart. However, Major Etheredge watched disapprovingly as the Georgians halted in the middle of the field to realign their ranks, arresting their momentum and making sitting ducks of themselves. Pvt. Charles M. Sanders of the Third Georgia remembered that the brigade “did not charge as a body, but by regiment,” weakening the impact of the assault and perhaps contributing to the impression that the Georgians charged more than once. An Alabama officer attributed the failure simply to “bad leadership,” a conclusion tactfully echoed by General Lee. “The brigade as I have explained failed somewhat,” Lee admitted to President Davis two days after the battle, citing “their want of confidence in their leader.”53 The Georgians may have been repulsed and the Virginians and Carolinians restricted to only a partial redemption of their lost lines, but for the Northern soldiers who remained in and around the crater, the day felt nothing like victory. Fresh Confederates, it was true, no longer dashed eastward from the ravine, but those already at or near the front turned the crater into a living hell. “The enemy effected a lodgment within a few feet of our men who still held the ruined fort,” testified a member of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, and these Confederates laid down a murderous fire. “Bullets came in amongst us like hailstones,” wrote an officer in the Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops. “The fort was filled completely so we had to lie down exposed to fire three ways.” A Pennsylvanian thought that “bullets buzzed like bees,” aimed not only at the defenders, but also at any Federal attempting to escape to the main Union lines. “Shell, grape, and musket balls swept the crest and the field between the crater 486

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and our breastworks,” remembered Sergeant Aston, “so that three out of every four who tried to run the gauntlet to our lines were struck down.”54 Artillery proved even more deadly. The Confederates placed Willie Pegram’s two batteries on Cemetery Hill and, combined with Wright’s guns and those along Jerusalem Plank Road, Southern ordnance spewed canister and shells above the tops of the Federal works, claiming casualties among any Yankee brave, desperate, or foolish enough to expose himself. Haskell’s mortars made an equally fatal impact. His shells exploded above the Union strongholds, raining fragments on the helpless troops, killing or wounding scores. Some projectiles buried themselves in the ground only to explode moments later, throwing men—dead and alive—high into the air. “One of these shells struck the major of a Maine regiment square on the head, exploding at the same instant,” shuddered Freeman Bowley. “The head and neck of the unfortunate man were blown to fragments, the body fell sloping downwards, and the blood rushed out as from an overturned bucket.”55 It is impossible to describe the Union dispositions or strength during the late morning with absolute accuracy. The Federals controlled essentially three zones—a small section of works on either side of the crater, and the western edge of the crater itself. The depth of the hole and the chaotic conditions within it made lateral movement between these sectors impractical. Fragmentary evidence places the Twentieth Michigan among other units in the works south of the crater and most of the blacks behind a traverse on the north side of the pit. “We had no semblance of an organization,” confirmed one Union officer, who added that the men were pressed so closely together that there was hardly room to stand. “Even many of those killed were held in a standing position until jostled to the ground.” Still, some Union soldiers believed that if properly managed, their position might have held. One account credits the Federals with about 3,000 viable defenders in and around the crater, but this is an educated guess at best and probably inflated.56 Untold additional Federals found themselves pinned to the ground just east of the crater, unable to offer assistance to those at the front. Capt. William T. Ackerson of the Fifty-­First New York was one of those men. He had tripped while retreating and landed in a ravine near a spring, spending the rest of the day ministering to the wounded lying around him. He recorded a fatalistic entry in his diary that long day: “I hope to get out of this very peculiar fix but if I do not the finder of this will be so kind as to send word to my friends.” When he eventually returned to the lines after dark, his overjoyed comrades, who had given him up for dead, pronounced him “too big a rascal to be shot.”57 A group of Native Americans constituted a unique segment of the deThe Confederates Regain the Crater

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fenders that day. Company K of the First Michigan Sharpshooters included Ottawa, Delaware, Chippewa, Huron, Oneida, and Potawatomi Indians accepted into the service, in part to relieve whites in their home counties from being drafted. Some had enlisted as a show of good faith in their effort to renegotiate unfavorable treaties. Others sought to defeat a slavery-­based enemy. “The Indians showed great coolness,” recorded their captain. “They would fire at a Johnny & then drop down. Would then peek over the works and try to see the effect of their shot.” Lieutenant Bowley acknowledged their “splendid service,” but regretted their reluctance to maintain a steady fire, preferring instead to carefully select specific targets. “Some of them were mortally wounded; clustering together they pulled their blouses over their faces and chanted a death song.”58 The beleaguered defenders north of the crater attempted to improve their position by building works. They lacked the necessary tools, and one Pennsylvania officer wrapped a request for picks and shovels around a brick and tossed it toward the crater hoping that someone would furnish the required equipment. When nothing arrived, the men used tin cups, bayonets, and their hands to place lumps of clay in position, a painfully tedious process. Someone yelled “put in the dead men,” and acting on the suggestion, the soldiers gathered the corpses of Union and Confederate killed—whites as well as blacks—and stacked them into a macabre breastwork. “A number of dead Confederates were thrown up on the top dirt . . . and utilized as ‘head logs’” observed Lieutenant Bowley.59 These expedients emerged either spontaneously or as a result of orders from lower-­graded officers, as the Ninth Corps’ senior leadership remained detached. Neither Potter nor Willcox was at the front, and both Ledlie and Ferrero found refuge in their familiar bombproof. Ferrero joined Ledlie imbibing alcoholic liquid refreshment, and even brigade commander Sigfried of the Fourth Division appeared at the bombproof. Capt. Warren H. Hurd of the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops believed that the soldiers had the wherewithal to maintain their position “but there was no head, no General officer, no support, no nothing.”60 Considering the disadvantages under which the Federals labored, their resistance following Hall’s attack proved nothing less than heroic. “All in the crater who could hang on by their elbows and toes lay flat against its conical wall and delivered their fire; but not more than a hundred men at a time could get into position,” recalled a Pennsylvanian. “In order to re-­load they were compelled to face about and place their backs against the wall.” Soldiers below the works would load rifles and place them where better-­positioned defenders 488

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could use them. Individual acts of bravery stood out, such as the one described by a member of the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania: “I saw a colored soldier stand on that human pile of dead and wounded, fire his musket and while hurriedly reloading, was shot in the face; still loading he was again shot in the back of the head; yet loading, when a third shot laid him prostrate like those beneath him; all done within the space of a few seconds.” Sergeant Stanley eventually ran out of ammunition (and water to swab out the barrel between shots), so the captured Napoleon that had proven so effective fell silent. Rifle cartridges dwindled as well, and the infantrymen longingly glanced behind them, praying that reinforcements would appear. “We still clung to the hope that the tide of battle would turn in our favor,” wrote a Massachusetts officer. “We could not believe that we had been entirely abandoned in this dark pit, in this mouth of an infernal Golgotha, to continue such a hopeless struggle alone.”61 Under these grim circumstances, some of the Union boys grew understandably discouraged and ceased to fight. “Leaving the line, they sat down, facing inwards, and neither threats nor entreaties could get them up into line again.” Lieutenant Bowley, with a degree of bias, stated that from noon forward only the black soldiers sustained their fire, the white troops seeming “apathetic and indifferent. The killing of a comrade by their very sides would not rouse them in the least.” No doubt, soldiers of both races succumbed to demoralization, although the African Americans had good reason to assume that passive surrender meant death.62 The racial brutality that underscored the battle of the Crater continued to manifest itself, even after the hand-­to-­hand fighting had temporarily run its course. An example occurred just after the panicked flight from Weisiger’s attack that left wounded soldiers in its wake. One member of the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops lay on a stretcher waiting to be taken to a place of safety, where medical attention might be available. Only one stretcher bearer appeared, and the unit’s colonel, Cleaveland J. Campbell, attempted to impress a captured Confederate officer to take the other end of the litter. This man, betraying conventional cultural prejudice, swore at Campbell and refused to assist any black man. Lt. William Baird witnessed this exchange and his commander’s reaction. “The colonel whipped out his revolver and shot him dead, dead.”63 William Bartlett became a casualty, of an odd nature, during the interval between Confederate attacks. The general was standing in the crater when a mortar round knocked him to the ground. Fearing the worst, a number of officers and men rushed to his rescue. “Put me any place where I can sit down,” Bartlett intoned with remarkable calm for a man who had been just felled by a shell. “But you are wounded, General, aren’t you?” came the worried reply. “It’s The Confederates Regain the Crater

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only my cork leg that’s shattered,” said Bartlett, who then allegedly shouted toward the enemy, “That is all right, my Johnny boys; keep your range on that leg. Shoot at it all day, but please let my ‘sure-­enough’ leg alone.”64 The sun rose higher in the sky, and conditions in the crater continued to deteriorate. By noon, the temperature had reached ninety-­nine degrees. “The suffering for want of water was terrible,” remembered a Pennsylvanian. The wounded had the worst of it. Many died “begging piteously for a drink of water, a drop of which was not to be had, for the men had long since drained their canteens.” Soldiers extended their tongues to dampen parched lips “until their tongues seemed to hang from their mouths” like canines. Captain Shearman of the Fourth Rhode Island recalled that “I had the feeling that if I had a thousand dollars I would give it cheerfully for a drink of water.” The men had been awake all night, few had enjoyed breakfast or even a cup of coffee, and after seven hours at the front in the enervating heat, they began to give out. “My tongue is swollen and lips cracked, from the powder in biting cartridges,” stated Sergeant Aston. “My gun gets so hot that I have to stop firing.” Sunstroke overcame many. “Strong men wept,” remembered a Pennsylvanian, and Pvt. Squire D. Rhodes of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery believed that the heat drove some men insane.65 Several witnesses described efforts by selfless soldiers to bring relief to their thirsty comrades. Capt. Lyman Jackman of the Sixth New Hampshire, for example, received numerous requests from soldiers seeking permission to go to the rear to fetch water, all of which Jackman approved. “I was glad of an excuse to give them a chance to run for their lives, not expecting human nature to be equal to the ordeal of passing twice through the almost certain death of that terrible cross-­fire,” explained Jackman. Much to his surprise, man after man made the dash from and back to the crater, laden with multiple canteens. “So it went on, till, I believe, every one of those noble fellows returned with his gallons of water, or perished in the attempt. It was one of the . . . bravest acts I saw during the whole war.”66 Similar scenarios unfolded as other men went to the rear to secure ammunition. As early as 9:18 a.m., General Hartranft began requesting more cartridges. Members of the Fifty-­First Pennsylvania responded by carrying 10,000 fresh rounds into the crater, although some of the bearers paid for the effort with their lives. Other men piled cartridges onto shelter tents and lugged them to the front. Despite these remarkable deeds, most of the defenders found themselves scrounging in the cartridge boxes of the dead to replenish their supply.67 Countless other soldiers attempted to make the trip back to Union lines with no intention of returning, although deciding to run for it was not easy. 490

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“To go back was as almost certain death as to stay,” wrote one soldier. Sergeant Aston’s estimate that three-­fourths of those attempting to escape were struck down probably overstated the case, but there can be no question that returning to the rear entailed a deadly peril. One survivor admitted that he did not have the courage to make the attempt until “a shell burst within ten feet of me and a piece about the size of an egg hit me in the hip causing a severe contusion but not breaking the skin, then I started and said I legs do your duty now.” It was, he wrote his sister, “a run for life, such a gauntlet as I hope never to have to run again.” The ground east of the captured Confederate works was “completely strewn with dead, dying, and wounded,” including several men attempting to remove Col. Jacob Parker Gould of the Fifty-­Ninth Massachusetts. Sgt. Robert B. Foster and three other men tried to carry their seriously injured commander to the rear. “We had hardly got back into the open when the man on the end with me was shot through the head and fell over dead,” wrote Foster. “A bullet knocked me down, grazing my cheek and drawing blood. A second later one of the fellows ahead of me was wounded in the head and fell.” Somehow, Foster and the surviving stretcher bearer managed to wrangle Gould to safety.68 Excavating a trench leading to the rear provided an escape option for soldiers unwilling to sprint for asylum. Staff officer William Powell, from his position within the crater, sensed that the Confederates would launch another attack, one that might prove decisive. He approached James Ledlie in the general’s snug rear-­area bombproof, suggesting that tools be procured to “open a covered way by which [the men] could be withdrawn.” No shovels or picks could be found and, thought a disappointed Powell, “the proposition was received with disfavor.” Some soldiers on their own initiative tried to tunnel their way out through the back of the crater, but intense Confederate fire put an end to that ploy. General Willcox initiated an effort by Eighteenth Corps troops and some of Ferrero’s men to build three covered ways toward the crater, a notion seconded by Ambrose Burnside. None of these enterprises succeeded.69 In the meantime, conditions in the crater and surrounding works had become unspeakably horrid. “At the hour of 1 p.m. the bottom, sides, and nearly all parts of the crater were strewn with dead, dying, and wounded soldiers, causing pools of blood to be formed at the bottom of the crater,” wrote the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania’s Captain Gregg. “It seemed impossible to maintain life from the heat of the sun.” As men attempted to move through this tortured landscape, they inadvertently trampled on those injured men who sought shelter there, killing some of these unfortunates. “Blood was everywhere,” remembered one participant, “trickling down the sides of the crater in streamlets, and in many places ponds of it as large as an ordinary wash basin.” The men of the Forty-­ The Confederates Regain the Crater

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Sixth Virginia, holding the trenches south of the crater, saw water running out of the hole “having the appearance of . . . grease mixed with it. The supposition was it came from the numerous fried bodies that were in the crater—at any rate, there was lye enough to make soap,” observed one Virginian. Union soldiers remembered their environment as “one seething cauldron of struggling, dying men,” and a “veritable slaughter pen.”70 Meade’s orders to suspend the assaults and withdraw the men reached Burnside sometime between 9:15 a.m. and 10:​​00 a.m. More than two hours transpired before the Ninth Corps commander transmitted those instructions to his officers in the crater. Burnside had tried in the interim to redeem the situation, but by 12:​​20 p.m. he accepted the painful reality that his offensive had been a ghastly failure. Reluctantly, he authorized his men to return to their lines. Generals Hartranft, Griffin, and Bartlett, along with Lieutenant Colonel Cutcheon and several other officers, met in the crater to consider their options. “I think the best way to withdraw is by making an attack from our pits and batteries, bearing on our right and left—the men here are a rabble—and then let them withdraw immediately,” Hartranft suggested to Burnside, with Griffin’s endorsement. If such a demonstration could not be made, the troops would do their best to hold out until darkness, although Cutcheon volunteered to return to the lines to obtain better means of constructing a practical escape route via a new covered way. Before any of these expedients could be implemented or even approved, the final Confederate assault erupted. Cutcheon, who had managed to reach the rear, heard a shout, turned, and “saw our troops, disorganized and without order, pouring out of the crater and making for our lines.”71 Events at Union army headquarters contributed to this inglorious retreat. As soon as Weisiger’s attack routed Ferrero’s soldiers, Burnside wired Meade requesting that Warren’s corps attack, but by then Meade had determined to cancel the offensive. Burnside had informed Meade of Ferrero’s withdrawal, a report verified by a courier and by Grant himself, who had just returned from his meeting near the front with Ord. That was all that Meade needed to pull the plug on the entire operation. A frustrated Burnside mounted his horse and rode as rapidly as possible to confront his superior. He arrived about 10:​​30 a.m. in the company of General Ord, where Meade, with Grant present, but strangely silent in the ensuing exchange, listened as his subordinate argued to continue the attacks. The normally amiable corps commander expressed himself forcefully (Theodore Lyman thought insubordinately), asserting that if the troops on his flanks advanced in concert with his own, the crest might still be carried. Failing that, the army might at least incorporate the captured ground into its own lines as an aid to future operations.72 492

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Meade had modified his orders to provide Burnside discretion as to how and when to withdraw his troops. He would not, however, retract the order to abandon the offensive, a decision supported by General Ord. An angry Burnside telegraphed his acting chief of staff, Julius White, to gather the corps’ division commanders “in order to consult as to the most favorable method and time for withdrawal.” He then directed his venom toward Ord: “You have 15,000 men concentrated on one point,” he told his fellow corps commander. “It is strange if you cannot do something with them.” Ord bristled. “You can fight if you have an opportunity; but if you are held by the throat, how can you do anything?” he sputtered.73 Following this rather unpleasant conference, both Meade and Grant departed for their respective headquarters. Burnside lingered a bit, expressing his profound disappointment to Grant’s aide, Cyrus Comstock. Comstock interpreted Burnside’s remarks as suggestive of the general’s desire to resign. “I attempted to quiet him,” Comstock wrote. “He is not competent to command a corps. . . . Poor Burn.”74 Grant telegraphed a message to General Halleck summarizing the morning’s events. “The effort to carry the ridge . . . which would give us Petersburg and the south bank of the Appomattox, failed,” Grant frankly stated. “As the line held by the enemy would be a very bad one for us, being on a side hill, the crest on the side of the enemy, and not being willing to take the chances of a slaughter sure to occur if another assault was made, I have directed the withdrawal of our troops to their old lines.” Technically this was true, as Grant listened without objection while Meade explained the operational facts of life to Burnside. Yet on July 30 the general-­in-­chief continued his custom of delegating battlefield decisions to Meade. There is no evidence that Grant even offered an opinion during the conference at which Burnside unsuccessfully argued his case.75 The Alabama brigade of Brig. Gen. John C. C. Sanders would dictate the ultimate outcome at the battle of the Crater. Only twenty-­four years old and a brigadier for just two months, Sanders had risen through the officer ranks of the Eleventh Alabama, which he joined as a captain after leaving his studies at the University of Alabama in 1861. He received promotion to colonel following the bloody battle of Sharpsburg in September 1862 and rose to brigade command at Spotsylvania twenty months later. “Sanders was born a soldier, straight as an arrow, and was especially attractive in person and manner,” wrote an admiring comrade. “His courage was not frothy and evanescent but solid and durable,” thought another acquaintance. Sanders led his five Alabama regiments on July 30 along the route followed by Weisiger and Hall, and arrived at The Confederates Regain the Crater

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the covered way about 11:​​00 a.m. On the way, he encountered the wounded Colonel Weisiger being helped to the rear, who briefed Sanders and his acting adjutant, Capt. George Clark, of events at the front.76 Mahone and Bushrod Johnson met Sanders there and explained the Alabamans’ impending assignment. Johnson had appeared on the battlefield for the first time around 10:​​00 a.m., taking position in the shallow ravine from which Weisiger and Hall had attacked. He summoned Mahone for consultation and the two officers agreed that when Sanders arrived, his men would launch another assault, while Johnson ordered troops from south of the crater to advance in concert with the Alabamans. This combined offensive would, if all went right, restore the entire Confederate line. When the young general reported, Mahone told him to occupy the same ravine that had sheltered the other two brigades prior to their attacks, but to move as far to the right as possible to gain a position opposite the crater. Accompanied by thundering artillery fire from both sides, the Ninth Alabama promptly led Sanders’s men to their designated positions. Sanders estimated the distance to his target at 300 yards. Mahone then requested Sanders, accompanied by Captain Clark, to join him at the crest of the depression in order to show the brigadier the terrain over which he would have to charge. “General, your brigade must retake that ground,” Mahone intoned. He then told Sanders to gather his officers and explain to them the details of the impending assault.77 Before conveying Mahone’s orders to his subordinates, Sanders sent Clark forward to examine the situation at the front. The captain carefully advanced to the warren of works held by the Virginians north of the crater, where he consulted with Colonels Stewart and Rogers, both of whom he knew from their service together on court-­martial duty the previous winter. Clark obtained firsthand knowledge of the ground still held by the Federals and returned to the ravine to share his observations with Sanders. The general told his aide to pass along the brigade line, count the men, and inform them that at the firing of two cannon the assault would commence. Every man must be ready to advance with the signal guns, Sanders advised, moving slowly at first, then at the double-­ quick as soon as they crested the rise. “Our object was to capture the rifle pits on our right as well as the Crater, and for this purpose the brigade would be compelled to right oblique after starting so as to cover the point of attack, no man was to fire a shot until we reached the works, and arms must be carried at a right shoulder shift,” Clark recalled Sanders’s instructions.78 While Clark conducted his reconnaissance, Mahone met with Sanders and articulated these specific tactics that Sanders would communicate to Clark. Neither general, however, would entrust a mere staff officer to explain the plan 494

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to the regimental officers with the required inspiration. Witnesses report that both Mahone and Sanders addressed the Alabamans, emphasizing the importance of their task and how to accomplish it. Mahone told a group of Alabama officers that the Confederate artillery would open a spirited bombardment to draw counterbattery fire away from the contested ground, then cease as soon as the assault began. “Alabamians, I call on you to take this place—two of the best brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia have failed but you can take it and you shall,” exhorted Mahone. “If you give back I’ll send you again.” At some point, Sanders similarly conveyed Mahone’s instructions with, perhaps, a bit less flamboyance.79 Mahone, Sanders, and Clark all employed one identical motivational tool to steel the Alabama soldiers for their perilous task. “I was instructed by General Saunders to inform the men that General Lee had notified him that if it were necessary, he would lead them himself,” wrote Clark. There is no evidence that Lee met personally with Sanders before the attack, but as a means of ensuring that the men would do their best, this message did the trick. Few of Marse Robert’s loyal soldiers cherished bearing responsibility for forcing their beloved commander to come under fire. “Well, if the old man comes down here, we will tie him to a sapling while we make the fight,” promised one Alabaman. Other sources quote Sanders and Mahone as using the same threat, while one of Sanders’s officers remembered being told that Lee, Beauregard, Hill, Mahone, Hoke, “and every general officer of the army” would watch them as they moved out.80 In less than an hour from their arrival in the covered way, Sanders’s men had quietly shuffled into the sheltering ravine west of the crater. “From that time until 11/2 o’clock we lay in an open field exposed to a hot broiling sun,” wrote Sanders. The men suffered from a lack of water and, according to one Alabama officer, “the heat was almost beyond human endurance. Strong men fainted and were carried to the rear. The waves of hot air at times were almost suffocating.” The Alabamans watched as Union prisoners were hustled to the rear, including some blacks. Although many of the officers and men had learned that they would be fighting U.S. Colored Troops, this hard evidence left no doubt and further elevated their commitment to victory.81 Mahone and Johnson would provide Sanders significant support, employing all the available manpower then on the scene. On Sanders’s left, the Sixty-­First North Carolina and fragments of the Seventeenth South Carolina would augment the Alabamans. Johnson would direct whatever combat-­ready remnants of the Twenty-­Second and Twenty-­Third South Carolina he could muster to move forward on Sanders’s right. Weisiger’s and Hall’s men at the The Confederates Regain the Crater

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front would open a covering fire to suppress Federal resistance as the attackers crossed the open ground, aided by the artillery, including Haskell’s mortars, which had remained as close to the crater as the Alabamans. Goode’s Virginians to the south and McAfee’s North Carolinians to the north would also participate with either supporting fire or, in the case of the Virginians, an actual thrust toward the crater and the adjacent works. Clark counted exactly 632 officers and men ready to attack from Sanders’s command. The Sixty-­First North Carolina brought 140 muskets to the equation, while the South Carolinians added relatively small numbers. There could not have been many more than 850 Confederates poised to respond to the signal guns that would launch the fateful charge. Witnesses disagree as to when those guns erupted, with estimates ranging from noon to 2:00 p.m., the truth being somewhere between these extremes.82 Until then, silent contemplation prevailed among the Alabamans “for [we] expected to die or retake that salient.” How two signal guns could be discerned amid the cacophony of the constant bombardment is difficult to comprehend, but when Sanders gave the command “forward,” his soldiers arose in unison and crested the top of the ravine. With rifles at right shoulder shift or trail arms, but in perfect alignment, the Alabamans began their attack with “steady and resolute” steps. The bluecoats immediately opened fire on the exposed attackers, eliciting a communal yell—“more terrific than the howl of the midnight wolf that had missed its evening repast”—and an accelerated pace from the Confederates. “For a moment or two the enemy overshot us and did no damage,” remembered Captain Clark, but soon Federal lead and iron began to find their marks. “When a soldier was shot down, the order was passed along the line, ‘Close up, men’ and I never saw a prettier line kept on drill,” recalled the Eleventh Alabama’s Lt. Phillip M. Vance. “The last charge of the Rebs was made in three lines and as they came down over the open lawn the shells seem to burst as thickly and sparkle as brightly as sparks from a red hot iron,” observed Sgt. Zerah Coston Monks of the 155th Pennsylvania from the distant Fifth Corps lines. “Great gaps could be seen torn through their ranks, but on they came.”83 Sanders’s men displayed the discipline of veterans as they withheld their fire, despite facing a metallic storm that one Confederate compared to “a second Vesuvius belching forth its fire.” The Union works, according to this officer, “bristled with bayonets as the quills of the ‘fretful porcupine’” and the appearance of the gray ranks “seemed to awaken the demons of hell.” The Alabamans and their Carolina cohorts reached the works and took cover under the shelter of their outside walls, where the voices of Union officers encouraging their men could be heard plainly amid the chaos. Sanders’s alignment had been nearly perfect, as the brigade nestled about forty yards north of the crater, inside the 496

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right flank of Weisiger’s position. “It is said to have been the most brilliant charge of the war,” boasted Dr. Henry Augustine Minor, the surgeon of the Ninth Alabama, but now the real work began.84 Federal stamina and morale had diminished due to the heat, exhaustion, and the unending and deadly presence of Haskell’s mortar shells. At the appearance of Sanders’s attackers, most of the Yankees occupying the flanking works on either side of the crater fled, surrendered, or sought shelter in the depression itself. Here, more than 1,000 survivors remained, reasonably well protected and either too frightened to give themselves up or run the gauntlet back to their main lines, or determined to defend themselves to the last extremity. The thought that no quarter would be shown, especially among the African American soldiers, inspired many a Federal vow to fight to the death.85 What followed, from fifteen to thirty minutes, matched the most intense and brutal close-­quarters combat ever to stain the North American continent. “Men were brained by guns and run through with bayonets,” remembered Captain Clark. The hand-­to-­hand struggle was one of life and death with no margin for mercy. Some of the Alabamans employed the familiar trick of raising their hats on their bayonets above the works to draw an enemy volley, then plunged over the embankment and into the crater. Capt. John C. Featherston of the Ninth Alabama judged the engagement “the bloodiest of the war, considering the numbers engaged.” Mahone had mentioned in his instructional speech to the men that the black troops had cried “No Quarter” during their attacks. “He did not say, ‘Show no quarter,’” remembered Lieutenant Vance, “but Saunders’s men decided that point.” Some Confederates ringed the crater and “poured volley after volley into this heaped-­up mass of terrified negroes and their brave officers,” wrote Capt. William L. Fagan of the Eighth Alabama. “We recaptured all our lines, driving the enemy over into the crater like a herd of frantic buffaloes,” recalled another Southerner. “Then such a scene ensued as I hope never to see again—the crater filled with a seething mass of men—hundreds and thousands of them—some firing back upon us, some struggling wildly to escape. Shattering volleys were fired into the seething abyss, till it became a perfect hell of blood.”86 Many combatants resorted to using unorthodox tactics. Countless rifles, with bayonets attached, littered the ground where their owners, living and dead, had abandoned them. Mahone’s men gathered these weapons and “propelled them with such nice skill that they came down upon Ledlie’s men [in the pit] like the rain of the Norman arrows.” Some of the beleaguered Federals threw them back, making for a unique contest of harpoons. Both sides tossed

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cannon balls, fragments of shells, and even clods of hardened brick-­like clay into and out of the crater.87 Perhaps the threat of being conked on the head by a brickbat or skewered by a flying bayonet did not by itself motivate the Northerners to give up the fight, but the cumulative effect of the situation gradually convinced most that further resistance would be futile. In fact, General Hartranft had authorized a retreat about the same time that Sanders’s attack struck. It is impossible to know, however, how many Federals forsook the crater under color of these orders or did so out of sheer self-­preservation. “When the bayonetting commenced many, white and black, rushed for the Union lines,” reported Lieutenant Bowley, some of the Colored Troops in particular “wild with terror.” General Beauregard discerned “great confusion” in the retreating blue ranks, although some of the soldiers who risked the dash back to their lines fell victim to Weisiger’s men, among other Confederates, who drew a deadly bead on the fleeing Yankees.88 Mahone yearned to put an end to the Union resistance and told Lt. William B. Young of the Eleventh Alabama to return to his regimental commander and call for 100 volunteers to leap into the crater and settle the matter once and for all. Sanders also encouraged his men to jump over the large ad hoc traverse on the north rim of the crater that separated his Alabamans from the Federals. Young knew that his superior, Lt. Col. George P. Tayloe, would eagerly respond to the general’s request for volunteers, meaning almost “certain death” for the men of his unit. “I determined on my way back, to try another method of getting possession of the crater,” Young explained. His idea proved to be laughably direct: ask the Yankees to give up!89 As soon as Young returned to the edge of the crater he shouted over the rim, “Why don’t you fools surrender? You will all be killed if you do not.” An unseen Northern voice replied, “We will surrender if you will stop your men from firing.” Young endeavored to oblige with mixed results and called to the Yankees that he could not stop the firing all along the line, recommending, however, that they “drop their arms and come out by me and I would protect them. They promptly did this and rushed out by me to our rear.”90 Captain Clark related a similar scenario, naming Adj. Morgan Smith Cleveland of the Eighth Alabama as the protagonist. According to Clark, Cleveland was one of the Confederates engaged in hand-­to-­hand combat within the crater and, finding himself next to a Federal officer, asked the man, “Why the hell don’t your fellows surrender?” putting the emphasis on the cuss word. “Why in the hell won’t you let us?” replied the Northerner. This led almost immedi-

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ately to many of the bluecoats laying down their arms and marching out of the crater as prisoners. The accounts of Young and Clark may well be embellished, or altogether fanciful, and in all probability no individual or gesture convinced the Union survivors that continued resistance would be suicidal. Mahone remembered seeing a white handkerchief raised inside the crater that triggered a cessation of hostilities, while Captain Featherston recalled that some of the Federals simply laid down their rifles and asked for quarter absent any overt Confederate act.91 Among the estimated 1,000 surrendering Union soldiers, none proved more interesting than General Bartlett. He had been prevented from escaping by the loss of his prosthetic leg, rendering him all but immobile. Captain Clark saw the captured general hobbling along using two inverted muskets as crutches and thought it remarkable that Bartlett displayed no sign of physical pain, having apparently lost a limb in the fight. Captain Featherston, in contrast, recalled seeing Bartlett lying on the ground and offered to assist the wounded general, who refused the help of two captured blacks. Eventually, white men helped Bartlett to stand and then mounted him on a mule for the trip to the rear. In any event, Bartlett became the highest-­ranking Federal captive that afternoon.92 Wounded men, cork legs or otherwise, were the exception in the crater that grim afternoon. “The slaughter was fearful,” explained Captain Featherston. “The dead were piled on each other. In one part of the fort I counted eight bodies deep.” Pvt. James Paul Verdery of the Forty-­Eighth Georgia entered the crater, but found the center “invisible to the eye owing to the many dead & dying Blacks piled upon one an other.” David Holt of the Sixteenth Mississippi thought that the scene in the crater “was the most horrible sight that even old veterans . . . had ever seen,” exceeding the carnage at Spotsylvania’s Bloody Angle. Surgeon Minor considered the spectacle unnerving. “The ditches were almost filled with the dead. Men had to walk on the dead, could not find room for their feet. Such a sight,” he informed his sister, “was never seen before.”93 Although the human debris in and around the crater varied in skin color as well as of uniform, U.S. Colored Troops provided a disproportionate number of dead and wounded. The Confederates perpetrated much of this carnage after the quasi-­spontaneous surrender had taken effect, most often striking the blacks with the butts of their muskets or stabbing them with bayonets. “Our men . . . clubbed their guns and knocked them in the head like killing hogs,” reported Pvt. Aaron T. Fleming of the Tenth Alabama. A soldier in the Forty-­ Eighth Georgia recalled that “the bayonet was plunged through their hearts & the muzzle of our guns was put on their temple & their brains blown out [and] 500

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others were knocked in the head with the butts of our guns.” South Carolina quartermaster Hall T. McGee wrote in his diary that “the negro troops were slaughtered without mercy, we not allowing them to surrender, they huddled together in the pit formed by the explosion and our men deliberately capped down on them and beat out their brains and bayonetted them until worn out with exhaustion.” Some graycoats may have employed even more brutal methods. According to rumors that reached the Fifth Corps’ James Monroe Lyon of the Ninety-­Fourth New York, the Rebels “showed no mercy to the wounded negro soldiers but would cut off their ears and cut out their tongues and then stick bayonets into them and threw them over their breastworks disdaining to touch their bodies with their hands.” One eager Alabaman continued his murderous spree even after an officer ordered him to stop. “Well gen let me kill one more,” he replied, whereupon “he deliberately took out his pocket knife and cut one’s throat.”94 The Confederates targeted only the blacks for this brutish punishment. The Vermont officer, Frank Kenfield, recalled that “as the rebels charged in upon us I heard the order given ‘save the white man but kill the damn niggers.’” Another Union officer related that several Confederates were not eight feet from him and a black soldier when the Rebels yelled out “Shoot the nigger but don’t kill the white man, and the negro was promptly shot by my side.” Even more horrifying were instances where frightened white Federals killed their black comrades in order to gain favor with their Confederate captors. Lt. George Emery of the Ninth New Hampshire testified that “the men was bound not to be taken prisoner among the niggers” and Pvt. George Kilmer of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery wrote that white soldiers “bayonetted blacks who fell back into the crater. This was in order to preserve the whites from Confederate vengeance. Men boasted in my presence that blacks had been thus disposed of, particularly when the Confederates came up.”95 “Every bomb proof I saw had one or two dead negroes in them who had skulked out of the fight & had been found & killed by our men,” reported Virginia artillerist Willie Pegram. Cpl. Andrew Sydnor Barksdale of Wright’s Battery thought “the slorter of Negroes was awful,” and that they “were laying so thick here it was impossible to step without treading on the dead boddys.” A Georgian wrote home that “the whole face of the earth was literally strewn with dead negroes, Yankees, and our men,” and Pvt. James M. Henderson of the Twenty-­Fifth North Carolina, admitting that “I never saw sutch a slaughter of men in my life,” recalled that “the negroes lay so thick in hour brest works that a man could hardly walk a long them without stepping on them.” North Carolina Maj. Rufus A. Barrier told his father a few days after the battle that “the blood The Confederates Regain the Crater

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ran in streams” from the “worthless carcasses” of the black soldiers. “The poor nigger realized the awful meaning of the words ‘no quarters.’”96 The blacks’ battle cry of “Remember Fort Pillow, no quarter” provided the most common explanation for their massacre. “The reason of the casualties in the Negro troops being so great was that they jumped upon our works and cried ‘no quarters,’” explained Georgia cavalry Pvt. Andrew J. Perkins. “Our boys replied ‘we ask none’ and commenced a most desperate and determined conflict.” Major Barrier agreed: “The negroes charged with the battle cry ‘no quarters, remember Fort Pillow,’ and they were received as they asked. Our brave boys fell upon them like an avalanche and but few lived to tell the tale.” “The negro cry of ‘No quarter’ was met with the stern cry of ‘amen’ and without firing a single shot we closed with them,” wrote a Virginia private, who boasted that “Southern bayonets dripped with blood.” Sgt. Thomas A. Smith of Goode’s Twenty-­Sixth Virginia wrote proudly that “our troops hearing the cry no quarters prepared to give the vandals the same medium,” an expedient that Petersburg partisan Edmund Ruffin believed was entirely justified.97 In truth, many Confederates confessed to needing no justification for their murderous fury beyond seeing black men in blue uniforms. Some, according to one Virginian, who were “inflamed to relentless vengeance by their presence [thus] disregarded the rules of warfare which restrained them in battle with their own race.” Dr. Minor explained simply that “the men were greatly enraged at the sight of negro Yankees,” while Mississippian David Holt wrote that “the sight of a nigger in a blue uniform with a gun was more than ‘Johnnie Reb’ could stand.” Capt. John Anderson of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts thought that “it seemed to add increased poison to the sting of death to be shot by a negro. The Confederates considered such an act as violating all rules of warfare and the sacred rights of humanity.” Porter Alexander took this theme one step further and argued that the enlistment and use of black soldiers signaled to white Southerners the desire of the North to incite servile insurrection, the punishment for which was death. Such an explanation provided a neat justification for the unspeakable atrocities inflicted on the blacks.98 The enormity might have been worse had General Mahone not ordered it halted. Word of Mahone’s intervention must have spread quickly throughout the army, because many Confederates who were nowhere near the battlefield used similar language to describe his decision. “It is reported that Gen. Mahone grew sick of the slaughter going on and begged his men to stop killing the negroes,” wrote a soldier in a First Corps battery. “The general had to beg the men to stop killing them,” repeated a North Carolina cavalryman. Pvt. Edmund Lockett Womack of the Eighteenth Virginia was a little less dramatic 502

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in his rendition: “I understand our men just chopped them to pieces and continued to do so until a Brig. Gen. road up and stopped them.” Artillery corporal Barksdale provided one of the more colorful descriptions of Mahone’s sensitivity: “Our men fought until Brigadier General Mahone thought it too bad to see men slortered in that stile and at once sprang from his saddle rushed to his men and cryed out to them ‘men for God’s sake observe humanity, and don’t be so destructive of life.’” Tellingly, the only mention of postsurrender murders made by Mahone referred to the Union artillery fire that unintentionally killed Union prisoners as they made for the rear. Nevertheless, there is no reason to reject the notion that Mahone used his authority to put a stop to the butchery.99 A small portion of those captives were black. “The negro prisoners seldom get to the rear,” admitted Pvt. Eugene Levy, “they get lost in the shuffle somewhere.” A soldier in the Sixteenth Mississippi was less coy: “Most of the negroes were killed after they surrendered,” he conceded. Pvt. Henry V. L. Bird of the Twelfth Virginia boasted that the Confederates sought out wounded black soldiers in order to bayonet them out of their misery. Willie Pegram explained that even though the blacks threw down their arms to surrender, they “were not allowed to do so,” an assertion not universally true. Hall McGee reported that they took some of the African Americans prisoner, but added that “a number were shot or hung after being brought to the rear.” Other black captives managed to survive, such as Pvt. Isaac Gaskins of the Twenty-­Ninth U.S. Colored Troops, who was shot in the hip by his guard, but ultimately spared. “Just before firing at me, with an oath, called me a damn nigger, and said if he had known I was a nigger he would never have taken me prisoner,” Gaskins related, “and I had so much of that damn Yankee blood over my face that he couldn’t tell what I was.” A Georgian admitted to his sister that four black soldiers went to the rear within his view, apologizing that “we could not kill them as fast as they passed me.” Captain Featherston sheepishly confessed that he did allow some blacks to be captured, but protested that “we will not be held culpable for this when it is considered the numbers we had already slain.”100 There were no repercussions from the Confederate authorities, military or civilian, for this wholesale violation of the accepted rules of war. In fact, many Confederate soldiers expressed a firm belief in its rectitude. “I think it is right to kill every negro, formerly a slave, found in arms against us,” wrote Dr. Minor. Willie Pegram agreed: “This was perfectly right as a matter of policy.” Private Perkins thought that the officers should not have stopped the butchering of the blacks for they deserved such treatment, “every one of them.” “Kill, kill every negro is my motto,” snarled Hall McGee. The lack of outrage was not limited to the Confederates. Major Roebling, the Fifth Corps engineer, recorded laThe Confederates Regain the Crater

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conically in his journal that “spectators amused themselves with looking at the crater and seeing rebs hunt niggers and shoot them.”101 The Richmond press went even further, expressing disappointment that the slaughter proved incomplete. “Grant’s war cry of ‘No quarter,’ shouted by his negro soldiers, was returned with interest, we regret to hear not so heavily as it ought to have been, since some negroes were captured instead of being shot,” opined the Richmond Enquirer shortly after the battle. “Let every salient we are called upon to defend be a Fort Pillow, and butcher every negro that Grant hurls against our brave troops, and permit them not to soil their hands with the capture of one negro.” The editor then expanded on this thought: “We beg [Mahone] hereafter, when negroes are sent forward to murder the wounded, and come shouting ‘no quarter,’ shut your eyes, General, strengthen your stomach with a little brandy and water, and let the work which God has entrusted to you and your brave men, go forward to its full completion; that is until every negro has been slaughtered.” Diarist Ruffin concurred, writing that “there will never be a better opportunity, nor more complete & unquestionable justification, for inflicting severe & merited retaliation.” Simply stated, Confederate culture could not recognize liberated chattels as soldiers and thought of armed blacks exclusively as slaves in rebellion, deserving only of summary execution.102 Much Southern opinion held the white Yankees responsible for the inevitable demise of their black comrades. Dr. Minor, for example, thought white soldiers were “more worthy of death,” adding “I would sooner spare the negro than his white associate.” Another Alabaman remonstrated with some of his comrades, who threatened to murder some black prisoners while escorting them to the rear, saying, “Oh boys, let the poor devils alone; if I had it in me to kill a man after he was unarmed and at my mercy, I would kill the white man who armed them and brought them in here.” Capt. Dudley Diggs Pendleton, serving on the staff of his uncle, artillery chieftain William Pendleton, displayed his disdain for the Federals associated with black troops by referring to them as “white negroes.” The Richmond Dispatch concluded that Northern authorities had deluded Ferrero’s soldiers with “cunning lies and whiskey” to persuade them to participate in the attack, eliciting the editor’s “unutterable disgust for the Yankee character utterly destitute, as it is, of every sentiment of honor or humanity.” The newspaper argued that the “cold-­blooded and fiendish Yankee” intended to incite the former slaves to “indiscriminate slaughter, and illumine the Southern skies with incendiary fires that were to leave a desolate land, where there would be neither food nor shelter for any one!” Pvt. William Meade Dame of the Richmond Howitzers placed the blame directly on the 504

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Union commander for subjecting the blacks to their hideous fate. Grant “will have a load of blood on his soul that will crush down quick into hell,” thought Dame, for plying these benighted creatures with liquor and encouraging them to yell “No quarter” when he knew the consequences. Confederate cannoneer Cpl. George M. Neese gloated sarcastically over the demise of these former slaves, while indicting the alleged concern displayed for African Americans by abolitionists in the North. “I suppose the survivors are deeply impressed with the striking idea that the road to Freedom’s blissful gate lies through a blasted deadly hole. I do wonder what the gentle, sympathetical, and philanthropical Aunt Harriet Beecher Stowe thinks of this sort of emancipation.”103 The majority of the Union prisoners made their way to the rear, avoiding incoming shells and vengeful guards, although white soldiers, such as Lt. George H. Wing of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery, resented being taken prisoner “while mixed up with Uncle Sam’s tanned soldiers.” Some of the terrified black captives, informed by their officers that morning that they would be killed if taken alive, and having witnessed the atrocities perpetrated at the front, humbled themselves in front of their captors. “The poor darkies thought their last day had come,” recalled Lt. Col. William W. Blackford, and “many came marching to our men in underclothing alone, or stripping off their uniforms as they ran and calling out piteously ‘Oh Lord, master, please don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!’” Colonel Stewart described “one old corn field chap” who pleaded for his life: “My God, I nebber pint’d a gun at a white man in all my life; dem nasty, stinkin’ Yankees fotch us here, and we didn’t want to cum.” Some of the black captives cleverly implored the most likely looking Confederates to claim them as their property, preferring to accept bondage to the distinct possibility of imminent execution.104 A number of officers in Ferrero’s division practiced their own version of self-­preservation by refusing to identify themselves as responsible for black troops, motivated by what one Confederate thought was shame as well as fear. This strategy worked for some, infuriating their Rebel interrogators. Mahone, however, ordered a few of the African American prisoners to identify their superiors. “One of them, pointing to an officer said, ‘There is my captain,’” related a Virginian. “The captain thus spoken of turned hastily around and answered, ‘You’re a damned liar, I never saw you,’ on which the Negro said, ‘O yes, you is my captain. I done walked wid you many a time.’” A few of the Federal officers had removed their shoulder straps in an effort to deny their elevated rank in any unit, but “the fresh marks showed plainly upon their sun-­burned jackets,” wrote one amused Southerner. Not every one of Ferrero’s officers obscured his identity. When asked for his name and unit, one defiant Federal replied, The Confederates Regain the Crater

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“Lemuel D. Dobbs, Nineteenth Niggers, by ___.” Lieutenant Bowley properly claimed his pedigree and watched with trepidation as the Confederate wrote “negro officer” by his name.105 The white prisoners may have avoided execution and, to a large degree, outright physical abuse, but many of them fell victim to robbery. “We were taken to the city of Petersburg and it did not take them long to disrobe us,” remembered William Baird of the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops. “We were stripped of our hats, boots, socks, blouse, money, watches, swords. They left me with a shirt and a pair of pants and this constituted my wardrobe from that date . . . up to and including the 17th day of February 1865.” His comrade, Lt. Robert K. Beecham, agreed that the officers were “systematically . . . robbed of nearly everything they possessed. . . . They even robbed us of such articles of clothing as they could most readily snatch, and by the time they were done with us we were a sorry looking set.” Lieutenant Bowley lost his watch to two predatory Confederates, but managed to wrangle back his cap. Lieutenant Wing recalled that “the Johnny’s went through me as fast as a dose of salts,” liberating his watch and his money and, most painfully, the diary that he had kept throughout the campaign. The prisoners suffered from a lack of food and water that night as they found themselves lying on the bare ground without shelter. Enterprising men such as Bowley managed to purchase a little sustenance from female Petersburg vendors who frequented the camps. Others benefited from edibles provided by sympathetic guards. None knew what the morrow might bring.106 General Grant was similarly unable to predict the future that afternoon, but that did not prevent him from first trying to control events and then reacting to them. Learning from observers that only a few Confederate regiments had been spotted moving toward Petersburg from north of the James, Grant ordered a significant offensive for the next day. The general-­in-­chief instructed Meade to “send a corps of infantry and the cavalry to cut fifteen or twenty miles of the Weldon railroad,” leaving at first light on July 31, and to strike the tracks as “near Petersburg as they can to commence work. I cannot yet help feeling that if our cavalry should get well around the enemy’s right, before our troops are withdrawn from their present position, we may yet take Petersburg.”107 Meade immediately sought to implement this improbable plan. He discovered, however, that neither the cavalry nor Ord’s or Hancock’s infantry felt able to withdraw from their current positions and undertake such a massive operation. As it turned out, Grant quickly canceled his ill-­considered notion upon learning that Confederates had, after all, been sighted crossing the James River “in a continuous stream.” Now, the Union high command changed gears

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and believed that Lee planned to pounce on their left flank. Meade ordered the abatis to be replaced and “available reserves held in hand ready for movement. . . . I anticipate offensive movement on the part of the enemy, and expect it will be by a movable column turning our left and threatening our rear,” he informed Burnside and Warren. Later in the day, Grant focused on his third stratagem in a matter of ten hours, ordering a cavalry division to report to City Point for transport to Washington to counter additional raiding at the hands of Jubal Early—including the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He also instructed Meade to remove all the heavy artillery from the Petersburg lines, adding that “it is by no means improbable the necessity will arise for sending two more corps” northward.108 Meade and Grant ordered these multiple arrangements in almost complete ignorance of conditions at the front. When Meade removed to his permanent headquarters at the Birchett house before noon, he did not bother to dispatch an aide or staff officer to ascertain the disposition of his forces. Indeed, the army commander remained so uninformed that at 7:40 p.m. he sent a message to Burnside inquiring if the Ninth Corps still held the crater! Burnside, whose disgust with his superior overwhelmed his normal composure, tossed aside this and two identical inquiries without a reply, an act he later acknowledged was inexcusably insubordinate. Grant, without returning to the scene of combat, departed that night for his meeting with President Lincoln at Fort Monroe on the 31st to discuss the situation in the Shenandoah Valley. It is nothing less than shocking that Grant and Meade gave such little personal attention to the aftermath of one of their army’s worst military setbacks.109 The Confederates, in fact, had no intention of launching an offensive. Lee, satisfied that the emergency had passed, returned north of the Appomattox soon after Sanders’s assault. A few hours later, he wired Secretary of War Seddon that “we have retaken the salient and driven the enemy back to his lines with loss.” Beauregard remained at the Gee house and then shifted to Johnson’s headquarters until most of the firing ceased, although projectiles continued to whiz over the crater until sunset, some claiming unfortunate victims.110 Mahone’s officers and soldiers at the front spent the remainder of the day transforming the ruined salient into a defensible position. They expended an equal effort in burying the dead who had fallen behind their lines—more than 200 men—whose rapidly decaying bodies “exhaled such a nauseating smell,” remembered Colonel Stewart, that he and many others could not stomach food. “Before sunset of the 30th we had made one of the biggest graves in the history of war,” thought Lt. Col. Richard Owen Whitehead of the Sixteenth

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Virginia. “That night we slept in the fort, over those who slept ‘the sleep that knows no waking,’ and with the living that slept that sleep caused by exhaustion,” mused Pvt. George I. Turnley of the Tenth Alabama.111 Mahone’s efforts could not reach the dead and wounded that lay in front of his modified position, and the morning of July 31 presented a spectacle of abomination that even veterans of three years of war found unfathomable. A correspondent to the Petersburg Express declared the crater to be “the most horrible sight I ever seen . . . and resembled more what one would imagine to have been the effects of a terrible earthquake. . . . The sides and bottom of the chasm were literally lined with Yankee dead, and the bodies lay in every conceivable position.” Capt. Henry Chambers of the Forty-­Ninth North Carolina visited the front that morning and considered it to be “such a sight that I never again desire to see” with great piles of dead at the bottom of the crater mixed with protruding limbs from men killed during the explosion. “It was solemnizing in the extreme,” thought Chambers. A South Carolinian commented on the putrid odor emanating from the decomposing bodies and remembered that the smell lingered in the neighborhood for months. “The day was the hottest in Virginia for thirty years,” guessed Sgt. Lucius L. McCurdy of the Eighth Alabama, “and the stench of the powder and blood and the bodies of the slain and wounded men was terrible to endure, many men vomiting as the result.”112 Federal witnesses commented on the plight of their wounded. “I could see hundreds of poor fellows squirming & rolling around on that open field,” reported Sgt. Charles Bowen of the Twelfth regulars. “I saw one poor black, who had both legs broke above the knee, who, by lying on his back & using his elbows managed to reach our line. He was all night getting over about twenty rods.” Many incapacitated men cried out for water while others were “crazed by their sufferings, shouting and throwing up their arms in wild delirium . . . a sight to make the heart sick,” shuddered an Ohioan.113 The corpses swelled in the stifling heat, in some cases expanding through their uniforms or worse. “Some of the bodies have burst open, too, and the black thick blood is oozing from the congested veins,” testified Colonel Thomas. The decaying flesh attracted flies. “The faces and hands of many were actually white with a moving layer of maggots,” wrote Colonel Lyman. Hospital Steward Addison S. Boyce of the Twentieth Michigan thought that the “nigars looked more like large black toads than like human beings,” but other observers thought it difficult to tell white men from blacks, the faces of all the dead shriveled and discolored. Maine Pvt. Elisha O. Drake wrote home reporting that the battlefield presented “a horrid sight” and that “we can smell the stench on our

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lines [as the bodies] blote very bad and very quick. . . . All one can say is the effects of war is horrid. When will it end?”114 The Federals captured on July 30 suffered their own ordeal the following day. After enduring a night with little or nothing to eat, between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. they received instructions under the general direction of A. P. Hill to form a long line. With General Bartlett mounted bareback at the head of the column “on an old spavined horse,” a file of four white officers preceded a file of four black soldiers in a repetitive pattern that included every white officer and every black soldier capable of walking—some barely so, due to their wounds. This parade, that also included many of the white enlisted prisoners, then circulated through the streets of town “affording a little innocent amusement to the good people of Petersburg,” according to a sarcastic Lieutenant Beecham.115 “We were assailed by a volley of abuse from men, women and children which exceeded anything of the kind that I ever heard,” remembered Lieutenant Bowley. “The people gazed at us as curiosities, and we were greeted with insults and sneers along the route,” wrote Lt. Col. Seymour Hall, and treated to cries of “See the white and nigger equality soldiers!” After two hours, this ritual humiliation had run its course and the prisoners found themselves consigned to little Merchant’s Island in the Appomattox, separated from the mainland by only a narrow river channel. Here, too, the captives received verbal degradation from the local citizenry. Hill’s racial object lesson had not been lost on either prisoners or spectators. Confederate soldiers and Petersburg civilians grasped the implied, unthinkable racial equality of an integrated enemy, as well as the potential for insurrection represented by an army of former slaves. Beecham concluded that the purpose of this parade had been to embarrass the white prisoners. He doubted that the officers of the black units felt any shame in marching with their men, but “it almost broke the hearts of very many of the officers of white divisions, a majority of whom, I honestly believe, would have been glad to see the officers of the Fourth Division hanged or shot, if thereby they could have been relieved from the terrible humiliation of marching through Petersburg with negro soldiers.” The next day, the prisoners boarded boxcars bound for Danville, Virginia, where the white enlisted men remained incarcerated. The officers continued their journey to Columbia, South Carolina, and the Richland County jail. Black prisoners stayed in Petersburg either to be reclaimed by their former owners or used as military laborers by the Confederates.116 Those prisoners too seriously wounded to participate in Hill’s circus found themselves at the Pavilion Hospital at Poplar Lawn, Petersburg’s municipal green space. Dr. John H. Claiborne, in charge of the Confederate military hos-

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pitals in the city, had assigned five captive Federal surgeons to treat the Union patients, thus relieving his own doctors, who had their hands full with Confederate wounded. Claiborne learned that these Northern physicians refused to minister to the African American soldiers, some 150 of them “lying about on the grounds, most of them naked; and with every conceivable form of wounds and mutilation,” who were “shrieking, praying, and cursing in their agony and delirium, their wounds undressed and festering under a summer sun.” Only when Claiborne threatened the recalcitrant healers with a one-­way ticket to Andersonville did they tend to the blacks.117 Meanwhile, a steady exchange of picket and sharpshooter fire blazed over the previous day’s nightmarish battlefield. Both sides anticipated some sort of renewed offensive and Meade, accordingly, ordered a shift along his lines to strengthen his vulnerable flank, “keeping in view the contingency of a movement of the enemy to our left rear.” Rebel marksmen paid particular attention to elements of Ferrero’s and Carr’s divisions, which took their turns on the picket line. “The Confederates were so mad that they shot at us every chance they got,” recalled Captain McMurray of the Sixth U.S. Colored Troops in Carr’s division. “The day seemed to me one of the longest I ever experienced.” The blacks found welcome diversion by raising their caps or shoes atop the butts of the rifles and letting the enemy sharpshooters blaze away at these faux targets.118 Meade and Burnside continued their acrimony on July 31, exchanging pointed correspondence regarding casualty reports and Meade’s arrest of two telegraph operators at Burnside’s headquarters. General Willcox attempted to make peace between his two superiors to no avail. Meanwhile, nothing was done to ease the plight of the scores of wounded men languishing between the lines, beyond random efforts to toss full canteens in the direction of the victims. Late in the day, Burnside authorized the display of a flag of truce that resulted in a temporary armistice, during which the Federals provided succor to their suffering comrades. For two hours soldiers, representatives from the Sanitary Commission, and even a few Confederates circulated among the wounded, distributing water and “stimulants” and occasionally erecting modest sunshades. Troops from both sides mounted their works to watch this humanitarian exercise. A few unrepentant Confederates, their pockets filled with greenbacks stolen from the black prisoners, who had just been paid, shouted across the lines, “When will the niggers be paid off again? Send them in on another charge when they get their money.”119 The process of obtaining a formal cessation of hostilities unfolded unnecessarily slowly. It began on the evening of the 30th with a message from General Willcox to Ninth Corps headquarters: “There are a large number of our 510

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wounded men between our line and the crater, and, if proper, I would respectfully ask that a flag of truce be sent out to bring them in as soon as possible,” suggested the division commander. Burnside waited until the next morning to pass Willcox’s request on to the army commander. But Meade had considered the question of removing the wounded the previous evening, asking Ord if it was possible for him to rescue the sufferers after dark, but rejecting the notion of asking for an armistice to do so. “The last time we had wounded left on the field Beauregard, on my application, refused to have a flag of truce to take off the wounded,” harkening back to the situation on June 19. “It would, therefore, be useless to try it again.” Historians have explained Meade’s hesitation to apply for a truce as evidence of the commander’s hubris—a reluctance to admit defeat. It is just as likely that the Pennsylvanian believed what he told Ord: that asking for a truce would elicit only rejection as it had six weeks earlier. In any event, Meade passed the question up to Grant. “Do you think it worth while to ask for a flag to-­morrow to remove our dead and wounded?” he inquired. “Perhaps they would be more amiable than Beauregard was the last time I applied.” Grant, as usual, deferred to his subordinate’s judgment: “You may exercise your pleasure about asking a truce,” he replied just before leaving for his meeting with Lincoln at Fort Monroe, missing the opportunity to authorize circumstances that would relieve his suffering soldiers.120 On the morning of the 31st, Meade replied to Burnside’s message, enclosing a letter to Lee requesting a truce, but instructing Burnside to ask the Confederates at the crater first if “an informal arrangement” could be implemented that would obviate the need to pre­sent the formal request. Burnside, after ascertaining that the letter to Lee should be sealed for delivery, ordered Maj. Peter Lydig of his staff along with Lieutenant Colonel Cutcheon, the officer of the day, to display a white flag above their lines. The Confederates eventually acknowledged the gesture with a white handkerchief tied to a ramrod and General Sanders sent Captain Clark out to meet Lydig and Cutcheon. The Federals articulated the request for an informal cease-­fire to recover the wounded and bury the dead, which Sanders passed up the chain of command.121 It is unclear who in the Confederate hierarchy rejected Burnside’s informal request, but soon enough word arrived between the lines that the Rebels would entertain only a formal application for a cease-­fire delivered through proper channels. Burnside, accordingly, forwarded the letter to Lee that Meade had prepared: “I have the honor to request a cessation of hostilities at such time as you may indicate, sufficiently long to enable me to recover our wounded and dead in the engagement of yesterday, now lying between the lines of the two armies. I make this application that the sufferings of our wounded may be reThe Confederates Regain the Crater

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lieved and that the dead may be buried.” This missive found its way to General Lee, who referred it to Beauregard as it would affect only that portion of the line in the jurisdiction of Beauregard’s phantom department. All of this took time—during which the ad hoc cease-­fire occurred—but eventually, in the evening, Beauregard drafted a response to Meade agreeing to his request. “Hostilities will be suspended for the purpose to-­morrow morning at 5 o’clock,” Beauregard explained. “The cessation will continue for four hours.”122 Flags of truce appeared on the opposing works on schedule at dawn, August 1. Captain Girardey advanced on the Confederate side and was met by Maj. James E. Doran of the Twenty-­Fourth New York Cavalry representing the Federals. Each side established a line of sentries midway between the lines standing only six feet apart. Then, a contingent of captured black soldiers emerged from the Confederate works armed with shovels and stretchers and on the Federal side the Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts and an unidentified regiment from the Fourth Division of the Ninth Corps began to dig burial trenches. They were joined by other members of Ferrero’s unit, assigned responsibility for bringing the dead to the trenches.123 Descriptions of the burial trenches vary in detail. A North Carolina private remembered “two graves about forty yards long, ten feet wide, and ten feet deep,” but in another account he estimated the length of the trenches as fifty feet. A Louisiana cannoneer recalled only a single trench as did Virginian James Eldred Phillips, who described the pit as “one solid ditch as wide as a man is long.” A New Yorker on the scene remembered “a ditch, three feet deep, six feet wide, and about eight rods long,” while a Rhode Islander saw multiple excavations, each about thirty feet long and four feet deep. Colonel Cutcheon described a single trench “nearly in front of the Crater about six feet wide and perhaps three feet deep.”124 All participants agreed that the black prisoners brought the bodies lying on the Confederate side of the sentry line to the neutral ground, where they were then taken up by Ferrero’s men and delivered to the burial trenches. Major Etheredge thought the Federals handled the process with remarkable regularity. The corpses in some cases had become so decomposed as to lose their form, requiring the details to shovel the remains onto blankets or stretchers. Once at the grave site, the bodies were rolled or dumped into the hole up to twelve inches from the top, “laid crosswise, side by side as closely as they could be laid,” then quickly covered, men “occasionally stopping to flatten down with their foot or shovel an arm or leg that would otherwise protrude beyond its covering.” When possible, the burial squads searched the corpses seeking identification and to retrieve personal effects and valuables. Some accounts assert 512

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that the black and white soldiers were buried indiscriminately, while other participants claim that they segregated them in the mass graves. Pvt. Hamilton R. Dunlap of the 100th Pennsylvania spoke for many in describing the repulsive nature of the burial process: “I was on the field and Oh God! What a sight! Men cut into a thousand pieces and as black as your hat. You could not tell the white from the black only by their hair. The wounded were fly-­blown and the dead were all maggot eaten, so we had to lift them on shovels. I was full of maggots up to my elbows, and such a stink I never experienced. About the time I was done I was so sick I could not stand.”125 Not everyone gathered around the crater that morning endured such a miserable experience. The truce allowed the opposing soldiers to emerge from the trenches and mingle with their enemies. “Both armies, within seventy-­five yards of each other, though invisible, now arose up out of the ground as if by magic, and it seemed that the world was filled with people in a moment,” wrote an Alabama officer. A Massachusetts soldier thought that the opposing troops “talked together like old friends,” while others swapped coffee for tobacco. Union and Confederate bands appeared and played patriotic airs. The respite also drew officers from the highest echelons. A. P. Hill, Beauregard, Mahone, Johnson, Sanders, Nathaniel Harris, and Archibald Gracie represented the Confederate leadership. Potter, Ferrero, and Julius White from the Ninth Corps put in an appearance. Some Federals brought refreshments, such as fresh lemonade, and shared them with their grayclad neighbors. Representatives of the Christian Commission circulated with ice and other delicacies. Capt. Josiah Jones of the Sixth New Hampshire considered the interlude to be “very pleasant” and remarked in his diary that “nearly all [the Confederates] behaved very gentlemanly and were well dressed.” The spirit of brotherhood amid the carnage moved one soldier to leap upon the breastworks and shout “Let’s all go home.”126 The cease-­fire expired at 9:00 a.m., but the Confederates extended it long enough to complete the burial work. Tallies of the number of men interred vary significantly, particularly between Northern and Southern sources. General Lee reported that the details buried 700 Federal dead, a figure confirmed by other Confederates. Burnside informed Meade’s headquarters that morning that “about 220 dead were found between the lines and are now buried.” Other Union sources counted between 200 and 300 placed in the pits. Less controversy exists regarding the number of wounded men recovered. Burnside reported “about twenty wounded,” while other witnesses counted only between four and fifteen survivors.127 A signal gun erupted somewhere behind the lines to indicate the end of The Confederates Regain the Crater

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the cease-­fire. “Both armies vanished from the sight of the other,” wrote a New Yorker, “and no sooner was the white flag out of sight than the firing began.” Artillery major William Miller Owen recalled the cannon blast that ended the armistice: “We lifted our hats to the Federal officers, bowed, and each retired to their respective line, ready to renew hostilities.” No one involved in that awful aftermath would ever forget the hideous spectacle presented by the Crater battlefield. A Massachusetts soldier spoke for many when he wrote, “It was, for the small space of ground covered, the concentration of horrors, and the effects of the burning sun, one of the most revolting scenes of death during the war.”128 The day proved uniquely memorable for Col. Henry Thomas. The Fourth Division brigade commander had been at the front during the cease-­fire, joining with other officers in conversation. As the truce was about to expire, Thomas left to return to his command when, confused by the irregular configuration of the works, he found himself confronted by Confederate pickets. The Rebels took Thomas into custody and brought him to General Johnson, who considered the colonel a legitimate prisoner of war. Johnson remanded Thomas to the Rock House in Petersburg, “a wretched prison—low, filthy, and almost without ventilation”—while various Confederate authorities discussed his case. Ultimately, they decided to release the directionally challenged colonel, and Thomas returned to Union lines at 6:00 a.m. August 2.129 Thomas thus not only escaped captivity, but avoided being counted among the casualties. As is the case with all Civil War battles, the sources disagree regarding the number of soldiers killed, wounded, and missing at the battle of the Crater. Grant had returned to City Point on August 1 and asked Meade that morning to provide an “estimate of our losses in the miserable failure of Saturday.” While waiting for Meade’s report, the general-­in-­chief told Henry Halleck that of the estimated 3,500 losses sustained by the army, 450 men were killed. Meade would reply several weeks later with his report tallying 4,400 total casualties, the vast majority sustained by the Ninth Corps. This number would be later modified to a total of 3,798, not counting the 65 losses from the Fifth and Second Corps included in the previous total. Using this figure and calculating a total effective force engaged of 20,708, Thomas Livermore concluded that the Union army suffered a casualty rate of 18.34 percent on July 30. Nearly 1,400 Ninth Corps soldiers alone received treatment in Union field hospitals during the twenty-­four hours following the assault.130 The official casualty list for Ferrero’s division included 209 officers and men killed, 697 wounded, and 421 captured or missing for a total of 1,327. Participants such as Lieutenants Beecham and Bowley persuasively elevated that total to 1,665 by almost doubling the number of blacks and their officers miss514

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ing. The Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops suffered the highest loss among Ferrero’s regiments at 292. The black troops sustained one man killed for every 1.8 men wounded, while the average ratio of killed to wounded in the Civil War was 1:4.8, a stark reminder of the merciless and mortal combat that engulfed the Fourth Division.131 Burnside’s officer corps was devastated by the battle, twenty-­three regimental commanders falling on July 30. Griffin’s brigade lost every field grade officer. Of the nine regimental commanders in Bartlett’s brigade, Stephen Weld was the only one to survive—and he was taken prisoner—the rest being killed or mortally wounded.132 The most careful student of Confederate losses at the crater tallied 1,622 Southern casualties. As might be expected, General Elliott’s South Carolinians suffered the highest attrition at nearly 700 men, including the soldiers who perished in the explosion. Weisiger’s brigade lost 267 men in their attack, Hall 231, and Sanders only 89. The brigades of Generals Wise, Ransom, Clingman, and Colquitt all contributed to the Confederate toll. Estimating that 9,430 Southerners were engaged at the battle, they suffered an attrition rate of 17.1 percent, not much less than the Federals.133 The Confederates captured twenty-­two Union flags, a huge humiliation for the Union army, along with some 2,000 small arms. Nineteen Southern officers or soldiers added their names to the Confederate Roll of Honor. The victory on July 30 sent Southern morale sky-­high. “Grant, great as he is thought to be by the Northern Fanatics, is no more a match for our Noble Lee, than an Ethiopian,” exclaimed an exultant soldier in the Nineteenth Virginia.134 Conversely, a sense of mortification swept over the Federal forces. “I consider this battle the most shameful & disgraceful affair that I have yet seen,” groused Pvt. John P. Foote of the 117th New York. Capt. Alfred Mordecai, chief ordnance officer of the Army of the James, wrote his mother that the engagement “was about the most disgraceful act of the army of the Potomac.” Colonel Tilton evaluated the battle as “a more shameful ending of a day gloriously begun.” “Never in my opinion, has the army had such a chance of complete success,” wrote brigade commander Col. J. Howard Kitching; “never has such a chance been so completely thrown away. . . . It was truly the most disgraceful ‘fizzle’ of the whole campaign.”135 Ulysses S. Grant considered the battle of the Crater “the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.” The first six weeks of the Petersburg Campaign had brought little but sadness to the general-­in-­chief. A series of tactical failures and bloody defeats had been his lot since crossing the James River on June 15. A crisis in the Shenandoah Valley had already drawn a portion of his army The Confederates Regain the Crater

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away from Petersburg and threatened to disrupt his entire effort to capture the Confederate capital and end the war. “I believe Grant is nonplussed,” wrote a Massachusetts private. “Things are not working at all to suit him; the question in my mind is is Grant going to raise the siege and fall back a whipped man.” The other Union commander, George Gordon Meade, whose influence over events at Petersburg had matched or exceeded Grant’s, told his wife on July 31 that Grant had gone to see the president. “What the result will be I cannot tell,” Meade admitted. “Matters here are becoming complicated.”136

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Acknowledgments

The author of a book that has been a decade in the making accumulates a long list of institutions and individuals to whom a profound debt of gratitude is owed. William Marvel of South Conway, New Hampshire, deserves first mention. Bill provided me with voluminous source material from New England archives and read the manuscript twice, improving my writing immeasurably, and challenging my conclusions in the process. I could not ask for a more insightful critic and generous colleague than my iconoclastic friend. Similarly, Petersburg scholars Richard Sommers and Earl Hess offered extremely helpful suggestions, saving me from embarrassing mistakes and pointing out new lines of inquiry. Bill, Dick, and Earl between them know more about Petersburg than I ever will, and I am grateful for their assistance. My friends at Petersburg National Battlefield, former historian Jimmy Blankenship and cultural resources manager Julie Steele, aided me numerous times in placing events on the ground. They generously opened their archives to my immense benefit. I extend my thanks to the entire staff at Petersburg National Battlefield for facilitating my work in so many ways. I am indebted to a large number of friends and colleagues who sent me obscure Petersburg references or assisted in my research. George Rable, professor emeritus at the University of Alabama, unfailingly enhanced my command of the sources by suggesting references that I would have otherwise overlooked. Robert E. L. Krick, Greg Mertz, and Don Pfanz of the National Park Service shared their extensive collections of unpublished manuscripts during countless visits to their libraries. Similarly, John Coski, historian and archivist of what was once known as the Museum of the Confederacy, hauled out box after box of invaluable primary material from his Richmond lair. Dave Grabarek, interlibrary loan officer at the Library of Virginia, handled dozens of my requests with cheerful professionalism. Likewise, Tom Crew, Minor Weisiger, and their

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workmates at that institution’s reference desks rendered great help during my weekly Saturday visits to Richmond over a period of three years. In a similar vein, Graham Dozier and his colleagues at the Virginia Historical Society were unfailingly kind and helpful during my countless hours in their reading room, as were Chuck Koutnik and the staff at the Appomattox Regional Library in Hopewell. Susan Riggs at the Swem Library of the College of William & Mary, Heather Turner of Navarro College, the fine archivists at the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, the Perkins Library at Duke University, the John Nau III Civil War Collection in Houston, and the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division all warrant specific thanks. My old pal, Gordon Rhea, generously shared his definitive work on the Union army’s movement to the James River and greatly improved my understanding of that complex endeavor. Local historians George Fickett and Chris Calkins offered useful guidance, as did Bryce Suderow, a dedicated and thoughtful student of all things Petersburg. Mike Cavanaugh—along with Bill Marvel, the author of an excellent study of the Third Offensive—shared his extensive collection of Crater documents, for which I am most thankful. I extend my gratitude to Steve Acker, Keith Bohannon, Rob Cleave, Rob Girardi, Mary Hatcher, John Hennessy, John Horn, Dan Laney, Jim Ogden, Dennis Rasbach, Andy Trudeau, and Steve Zerbe for tracking down source material on my behalf. Old chums Ken Noe and Joe Trahan offered accommodations in their homes during research trips to Alabama and Georgia. Special acknowledgment is due to Edward Alexander, my former colleague at Pamplin Historical Park and the cartographer responsible for this volume’s fine maps. Edward also shared rare sources he discovered in the course of his own extensive research on Petersburg. Finally, Gary W. Gallagher, the general editor of the Civil War America series and the inspiration behind this undertaking, helped shepherd my work through to its conclusion. Gary’s unparalleled understanding of the military nuances of the Civil War, which he shared with me on several occasions, helped give my work whatever value it may possess. The excellent staff at the University of North Carolina Press—especially Mark Simpson-­Vos and Jessica Newman—supported this project with steadfast determination, despite several badly missed deadlines by the author. The work for this book spanned many years and two domestic venues. During that time and in those places, my four-­legged literary assistants, Celeste and Ozzie, provided much-­needed diversion and silent companionship. Every writer knows how much a spouse sacrifices while their other half is off in some

518Acknowledgments

distant archive or sequestered in his or her own library, ignoring domestic responsibilities. My wife, Maggie, was always there for me, lending her love and support. This book would not have been possible without her. A. Wilson Greene Walden, Tennessee

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Notes

Chapter 1 1. Anne Banister Pryor, “Child’s Recollection of War”; MacRae, Americans at Home, 158; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 182–83. 2. Mrs. Bessie Callender, “Personal Recollections of the Civil War,” Bird Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 183. For a list of the civilian casualties incurred on June 9, see William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 152–60. Robertson’s book is the best source on the battle. 3. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 36(2):277 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); John W. Robinson report in Benjamin F. Butler Papers, Library of Congress; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534. 4. Keiley, In Vinculis, 15; William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 51–54; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 177–79. 5. OR, 36(2):289; Butler to Edward Hinks, June 13, 1864, in Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 361; William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 60–77, provides tactical detail and convincing analysis of Gillmore’s timidity and culpability. There were those in the army who thought Gillmore’s decision was prudent. See Alfred Howe Terry to “Dearest Mother,” July 2, 1864, Alfred Howe Terry Papers, Connecticut Historical Society. 6. Fletcher Archer, “The Defense of Petersburg on the 9th of June, 1864,” in Bernard, War Talks, 116; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534; Keiley, In Vinculis, 21–22; William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 79–85. 7. Keiley, In Vinculis, 22; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 240; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 24; William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 87–92. 8. William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 103–6; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 180. 9. Keiley, In Vinculis, 23–24. 10. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 181–82; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 30–31; William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 108–13. 11. Trefousse, Ben Butler. Chapters 5 through 15 cover Butler’s military career. Butler offended the European consuls in New Orleans, as well as the local citizenry, and his removal resolved international tensions. 12. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 227; Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 85; Keiley, In Vinculis, 37. 13. OR, 36(1):16. Two excellent monographs address the Bermuda Hundred campaign: 521

William Glenn Robertson, Back Door to Richmond, and Schiller, Bermuda Hundred. Schiller estimates the field force at 38,000, and Robertson counts about 39,000. 14. For a summary of events between May 5 and June 8, see Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 163–76. 15. The action on May 6 is styled the first battle of Port Walthall Junction. William Glenn Robertson covers the engagement in detail in Back Door, 76–82. For Butler’s correspondence with Senator Henry Wilson, see OR, 36(2):518. 16. The second battle of Port Walthall Junction is admirably covered in Schiller, Bermuda Hundred, 84–98. For Kautz’s Raid, see William Glenn Robertson, Back Door, 95–106. The Petersburg Railroad is better known as the Weldon Railroad, and soldiers on both sides unfamiliar with the line’s official designation, referred to it that way throughout the campaign. 17. OR, 36(2):34. 18. OR, 36(2):11. The action on May 9 is covered in William Glenn Robertson, Back Door, 109–16. 19. Stanton’s messages are in OR, 36(2):587. For the rationale behind the Union plan to attack Petersburg and the eleventh-­hour modifications proposed by Gillmore and Smith, see William Glenn Robertson, Back Door, 119–20. 20. Petersburg Daily Express, May 13, 1864. Schiller addresses Butler’s decision to abandon the movement against Petersburg in Bermuda Hundred, 139–47. 21. OR, 36(2):986. 22. The conduct of the battle of Drewry’s Bluff, the largest engagement of the Bermuda Hundred campaign, lies outside the scope of this work. William Glenn Robertson, Back Door, 182–229, and Schiller, Bermuda Hundred, 228–92, discuss the engagement and its significance in great detail. 23. OR, 36(3):286. For a summary of these events, see Greene, Civil War Petersburg 174– 75, and William Glenn Robertson, Back Door, 230–35. 24. See William Glenn Robertson, Back Door, 237–39; William Glenn Robertson, First Battle for Petersburg, 27–34; and Longacre; Army of Amateurs, 126–27, for information about this phase of the campaign. 25. Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, quoted in OR, 40(1):35; Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 386; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 100; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 176. 26. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 538; Meade, Life and Letters, 178. 27. For a brilliant summary of the Union military situation on the eve of the Overland Campaign, see Brooks D. Simpson, “Great Expectations.” An excellent general background to the campaign is in Rhea, Wilderness, 41–49. On Grant’s relationship with Lincoln, see Glatthaar, Partners in Command, 217. 28. Nevins, Diary of Battle, 338; Jewett, Boy Goes to War, 63; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 156; Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” July 23, 1864, Charles Cummings Papers, Vermont Historical Society. 29. Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 10:​​274 (hereafter cited as Grant Papers). 30. Grant Papers, 10:​​327, 309; Reid, “Another Look,” 293; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 9. 31. OR, 33:​​1036, 1045; Rhea, Wilderness, 34. 32. OR, 33:​​1297–98; 36(1):1036–40; Steere, Wilderness Campaign, 25; Rhea, Wilderness, 21; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 737–41; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 345. 522

Notes to Pages 7–14

33. OR, 33:​​1298–1301. 34. OR, 33:​​1114; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 698. An excellent summary of the Army of Northern Virginia on the eve of the Overland Campaign is Gallagher, “Our Hearts Are Full of Hope,” 36–59. 35. Stephens, Intrepid Warrior, 342; Gallagher, “Our Hearts Are Full of Hope,” 51; Rhea, Wilderness, 21; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 493; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 342. Gallagher’s essay pre­sents voluminous evidence demonstrating the optimism of the army that spring and the trust it and the Southern people placed in General Lee. 36. Tower, Lee’s Adjutant, 148; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 666–67. See Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 259–66, for background on the various concepts for a Confederate offensive in Kentucky and Tennessee and Lee’s frustrated desire to assume the offensive. 37. Douglas Southall Freeman elegantly describes Lee’s considerations in R. E. Lee, 265– 68. Rhea’s description is more analytical. See Rhea, Wilderness, 22–29. 38. Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 9–13; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 135–37. Rhea provides insightful analysis in Wilderness, 49–58. Humphreys’s orders, issued by Meade, are in OR, 36(2):331–34. 39. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 177–78, 141. For analysis of Grant’s strategy, see Weigley, American Way of War, 142–45. 40. The best account of the preliminary movements at the Wilderness is Rhea, Wilderness, 60–93. 41. Casualty figures are elusive and at best educated estimates. A recent study hypothesizes that Lee suffered more than 11,000 losses at the Wilderness and that the official Union tally of 17,666 was intentionally minimized. See Rhea, Wilderness, 435–36, 440. 42. OR, 36(2):481–82; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 208, 211; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 74–75. See Rhea, Spotsylvania, 13–16, for analysis of Grant’s thinking. Burnside would waive his seniority voluntarily on May 24. 43. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 373–75. 44. OR, 36(1):1085, (2):968, 970. Analysis of Lee’s thinking may be found in Matter, If It Takes All Summer, 15–16; Rhea, Spotsylvania, 27–28, and Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 301–3. Freeman questions assertions made by Brig. Gen. John Gordon that Lee knew that Grant would target Spotsylvania based solely on intuition and uncanny insight into Grant’s strategic thinking. See John B. Gordon, Reminiscences of the Civil War, 267–69. 45. The movement to Spotsylvania is nicely covered in Matter, If It Takes All Summer, 44–60, and Rhea, Spotsylvania, 37–53. Rhea pre­sents a colorful description of the contretemps between Meade and Sheridan, 67–69. 46. OR, 36(2):627. Casualty estimates vary, but see Trudeau, Bloody Roads South, 213, for one accounting. 47. Badeau, Military History, 235. The movement from Spotsylvania to the North Anna River and the combat on May 23–24 is ably discussed in Rhea, North Anna, 191–354. The impact of earthworks in the Overland Campaign is the subject of Hess, Trench Warfare. For an outstanding monograph on the North Anna segment of the story, see J. Michael Miller, North Anna Campaign. 48. Charles Scott Venable, “Campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg,” 535; J. Michael Miller, North Anna Campaign, 138; Rhea, North Anna, 354. 49. OR, 36(2):595–96. Notes to Pages 14–23

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50. William C. Davis, Breckinridge, 433–34; OR, 36(1):1058; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 497. For analysis of the campaign at this point, see Rhea, North Anna, 367–74. 51. OR, 36(3):206, (1):79; Meade, Life and Letters, 198; Catton, Grant Takes Command, 254. 52. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 252. 53. OR, 36(3):183, 234–35. The best description of this portion of the campaign is Rhea, Cold Harbor, 21–63. Smith’s mobility provided graphic evidence that Butler was not “corked as if in a bottle” at Bermuda Hundred. 54. OR, 36(3):834, 836, (1):1074. The maneuvering along Totopotomoy Creek is covered from the Confederate perspective in Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 362–72. Freeman discusses Ewell’s removal in Lee’s Lieutenants, 498–99, 510. Lee’s formal reassignment of Ewell occurred on June 12. See Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 776. 55. OR, 51(2):971; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 207. Beauregard reported on May 29 that only 4,000 of Butler’s men had departed. See OR, 36(3):849. For an account of the action between May 29 and May 31 at Totopotomoy Creek, Bethesda Church, and Old Cold Harbor, see Rhea, Cold Harbor, 92–194. 56. Excellent descriptions of the combat on June 1 are in Rhea, Cold Harbor, 195–270, and Furgurson, Not War but Murder, 74–111. 57. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 268; OR, 36(3):478–79. A good description of the Confederate movements and dispositions on June 2 is in Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 380–86. 58. Stocker, From Huntsville to Appomattox, 174. Detailed accounts of Hancock’s and Smith’s assaults are in Rhea, Cold Harbor, 318–58. 59. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 415. Many histories erroneously state that the Union army suffered 7,000 casualties in thirty minutes at Cold Harbor. 60. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 272–73; OR, 36(3):526. 61. Corbin, Letters, 30; Dame, From the Rapidan to Richmond, 205; Cockrell and Ballard, Mississippi Rebel, 276–77. 62. OR, 36(1):1032; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 508; Rhea, Cold Harbor, 392–93. 63. Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 192; OR, 36(3):599. 64. OR, 36(3):600. 65. OR, 36(3):638–39; Grant Papers, 11:​​26–27. Full treatments of this episode may be found in Catton, Grant Takes Command, 270–72, and Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 328–29. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 392, implies that Grant’s reluctance to admit defeat caused the long delay. 66. OR, 36(3):598; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 279; Horace Porter to his wife, June 14, 1864, Horace Porter Papers, Library of Congress. Catton observes that the notion of isolating Richmond from its rail connections resembled the plan Grant implemented to besiege and capture Vicksburg. See Catton, Grant Takes Command, 274, 276. 67. OR, 36(3):598–99; Grant Papers, 11:​​21, 23–25; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 279– 81. Brian Holden Reid speculates, as others have, that Grant also expected that Sheridan’s move would draw off Lee’s cavalry and thus blind him to the “hazardous move around his right flank.” Although this is logical, nowhere does Grant explicitly mention this ulterior motive. See Reid, “Another Look,” 298. 524

Notes to Pages 24–30

68. Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 221–22, 216–18. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 392–96, outlines Lee’s reactions in more detail. Gary’s commission as brigadier general dated to May, but he was not officially mustered at that rank until early July. 69. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 284; Grant Papers, 11:​​28–31; Catton, Grant Takes Command, 280. 70. OR, 36(3):878–79, 885; 51(2):997, 1005; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 770; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 566; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 223–24. An excellent summary of Lee’s options and considerations is in Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 396–400. 71. The best treatment of the battle of Trevilian Station is McKinney, Trevilian Station. 72. OR, 37(1): 346; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 523–24; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 401. For details on Hunter’s destructive visit to Lexington, see Gary C. Walker, Hunter’s Fiery Raid, 184–214, and Du Pont, Campaign of 1864, 68–70. 73. Grant Papers, 11:​​34–38; OR, 36(3):745–49; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 284– 87; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 198; William Howell Reed, War Papers, 123. Lewis E. Harvie, president of the Richmond & Danville Railroad, the one line that would not be directly affected by the capture of Petersburg, recognized the vulnerability of his railroad should Grant cross to the south side: “General Grant may reach the James River. He may cross it or place his army in a position to operate on both sides. If so, can his cavalry be better employed, will it not in all probability be employed to cut our communications?” See Harvie to General Beauregard, June 7, 1864, in Russell, “Eyewitness to War,” 62–66. 74. A comprehensive history of Petersburg is Scott and Wyatt, Petersburg’s Story; see 3–166, for a review of the city’s antebellum years. 75. Scott and Wyatt, Petersburg’s Story, 27–29, 126–27. A number of businesses in Petersburg today continue the tradition by incorporating “Cockade” into their names. 76. Scott and Wyatt, Petersburg’s Story, 83–88, 158. 77. Scott and Wyatt, Petersburg’s Story, 94–99. For a discussion of the Commonwealth’s railroads on the eve of the Civil War, see Johnston, Virginia Railroads, 1–19. 78. Henderson, “Evolution of Petersburg’s Economy,” 25; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 6. 79. Wyatt, “Rise of Industry,” 1–36; Calkins, “Geographic Description,” 47; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 6–7. 80. Henderson, Petersburg in the Civil War, 8–9; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 6–7. 81. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 8–9. 82. Scott and Wyatt, Petersburg’s Story, 100–124; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 9–11; Henderson, Petersburg in the Civil War, 1–15. 83. Reese, Proceedings, 116–17; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 15–21. 84. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 35–36, 44. Available documents shed little light on the motivation of the black men willing to fight for the Confederacy in 1861, but logic suggests that many of them did so in order to preserve their favored status in what had become a slaveholders’ republic. 85. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 45–52. 86. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, ser. 1, 7:502–3, 523–24; Bearss, River of Lost Opportunities, 84–88. 87. Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond, 352–53. 88. OR, 11(2):934–38; Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 2:394–99; French, Two Wars, 149; Lane, Dear Mother, 175–77; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 98–103. Notes to Pages 30–39

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89. Petersburg Common Council Minutes, March 5, 1862, Office of the Clerk of City Council, Petersburg, Va. (hereafter cited as Common Council Minutes); Samuel H. Walkup Diary, July 26 and July 28, 1862, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Thomas Bragg Diary, August 2, 1862, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; OR, 11(3):663, 668, (2):939; Charles H. Dimmock to Robert E. Lee, February 1, 1866, Charles Henry Dimmock Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 90. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 98, 108. 91. Letters of Samuel G. French and Charles H. Dimmock to Common Council, Common Council Minutes, December 12, 1862. 92. Common Council Minutes, December 12–13, 1862; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 108–9. 93. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 85–88, 93–95, 107, 138, 141–42. 94. John H. Claiborne to “My Dear Wife,” May 14, 1864, John H. Claiborne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia. For more on the atmosphere in Petersburg in May 1864, see Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 164–74. 95. Petersburg Daily Express, May 14, 1864; OR, 36(3):878–79. Chapter 2 1. William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 115; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 417. 2. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 36(3):598–99 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 11:​​19–20 (hereafter cited as Grant Papers); Reid, “Another Look,” 297; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 318; Livermore, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 37. 3. Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 233; Lindsell, “Grant’s Crossing of the James,” 160; Alfred Terry to “Dear Mammy,” May 25, 1864, Alfred Howe Terry Papers, Connecticut Historical Society. 4. OR, 36(3):598, 665. 5. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 187–88; Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 272–73; Grant Papers, 11:​​23; OR, 36(3): 662. Fort Powhatan was a Second System work designed to protect the upper James River. It was never fully garrisoned and abandoned prior to the Civil War. Remnants of the fort survive in 2017 on private property. 6. Grant Papers, 11:​​30–31; OR, 36(3):695, (1):302; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 196; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 31–32. 7. OR, 36(3):730–31. In his message to Meade on June 11 that outlined the general course of the movement south, Grant referred to the plans as those “heretofore agreed upon,” suggesting that he had consulted with Meade to some degree in developing the operation. See OR, 36(3):745. Ayres’s and Crawford’s divisions were the units in reserve. 8. OR, 36(3):745–46, 754–55; Grant Papers, 11:​​34–37. 9. Grant’s orders to Meade are in OR, 36(3):745–46, and Grant Papers, 11:​​36–37. Grant originally identified Coles Landing or Ferry, well downstream from Jones Bridge on the Chickahominy, as the embarkation point for the Eighteenth Corps, but changed his mind in a postscript, designating White House Landing on the Pamunkey for that purpose. 10. These orders are found in OR, 36(3):747–49. Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Cam-

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Notes to Pages 39–48

paign, 201–2, articulates Warren’s auxiliary mission of deceiving Lee. My thanks to the eminent student of this phase of the war, Gordon C. Rhea, who kindly shared drafts of his monograph on this phase of the campaign and whose article, “The Move to the James and the Battle of Riddell’s Shop,” is the most authoritative published source on events between the Chickahominy and the James, June 12–14. 11. OR, 36(3):754–55. Just as in the orders to Meade, Grant’s message to Butler contained a postscript changing Smith’s embarkation point from Coles Ferry to White House Landing. 12. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 188–90. 13. OR, 40(1):676; 36(3):769. 14. Badeau, Military History, 2:346; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 419; Meade, Life and Letters, 204. 15. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 195–96; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 413–14. Emphasis in the original. 16. Haines, Fifteenth New Jersey, 214–15. 17. Quoted in Rhea, “Move to the James,” 18, 20. 18. Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 140; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 98. Guy Vernor Henry would compile a long and admirable record in the U.S. Army after the Civil War, distinguishing himself in the Indian Wars and in the Spanish-­American War. He received a Medal of Honor for his service at Cold Harbor. 19. OR, 40(2):17; Rhea, “Move to the James,” 24; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 141; Denny, 25th Mass., 342; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 79–80; William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 122–23; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 97–99. 20. OR, 36(1):883; 40(1):296. 21. Lewis H. Steiner Diary, June 13, 1864, Lewis H. Steiner Collection, Maryland Historical Society (hereafter cited as Steiner Diary); George Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 157; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 166–67. 22. Walter Clark, Histories, 3:609; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 398–99; David M. Jordan, “Happiness Is Not My Companion,” 165. Jordan questions the veracity of Wilson’s account. 23. OR, 36(1):883–84, 902; (3):767; 40(2):6; Badeau, Military History, 2:348; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 167; Rhea, “Move to the James,” 19–20. A soldier in the Seventh Indiana recorded that the cavalry lost “3 killed and 7 wounded” in the operation, apparently repeating what he had been told because his regiment did not reach Long Bridge until 6:00 a.m. on June 13. Alexander B. Pattison Diary, June 13, 1864, Indiana Historical Society (hereafter cited as Pattison Diary). 24. OR, 40(2):6; John Lord Parker, Twenty-­Second Massachusetts Infantry, 466; War­ren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 26, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Dusseault, 39th Infantry, 22; Pattison Diary, June 12–13, 1864; Appleton et al., 5th Massachusetts Battery, 868; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 413–15. 25. Billings, Tenth Massachusetts Battery, 274; Armes, Ups and Downs, 96; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 440. 26. Almeron W. Stillwell Diary, June 13, 1864, Wisconsin Historical Society; Olcott, Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell, 260; Horace Fenn to “Dear Old Chum,” June 21, 1864, Horace

Notes to Pages 48–54

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Fenn Letters, Connecticut Historical Society; Haines, Fifteenth New Jersey, 216; DeMay, Civil War Diary of Berea M. Willsey, 156; OR, 40(2):9; Rosenblatt and Rosenblatt, Hard Marching, 229; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 167. 27. Samuel K. Gates Memoir, June 12, 1864, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Gates Memoir); Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 253–54; William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, June 13, 1864, New York Public Library; OR, 40(2):9. Gates misdated the departure from Cold Harbor as occurring on June 13. 28. OR, 40(2):9–10, (1):521–22; Gates Memoir, June 13, 1864; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 254; Weld, War Diary, 309. 29. Captain Albert L. Dodge, 39th United States Colored Troops, [to Laura Dodge, his wife], June 15, 1864, Albert F. Dodge Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 95. Some allowance should be made in accepting this story verbatim. 30. OR, 40(1):297; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 168. 31. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 196; OR, 40(1):12. 32. OR, 36(3):886; Susan Leigh Blackford, Letters from Lee’s Army, 253. 33. OR, 51(2):1004; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 774–76. 34. “Diary of Captain Washington L. Dunn, Co. A 27th Ga Regt.,” June 13, 1864, United Daughters of the Confederacy Typescripts, vol. 5, Georgia Department of Archives and History; Hunton, Autobiography, 133; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 776–77; W. M. Harris, Movements of the Confederate Army in Virginia, 31. 35. Rhea, “Move to the James,” 25; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 211; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 178; Walter H. Taylor, Four Years with General Lee, 177. Confederate troop strength is an estimate based on returns from June 30. 36. OR, 40(2):11; Samuel J. B. V. Gilpin Diary, June 13, 1864, E. N. Gilpin Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Gilpin Diary). Gordon Rhea addresses this action in a draft of his manuscript study, “June 13, 1864: Across the Chickahominy,” 6–7. 37. OR, 40(2):6, 11; Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 7–8. 38. OR, 40(1):644, (2):11–12; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 281; Benedict, Vermont, 2:648; Howard Coffin, Battered Stars, 345; Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 8–9. 39. Conner, Letters, 135; Cadmus Wilcox, Petersburg Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 14; Rhea, “Move to the James,” 25. Biographical information on Wilcox may be found in Patterson, From Blue to Gray. Conner had been appointed to temporary command of McGowan’s Brigade on June 4. 40. Gilpin Diary, June 13, 1864; Benedict, Vermont, 2:648; Howard Coffin, Battered Stars, 345; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 282; Wilcox, Campaign Report, Virginia Historical Society; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 420; Conner, Letters, 135; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 100–101; OR, 40(1):644; Rhea, “Move to the James,” 25. Chapman’s official report conflates this midafternoon attack with the subsequent Confederate assault in the evening. 41. Alfred S. Roe, Thirty-­Ninth Massachusetts, 216–17; Samuel Z. Ammen, “Maryland Troops in the Confederate Army,” June 13, 1864, Thomas Clemens Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Warren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 26, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Rhea, “Move to the James,” 25. 42. OR, 40(1):644; Wilcox, Campaign Report, Virginia Historical Society; Hoffman, Ver528

Notes to Pages 54–59

mont Cavalryman, 281; Conner, Letters, 135; Private William Andrew Mauney Diary, June 13, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy; Walter Clark, Histories, 2:173. 43. OR, 40(1):644, (2):645; Wilcox, Campaign Report, Virginia Historical Society; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 420; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 202; Rhea, “Move to the James,” 26; Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 16–17. Casualty figures are only estimates based primarily on Rhea’s conclusions. Wilcox reported a loss of “slightly over 100 men” and Alexander stated that Hill’s total losses amounted to “300 killed & wounded.” 44. Billings, Tenth Massachusetts Battery, 274–75; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 167; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 157–58; Keating, Carnival of Blood, 171; Lyman, “Operations of the Army of the Potomac,” 21; Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 17. 45. OR, 40(2):6; Washington A. Roebling Journal of Military Service, June 14, 1864, bound vol. 150, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Roebling Journal); Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 17–18. 46. Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 110–12; OR, 40(1):12, 273, (2):3, 12–13; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 288–89; Rhea, “Across the Chickahominy,” 18–19. 47. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 98–99; James H. Clark, Iron Hearted Regiment, 134; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 364–65. 48. Any number of sources document the staggered arrival of Brooks’s, Martindale’s, and Ames’s soldiers. For example, see S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 380–81; Denny, 25th Mass., 342–43; Derby, 27th Massachusetts, 328; Isaiah Price, Ninety-­Seventh Pennsylvania, 289; and John B. Foote to “Dear Mary,” c. June 20, 1864, John B. Foote Papers, 1862–65, Perkins Library, Duke University. 49. OR, 36(3):740, 40, (2):4–5; Grant Papers, 11:​​38. Warren Hannum is the most thoughtful analyst of this fateful oversight. See Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 233; and Hannum, “The Military Bridge Used by the Army of the Potomac in Crossing the James River, June 14 to 17, 1864,” submitted to the Director of the General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kan., February 23, 1931, 26, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as “Military Bridge”). 50. Grant Papers, 11:​​38; OR, 40(2):4–5, 12–13. Butler and Meade communicated their own orders to Benham to send the pontoons upriver on June 13 at 3:40 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., respectively. This suggests a lack of communication between Grant’s, Meade’s, and Butler’s headquarters, a phenomenon that would manifest itself with much greater consequence during the following thirty-­six hours. See OR, 40(2):4–5. 51. OR, 40(1):676–77; Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 235. 52. OR, 40(1):676; Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 132–33; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 299; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 172; Lindsell, “Grant’s Crossing of the James,” 160–61; Lyman, “Operations of the Army of the Potomac,” 22; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 203. 53. Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 173; Lindsell, “Grant’s Crossing of the James,” 166. 54. Lindsell, “Grant’s Crossing of the James,” 160–61; Gilbert Thompson, “Engineer Battalion,” 68, 70; Gilbert Thompson Memoir, June 18, 1864, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Thompson Memoir); Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 232. Lindsell credits Mendell with the quoted description of events, but it is more likely that Lt. Thomas Turtle of the U.S. Engineers is the source. Notes to Pages 59–64

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55. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 282; OR, 40(2):23; Thompson Memoir, June 15, 1864; Lyman, “Crossing of the James,” 28. Benham had never been a popular officer. A subordinate in the 1862 operations against Charleston over which Benham presided declared him “an ass—a dreadful man, of no earthly use except as a nuisance and obstruction.” Benham embellished his tarnished reputation by being ostentatiously drunk on April 29, 1863, during the river crossing operation prior to the battle of Chancellorsville, among other transgressions to which the army’s officers were privy. 56. Butler, Butler’s Book, 684–85; Gilbert Thompson, “Engineer Battalion,” 70; Lindsell, “Grant’s Crossing of the James,” 166; OR, 40(2):23–24. 57. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 159; OR, 40(1):301; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 549; Benjamin P. Thomas, Three Years with Grant, 218; Palladino, Diary of a Yankee Engineer, 142. A pontoon bridge assembled across the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky, may have exceeded the bridge length across the James. See Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 174. 58. Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 229–31; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 198–99; Lyman, “Operations of the Army of the Potomac,” 21; Roebling Journal, June 14, 1864. 59. OR, 40(2):12, (1):677; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, ser. 1, 10:​​ 129–33, 149–51; Badeau, Military History, 2:351; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 203–4; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 292–93; Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 236. A good summary of this operation is McPherson, War on the Waters, 199–200. 60. OR, 36(3):754–55; 40(2):12–13. 61. OR, 40(2):24. 62. Henry J. Madill Diary, June 14, 1864, Gregory Coco Collection, Harrisburg Civil War Round Table Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Craft, One Hundred Forty-­ First Pennsylvania, 211–12; Marbaker, Eleventh New Jersey, 192. 63. Francis Yeager Diary, June 14, 1864, bound vol. 183, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Silliker, Rebel Yell and Yankee Hurrah, 170; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 435; Russell C. White, Civil War Diary, 261. 64. OR, 40(2):5–6, 25; Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 455; John H. Rhodes, First Rhode Island Light Artillery, 301; William E. Endicott to “Dear Mother,” June 14, 1864, William E. Endicott Papers, Auburn University; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 440–41. The Federal soldiers were less impressed with the Wilcox house than with the fields surrounding it, describing the dwelling as “nothing remarkable” and “a queer old house with five gables.” William E. Endicott to “Dear Mother,” June 14, 1864; Chesson, Journal of a Civil War Surgeon, 169. 65. OR, 40(1):303, (2):5–6, 25; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 203–4. Meade’s camp near the home of John Tyler—“him of the big nose and small political principles,” according to Colonel Lyman—yielded some welcome vegetables and fresh milk for the headquarters entourage. Lyman, “Operations of the Army of the Potomac,” 21. 66. OR, 40(2):36, 76; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 366–67, 373; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 293. Smith acknowledged receiving written orders for an attack on Petersburg “the next morning” when he arrived at Bermuda Hundred at sunset, June 14. See Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 99–100. 67. OR, 40(2):29.

530

Notes to Pages 64–68

68. OR, 40(2):56–57; 51(1): 269–70. 69. OR, 40(2):57; 51(1):270; Malles, Bridge Building in Wartime, 245. 70. OR, 40(2):270; Malles, Bridge Building in Wartime, 245. 71. OR, 40(2):58. The rations arrived at 10:​​30 a.m. aboard the schooner Susan. However, Susan had a draught of eleven feet and would not have been able to land, even had it arrived in a timely fashion. She was sent up to City Point to await orders. Lieutenant Colonel Smith assumed responsibility for redirecting the loaded vessel. 72. OR, 40(1):303; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 527–28. 73. Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 463; Peabody, “Crossing of the James,” 133–35; Frederic S. Klein, “Lost Opportunity,” 45; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 548–49; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 199–200. 74. Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 130; Steiner Diary, June 15, 1864; Lieutenant Nathaniel Miller Talmage Memoir, June 14, 1864, bound vol. 142, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Gilpin Diary, June 14, 1864. 75. OR, 40(2):8; John Lord Parker, Twenty-­Second Massachusetts Infantry, 466–67; Samuel H. Edwards to “My Dear Puss,” June 15, 1864, Samuel H. Edwards Letters, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as Edwards Letters); Nevins, Diary of Battle, 418; Warren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 26, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Dusseault, 39th Infantry, 23; Roebling Journal, June 14, 1864; Appleton et al., 5th Massachusetts Battery, 868; Pattison Diary, June 14, 1864. 76. Britton and Reed, To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home, 239; Tyler, Recollections, 217; Alfred S. Roe, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 108; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 178. 77. Samuel B. Salsburg to “Dear Sister,” June 18, 1864, Samuel B. Salsburg Papers, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 178; Ethel Lowerre Phelps, “A Chaplain’s Life in the Civil War: The Diary of Win­throp Henry Phelps,” June 16, 1864, Winthrop Henry Phelps Papers, Library of Congress; Alfred S. Roe, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 108; Alfred S. Roe, Tenth Massachusetts, 288; Tyler, Recollections, 218. It is curious that such vandalism occurred so near to army headquarters. 78. De May, Willsey Diary, 156; Haines, Fifteenth New Jersey, 217; Greiner, Coryell, and Smither, Surgeon’s Civil War, 205. 79. Cuffel, Durell’s Battery, 186; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 131; Corporal Arthur B. Wyman Diary, June 14, 1864, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Wyman Diary); Weld, Diary and Letters, 309; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 163; Holahan, Diary, 225; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 254–55; Leander O. Merriam, “Personal Recollections of the War for the Union,” 47, bound vol. 190, Fredericksburg National Military Park. 80. Weld, Diary and Letters, 310; Wyman Diary, June 14, 1864; Daniel R. Larned to his sister, June 15, 1864, Daniel Reed Larned Papers, Library of Congress; OR, 40(1):521–22; Wilkinson, Mother May You Never See, 163, 165; Marvel, Burnside, 383. 81. Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 383; Russell C. White, Civil War Diary, 261–62; Samuel H. Edwards to “My Dear Puss,” June 15, 1864, Edwards Letters. According to Patrick, the plundering continued the following day as well. 82. Samuel H. Edwards to “My Dear Puss,” June 15, 1864, Edwards Letters; John G. Perry, Letter, June 21, 1864, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Steiner Diary, June 14, 1864.

Notes to Pages 68–73

531

83. OR, 40(1):594; Thienel, Mr. Lincoln’s Bridge Builders, 168–69. 84. Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 237; Hannum, “Military Bridge,” 28; Roebling Journal, June 14, 1864. 85. OR, 40(2):19. 86. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 292–94; OR, 40(2):36, 47, (1):12; Grant Papers, 11:​​45–46. 87. OR, 40(2):43–44; Howe, Wasted Valor, 19. 88. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 97–99; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 141. 89. August V. Kautz, “Siege of Petersburg,” 401; Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):237. 90. Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 231. 91. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 777–78; Crist, Papers of Jefferson Davis, 466–67; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 226–32. Lee knew that the enlistments of substantial numbers of Union regiments were expiring. 92. Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 232–35; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 778–79. Lee made a similar if briefer report to the secretary of war that evening. See OR, 40(2):651. Two pontoon bridges connected the north side with Chesterfield County between Drewry’s Bluff and Richmond. 93. OR, 40(2):652–53. 94. OR, 40(2):676. Events would demonstrate that Hoke either never received these orders or considered them subordinate to the direction of General Lee. 95. Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 579–81; Pierre G. T. Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 411–12. Paul indicated that his actual interview with General Lee did not occur until the following day. 96. John B. Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 231; James T. Perry Diary, June 14, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 16, 1864; James Adger Smyth to “My own Precious darling,” June 14, 1864, James Adger Smyth Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society. The Dispatch had compiled a long list of disrespectful names for Grant based on his initials, including “Unregenerate Sinner” and “Unalloyed Scoundrel.” Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 14, 1864. 97. Chapman, More Terrible Than Victory, 198–99; Joseph Banks Lyle to “Dear Dora,” June 14, 1864, Captain Joseph Banks Lyle Diary and Letters, Virginia Historical Society; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 244–45; Emerson and Stokes, Faith, Valor, and Devotion, 283–84; Private Alexander C. Jones Diary, June 14, 1864, Louisiana Historical Association Collection, Tulane University Special Collections; William Meade Dame to “My own Dear Mother,” June 14, 1864, William Meade Dame Letters, bound vol. 138, Fredericksburg National Military Park; William Nelson Pendleton to “My Beloved Children, Sue & Kate,” June 14, 1864, William Nelson Pendleton Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina. 98. James McDonnell, “To the Editors of the Irish-­American,” Irish-­American Weekly, June 23, 1864; Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 462; OR, 40(1):316. 99. Third Annual Report of the State Historian of the State of New York, 1897, 82–83; OR, 40(1):316–17, 303–4, (2):59; 51(1):270. The stream referred to as Harrison’s Creek was probably Cabin Creek. 100. OR, 40(1):304, 316–17; 51(1):270. Humphreys stated, “About four o’clock in the after-

532

Notes to Pages 74–80

noon, General Smith was informed by a staff officer sent by General Grant that the Second Corps was marching toward him on the road from Windmill Point.” This courier must have shared the message that Hancock received from Grant at 5:25 p.m., although Grant in his memoirs wrote that the note Hancock received from Smith (that was triggered by Smith reading Grant’s message) “seems to be the first information that General Hancock received of the fact that he was to go to Petersburg.” See Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 208–9; OR, 40(2):63; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 295. The simplest explanation for this incongruity is that Grant’s memory failed him while writing his memoirs. 101. Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 463; OR, 40(1):304; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 528. Chapter 3 1. Quoted in Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, xxv; Longacre, “Perfect Ishmaelite,” 18–19; U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(2):595 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted). 2. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, xxiii; Warner, Generals in Blue, 462–63. 3. Warner, Generals in Blue, 229–30; Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 177, 291. Hinks originally spelled his surname Hincks, but deleted the “c” when he joined the army in 1861. He resumed using the original spelling after the Civil War. Brig. Gen. Ed­ward A. Wild officially commanded the First Brigade, but he and some of his troops had been detached north of the James after Butler’s army had advanced up that river on May 5, leaving Colonel Holman the ranking officer south of the river. 4. Warner, Generals in Blue, 47; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 86; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 191. Brooks commanded the Department of the Monongahela from June 1863 through April 1864. 5. Warner, Generals in Blue, 312–13; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 197; Livermore, Days and Events, 380. 6. Welcher, Union Army, 479–80; Warner, Generals in Blue, 106–7; Wheeler, “Petersburg”; OR, 40(1):700.The temporary designations of these two units were Second Brigade, Third Division, Eighteenth Corps (Curtis) and Third Brigade, Third Division, Eighteenth Corps (Bell). 7. Warner, Generals in Blue, 257–58; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 40. Three women applied for Spear’s pension claiming to be his widow. 8. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 107; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 88; OR, 40(1):729. Smith provided similar strength figures in William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 65–66. Here, he acknowledged that he retained at least a fraction of Ames’s Tenth Corps division, although their presence did not inflate his strength estimate. In addition to the organic artillery assigned to the Eighteenth Corps, Special Orders No. 1, dated June 14, 1864, assigned Battery C, Third Rhode Island Artillery, Battery D, First U.S. Artillery, Battery D, Fourth U.S. Artillery, and the Seventh New York Battery to report to Smith at Point of Rocks, adding perhaps 600 men to Smith’s force. See OR, 40(2):41. Hinks reported an aggregate strength of 3,747 on June 15 in OR, 40(1):721. Joseph Mills Hanson, a National Park Service historian, calculated Smith’s total strength on June 15 as 16,915 men based on challenging Smith’s calculations of the number of men

Notes to Pages 81–85

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transported to and lost at Cold Harbor. See Hanson, “A Study of the Attack of June 15, 1864, including Combat Map 1-­A,” 10–14, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Hanson, “Study of the Attack of June 15, 1864”). 9. S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 381. Thompson stated that his regiment, a part of Brig. Gen. Hiram Burnham’s brigade of Brooks’s division, did not leave their transports until 10:​​00 p.m. 10. OR, 51(1):263–65; 40(1):721; Howe, Wasted Valor, 21–22; McMurray, Recollections, 33. 11. William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 80, 84; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 100; William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 70. Smith variously identified Kautz’s specified departure time as 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., an important distinction in evaluating Kautz’s performance that morning. 12. William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 84; OR, 40(1):729, 736, 738, 741, 743; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 101; “The Capture of Petersburgh Heights,” New York Times, June 19, 1864. 13. William S. Hubbell to “Dear Parents,” June 18, 1864, William S. Hubbell Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield; Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Captain Charles M. Coit Papers, Yale University (hereafter cited as Coit Papers); “The Capture of Petersburgh Heights,” New York Times, June 19, 1864; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 382; George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, George Naylor Julian Papers, University of New Hampshire (hereafter cited as Julian Papers). 14. Hanson, “Study of the Attack on June 15, 1864,” 23; OR, 40(1):700, 729, 738; 51(1):1270; statement of Charles W. Dodge, n.d., William Orland Bourne Papers, Library of Congress; Denny, 25th Mass., 344; Isaiah Price, Ninety-­Seventh Pennsylvania, 289; John B. Foote to “Dear Mary,” c. June 20, 1864, John B. Foote Papers, 1862–65, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Foote Papers); David Walbridge Kendall to “Dear Ones at Home,” June 21, 1864, David Walbridge Kendall Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Kendall Papers); George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers. 15. OR, 40(1):729, 738; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 101; Livermore, Days and Events, 355. The City Point Railroad was administratively a part of the South Side Railroad and had lost its official identity as a separate line. 16. Livermore, Days and Events, 356. 17. Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):315 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); Hanson, “Study of the Attack on June 15, 1864,” 24. Federal sources stated that the Confederates had four or six guns in place at Baylor’s farm, but Ferebee’s contemporary report indicated only two. 18. OR, 40(1):721; 51(1):265; George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers. 19. Longacre, Regiment of Slaves, 86–87; OR, 51(1):266; Anonymous, June 17, 1864, in Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, 570; William Glenn Robertson, “From the Crater to New Market Heights,” 174; Christian Fleetwood to Editor, Anglo African (New York), June 28, 1864, Carter G. Woodson Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Woodson Papers); Livermore, Days and Events, 356–57. 20. Redkey, Grand Army of Black Men, 103–5. 21. Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 329; OR, 40(1):724; Redkey, Grand 534

Notes to Pages 85–90

Army of Black Men, 99; “‘Colored Troops,’” 580; Charles Carleton Coffin, Four Years of Fighting, 356; Hall and Hall, Cayuga in the Field, 240; Livermore, Days and Events, 356. 22. Christian Fleetwood to Editor, Anglo African (New York), June 28, 1864, Woodson Papers; Whitefield McKinlay Papers, Library of Congress; OR, 40(1):724–25; 51(1):263, 266; Redkey, Grand Army of Black Men, 99; Livermore, Days and Events, 358; “The Negro Troops at Petersburgh: Letter from a Son of Frederick Douglass,” New York Times, June, 26, 1864; Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 526. Colonel Russell would receive a brevet to brigadier general for his service that day. 23. George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 382; George Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 162. 24. “The Capture of Petersburgh Heights,” New York Times, June 19, 1864; Charles Carleton Coffin, Boys of ’61, 356; OR, 40(2):490–91. 25. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 101; Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 99. 26. OR, 40(2):676. 27. OR, 40(2):658, 677, 707; 36(3):817, 819; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 235; Beauregard to E. P. Alexander, July 18, 1867, E. Porter Alexander Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Alexander Papers); Giles Buckner Cooke Diary, June 15, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Cooke Diary). Lee ordered Hoke to march to Petersburg on the morning of June 15 after learning that the skirmishing north of the James involved only Union cavalry. Hoke stated that these orders to cross the river reached him at 11:​​30 a.m. It is unclear whether Hoke received Beauregard’s orders and declined to obey them or if those orders never reached him. The precise strength of Hoke’s Division is conjectural. See Peabody, “Some Observations,” 150–51, and Peabody, “Crossing of the James,” 137, for varying estimates from the same author. 28. OR, 33:​​1292, 1307–8; 36(2):987, (3):865; Henry Wise to “My dear Wife,” May 11, 1864, Wise Family Papers, 1816–1898, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Wise Family Papers). Wise replaced Col. William Butler, whose reduced authority included only the subdistrict between the Appomattox River and Swift Creek. 29. For an excellent biography of Wise, see Craig M. Simpson, Good Southerner. 30. Strength reports and the table of organization for the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia as of June 10, 1864, are provided in OR, 36(3):890–93. The figures for Johnson’s Division must include Wise’s Brigade, as Fulton and Elliott did not have an average of 2,000 men each on June 10. See OR, 51(2):951 for Gracie’s detachment, 36(3):890, 896 for his return to the Southside, and 51(2):1004 for confirmation of Gracie’s arrival. For Ransom’s assignment north of the James, see OR, 51(2):979 and 36(3):872. Ransom had been wounded in May, and the brigade was under the temporary command of Col. Henry M. Rutledge. See Walter Clark, Histories, 3:357–58. The table of organization for the Department of Richmond is in OR, 36(3):862 and Gracie’s strength is listed in OR, 36(3):861. Hicksford is now a portion of the City of Emporia, Virginia. 31. Determining accurate strength figures for the Confederates on June 15 is an imprecise exercise. See Henry A. Wise to “My Dear Beloved Wife,” June 18, 1864, Wise Family Papers, for the figures for Wise’s Brigade and the militia, although he omits mention of the Georgians and South Carolinians in arriving at his estimate of 2,013 infantry present. After deducting the soldiers required to man “some 8 or 10 guns in position,” the number of foot soldiers in the line, he wrote, totaled “less than 1800.” Wise reported “a really effecNotes to Pages 90–93

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tive force of 2200 men of all arms” in his report of the action on June 15. See OR Supplement, 284–87, and Wise Family Papers. He repeated this estimate in a report to Beauregard. See Henry Wise Narrative, 59, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Beauregard Papers). Hanson, “Study of the Attack of June 15, 1864,” 14–19, provides the most systematic analysis and concludes that Beauregard had 4,256 men available for the defense of Petersburg. Frank E. Peabody credited Beauregard with about 4,000 men. See Peabody, “Some Observations,” 150. Returns for the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia as of June 10 credit Wise with 3,013 officers and men and Dearing with 1,806 for a total strength of 4,819. See OR, 36(3):890–91. However, the Sixth North Carolina Cavalry was posted in eastern North Carolina at this time and I deducted 500 to account for their absence. The Sixty-­Second Georgia Cavalry was also known as the Eighth Georgia Cavalry. See OR, 36(3):892 and 40(2):669. Beauregard maintained that his defenses consisted of “Wise’s Brigade of about 1,200 men, a small battalion of City Militia and reserves, a few batteries of light artillery and two small regiments of cavalry under Col. Dearing, in all about 2,000 men.” See Beauregard to E. P. Alexander, July 18, 1867, Alexander Papers; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 229; and OR, 40(2):675–76. The absence of either the Sixty-­Second Georgia Cavalry or Seventh Confederate States Cavalry would reduce Dearing’s strength proportionately. See also Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 835, which asserts that there were 3,000 Confederates available and twenty-­two guns. Internal evidence demonstrates that the Confederates had artillery in position along much of the Dimmock Line between batteries 3 and 11 and gives credence to this number. 32. Howe, Wasted Valor, 27; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 47–48; OR Supplement, 285; Wise Family Papers; Beauregard, “Four Days of Battle at Petersburg,” 540; Hoy, “Of the Siege of Petersburg,” 331; Hanson, “Study of the Attack of June 15, 1864,” 26; OR, 36(3):896– 97. 33. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 101; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 86. As late as 1:30 p.m. Smith was blaming the fight at Baylor’s farm for the disorganization of his march. See OR, 40(2):83. 34. S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 383; Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 106–7; Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 585. The wounded soldier, an Irishman, indulged in such histrionics that the Confederate skirmishers, fearing that his yells presaged an assault, quickly retreated. 35. Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 108; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 385–86; OR, 40(1):713; Cunningham, 118th New York, 132; “The Capture of Petersburgh Heights,” New York Times, June 19, 1864; William S. Hubbell to “Dear Parents,” June 18, 1864, Hubbell Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield. 36. OR, 51(1):1256, 1262; Derby, 27th Massachusetts, 330–31; Harvey Clark, My Experience with Burnside’s Expedition, 70–71; John E. Bassett Diary, June 15, 1864, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter cited as Bassett Diary); Denny, 25th Mass., 344–46; Hilton A. Parker to “Dear Sister,” June 19, 1864, Lieutenant Hilton A. Parker Letters, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Parker Letters). River Road was also called Spring Hill Road. 37. OR, 40(1):700; 51(1):1247; Linus Clark to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Clark Letter, Civil War Voices (accessed June 14, 2011); David Walbridge Kendall to “Dear Ones at Home,” June 21, 1864, Kendall Papers; John B. Foote to “Dear Mary,” c. June 20, 1864, Foote Papers. 536

Notes to Pages 94–95

38. OR, 40(1):721–22; 51(1):266. The Federals variously called Baxter Road Suffolk Stage Road or Norfolk Road. 39. Livermore, Days and Events, 358–59. 40. OR, 40(1):722; 51(1):266–67; Hall and Hall, Cayuga in the Field, 241. 41. OR, 40(1):729, 738; History of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, 123. 42. OR, 40(1):729–30, 738–39, 743; 51(1):1269; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 123–25; Cruikshank, Back in the Sixties, 67–68; Howe, Wasted Valor, 27–28. The sources disagree as to whether Mix responded to a threat to the left or right flank of Kautz’s line. I have chosen to place him on the right, consistent with the brigade’s position and Kautz’s report. 43. Livermore, Days and Events, 359; OR, 40(1):722; 51(1):267; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 223; McMurray, Recollections, 34; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 385. William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 98, estimated that the Confederates mounted at least thirty-­five pieces of artillery in the works. 44. Petersburg Daily Index-­Appeal, February 1, 1903; Robert W. Hicks Diary, June 15, 1864, Robert W. Hicks Diary and Letters, bound vol. 18-­08, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Hicks Diary); OR Supplement, 285; Henry A. Wise to “My Dear Beloved Wife,” June 18, 1864, Wise Family Papers; Henry Wise Narrative, 60–61, Beauregard Papers. 45. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 102; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 88–89; August V. Kautz, “Siege of Petersburg,” 401. Some Petersburg Campaign students have suggested that a “Cold Harbor Syndrome” animated Smith’s tentative generalship that day, but little evidence exists to support such a theory. 46. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 103, 141; William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 23, 33; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 89, 96; Livermore, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 54–55; Howe, Wasted Valor, 29. Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 87, suggested that Butler’s refusal to provide Smith with an engineer officer implied that Smith “was instructed to move rapidly, and when in front of the fortifications to assault them at once” and not to waste time with “interminable reconnaissances.” 47. Livermore, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 56; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 141; William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 79; OR, 40(1):722; Rhea, “Baldy Smith,” 23. 48. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 103–4; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 90; Livermore, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 54; OR, 40(1):304; Rhea, “Baldy Smith,” 23. The exact time when Hinks and Brooks managed to connect their lines is difficult to determine. Accounts peg it between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. Frederick Maximus Follett was a thirty-­three-­year-­old New Yorker, who had graduated in the U.S. Military Academy class of 1850 and spent his antebellum years on the Texas frontier and in Michigan, Florida, Kansas, on the Mormon Expedition to Utah, and in the Dakota Territory. He would die while on active duty at Fort McHenry in Baltimore at the age of forty-­one. 49. Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 107–14. 50. Peabody, “Crossing of the James,” 141; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 102. 51. Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 374, 380; OR, 40(2):83. Butler’s letter to Sarah includes a parenthetical reference to the time as “7 a.m.” but this makes no sense in the letter’s context. 52. Hanson, “Study of the Attack of June 15, 1864”; Philip S. Chase, Battery F, 197–98. The batteries were most likely Battery D, Fourth U.S. Artillery, Battery C, Third Rhode Island Light Artillery, and Battery F, First Rhode Island Light Artillery. Notes to Pages 96–101

537

53. S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 386; OR, 40(1):713–15; Charles A. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Coit Papers. 54. OR, 51(1):1247; 40(1):700; Wheeler, “Petersburg.” Colonel Bell assumed overall command of Curtis’s troops during the attack. 55. David Walbridge Kendall to “Dear Ones at Home,” June 21, 1864, Kendall Papers; Hilton A. Parker to “Dear Sister,” June 19, 1864, Parker Letters; Livermore, Days and Events, 369; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 386–87; Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Coit Papers; “The Capture of Petersburgh Heights,” New York Times, June 19, 1864; George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers. 56. S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 387; George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers; Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 113. 57. OR, 51(1)1247; Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 414; Longacre, “Roughest Kind of Campaigning,” 336; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 388; Linus Clark to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Clark Letter, Civil War Voices (accessed June 14, 2011); Howard Thomas, Boys in Blue, 208. Some accounts identify Hunt’s path as being between Batteries 5 and 6, but there is no appreciable defilade in this area. Beauregard’s statement that the Federals gained the rear of Battery 5 by penetrating the depression between Batteries 6 and 7 makes more sense. In 2017 Virginia Highway 36 follows this ravine between the surviving remnants of Batteries 6 and 7. 58. George L. Sherwood, Mathews Light Artillery; Penick’s Pittsylvania Artillery; Young’s Halifax Artillery and Johnson’s Jackson Flying Artillery, 59–61; W. Cullen Sherwood and Richard L. Nicholas, Amherst Artillery, Albemarle Artillery, and Sturdivant’s Battery, 204–5; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 388; George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers; Longacre, “Roughest Kind of Campaigning,” 336. Sherwood and Nicholas express skepticism that all Sturdivant’s guns were lost, citing a newspaper account, the relative lack of casualties among the battery men, and the presence of three guns with the battery on June 30. 59. OR, 51(1):1247–48; 40(1):714; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 388; George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers. 60. Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Coit Papers; “The Capture of Petersburgh Heights,” New York Times, June 19, 1864; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 390; OR, 40(1):714. Captain Julian reported a total of forty-­five casualties in the Thirteenth New Hampshire. See George Naylor Julian to “My dear Parents & Sister,” June 17, 1864, Julian Papers. 61. S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 390; Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Coit Papers; Wiatt, 26th Virginia Infantry, 25; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 243–44. 62. Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Coit Papers; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 388; David Walbridge Kendall to “Dear Ones at Home,” June 21, 1864, Kendall Papers. 63. OR, 40(1):714; Kreutzer, Ninety-­Eighth N.Y., 211; Howe, Wasted Valor, 33. 64. William S. Hubbell to “Dear Parents,” June 18, 1864, Hubbell Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield. 65. Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 74–75; Howe, Wasted Valor, 33; Warner, Generals in Blue, 471.

538

Notes to Pages 101–6

66. OR, 51(1):1262–63; Denny, 25th Mass., 347; Samuel A. Putnam, 25th Mass., 298–99; Bassett Diary, June 15, 1864; Harvey Clark, My Experience with Burnside’s Expedition, 71. 67. OR, 51(1):1256, 1262–63; Howe, Wasted Valor, 33. 68. OR, 40(1):722, 725; 51(1):267. 69. OR, 40(1):725; 51(1):267; Ulmer, Adventures, 45; Bryant, Diary, 162–63; “‘Colored Troops,’” 580. 70. OR, 40(1):726; 51(1):267; George W. Williams, History of the Negro Troops, 236; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 225; Jewett, Boy Goes to War, 56–57. 71. OR, 40(1):725. 72. OR, 51(1):268; Hall and Hall, Cayuga in the Field, 241. 73. OR, 51(1):264, 268; McMurray, Recollections, 37–38. 74. OR, 40(1):236–37; 51(1):268–69; McMurray, Recollections, 38; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 226; Oren, Dearest Sattie, 80. General Humphreys stated that Hinks calculated his division’s loss that day as 507 killed and wounded. See Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 208n1. Confederate losses and even the specific identities of the troops in each of the captured batteries remain speculative. 75. Redkey, Grand Army of Black Men, 101–2; W. F. Smith, “To the Eighteenth Corps,” 571; OR, 40(1):21; Edward K. Russell to “My Dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Edward K. Russell Letters, bound vol. 405, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Charles J. Paine to “Dear Father,” June 17, 1864, Charles Jackson Paine Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 76. Abbott, Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 84; George Breck, June 22, 1864, to the Rochester (N.Y.) Union and Advertiser, June 30, 1864; OR, 40(2):490–91. 77. Major Albert Brooker to “My Dear Mother,” June 20, 1864, Albert Brooker Letters, bound vol. 53, Richmond National Battlefield Park. 78. William Foster to “Dear Kate,” June 18, 1864, William Foster Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society; “‘Colored Troops,’” 581; Helmreich, To Petersburg, 205; Jackson and O’Donnell, Back Home in Oneida, 142. 79. Charles Carleton Coffin, Four Years of Fighting, 362–63. 80. OR, 40(2):683, (1):21. Wise reported twelve killed, sixty-­two wounded, and 129 missing and the loss of ten guns. See the synopsis of Wise’s report, Wise Family Papers, and OR Supplement, 286. Smith claimed that Brooks seized ten guns, making sixteen artillery pieces captured in all. See William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 24, 84, and OR, 40(1):21. 81. Livermore, Days and Events, 360–61; OR, 40(1):304–5, 317, (2):59; 51(1):270; Fran­ cis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 529–30; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 207–9. Humphreys, Livermore, and others wrote that one of Grant’s staff officers reached Smith about 4:00 p.m. to inform him of Hancock’s approach, triggering Smith’s request for Hancock’s assistance. 82. OR, 40(2):643, (1):305; 51(1):270; Cruickshank, Back in the Sixties, 68. Smith would contradict Morgan’s version of events, denying that he learned anything of Hancock’s proximity until 9:30 p.m., when he first met with Hancock. William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 95. 83. OR, 40(2):643–44, (1):722. 84. Livermore, Days and Events, 361. 85. OR, 51(1):270; 40(1):305, 317.

Notes to Pages 106–14

539

86. Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 11:​​47 (hereafter cited as Grant Papers); Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 200–201; OR, 40(2):73. The precise time of Grant’s arrival at City Point cannot be determined from the available evidence. 87. OR, 40(1):305, 314, 366; Winfield Scott Hancock to General Seth Williams, June 21, 1864, Winfield Scott Hancock Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg, 79, 94; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 105. Smith timed his meeting with Hancock as both 9:00 p.m. and “after 9:30 p.m.” Hancock believed that Birney and Gibbon had completed their relief of Smith’s men between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, but Gibbon was clear that his men did not reach their positions until between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. on June 16. 88. The voluminous correspondence regarding Barlow’s march on June 15 may be found in OR, 40(2):436–44. 89. OR, 40 (1):705; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 93–102; William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 25, 91–102; Schiller, Autobiography of Wil­ liam F. Smith, 104–5, 145–51. 90. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 105; OR, 40(2):83; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 375, 382–83; William F. Smith, “General W. F. Smith at Petersburg,” 638; Butler, Butler’s Book, 689. Bruce Catton, citing Smith’s admission that his failure to have remembered Butler’s order can only be explained by a psychologist, sarcastically suggests that Smith’s fable is more evidence that “Smith’s behavior through the 1864 campaign greatly needs a thorough psychological study.” Bruce Catton, Grant Takes Command, 514n7. It should be noted that the judicious Gordon Rhea surprisingly accepts this dubious explanation for Smith’s failure to continue his assault. See Rhea, “Baldy Smith,” 26. 91. Edward W. Hinks to William F. Smith, January 1, 1866, William Farrar Smith Papers, Vermont Historical Society; Livermore, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 67–69. 92. Cleaves, Meade of Gettysburg, 260–61; OR, 40(1):313–15; David M. Jordan, Winfield Scott Hancock, 145–46; Tucker, Hancock the Superb, 239–40. 93. OR, 36(1):25; 46(1):23–24; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 293–94; Rhea, “Baldy Smith,” 28; Livermore, Days and Events, 362; Bruce, “Petersburg—Fort Harrison,” 115; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 268; Badeau, Military History, 2:361–62; Livermore, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 73; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 202. William F. Smith attempted to refute Grant’s postwar criticism point by point in “Movement against Petersburg,” 77–102, and Chattanooga to Petersburg, 60–112. 94. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 162–63; William A. Ketcham Memoirs, Indiana Historical Society; Wilkeson, Recollections, 161–62. 95. Mowris, One Hundred Seventeenth N.Y., 115; Philip S. Chase, Battery F, 198; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 426; William F. Smith, “General W. F. Smith at Petersburg,” 637; OR, 40(2):61; McMurray, Recollections, 39; William F. Smith, “Movement against Petersburg,” 92; Dollard, Recollections, 127–28. Records indicate that the moon was at three-­ quarters full that night. My thanks to William Marvel for alerting me to this fact. 96. Beauregard, “Four Days of Battle at Petersburg,” 541. 97. OR, 40(2):83, (1):21. 98. Grant Papers, 11:​​55. 99. Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 581; OR, 40(2):656; Beauregard,

540

Notes to Pages 115–20

“Battle of Petersburg,” 415. It is possible that Beauregard reached Petersburg shortly after the Union attacks had begun, not just prior to their commencement. 100. Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 568, 581; Beauregard, “Four Days of Battle at Petersburg,” 540; Joseph Mills Hanson, “Documentation for Combat Map No 1-­B,” 4–6, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Hanson, “Combat Map No 1-­B”); Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 75. 101. Wolfe, Private F. W. D., 23; William R. Barry to “Dear Sally,” June 22, 1864, William R. Barry Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as Barry Correspondence); DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 72; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 397; Hagood, Memoirs, 265; William M. Thomas, “Slaughter Pen at Petersburg,” 224; Barefoot, General Robert F. Hoke, 202. 102. OR, 36(3):817; Hanson, “Combat Map No 1-­B,” 7-­A; Wolfe, Private F. W. D., 23; William R. Barry to “Dear Sally,” June 22, 1864, Barry Correspondence; OR, 40(1):801; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 73; Hagood, Memoirs, 263, 265–66; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 581. Hagood’s strength is estimated from the return on May 21 less the brigade’s casualties at Cold Harbor. 103. OR, 40(1):801; Wolfe, Private F. W. D, 23; Hagood, Memoirs, 265–67; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 398; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 568, 580; Captain Sydenham B. Alexander, “Narrative,” Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina; David A. Hampton to “Dear Uncel and family,” June 19, 1864, Caleb Hampton Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Hicks Diary, June 15, 1864; William M. Thomas, “Slaughter Pen at Petersburg,” 225; Walter Clark, Histories, 4:534; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 77; Barefoot, General Robert F. Hoke, 204. Beauregard would claim that he selected the Hagood Line, although there is no evidence to support such an assertion. See Beauregard, “Four Days of Battle at Petersburg,” 541. According to Private Dantzler, Hagood’s regiments aligned from left to right, Twenty-­Seventh South Carolina, Twenty-­First South Carolina, Eleventh South Carolina, Seventh South Carolina Battalion, and Twenty-­Fifth South Carolina. See also William M. Thomas, “Slaughter Pen at Petersburg,” 223, for evidence that the Seventh South Carolina Battalion occupied two detached forts astride the City Point Railroad about a mile west of Battery 5. 104. OR, 40(2):656–58; 36(3):725, 819, 872–74; Cooke Diary, June 15, 1864; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 781; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 235–36; William Henry Harder Memoir, 481, 487, Tennessee State Library and Archives (hereafter cited as Harder Memoir); Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 203; Day, 49th North Carolina, 75; Roulhac, “Forty-­Ninth N.C. Infantry,” 70; Day, “Life among the Bullets,” 140; James Carson Elliott, Southern Soldier Boy, 22; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 570; Howe, Wasted Valor, 38. 105. OR, 40(2):657, 677; Bernard, War Talks, 225; Henry A. Wise to “My Dear Beloved Wife,” June 18, 1864, Wise Family Papers; Harder Memoir, 487; Howe, Wasted Valor, 38. 106. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 781–83; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 235–36; OR, 40(2):654. 107. Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 237, 243–44; OR, 40(2):655; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 409–11; Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, 530; Howe, Wasted Valor, 38–40. 108. Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 456; William Farrar Smith, From Chatta-

Notes to Pages 120–23

541

nooga to Petersburg, 87; Orrin Sweet Allen to “Dear Frank,” June 17, 1864, Orrin Sweet Allen Letters, Virginia Historical Society. Chapter 4 1. Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:466; James T. Perry Diary, June 15, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Thomas Foreman Screven to “Dear Ade,” June 16, 1864, Screven Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; J. W. Biddle to “My dear Rosa,” June 16, 1864, Samuel Simpson Biddle Letters, 1860–66, Perkins Library, Duke University. 2. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(1):760 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):249 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); Diary of John R. Zimmerman, June 15, 1864, bound vol. 177, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Zimmerman Diary); Loehr, Old First Virginia Infantry, 52; Hunton, Autobiography, 114. Aylett commanded the Virginia brigade formerly led by Seth Barton. 3. OR Supplement, 249; OR, 40(1):760; Joseph Pryor Fuller Diary, June 16, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Fuller Diary); Captain Joseph Banks Lyle Diary and Letters, June 16, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 836. Only four of Field’s brigades crossed the James early that morning. Bratton’s South Carolinians crossed around noon. See OR, 40(1):766. The accompanying artillery consisted of the battalions of Lt. Col. Frank Huger, Maj. John C. Haskell, and Maj. W. Hampton Gibbes. 4. OR, 40(2):659; T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard, 230. 5. OR, 51(2):1078. For a discussion of the communications problems between Beauregard and Lee, see Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 159–60. 6. OR, 40(2):659; Giles Buckner Cooke Diary, June 16, 1864, Virginia Historical Society. 7. Bolling Hall Junior to “My dear father,” June 21, 1864, Hall Family Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as Hall Family Papers). 8. OR Supplement, 235; OR, 51(1):1167; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 137–38; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 387. 9. OR Supplement, 235–36; OR, 51(1):1167–68; Osborn, “Bermuda Hundred,” 196–98. 10. OR, 40(1):683–91, (2):101; Bolling Hall Junior to “My dear Father, June 21, 1864, Hall Family Papers; Timothy W. Bludworth to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Letters of Timo­thy W. Bludworth, William Henry Watson Family Papers, University of West Florida; Henry C. Trumbull to “Dear Courant,” Hartford Courant, June 29, 1864; Stowits, One-­Hundredth New York, 268; Peck, Army Journal, 208. 11. OR, 40(1)689–90; William Henry Harder Memoir, 481, Tennessee State Library and Archives (hereafter cited as Harder Memoir); Brady, Eleventh Maine, 208; Trumbull, “Dear Courant,” Hartford Courant, June 29, 1864. 12. OR, 40(1):683–88. 13. OR, 40(1):684; David D. Roe, Civil War Soldier’s Diary, 220; Jenkins, “39th Illinois,” 135. Ames was in command of that division of the Tenth Corps temporarily designated as the Third Division, Eighteenth Corps that included Bell’s and Curtis’s brigades, which fought with Smith south of the Appomattox on June 15. 542

Notes to Pages 124–28

14. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 299; OR, 40(2):98, 111. 15. OR, 40(2):101, 106, (1):677; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 385; Petersburg Daily Index-­Appeal, February 1, 1903; Russell, “Eyewitness to War,” 72. 16. “Crossing of the James,” 568. Warren T. Hannum, “The Military Bridge Used by the Army of the Potomac in Crossing the James River June 14 to 17, 1864,” 20–22, submitted to the Director of the General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kan., February 23, 1931, 26, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as “Military Bridge”) provides a summary of the bridge’s traffic on June 15–17. 17. OR, 40(2):49–51, (1):167, 522; Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 11:​​51 (hereafter cited as Grant Papers); Arthur B. Wyman Diary, June 15, 1864, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 164–65. 18. Washington A. Roebling Journal of Military Service, June 15, 1864, bound vol. 150, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Roebling Journal); Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 161; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 131; Holahan, Diary, 226. 19. Marvel, Burnside, 384; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 103; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 131; Sergeant Joseph R. Atkins Diary, June 16, 1864, bound vol. 359, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Atkins Diary); Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 156; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 131, 136; Memoir of Private Conrad Dippel, William Orland Bourne Papers, Library of Congress. 20. OR, 40(2):49–51, 86, (1):167; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 163; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 206; Lyman, “Crossing of the James,” 28–29. The USS Atlanta had previously been a Confederate vessel of the same name. Captured trying to run the blockade of Savannah, Georgia, in June 1863, she was incorporated into the Union navy and stationed in the James. See Lowe, Meade’s Army, 449n196. 21. Henry A. Wise to “My Dear Beloved Wife,” June 18, 1864, and Wise’s report of operations around Petersburg, Wise Family Papers, 1816–1898, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Wise Family Papers); Miscellaneous Unbound Material, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Beauregard Papers). Wise referred to the Shand house as the Webb house, as it appears in early war maps of the Petersburg area. 22. Miscellaneous Unbound Material, Beauregard Papers; Hagood, Memoirs, 267; Hall T. McGee Diary, June 16, 1864, South Carolina Historical Society; William R. Barry to “Dear Sally,” June 22, 1864, William R. Barry Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society. 23. Day, “Life among the Bullets,” 141; Day, 49th North Carolina, 75; Roulhac, “Forty-­ Ninth N.C. Infantry,” 70; James Carson Elliott, Southern Soldier Boy, 22; T. H. Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 203; Oliver D. Cooke to “My dear Colonel” [Wil­ liam J. Clarke], July 3, 1864, William J. Clarke Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Clarke Papers). 24. William Leak to “Dear Wife and children,” June 20, 1864, William Leak Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Leak Papers); Samuel Catawba Lowry Diary, July 14, 1864, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter cited as Lowry Diary); Bushrod Johnson, “Report of Operations at Petersburg, Va., June 16–18, 1864,” War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives (hereafter cited as “Report of Operations”). 25. “Report of Operations.” Johnson listed his effective strength as Ransom, 2,581; Fulton, 633; Wise under Page, 1,363; Elliott, 1,887; Gracie 944; six companies of the Sixty-­Fourth Georgia under Captain Pritchett, 160, for a total of 7,568. Gracie’s Brigade and the Fifty-­ Notes to Pages 128–32

543

Sixth North Carolina must be subtracted to arrive at my estimate for Johnson’s numbers on the line at midday June 16. 26. OR, 40(1):317; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 532–34. 27. Howe, Wasted Valor, 44; Silliker, Rebel Yell and Yankee Hurrah, 171. The accusatory soldier, Pvt. John West Haley of the Seventeenth Maine, implied incorrectly that Egan had already gained the star of a brigadier general. He would not do so until September 1864. 28. Howe, Wasted Valor, 44–46; OR, 40(1):390–91, 394; 51(1):235–36; Burgwyn, “Clingman’s Brigade,” 494; Silliker, Rebel Yell and Yankee Hurrah, 171–72. Other Union casualties went unreported, as did Confederate losses, which must have been negligible. Egan would be partially paralyzed by his wound and not return to duty until September. Drum Major William G. Brady of the Eighty-­Sixth New York believed that “half of the officers was drunk” and the captain in charge of the 110th Pennsylvania “was so drunk he couldn’t hardly walk.” See William G. Brady to “Dear Sir,” June 20, 1864, William G. Brady Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield. Howe believes that Ransom’s brigade helped repulse Egan’s assaults, a possibility as Pvt. John W. Haley of the Seventeenth Maine, Egan’s sarcastic critic, located the attack “not far from the Avery House and near where the Rebel works covered the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad.” Silliker, Rebel Yell and Yankee Hurrah, 171. However, Battery 12 and the Hare house plateau are about a mile north of the Avery house site, making it unlikely that a single brigade would span such a large expanse. 29. Howe, Wasted Valor, 46–47; Livermore, Days and Events, 363–64; “Diary of Captain Washington L. Dunn, Co. A 27th Ga Regt.,” June 16, 1864, United Daughters of the Confederacy Typescripts, vol. 5, Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as “Diary of Washington L. Dunn”); Leverett N. Case, “Personal Recollections,” 158. 30. OR, 40(2):112; Livermore, Days and Events, 364. 31. Livermore, Days and Events, 364–65; Howe, Wasted Valor, 47–48; OR, 51(1):1256. 32. OR, 40(1):714–15; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 399; David Walbridge Kendall to “Dear Ones at Home,” June 21, 1864, David Walbridge Kendall Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Kendall Papers); Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Captain Charles M. Coit Papers, Yale University (hereafter cited as Coit Papers); George Naylor Julian, Letter, June 17, 1864, George Naylor Julian Papers, University of New Hampshire. 33. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 164; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 207; Lyman, “Crossing of the James,” 29; OR, 40(2):90–91, (1):167–68. 34. OR Supplement, 219–20; Billings, Tenth Massachusetts Battery, 276–77; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 275. 35. William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, June 16, 1864, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as Harris Journal); Captain Charles M. Coit to “Dear Sis & all,” June 16, 1864, Coit Papers; OR, 40(1):522. 36. OR, 40(1):532, 544, 576, 587; Weld, War Diary, 309; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 136; Holahan, Diary, 226; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 156; Samuel K. Gates Memoir, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Alexander S. Patten Diary, June 16, 1864, bound vol. 284, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Patten Diary); Dippel Memoir, William Orland Bourne Papers, Library of Congress; Atkins Diary, June 16, 1864. Hartranft would be promoted to brigadier general on July 2, to date from May 12, 1864. 37. Nevins, Diary of Battle, 420; Roebling Journal, June 16, 1864. 38. Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 437; John Lord Parker, Twenty-­ 544

Notes to Pages 132–35

Second Massachusetts Infantry, 467; Thomas Chamberlin, One-­Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania, 260; Dusseault, 39th Infantry, 23; Warren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 26, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). 39. Nevins, Diary of Battle, 420; Roebling Journal, June 16, 1864; John Lord Parker, Twenty-­Second Massachusetts Infantry, 467; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 437; Dusseault, 39th Infantry, 23; Warren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 26, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Alexander B. Pattison Diary, June 16, 1864, Indiana Historical Society (hereafter cited as Pattison Diary); Charles H. Salter to “My Dear Friend,” June 21, 1864, in Poremba, If I Am Found Dead, 186; Donald L. Smith, Twenty-­Fourth Michigan, 210. Italics in the original. 40. Roebling Journal, June 16, 1864; John Lord Parker, Twenty-­Second Massachusetts Infantry, 467–68; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 437; Warren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 26, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Dusseault, 39th Infantry, 23. 41. OR, 40(2):86–87; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 207; Lyman, “Crossing of the James,” 30; Howe, Wasted Valor, 49–51. 42. Charles R. Francis to “Dear Cousin,” July 9, 1864, Terrell-­Francis Family Letters, bound vol. 66, Fredericksburg National Military Park; E. M. Morrison, “Capture and Reoccupation,” 21; Hunton, Autobiography, 114; George Wise, Seventeenth Virginia, 187–88; Zimmerman Diary, June 16, 1864; OR, 40(1):684. 43. OR, 40(1):683–89, (2):98, 106–7; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 390–91; David D. Roe, Civil War Soldier’s Diary, 220. 44. OR, 40(2):99; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 392. 45. Osborn, “Bermuda Hundred,” 199–201; Dickey, Eighty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 329; OR, 40(1):683–87. 46. OR, 40(2):111; Graham, “Fifty-­Sixth Regiment,” 359; Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 203; Roulhac, “Forty-­Ninth N.C. Infantry,” 70. 47. Unidentified soldier in the Second Georgia to Dr. Lee, June 21, 1864, Dr. Lee Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Dr. Lee Papers); Jordan, Some Events, 84–85; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 179. Law had been seriously wounded at Cold Harbor. 48. Charles M. Clark, History of the Thirty-­Ninth Illinois, 157; OR, 40(1):688, 691; George Stearns to “Dear Mother,” June 18, 1864, George Stearns Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society; Jesse L. Pendergrast Memoir, William Orland Bourne Papers, Library of Congress; Unidentified soldier in the Second Georgia to Dr. Lee, June 21, 1864. 49. Howe, Wasted Valor, 51–52; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 157; Chick, Battle of Petersburg, 169–70. 50. Osborn, “Bermuda Hundred,” 201–2. 51. OR, 40(1):422–23; OR Supplement, 219–20, 224; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 206; David Walbridge Kendall to “Dear ones at Home,” June 21, 1864, Kendall Papers; William S. Hubbell to “Dear Parents,” June 18, 1864, William S. Hubbell Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield; Lyman, “Crossing of the James,” 30; “The Petersburg Defences,” New York Times, June 21, 1864. 52. OR, 51(1):1257, 1263; 40(1):801; James Adger Smyth to “My own darling Wife,” June 17, 1864, James Adger Smyth Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as Smyth Correspondence). 53. OR, 40(1):544–45; Harris Journal, June 16, 1864; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 156– Notes to Pages 136–42

545

57; Walter N. Jones, “Some Recollection,” 441–42. General Hancock mentioned that two Ninth Corps brigades assisted him that evening. The other brigade was likely Col. Benjamin Christ’s of Willcox’s division, although elements of Col. John I. Curtin’s brigade of Potter’s division played a small role as well. See OR, 40(1):306; Chandler, “Petersburg.” 54. OR, 40(1):376–79; Joseph R. C. Ward, One Hundred and Sixth Pennsylvania, 274; Armstrong, Nuggets of Experience, 57; J. R. Cooper, letter published in the Batavia (N.Y.) Republican Advocate, July 8, 1864. 55. Roe and Nutt, History of the First Regiment, 179; Howe, Wasted Valor, 53–55; Hunt, Colonels in Blue, 139. 56. James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 441–42; Howe, Wasted Valor, 55. 57. OR, 40(1):333; Hain, Perry County, 662–63; Frank A. Burr, James Addams Beaver, 158– 59; Verel R. Salmon, “Onward to Hell” (manuscript, History of the 145th Pennsylvania Infantry, unpaginated), Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as “Onward to Hell”; Irvin G. Myers, We Might as Well Die Here, 207; Howe, Wasted Valor, 56. The alignment of Barlow’s brigades south of Miles is unclear, although Beaver probably held Barlow’s left. 58. Cole, Under Five Commanders, 215; “Onward to Hell”; Hain, Perry County, 663; Burr, James Addams Beaver, 160–61. 59. OR, 40(1):769–72; Pomfret, “Letters of Frederick Lockley,” 81–82; Third Annual Report of the State Historian of the State of New York, 1897, 94–95; “Onward to Hell.” Responsibility for capturing these flags caused quite a stir as Wise’s Brigade received credit in the press, much to General Johnson’s objection. 60. Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 236; Dennis L. Sweeney to “Dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Dennis L. Sweeney Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Sweeney Letter); Lowe, Meade’s Army, 208; Ropes, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 162. 61. OR, 40(1):306, 423; 51(2):1078–79; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 236; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 269; David L. Thompson Letter, June 17, 1864, David L. Thompson Papers, New-­York Historical Society; Howe, Wasted Valor, 58. The three batteries captured were 3, 13, and 14. 62. James Adger Smyth to “My own darling Wife,” June 17, 1864, Smyth Correspondence; Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:466; “The Petersburg Defences,” New York Times, June 21, 1864; OR, 40(2):117; Lyman, “Crossing of the James,” 30; Howe, Wasted Valor, 57. 63. “Onward to Hell”; Howe, Wasted Valor, 59. 64. OR, 40(2):50, 86–89, 96, (1):505–6, 513, 491–93, 495–96, 499, 501, 504; Tyler, Recollections, 219. 65. Lee inquired at 10:​​30 a.m., 1:15 p.m., 3:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m. See OR, 40(2):659; 51(2):1079; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 571; and Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 159–61. 66. OR, 40(2):660–62, 664–65; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 243–45. 67. August V. Kautz, “Siege of Petersburg,” 405. 68. Beauregard, “Letter of General Beauregard to General C. M. Wilcox,” 5:121; Ropes, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 163; OR, 40(2):117; Meade, Life and Letters, 205; Howe, Wasted Valor, 59–61. 69. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 206; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 208; Grant Papers, 11:​​65. 70. Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 395–96; John B. Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 232–33. 71. OR, 40(2):87, 100. 546

Notes to Pages 142–47

71. OR, 40(2):87, 100. 72. William Briggs Shand to William Augustine Shand, April 3, 1892, Petersburg National Battlefield; Charles Carleton Coffin, Four Years of Fighting, 363–64; Major General Bushrod Johnson Diary, June 17, 1864, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives (hereafter cited as Johnson Diary); Henry A. Wise to “My Dear Beloved Wife,” June 18, 1864, Wise Family Papers; Henry Wise Narrative, Beauregard Papers; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 132; Howe, Wasted Valor, 62–63. 73. Charles Carleton Coffin, Four Years of Fighting, 363–64; Howe, Wasted Valor, 62–63. 74. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 162; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 166. Potter has yet to find his biographer. 75. Warner, Generals in Blue, 191–92; Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” July 14, 1864, Charles Cummings Papers, Vermont Historical Society (hereafter cited as Cummings Papers); Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 281; Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 141. 76. Leander O. Merriam, “Personal Recollections of the War for the Union,” 49, bound vol. 190, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Merriam, “Personal Recollections”); Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 271–72, 279; Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” June 18, 1864, Cummings Papers; Marvel, Race of the Soil, 243–44; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire, 444–45; Jackman, Sixth New Hampshire, 292; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 366; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 409. 77. OR, 40(1):545; Burrage, Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts, 204; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 272–73; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 409; Holahan, Diary, June 17, 1864. Some accounts have the Second New York Mounted Rifles in Curtin’s advanced line. See Howe, Wasted Valor, 63 and 171n22, who makes the case that the Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania only came up after the attack began and the Second New York Mounted Rifles had retreated, based on Burrage, Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts, 205–6. 78. OR, 40(2):134; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 409. Most of Potter’s troops identified the attack as beginning at 3:15 a.m. A breathless account contends that the attack commenced based on the synchronization of the officers’ watches. See Charles Carleton Coffin, Four Years of Fighting, 364–65. 79. OR, 40(1):545; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 158; Merriam, “Personal Recollections,” 49; General Simon Goodell Griffin, “Civil War Recollections,” June 17, 1864, Dartmouth College; “Our Army Correspondence,” New Hampshire Sentinel (Keene), June 30, 1864; Henry Clay Heisler to “Dear Sister,” June 22, 1864, Henry Clay Heisler Papers, Library of Congress. Potter also lost his horse to Confederate fire at some point during the attack. 80. Cogswell, Eleventh New Hampshire, 377; Willard J. Templeton to “Dear Friends at Home,” June 18, 1864, Willard J. Templeton Papers, New Hampshire State Library; Holahan, Diary, June 17, 1864; Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” July 3, 1864, Cummings Papers. 81. OR, 40(1):530, 545, 569, (2):305; Gould, Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, 197, 201–2; Merriam, “Personal Recollections,” 49; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 409; Cogswell, Eleventh New Hampshire, 381; Weaver, Branch, Harrington, and Staunton Hill Artillery, 23; Henry A. Wise to “My Dear Beloved Wife,” June 18, 1864, Wise Family Papers; Wiatt, Confederate Chaplain, 178; OR Supplement, 287–88; Oliver D. Cooke to “My dear Colonel” (William J. Clarke), July 3, 1864, Clarke Papers; Willard J. Templeton to “Dear Friends at Home,” June 18, 1864, Templeton Papers, New Hampshire State Library. Estimates of the number of Confederate prisoners taken by Potter’s division range from 350 to Notes to Pages 147–51

547

1,000. Potter and others reported taking 1,500 small arms and five colors. In addition to the flags of Fulton’s regiments, a member of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania recaptured one of the regimental banners lost by the Seventh New York Heavy Artillery the previous day. This is not to be confused with another flag from that unit retained by the Confederates that became a bone of contention between Bushrod Johnson and Henry Wise. See Rodenbaugh, Sabre and Bayonet, 105–7. Sgt. Patrick Monaghan recaptured the flag and earned the Medal of Honor for doing so. There are also disputes as to the fate of Pegram’s two guns in Battery 15—the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania claiming to have captured them and Pegram denying it—and regarding the circumstances of Page’s mortal wound. See Howe, Wasted Valor, 72. 82. OR, 40(2):122, 135. 83. OR, 40(1):306, 318; Ropes, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 168–69. The Second Corps advanced on Hare’s Hill against token opposition and simply stopped. See Howe, Wasted Valor, 70. 84. OR, 40(1):522, 532; Griffin, “Recollections, June 17, 1864,” Dartmouth College; Merriam, “Personal Recollections,” 49–50. 85. Johnson Diary, June 17, 1864; Henry Wise Narrative, Beauregard Papers; Howe, Wasted Valor, 68. Johnson identified the guns as Young’s Yorktown (Va) Battery and Blount’s Lynchburg (Va) Battery. 86. OR, 40(1):545; Holahan, Diary, June 17, 1864; Dennis L. Sweeney to “Dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Sweeney Letter; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 161; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 210; Merriam, “Personal Recollections,” 50; Howe, Wasted Valor, 68–69. 87. “Our Army Correspondence,” New Hampshire Sentinel (Keene), June 30, 1864; OR, 40(1):530; Burrage, Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts, 209. Some scattered casualty reports exist. For example, the Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts listed three killed and sixteen wounded and the Seventeenth Vermont counted five killed and sixteen wounded. 88. Pattison Diary, June 17, 1864; Tilney, My Life in the Army, 102–3; Under the Maltese Cross, 296; Samuel H. Edwards to “My Dear Puss,” June 21, 1864, Samuel H. Edwards Letters, New York Public Library. 89. Roebling Journal, June 17, 1864; Holahan, Diary, June 17, 1864; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 422. 90. Roebling Journal, June 17, 1864; OR, 40(2):117, 122, 125. 91. Longacre, “Roughest Kind of Campaigning,” 340; Hagood, Memoirs, 268; OR, 40(1):801, (2):117; 51(1):1257; Bassett Diary, June 17, 1864, Massachusetts Historical Society; “Diary of Washington L. Dunn,” June 17, 1864; Joseph D. Galloway Diary, June 17, 1864, New York Public Library. 92. OR, 40(2):140. 93. OR, 40(2):140–41. 94. Howard Coffin, Battered Stars, 344; Alfred S. Roe, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 108–9; Paul Stephen Beaudry, 151st New York, 131; Olcott, Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell, 260; OR, 40(2):130. 95. David D. Roe, Civil War Soldier’s Diary, 221; Jenkins, “39th Illinois,” 158–59; Charles M. Clark, Thirty-­Ninth Illinois, 157–58; Alfred S. Roe, Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts, 315–16; Zimmerman Diary, June 17, 1864; Francis Williamson Smith to “My Darling Wife,” June 24, 1864, Smith Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Howe, Wasted Valor, 73. 96. OR, 40(2):664; 51(2):1079.

548

Notes to Pages 152–56

97. Bernard, War Talks, 225; Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 161–62. 98. OR, 51(2):1079–80; 40(2):664. 99. OR, 40(2):663, 665; 51(2):1020, 1080. 100. Warner, Generals in Blue, 558–59; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 166; Robert Garth Scott, Forgotten Valor, 1. 101. OR, 40(1):576, 584, 587–88; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 132; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 166; Warner, Generals in Blue, 336–37. Staff officer Daniel Larned considered Morton “a pleasant fellow but peculiar in many things and one of the bravest of the staff.” Daniel Reed Larned to “My dear Sister,” June 20, 1864, Daniel Reed Larned Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Larned Papers). 102. OR, 40(1):576–77; Addison J. Parker, “Two Days’ Soldiering”; Sauers, Civil War Journal of Colonel William J. Bolton, 217–18; Pierce, Battlefields and Campfires, 26; OR, 40(1):571; Francis W. Knowles Journal and Diary, June 17, 1864, East Carolina University (hereafter cited as Knowles Journal). 103. Eden, Sword and the Gun, 19–20; Harder Memoir, 493; Cutchins, Famous Command, 145–46; John Forrest Robertson, “A True Record of the Experiences and Some Incidents in the Life of a Confederate States Infantry Soldier Who Served in the Ranks during Campaigns in the States of South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, and Maryland,” Confederate Veteran Collection, Perkins Library, Duke University. 104. OR, 40(1):571; Eden, Sword and the Gun, 20; Edwin Stearns to “Dear Sister Ellen,” June 22, 1864, Ezra Stearns Papers, Clements Library, University of Michigan; Addison J. Parker, “Two Days’ Soldiering.” 105. OR, 40(1):571, 577; Addison J. Parker, “Two Days’ Soldiering”; Sauers, Civil War Journal of Colonel William J. Bolton, 217–18; Eden, Sword and the Gun, 20–21; Pierce, Battlefields and Campfires, 26; Patten Diary, June 17, 1864; John Forrest Robertson Memoir, 59, Confederate Veteran Collection, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Robertson Memoir). 106. Pierce, Battlefields and Campfires, 26; Addison J. Parker, “Two Days’ Soldiering”; Eden, Sword and the Gun, 21–22; Robertson Memoir, 59; OR, 40(1):290, 571, 588; Burgwyn, “Clingman’s Brigade,” 494; Day, “Life among the Bullets,” 140; Loving, Letters of Whitman, 122; Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 255. The exact circumstances of Morton’s death remain uncertain. It is possible that he sustained his fatal wound after Willcox’s assault while in the act of reconnoitering. 107. OR, 40(2):122, (1):423, 584; OR Supplement, 220; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 410–11; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 133; Merriam, “Personal Recollections,” 50; Howe, Wasted Valor, 77–78. 108. OR, 40(1):577; Gambone, Major-­General John Frederick Hartranft, 100; Addison J. Parker, “Two Days’ Soldiering”; Eden, Sword and the Gun, 23; Patten Diary, June 17, 1864. Willcox reported a total of approximately 689 casualties on June 16 and 17, an estimate that seems too low. See OR, 40(2):253. 109. OR, 40(1):571, 577; Howe, Wasted Valor, 78–79, 97. 110. OR Supplement, 250; Charles Scott Venable, “The Campaign from the Wilderness to Petersburg,” Southern Historical Society Papers, 14:​​538–39; Charles Scott Venable, “General Lee in the Wilderness Campaign,” 4:245. Anderson claims that he made the decision to suspend the attack while Venable credits Lee.

Notes to Pages 156–61

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111. Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 244; Jordan, Some Events, 85; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 179; Bratton, “Report of Operations,” 551; Austin, General John Bratton, 220; Fuller Diary, June 17, 1864. 112. Alfred S. Roe, Twenty-­Fourth Massachusetts, 315; Jenkins, “39th Illinois,” 158–59; David D. Roe, Civil War Soldier’s Diary, 221; Stowits, One-­Hundredth New York, 268–70. 113. OR, 40(2):665; “Field Telegrams,” 300; Lee quoted in Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 418–19. 114. OR, 40(2):143, 151, 130. 115. OR, 40(2):143, 131–32; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 160–61. President Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, condemned Butler’s treatment of Wright: “An insult like that from a man who never smelt powder to one who has been in half the battles of the war is almost incredible,” he wrote in his diary. See Dennett, Lincoln, 195. 116. OR, 51(2):1080; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 234–35; Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 162–63. 117. OR, 40(2):663, 665; Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 163. 118. McWhiney and Jenkins, “Union’s Worst General,” 30–36; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 140. 119. Marvel, Burnside, 386; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 139; Hunt, Colonels in Blue, 90. 120. Charles Chipman to “Dear Lissie,” June 19, 1864, Charles Chipman Papers, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Chipman Papers). 121. OR, 40(1):570; Marvel, Burnside, 386; Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 32; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 106. The heavy artillery regiments may have numbered in excess of 1,000 men each. See Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 175. 122. Marvel, Burnside, 386; OR, 40(1):532–33; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 104–5; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 175. 123. Howe, Wasted Valor, 94; Spencer, “179th’s First Charge.” 124. Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 139–40; Weld, Diary and Letters, 312; Marvel, Burnside, 387. 125. Osborne, Twenty-­Ninth Massachusetts, 302–3; William B. Phillips to “Dear Richard,” June 18, 1864, Phillips Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); OR, 40(1):533. There is considerable disagreement as to the timing of Ledlie’s attack, accounts variously placing it between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. The preponderance of evidence suggests that the assault commenced not long before sunset, about 8:00 p.m. Lt. George E. Barton of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts recounted waiting in the ravine “for nearly two hours” before starting the assault. Private Austin of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery stated that the charge occurred “about sundown.” Maj. Charles Mills of Ledlie’s staff reported that the order to attack came “just before sunset,” while various Confederate sources remembered that the attack occurred “near sunset,” “just after dark,” or “about dark.” See George E. Barton to “Dear Mother,” June 20, 1864, Barton Family Civil War Letters, American Antiquarian Society; Weld, Diary and Letters, 311; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 139; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 105–6; Charles H. Austin to “My Dear Wife,” June 18, 1864, Civil War Letters of Fannie Austin (accessed January 26, 2010); Lowry Diary, July 14, 1864; Burgwyn, “Thirty-­Fifth Regiment,” 622; Alvin W. Shaver Diary, June 17, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield; James Carson Elliott, Southern Soldier Boy, 23; OR Supplement, 305; Harder Memoir, 493. 550

Notes to Pages 161–66

126. Robert W. Hicks Diary, June 17, 1864, Robert W. Hicks Diary and Letters, bound vol. 18–08, Fredericksburg National Military Park; OR Supplement, 305; Harder Memoir, 493; Robertson Memoir, 62; Collins, 46th Virginia Infantry, 59; Howe, Wasted Valor, 94–96. 127. OR, 40(1):533, 572, 584; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 133; Knowles Journal June 17, 1864. The other regiments were the Thirty-­Eighth Wisconsin, Sixtieth Ohio, and Second Michigan. 128. OR, 40(1):472, 333, 339, 354, 356; Roebling Journal, June 17, 1864; George H. Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” George H. Moffett Family Papers, South Carolina Historical Society; Howe, Wasted Valor, 96–97. The identity of the regimental flag captured by Carle’s brigade remains a mystery. Crawford identified it as belonging to the Thirty-­ Ninth North Carolina, a western theater regiment not present at Petersburg. Roebling mistakenly said it belonged to “some Alabama Regt. of Pickett’s Div.” It is possible that Crawford claimed credit for capturing the Thirty-­Fifth North Carolina flag seized by the First Michigan Sharpshooters. 129. Wentz, “Closing Days of the War.” 130. Ezekiel Johnson, “Sharpshooting”; Gavin, Campaigning with the Roundheads, 474; Howe, Wasted Valor, 97. The erring officer was Lt. Theodore P. Cook. 131. Burgwyn, “Thirty-­Fifth Regiment,” 361; Captain Lawson Harrill, “Reminiscences of the Civil War,” Petersburg National Battlefield; William Leak to “Dear Wife and children,” June 20, 1864, Leak Papers; Day, “Life among the Bullets,” 141; Day, 49th North Carolina, 77; James Carson Elliott, Southern Soldier Boy, 23; OR Supplement, 305–6. It is possible that the Thirty-­Fifth North Carolina lost its flag during the counterattack and not during the Union assault. 132. Bolling Hall Junior to “My dear father,” June 21, 1864, Hall Family Papers; Miscellaneous Unbound Material, Beauregard Papers; Archibald Gracie Jr. to “Dear Comrade” (J. E. French), January 4, 1910, to “Dear Senator (Charles A Culberson), May 1, 1908, and to Gordon McCabe, August 7, 1907, all in Archibald Gracie Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History; James Carson Elliott, Southern Soldier Boy, 23; Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 203. 133. Weld, Diary and Letters, 312. 134. OR, 40(1):535; Poremba, If I Am Found Dead, 186; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 106, 115; Henry H. Service to “My Dear Aunt,” July 5, 1864, Henry H. Service Letter, John L. Nau III Civil War Collection; Charles Chipman to “Dear Lissie,” June 19, 1864, Chipman Papers; Weld, Diary and Letters, 312; Howe, Wasted Valor, 99, 172n49. 135. Ropes, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 173; Howe, Wasted Valor, 101–5. 136. Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 406–7. Chapter 5 1. Howe, Wasted Valor, 102. 2. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(2):666 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Bernard, War Talks, 205; Beauregard, “Letter of General G. T. Beauregard to General C. M. Wilcox,” 5:122; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 425; Allardice, Confederate Colonels, 183. 3. OR, 40(2):666; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 233; Beauregard, “Letter of General G. T. Beauregard to General C. M. Wilcox,” 5:122; George H. Moffett, Notes to Pages 166–71

551

“With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 30–31, George H. Moffett Family Papers, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia”; Stephen Elliott to “My own Darling,” June 18, 1864, Elliott Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter cited as Elliott Family Papers); William Henry Harder Memoir, 518, Tennessee State Library and Archives (hereafter cited as Harder Memoir); Walter Clark, Histories, 3:363; Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 417; “Diary of Captain Washington L. Dunn, Co. A 27th Ga Regt.,” United Daughters of the Confederacy Typescripts, vol. 5, June 18, 1864, Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as “Diary of Washington L. Dunn”); Hess, In the Trenches, 28; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 99–100; Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 163–64. Many soldiers referred to Poor Creek as Taylor’s Creek. 4. OR, 51(2):1020; 40(2):663; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 790; Robert E. Lee to Lt. Gen. Anderson, June 17, 1864, Joe Rubinfine Collection. 5. Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 417; OR, 40(2):666; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 430. There is uncertainty regarding the timing of Chisholm’s visit. Alexander says that Chisholm arrived between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., but Beauregard’s next emissary, Colonel Roman, states that he arrived at Lee’s headquarters between midnight and 1:00 a.m. 6. Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 576–77; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 430. Italics in the original. 7. Giles Buckner Cooke Diary, June 17–18, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 430–31; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 577. 8. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 431; OR, 40(2):667–68. 9. William D. Alexander Diary, June 17, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Alexander Diary); Samuel L. Dorroh to “Dear Mother,” June 20, 1864, Samuel Lewers Dorroh Letters, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter cited as Dorroh Letters); Joseph Mullen Diary, June 17, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Mullen Diary); Cadmus Wilcox, Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Private William Andrew Mauney Diary, June 17, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy; Robert E. L. Krick, 40th Virginia Infantry, 47. 10. John William Ford Hatton Memoir, June 18, 1864, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Hatton Memoir); Captain Francis Marion Coker to his wife, June 19, 1864, Francis Hodgson Heidler Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia; Samuel Z. Ammen, “Maryland Troops in the Confederate Army,” Thomas Clemens Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Samuel L. Dorroh to “Dear Mother,” June 20, 1864, Dorroh Letters; Mullen Diary, June 18, 1864; James Eldred Phillips Diary, June 18, 1864, James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Phillips Papers); Alexander Diary, June 18, 1864; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 213–14; Wagstaff, “Letters of Thomas Jackson Strayhorn,” 319; Harry H. Hall, Johnny Reb Band, 93; Susan Leigh Blackford, Letters from Lee’s Army, 257; McDaid, “Four Years of Arduous Service,” 292; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 105; Conner, Letters, 138; J. D. Joyner to “My dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Joyner Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Joyner Family Papers); Amma Chancellor Crum, ed., “The Letters of William Floyd Chancellor Company A, 14th Georgia Infantry, Army of Northern Vir-

552

Notes to Pages 171–74

ginia,” Pamplin Historical Park (hereafter cited as “Letters of William Floyd Chancellor”); Alfred M. Scales to “My Dearest Wife,” June 19, 1864, Alfred M. Scales Papers, East Carolina University. The sources from Wilcox’s Division disagree as to the crossing point on the James, some specifying Chaffin’s Bluff and others the bridge at Drewry’s Bluff. It is probable that portions of the division used both spans. 11. Warren T. Hannum, “The Military Bridge Used by the Army of the Potomac in Crossing the James River June 14 to 17, 1864,” submitted to the Director of the General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kan., February 23, 1931, 20–22, Petersburg National Battlefield; Hannum, “Crossing of the James River,” 234; Samuel J. B. V. Gilpin Diary, June 17, 1864, E. N. Gilpin Papers, Library of Congress; Lieutenant Nathaniel Miller Talmage Memoir, June 17, 1864, bound vol. 142, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Albion W. Clark Diary, June 17, 1864, New York Public Library; OR, 40(1):594; Elon J. Mills to “Dear Father,” June 22, 1864, Elon J. Mills Letters, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 12. Tyler, Recollections, 228; Kevin C. Murphy, Civil War Letters, 198–99; Aldace F. Walker to “Dear Mary,” June 12, 1864, Aldace F. Walker Letters, Vermont Historical Society; Livermore, Days and Events, 371. 13. OR, 40(2):118, (1):496, 715; 51(1):1257; Tyler, Recollections, 219; Oliver Edwards Memoir, 170, Edwards-­Johnston Family Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; Newell, Annals of the 10th Massachusetts, 280–81; William S. Hubbell to “Dear Parents,” June 18, 1864, William S. Hubbell Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield; Maurice S. Lamprey Diary, June 17, 1864, William Farrar Smith Papers, Vermont Historical Society; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 161; Howe, Wasted Valor, 103. 14. OR, 40(2):118, 123–24, (1):307, 318; Howe, Wasted Valor, 103–4; David M. Jordan, Winfield Scott Hancock, 147–48; Armes, Ups and Downs, 103; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 539. Hancock was in bed at the Jones house when he and his physician agreed that his condition required him to cede command to Birney. 15. OR, 40(2):120, 142; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 281. 16. OR, 40(2):120, 197; John W. Thomas, “Charge of June 18, 1864”; Samuel K. Gates Memoir, June 18, 1864, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 17. Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 6:419; OR, 40(1):802; Hagood, Memoirs, 268–69; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 400; Walter Clark, Histories, 3:362–63; Harder Memoir, 518– 19; Howe, Wasted Valor, 107–8. The exact alignment of Confederate brigades on June 18 is partly speculative. 18. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 349. There is no biography of Kershaw. 19. Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 236; Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):250–51; D. Augustus Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 380–81; Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 6:420. 20. Corbin, Letters, 47; Letter from a soldier in the 2nd Georgia to Dr. Lee, June 21, 1864, Dr. Lee Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Dr. Lee Papers). Field, like Kershaw, is without a biography. 21. Edward Richardson Crockett Diary, June 18, 1864, Edward Richardson Crockett Diary and Papers, 1864–65, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas; Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 244; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 180, 182; Harold B. Simpson, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 424; Letter from a soldier in the 2nd Georgia to Dr. Lee, June 21, 1864, Dr. Lee Papers; Joseph Pryor Fuller Diary, June 18, 1864, Southern Historical Collection,

Notes to Pages 174–77

553

University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Fuller Diary); Captain Joseph Banks Lyle Diary and Letters, June 18, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Lyle Diary and Letters); Memoir of a Soldier in the 1st South Carolina, Hampton Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; Austin, General John Bratton, 221. 22. W. M. Harris, Movements of the Confederate Army in Virginia, 31; Hatton Memoir, June 18, 1864; Elias Davis to “Dear Georgie,” June 20, 1864, Elias Davis Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 245–46; James Eldred Phillips Memoir, June 18, 1864, James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society; John Bell Vincent Diary, June 18, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Thomas L. Norwood to “My dear Grandmother,” July 5, 1864, Lenoir Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Chamberlaine, Memoirs, 104–5; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, 50–51; James W. Albright Diary, June 18, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; MacRae, Americans at Home, 1:159; Henderson, 12th Virginia Infantry, 79; Wagstaff, “Letters of Thomas Jackson Strayhorn,” 319; Cockrell and Ballard, Mississippi Rebel, 281; Mullen Diary, June 18, 1864; Chapman, More Terrible Than Victory, 200. 23. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 211; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 167; OR, 40(2):161; Howe, Wasted Valor, 110. Many sources document the discovery of the abandoned Confederate works. See, for example, OR, 40(1):391, 523; Washington A. Roebling Journal of Military Service, June 18, 1864, bound vol. 150, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Roebling Journal); Major Robert G. King Diary, June 18, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as King Diary). 24. OR, 51(1):1257; 40(2):203; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 108. 25. OR, 51(1):1257; 40(1):757, 802; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 837–39; Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 30–31, Moffett Family Papers; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 108. 26. Armes, Ups and Downs, 103; OR, 40(1):391, 423; John W. Thomas, “Charge of June 18, 1864”; Aubery, Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin, 86, 97; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 443; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 433; “Diary of Washington L. Dunn,” June 18, 1864; William H. Smith Diary, June 18, 1864, Confederate Miscellaneous Collection, Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as Smith Diary); Edwin B. Houghton, Seventeenth Maine, 204; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 100–101. 27. OR, 40(2):191–92. 28. OR, 40(1):523, 545, 572. 29. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 376; Holahan, Diary, 227; OR, 40(1):572, 577, 588; Addison J. Parker, “A Slim Roll Call”; Addison J. Parker, “Two Days’ Soldiering”; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 412; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 105–6. 30. For more information on Warren’s background, see David M. Jordan, “Happiness Is Not My Companion.” 31. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 190, 151; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 432, 436; Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 381; Buell, Cannoneer, 236. 32. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 168; Jordan, Life of Warren, 167–68; OR, 40(2):171; Roebling Journal, June 18, 1864. 33. Roebling Journal, June 18, 1864; OR, 40(1):481–82; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 424–25; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 198; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 438; Major General Bushrod Johnson Diary, June 18, 1864, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 212; 554

Notes to Pages 178–83

George Hugunin Diary, June 18, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Hugunin Diary). 34. William Stowell Tilton Diary, June 18, 1864, Massachusetts Historical Society; Fowler, Memorials, 94; John Lord Parker, Twenty-­Second Massachusetts Infantry, 471–72; Day, “Life among the Bullets,” 140–41. 35. Captain Josiah C. Fuller to “My own Dear Wife,” June 19, 1864, in “Captain Jo­siah C. Fuller,” 26–27; Thomas F. Walter Memoir, 60, bound vol. 420, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Walter Memoir); King Diary, June 18, 1864. 36. OR, 40(2):156, 158–59, 165. 37. OR, 40(2):165, 175. 38. OR, 40(2):668. 39. Walter H. Taylor, General Lee, 253; Charles Campbell Diary, June 18, 1864, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary; Charles S. Venable to “My Dear Sir,” date illegible, Charles Scott Venable Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Beauregard, “Battle of Petersburg,” 6:423; Beauregard, “Letter of General G. T. Beauregard to General C. M. Wilcox,” 5:123; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 254, 581. One Confederate officer thought that Beauregard’s proposal contemplated “massing the Confederate forces on the banks of the Appomattox . . . attack and break the Federal right, take their lines in reverse and sweep them out before they could fortify.” The evidence documents no such plan. See Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 113. 40. OR, 40(2):156–57, 176. 41. OR, 51(1):268, 1257–58; 40(1):496, 722; Derby, 27th Massachusetts, 337; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 110–11. 42. DeMay, Civil War Diary of Berea M. Willsey, 157; Robert Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union, 163; OR, 51(1):1263. 43. Howe, Wasted Valor, 118; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 111–12. The three batteries were Battery F, First Pennsylvania Artillery; Tenth Massachusetts Battery; and Eleventh New York Battery. See Chick, Battle of Petersburg, 263. 44. James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 443; Nosworthy, Bloody Crucible, 550–52; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 286–87. 45. James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 443–44. 46. John W. Thomas, “Charge of June 18, 1864”; OR, 40(2):166; Eugene Burnett letter, June 22, 1864, Jordan-­Burnett Papers, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia (hereafter cited as Jordan-­Burnett Papers); Howe, Wasted Valor, 118–19, 174n34; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 112. 47. OR, 40(1):572; Burrage, Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts, 211; Alexander S. Patten Diary, June 18, 1864, bound vol. 284, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Patten Diary); Holahan, Diary, 227; Eden, Sword and the Gun, 28. 48. Roebling Journal, June 18, 1864. Roebling called the stream “Poo” Creek, as did several other Federals. 49. OR, 40(2):176–77. 50. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 213; OR, 40(2):178. 51. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 209; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 213; OR, 40(2):178– 79. 52. OR, 40(2):166–67. 53. Graham, “Fifty-­Sixth Regiment,” 362–63. Notes to Pages 183–89

555

54. OR, 40(2):204–5. 55. OR, 51(1):1258; 40(1):802. This Hare property is not to be confused with the large mansion along Birney’s front. 56. Miscellaneous Unbound Material, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress; Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 31–32; Derby, 27th Massachusetts, 338. 57. Peck quoted in Derby, 27th Massachusetts, 338. 58. OR, 40(1):496, 802; 51(1):1258; Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 32. 59. OR, 40(1):802, (2):206; 51(1):1258; Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 32; Newell, Annals of the 10th Massachusetts, 281. 60. Howe, Wasted Valor, 125. 61. Howe, Wasted Valor, 127; William H. Broughton to “Dear Father,” July 1, 1864, Wil­ liam H. Broughton Papers, Pearce Civil War Collection, Navarro College; Charles E. Davis, Thirteenth Massachusetts, 373. 62. Vautier, 88th Pennsylvania, 192; Henry H. B. Chamberlain to “Dearest Minnie,” June 19, 1864, Henry H. B. Chamberlain Papers, Cornell University; Charles McKnight Diary, June 18, 1864, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Davis, Thirteenth Massachusetts, 373. 63. Howe, Wasted Valor, 129; Fowler, Memorials, 95. 64. Bennett, Musket and Sword, 275; D. Porter Marshall, Company K, 155th Pa, 173; Walter Memoir, 60–61. 65. Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 439–41; D. Porter Marshall, Company K, 155th Pa, 173–74; Bennett, Musket and Sword, 279. 66. A number of sources profile Chamberlain’s life. See especially Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, and Willard M. Wallace, Soul of the Lion. Pullen, Twentieth Maine, contains a great deal of information about Chamberlain and is a classic regimental history. The award-­ winning novel, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, and the feature film, Gettysburg, that was based on it, made Chamberlain’s a familiar name in the late twentieth century. 67. Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 201, 207; Rasbach, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, 24, 70–71; OR, 40(1):482; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 424; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 130. The additional ordnance, Battery C, First New York Artillery, was commanded by Capt. Almont Barnes. 68. Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 201; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 127; Chamberlain, “Reminiscences of Petersburg and Appomattox,” 3:172–73. 69. Chamberlain, “Reminiscences of Petersburg and Appomattox,” 172; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 203–4; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 128–29; Pullen, Twentieth Maine, 210–11; Howe, Wasted Valor, 128. 70. Letter of P. DeLacy of the 143rd Pennsylvania, January 15, 1904, Joshua L. Chamberlain Papers, Library of Congress. For one vivid example of Chamberlain’s fabricated version of events, see Marvel, Lee’s Last Retreat, 193–95. 71. Lt. Ransford B. Webb quoted in Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 207; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 129; Chamberlain, “Reminiscences of Petersburg and Appomattox,” 174; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 201, 203, 205. 72. Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 131–33; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 208–9. Chamberlain claimed that his wound occurred “close upon the enemy’s works,” but given the circumstances of his rescue, this is unlikely. See Chamberlain, “Reminiscences of Petersburg and Appomattox,” 172–73. 73. Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 133–34; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 209–10; 556

Notes to Pages 189–96

Thomas Chamberlin, One-­Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania, 261–62; Gibbs, First Battalion Pennsylvania, 95; Captain Charlie Woodin to “My Dear Sir,” July 6, 1864, James Earle Hagood Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. 74. Pullen, Twentieth Maine, 211–12; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 136–37; Willard M. Wallace, Soul of the Lion, 132–34; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 212–14. This portion of Chamberlain’s ordeal smacks a bit too much of the melodramatic. Lt. Col. John Irvin of the 149th Pennsylvania assumed temporary command of the brigade after Chamberlain’s wounding. 75. Special Orders No. 39, Joshua L. Chamberlain Papers, Library of Congress; Ulys­ ses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 297–98; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 136–37; Trulock, In the Hands of Providence, 215–19. The Senate approved Chamberlain’s promotion on June 27 and the new brigadier general received notification in the hospital on July 3. It was the only field promotion Grant ever made. 76. Howe, Wasted Valor, 125; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 126. 77. Hunt and Brown, Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue, 288; Venner, Hoosier’s Honor, 260; Donald L. Smith, Twenty-­Fourth Michigan, 214; Howe, Wasted Valor, 125. 78. OR, 40(1):474, 476, (2):188; Hugunin Diary, June 18, 1864; Howe, Wasted Valor, 125. 79. Donald L. Smith, Twenty-­Fourth Michigan, 214; Orson Blair Curtis, Twenty-­Fourth Michigan, 262–63; Cheek and Pointon, Sixth Wisconsin, 115; Gaff, On Many a Bloody Field, 363; Day, 49th North Carolina, 78; Alexander B. Pattison Diary, June 18, 1864, Indiana Historical Society; OR, 40(1):474; Dawes, Service, 291. Bragg’s men had distinguished themselves earlier in the war by wearing black, broad-­brimmed hats instead of the conventional kepis and thus earned this additional moniker. Capt. George Hugunin of the 147th New York in Hofmann’s brigade held Bragg’s troops responsible for the failure of Cutler’s attack. “I think we would have carried the works if the 2nd line had followed us,” wrote Hugunin. “They were called the Iron Brigade—we called them the I Run Brigade.” Hugunin Diary, June 18, 1864. 80. Nevins, Diary of Battle, 438; Howe, Wasted Valor, 126–27, Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 126. There is no biography of Ayres. 81. Sergeant Charles Thomas Bowen to “Dear Friends at Home,” June 21, 1864, Sergeant Charles Thomas Bowen Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield; Cassedy, Dear Friends at Home, 499; Brainard, Campaigns of the 146th Regiment, 227; Tevis and Marquis, History of the Fighting Fourteenth, 175. 82. King Diary, June 18, 1864; Irving, “More Than Conqueror,” 150–51; Graham, “Fifty-­Sixth Regiment,” 364; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 170; OR, 40(2):180, 184. 83. Nevins, Diary of Battle, 425; Schroeder, 5th New York, 149; Roebling Journal, June 18, 1864. 84. Howe, Wasted Valor, 127. 85. OR, 40(2):167. For overviews of the Second Corps’ late afternoon attack on June 18, see Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 116–22, and Howe, Wasted Valor, 130–32. 86. Armes, Ups and Downs, 104; Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 557–58. The standard Birney biography is Oliver Wilson Davis, Life of David Bell Birney, Major-­General United States Volunteers. 87. OR, 40(1):391, 394, 410, 427; Edwin C. Bearss, “Background to the Event, Painting Number 5,” Petersburg National Battlefield; Bloodgood, Personal Reminiscences, 285; Craft, One Hundred Forty-­First Pennsylvania, 216; Edwin B. Houghton, Seventeenth Maine, 205. Notes to Pages 196–201

557

88. Hunt and Brown, Brigadier Generals in Blue, 107; Sifakis, Who Was Who in the Civil War, 115. 89. Roe and Nutt, History of the First Regiment, 181, provides the origin for this probably fanciful tale, repeated in most secondary accounts including Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 116, and Howe, Wasted Valor, 130. Mott is alleged to have explained that “I knew that it was useless to expect suicide en masse from my old troops who had seen the wolf, had felt his teeth, and bore the scars. All I could hope was that a heavy artillery regiment, the First Maine, innocent of the danger it would incur, would lead off with a dash and carry the works with a rush.” See Capt. G. L. Kilmer, quoted in Izlar, Edisto Rifles, 75. This is not to suggest that some veteran troops did not refuse to charge that afternoon. See, for example, George A. Bowen Diary, June 18, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield; Cowtan, Tenth New York, 298–99; and Catton, Stillness at Appomattox, 197–98. 90. Izlar, Edisto Rifles, 75–76; Shaw and House, First Maine Heavy Artillery, 121–22; Roe and Nutt, History of the First Regiment, 181; Brown, “Charge of the Heavy Artillery,” 6; House, “How the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Lost 1,179,” 92; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 434. 91. OR, 40(1):366, 377–80, 418. 92. Izlar, Edisto Rifles, 77; House, “How the 1st Maine Lost 1,179 Men,” 93; George H. Coffin, Three Years in the Army, 14. 93. Bloodgood, Personal Reminiscences, 285; Stephen B. Chase Diary and Memoirs, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; OR, 40(1):391, 394, 427; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 120. 94. Brown, “Charge of the Heavy Artillery,” 6; House, “How the 1st Maine Lost 1,179 Men,” 93; Izlar, Edisto Rifles, 77. 95. Eugene Burnett letter, June 22, 1864, Jordan-­Burnett Papers; Harder Memoir, 523; Timothy W. Bludworth to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Letters of Timothy W. Bludworth, William Henry Watson Family Papers, University of West Florida (hereafter cited as Bludworth Letters); William H. Smith Diary, June 18, 1864; Leverett N. Case, “Personal Recollections,” 159–60. 96. House, “How the 1st Maine Lost 1,179 Men,” 93; Brown, “Charge of the Heavy Artillery,” 7; George H. Coffin, Three Years in the Army, 14; Harder Memoir, 523; Timothy W. Bludworth to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Bludworth Letters; Smith Diary, June 18, 1864; Ezekiel D. Graham to “My dear Friend,” June 18, 1864, Ezekiel D. Graham Letters, United Daughters of the Confederacy Transcripts, Georgia Department of Archives and History. 97. Izlar, Edisto Rifles, 78; Eugene Burnett letter, June 22, 1864, Jordan-­Burnett Papers; Brown, “Charge of the Heavy Artillery,” 7; Fox, Regimental Losses, 125, 451; Boatner, Civil War Dictionary, 503; Shaw and House, First Maine Heavy Artillery, 124; Howe, Wasted Valor, 131–32. The number of reported losses in the First Maine Heavy Artillery varied between a low of 580 to a high of 700, but 632 is now the accepted number. Charles House believed the entire attack and retreat took only four minutes and Cpl. Walter S. Gilman of Company D estimated eight minutes. See “Life in Virginia or Thirty-­Four Days in Grant’s Army in the Field by a Crippled Soldier,” Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 98. OR, 40(1):391, 418; George H. Coffin, Three Years in the Army, 14; Jerome Sears to “Dear Bro Webster,” June 19, 1864, Jerome Sears Papers, Pearce Civil War Collection, Navarro College; Roback, 152nd New York, 100–101; Howe, Wasted Valor, 132. 99. OR, 40(2):168; Brown, “Charge of the Heavy Artillery,” 7–8; Coates, “Bloody First 558

Notes to Pages 201–5

Maine,” 42. Brown has Chaplin tendering his sword to Birney. Chaplin would be killed in the Deep Bottom operations in August and Brown believed that “he threw his life away” due to being “broken hearted” over events on June 18. 100. OR, 40(2):194–95. Considering the poisonous relationship that existed between Meade and Burnside, the army commander’s “hope” might have implied a criticism. 101. William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, June 18, 1864, New York Public Library (hereafter cited as Harris Journal); Patten Diary, June 18, 1864. 102. OR, 40(1):523, 572–73, 577; Holahan, Diary, 228; Addison J. Parker, “Slim Roll Call.” 103. OR, 40(1):572–73, 578; Patten Diary, June 18, 1864; Holahan, Diary, 228. 104. Howe, Wasted Valor, 132; Samuel Catawba Lowry Diary, July 14, 1864, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter cited as Lowry Diary); Holahan, Diary, 228; Sauers, Civil War Journal of Colonel William J. Bolton, 219; OR, 40(2):221; J. W. Pursley to “Dear Sister,” June 19, 1864, Mary Frances Jane Pursley Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Pursley Papers). 105. OR, 40(1):523, 573, 578; Sauers, Civil War Journal of Colonel William J. Bolton, 219; Chandler, “Petersburg”; Stephen Elliott to “My own Darling,” June 18, 1864, Elliott Family Papers; William Leak to “Dear Wife and children,” June 20, 1864, William Leak Papers, Petersburg National Battlefield. 106. OR, 40(1):573, 585; Harris Journal, June 18, 1864; Chandler, “Petersburg”; Holahan, Diary, 228. 107. OR, 40(2):195. 108. OR, 40(2):189, 197. 109. OR, 40(2):142, 200; New York Times, June 22, 1864; Alfred Howe Terry to “Dearest Mother,” July 2, 1864, Alfred Howe Terry Papers, Connecticut Historical Society. Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 161, suggests that Terry actually resented his demotion and blamed Butler for the slight. 110. Henry C. Trumbull to “Dear Courant,” Hartford Courant, June 29, 1864; Dickey, Eighty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 338; David D. Roe, Civil War Soldier’s Diary, 221–22; George Wise, Seventeenth Virginia, 189; Diary of John R. Zimmerman, June 18, 1864, bound vol. 177, Richmond National Battlefield Park. 111. OR, 40(2):189. 112. J. D. Joyner to “My dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Joyner Family Papers; Chamberlaine, Memoirs, 105; William Floyd Chancellor to “Dear Cousin,” June 19, 1864, in Crum, “Letters of William Floyd Chancellor”; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 245–46; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 105; Hatton Memoir June 18, 1864; Unidentified soldier in the Second Georgia to Dr. Lee, June 21, 1864; Memoir of unidentified officer in Bratton’s Brigade, Hampton Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; Fuller Diary, June 18, 1864; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 180; Lowry Diary, July 14, 1864; Lyle Diary and Letters, June 18, 1864. 113. James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 445; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 434; Roebling Journal, June 18, 1864; Holahan, Diary, 229. 114. James T. Perry Diary, June 18, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; J. W. Pursley to “Dear Sister,” June 19, 1864, Pursley Papers; J. Christopher Winsmith to “My dear Father,” June 19, 1864, Captain John Christopher Winsmith Letters, Museum of the Confederacy; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 20 and June 22, 1864; Styple, Writing and Fighting from the Army of Northern Virginia, 228. Notes to Pages 205–10

559

115. Lerch, Words of War, 78; Benjamin Wright to “My Dear Abbie,” June 17, 1864, Wright Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). 116. Weld, War Diary, 318. 117. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Cycle of Adams Letters, 154–55; Zerah Coston Monks to “Dear Hattie,” June 19, 1864, Monks Family Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society. 118. Meade, Life and Letters, 206; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 224; Records of the AGO, 1780s–­1917, Record Group 94, Entry 729, Box 69: 92–93, National Archives; OR, 40(1):218–38, 573, (2):253; 51(1):269, 1263; Daniel Reed Larned to “My dear Sister,” June 20, 1864, Daniel Reed Larned Papers, Library of Congress; Howe, Wasted Valor, 136. Fox, Regimental Losses, 547, counts 11,386 Union casualties in the First Offensive, but includes June 19 in his tally. Including the relatively light losses suffered by Butler’s men at Bermuda Hundred, the total number of Union casualties between June 15 and 18 might break down as follows: Second Corps: 4,200; Fifth Corps: 2,000; Ninth Corps: 3,000; Eighteenth Corps: 2,200; Tenth Corps: 600; total: 12,000. 119. Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 20, 1864; Bushrod Johnson’s Manuscript Casualty Report, June 1864, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives; Beauregard to E. P. Alexander, July 18, 1867, E. Porter Alexander Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Hagood, Memoirs, 270; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 559; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 434. Both Howe, Wasted Valor, 136, and Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 130, estimate Confederate losses at about 4,000. 120. Lewis H. Steiner Diary, June 19, 1864, Lewis H. Steiner Collection, Maryland Historical Society. Chapter 6 1. Leeke, Hundred Days, 105. Pvt. Gilbert L. Laboytreaux of the 138th Ohio authored the poem. 2. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(2):156–57 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 210. 3. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 170; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 215; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 209. 4. Dana, Recollections, 226–27. 5. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 224; Meade, Life and Letters, 206–7. 6. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 179; OR, 40(1):25; Ropes, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 182–83; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 210–11; Jerome Sears to “Dear Bro Webster,” June 19, 1864, Jerome Sears Papers, Pearce Civil War Collection, Navarro College (hereafter cited as Sears Papers). 7. Wilkeson, Recollections, 174; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 425; Howe, Wasted Valor, 141; New York Herald, June 22, 1864; Armes, Ups and Downs, 103. 8. John B. Foote to “Dear Mary,” c. June 20, 1864, John B. Foote Papers, 1862–65, Perkins Library, Duke University; Linus Clark to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Clark Letter, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). 9. Charles J. Paine to “Dear Father,” June 23, 1864, Charles Jackson Paine Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Paine Papers); Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 435. 560

Notes to Pages 210–16

10. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 298; Third Annual Report of the State Historian of the State of New York, 1897, 80; Dana and Wilson, Life of Ulysses S. Grant, 242; Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 339. 11. Ropes, “Failure to Take Petersburg,” 159–86, provides a thoughtful analysis; Chamberlain, “Reminiscences of Petersburg and Appomattox,” 164; Howe, Wasted Valor, 137–42; Burne, Lee, Grant and Sherman, 62–63. 12. Charles Morris to “Dear Wife,” June 21, 1864, Charles Morris Letters, Virginia Historical Society; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 227. It is widely understood that Roman’s book serves as Beauregard’s military autobiography. 13. Burne, Lee, Grant and Sherman, 63–64. Bragg criticized Beauregard’s decision to abandon Bermuda Hundred, eliciting a fevered response from the accused. President Davis revealed his preferences when sustaining Bragg’s opinion. See Hallock, Braxton Bragg, 210–13. 14. T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard, 232; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 433; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 229. 15. For a fuller explication of this argument, see Greene, “Beauregard and the Petersburg Campaign,” 165–66. Beauregard’s most articulate advocate is T. Harry Williams, Beauregard, 232–35. The best defense of Lee’s performance is Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 438–46. Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill vocally criticized Lee’s generalship in the weeks following the First Offensive. See Charles Campbell Diary, July 16, 1864, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary. 16. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 432; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 556. 17. Leander O. Merriam, “Personal Recollections of the War for the Union,” 51–52, bound vol. 190, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Merriam, “Personal Recollections”); Jackman, Sixth New Hampshire, 300–303; Green, “Horseshoe”; Holahan, Diary, 228; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 136. 18. Cleary, “June 19, 1864 In front of Petersburg.” 19. Merriam, “Personal Recollections,” 52; Jackman, Sixth New Hampshire, 302; Walcott, Twenty-­First Massachusetts, 341. Much of the resentment toward black Union soldiers felt by Confederates stemmed from their belief that all U.S. Colored Troops were former slaves, but most of Ferrero’s soldiers came from free states and had never been enslaved. The spring may be the one marked “Soldiers’ Spring” and preserved within Petersburg National Battlefield. 20. OR, 40(2):220. The concept would change from an approach trench to a mine and would result in the battle of the Crater on July 30. See chapter 10. 21. OR, 40(1):578; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 445–46; John H. Rhodes, First Rhode Island Light Artillery, 303; Tidball, No Disgrace, 342. 22. OR, 40(2):208, 210–11; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 215–17; Beauregard to George Meade, June 19, 1864, Personal Letter Book, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress. Roman is conspicuously silent on the matter. 23. Jerome Sears to “Dear Bro Webster,” June 19, 1864, Sears Papers; William A. Ketcham Memoirs, Indiana Historical Society; Robert Goldthwaite Carter, Four Brothers in Blue, 435; Sellers, “A Charge That Rivaled the Light Brigade’s”; Charles Kline to “Dear Mother and Sister,” June 28, 1864, Charles Kline Civil War Letters, South Carolina Historical Society; Wheeler, “Petersburg”; McMurray, Recollections, 40–41; Paradis, Strike the Blow for Freedom, 58. Notes to Pages 217–21

561

24. Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 390; Paul E. Wilson and Harriet S. Wilson, Civil War Diary of Thomas White Stephens, 201; Styple, Writing and Fighting from the Army of Northern Virginia, 228; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 20, 1864; John R. Mitchell Diary, June 19, 1864, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Mitchell Diary). 25. Henry E. Taintor to “Dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Henry E. Taintor Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University; Edward D. Hatch to “Mrs. Clark,” June 20, 1864, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Wilbur Fisk Diary, June 19, 1864, Minnesota Historical Society; Arthur B. Wyman to “My dear sister,” June 19, 1864, Arthur B. Wyman Diary and Letters, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 26. Carlos Parsons Lyman to “Dear ones at Home,” June 19, 1864, Carlos Parsons Lyman Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society (hereafter cited as Lyman Papers); Vaill, Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery, 72–73; Olcott, Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell, 272; Charles J. Paine to “Dear Father,” June 20, 1864, Paine Papers. Ironically, Paine would command a division of black troops later in the year. 27. Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 274–75; Walter Graham Diary, June 19, 1864, Vermont Historical Society (hereafter cited as Graham Diary); OR, 40(2):209, 222; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 164. Good maps of Deep Bottom are in the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, plate 65, map 6 and plate 67, map 7. 28. OR, 40(2):120, 142, 148, 224–26, 266; 36(2):284–87; Beecher, First Light Battery, Connecticut, 494; Dickey, Eighty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 335; William Glenn Robertson, Battle of Old Men and Young Boys, 93–96; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 137. General Terry graciously accepted his return to divisional leadership with Brooks as his new superior. “General Brooks is a pleasant gentleman & has a high reputation as a soldier,” Terry wrote his mother. “I feel he is an honest man too, & that is a very great thing. . . . Butler’s treatment of Gillmore was shameful beyond comparison. It was dictated by personal considerations & was I believe intended to crush G. before hand so that any charges which he might make as to B’s horrible management at Drewry’s Bluff would lose their force.” Alfred Howe Terry to “Dearest Mother,” July 2, 1864, Alfred Howe Terry Papers, Connecticut Historical Society. 29. Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 417. Mrs. Butler’s residence at Fort Monroe, Quarters 1, was under renovation in 2017 by the National Park Service at Fort Monroe National Monument. 30. Walter H. Taylor, General Lee, 253; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 457; Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee, 338; OR, 40(1):757; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 842; Alex Ward, “Employment of Artillery during the Battles of the Siege of Petersburg,” 4, Petersburg National Battlefield; Henry L. Abbot, Siege Artillery in the Campaigns against Richmond, 134; Joseph Mullen Diary, June 19, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Mullen Diary). Although Colonel Taylor is specific that Lee was offered a room at Violet Bank, subsequent evidence suggests that the general spent at least part of his time there on the grounds. 31. Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 556; Gilbert Thompson Memoir, June 23, 1864, Library of Congress; Captain Joseph Banks Lyle Diary and Letters, June 19, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 82–83; OR, 40(1):761; Unidentified soldier in the Second Georgia to Dr. Lee, June 21, 1864, Dr. Lee Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 214–15; Wright, Letters of Ben­ja­ min H. Freeman, 43. James Conner was still in command of McGowan’s Brigade. 562

Notes to Pages 221–24

32. Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 251; OR, 40(2):671–72, 684–85, 689–90. 33. Peck, Army Journal, 213; Robert K. Krick, Parker’s Virginia Battery, 260–62. 34. Diary of John R. Zimmerman, June 18, 1864, bound vol. 177, Richmond National Battlefield Park. 35. OR, 40(2):231. 36. OR, 40(2):232; 36(3):781. 37. OR, 40(2):231. 38. OR, 40(2):233; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 133–35. 39. OR, 40(2):233, 239, 248–51, 264–65; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 135–38. 40. OR, 40(2):240–42. 41. OR, 40(2):262, 264. 42. John Wesley Ringler to “Dear Father,” June 20, 1864, John Wesley Ringler Papers, Virginia Historical Society; John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Pa,” June 20, 1864, John C. C. Sanders Collection, University of Alabama (hereafter cited as Sanders Collection); OR, 40(2):239. 43. Many sources provide details regarding the hanging of William Johnson. See, for example, Albert J. Reid Diary, June 20, 1864, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Sergeant Joseph R. Atkins Diary, June 20, 1864, bound vol. 359, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Rauscher, Music on the March, 190–91; Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 386; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 29, 1864; Parish, “Notable Execution”; Webster, “Petersburg Execution”; Grayson M. Eichelberger Memoir, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; “Petersburgh Bombarded by Gen. Birney—Execution of a Negro for an Outrage upon a White Woman,” New York Times, June 23, 1864; “Execution of the Negro Johnson,” New York Times, June 23, 1864. Lucy Batkins, age nineteen, resided in New Kent County. Eighth Census of the United States (M 653), reel 1365, page 904, Record Group 29, National Archives. My thanks to William Marvel for tracking down details about the unfortunate Miss Batkins. 44. Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 386; Oliver Edwards Memoir, 170–72, Edwards-­ Johnston Family Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (hereafter cited as Edwards Memoir); Newell, Annals of the 10th Massachusetts, 281. 45. Benjamin P. Thomas, Three Years with Grant, 231; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 216–17; OR, 40(2):287, (1):27; Charles Dana to Edwin Stanton, June 21, 1864, Ed­win M. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress; “The Presidential Visit,” New York Herald, June 25, 1864. Descriptions of the circumstances of Lincoln’s arrival are inconsistent. Newspaper correspondent William H. Merriam times Lincoln’s arrival at 1:00 p.m. as does journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader. However, Grant corresponded with Butler at 10:​​50 a.m., reporting the president’s desire to tour Bermuda Hundred the next day, suggesting that Lincoln must have arrived some time before then. Grant sent a similar message to Meade at 11:​​ 40 a.m. Porter weaves an elaborate tale in his memoirs regarding Grant going to the wharf at City Point to greet the president on his steamer, but in a contemporary letter to his wife he describes the chief executive appearing at headquarters unannounced. 46. Benjamin P. Thomas, Three Years with Grant, 232–33; “The Presidential Visit,” New York Herald, June 25, 1864; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 212; Horace Porter to his wife, June 24, 1864, Horace Porter Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Porter Papers). Cadwallader said that the party remained at Wright’s headquarters for ninety minutes. Wright’s headquarters is described as “the house where Smith had his headquarters” when Meade arrived at City Point. OR, 40(2):269. Notes to Pages 224–29

563

47. OR, 40(1):27; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 218–19; Benjamin P. Thomas, Three Years with Grant, 233; Charles Paul Diary, June 21, 1864, Murray G. Smith Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Eldredge, Third New Hampshire, 504. 48. “The Presidential Visit,” New York Herald, June 25, 1864; Horace Porter to his wife, June 24, 1864, Porter Papers; Benjamin P. Thomas, Three Years with Grant, 233; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 222–23. 49. Nichols, Perry’s Saints, 244–46; Orin Sweet Allen to “Dear Frank,” June 23, 1864, Orin Sweet Allen Letters, Virginia Historical Society; Jackson and O’Donnell, Back Home in Oneida, 144; Lerch, Words of War, 78–79. 50. Howard K. Beale, Diary of Edward Bates, 378; Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 406; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 223; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 321. 51. Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 136–39; OR, 40(1):318, 333, 337, 339, 342, 344, 347, 348, 352, 354, 356–57, 359, 363, 366, 372, 374, 391, 396, 402, 404, 416, 420, 429, 430, 436. 52. OR, 40(2):266, 281; 51(1):1250; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 142–43. 53. OR, 40(1):497, (2):282; Hazard Stevens to “Dear Mother,” June 24, 1864, Hazard Stevens Family Papers and Journal, Library of Congress; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 180; Kuntz, “Brookfield Soldier’s Report,” 211; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 143. The Chieves house is no longer extant, but the Jones house survives, albeit several hundred yards removed from its wartime location. 54. OR, 40(2):176, 274, 277; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 139–40. The composition of Crowninshield’s detachment is undefined, but Meade did not consider it particularly capable. They may have numbered as many as 1,146. 55. OR, 40(2):275–76. The Richmond Examiner of June 23 identified Richard Williams as the owner of the Williams house. It no longer stands, but was located near the administration building of modern South Lawn Memorial Park. 56. OR, 40(2):276; Walter Clark, Histories, 1:431–32, 3:609–10; Fred C. Foard Memoir, Confederate Papers, State Archives of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Foard Memoir); Cadmus M. Wilcox, “Military Operations around Petersburg, the Mine, etc.,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Charles S. Venable Papers, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas (hereafter cited as Venable Papers), and Mahone Family Papers, Library of Virginia (hereafter cited as Mahone Family Papers); Cadmus Wilcox Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers); Trout, Galloping Thunder, 544–45; Daughtry, Gray Cavalier, 188; Harrell, 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, 293–95; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 140–41. Bearss identifies the Sixty-­ First New York and Eighty-­First Pennsylvania as the Federal units most heavily engaged in what some participants called the battle of Davis Farm. The Fifth New Hampshire claimed credit for capturing Baker. Barlow reported about twenty killed or wounded in the fight. OR, 40(2):276. Nothing remains of any of several residences labeled “Davis” on contemporary maps in the vicinity of this struggle. The house in question is probably the one identified as W. P. Davis, just east of the railroad. 57. Wilcox Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers; Wilcox, “Military Operations around Petersburg,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Venable Papers; Harrell, 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, 294–95; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 215–16. The two brigades were McGowan’s and Thomas’s. 58. Foard Memoir; Armes, Ups and Downs, 104. Foard would affect his escape from cap564

Notes to Pages 229–33

tivity between Washington and Baltimore by leaping out of a window on the train transporting him north. 59. OR, 40(2):275–76; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 180; Kuntz, “Brookfield Soldier’s Report,” 211; Graham Diary, June 21, 1864; Alfred S. Roe, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 111; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 141. 60. OR, 40(2):268–69, 287; Washington A. Roebling Journal of Military Service, June 21, 1864, bound vol. 150, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Roebling Journal); Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 146–47. 61. Meade’s letter to Rawlins is in the George Gordon Meade Letters, George G. Meade Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and printed in Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 11:​​104–6. For a thorough background discussion of the Meade-­Warren relationship at this time, see David M. Jordan, “Happiness Is Not My Companion,” 168–70. 62. OR, 40(1):677; Peck, Army Journal, 214; Dickey, 85th Pennsylvania, 336; Brady, Eleventh Maine, 215–16; Robert E. Lee to Brigadier General G. W. C. Lee, June 21, 1864, “Field Telegrams from Headquarters,” 191; Stubbs, 11th Mississippi, 582; Mullen Diary, June 21–22, 1864; Private Ethelbert Fairfax to “Dear Nimmy,” June 23, 1864, Private Ethelbert Fairfax Letters, Museum of the Confederacy; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 164–65. 63. OR, 40(2):335; Coski, Capital Navy, 165–66. Lt. William Parker is the officer quoted. 64. OR, 40(1):325–26. 65. OR, 40(1):328; Marsena Patrick Diary, June 22, 1864, Library of Congress; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 221; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 246; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 149– 50. 66. “National Accounts,” 576; Allen Landis to “Dear Father,” July 2, 1864, Allen Landis Letters, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Landis Letters); OR, 40(1):366, 386, 403, 411, 414, 416, 418, 431; Leavitt Wilson Cushing, “Some Experiences of the Civil War,” Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 449; Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 458–59; John D. Smith, History of the Nineteenth Regiment, 206–7; Tilton C. Reynolds to “Dear Mother,” June 25, 1864, Tilton C. Reynolds Letters, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Reynolds Letters); Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 391–92; Bruce, Twentieth Massachusetts, 408; Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):221 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); Albany (N.Y.) Evening Journal, June 30, 1864. 67. Gilbert C. Moore to “Dear Sister Ad,” July 7, 1864, Gilbert C. Moore Jr., “Cornie,” unpaginated; OR, 40(1):328–30; Leavitt Wilson Cushing, “Some Experiences of the Civil War,” Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Allen Landis to “Dear Father,” July 2, 1864, Landis Letters; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 151. 68. Kuntz, “Brookfield Soldier’s Report,” 211; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 181; Henry P. Burnham to “Dear Sister Emma,” June 23, 1864, Henry P. Burnham Letters, Vermont Historical Society (hereafter cited as Burnham Letters); Prowell, Eighty-­Seventh Pennsylvania, 165; John Frederick Roser to “Dear Father and mother,” n.d., John Frederick Roser Diary and Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield; Alfred S. Roe, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 111; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 151–52. 69. Edwards Memoir, 170; OR, 40(1):497, 501, 504; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 149. 70. Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 152–53; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 241. 71. Wilcox, “Military Operations around Petersburg,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Venable Notes to Pages 233–38

565

Papers; Wilcox Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers; OR Supplement, 290, 297– 98, 302–3, 323; John D. Young to William Mahone, n.d., Mahone Family Papers; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 124–25. Wilcox misidentified the prisoners as coming from the Second and Fifth Corps. Col. John D. Barry commanded Lane’s Brigade, General Lane having been wounded at Cold Harbor. 72. John D. Smith, Nineteenth Maine, 209–10; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 241–42. 73. McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 273; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 453; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 154. 74. Wilcox, “Military Operations around Petersburg,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Venable Papers. 75. Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 155; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 242; John D. Smith, Nineteenth Maine, 210; William A. Batchelor letter, June 27, 1864, Augusta (Ga.) Constitutionalist, June 30, 1864; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, 51; Fortin, “Colonel Hilary A. Herbert’s History,” 144; John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Ma,” June 28, 1864, Sanders Collection; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 844; Jennings Cropper Wise, “Boy Gunners of Lee,” 165. Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 155, credits Dement’s Battery with all four of its guns on the field. Mahone says that he brought two brigades with him and then “most of his division” in the two cited postwar accounts, giving further cause to be suspicious of their literal accuracy. The Johnson house is marked as “Bailey” on some contemporary maps, since George Bailey (or Baylie) owned the property and leased it to Sylvanus Johnson. See Richmond Daily Examiner, June 25, 1864. It is no longer extant and sat west of modern Johnson Road, just north of a municipal golf course and the adjacent railroad tracks. 76. OR, 40(1):326, 328; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 157–58. 77. Blakemore letter to Mahone, untitled pamphlet, 19–20, Mahone Family Papers; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 844; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, 51; Cole, Under Five Commanders, 218–19; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 244; OR, 40(1):330, 351. 78. Leavitt Wilson Cushing, “Some Experiences of the Civil War,” Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); OR, 40(1):329, 333, 354, 357, 363; Roney, “Reminiscences,” 24. 79. OR, 40(1):388, 414, 416; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 159–60. 80. James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 449; Sallada, Silver Sheaves, 99–100; Til­ ton C. Reynolds to “Dear Mother,” June 25, 1864, Reynolds Letters; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, June 22, 1864. 81. OR, 40(1):326, 368–69, 371, 386–87; Gibbon, Personal Recollections, 245–46; Joseph R. C. Ward, One Hundred and Sixth Pennsylvania, 229. Ward inadvertently mentioned the 183rd Pennsylvania when he meant the 184th. 82. OR, 40(1):376, 385–87; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 427. 83. OR, 40(1):436–37; OR Supplement, 221–22; Albany (N.Y.) Evening Journal, June 30, 1864; Tidball, No Disgrace, 344; John William Ford Hatton Memoir, June 22, 1864, Library of Congress. 84. For biographical information on Pierce, see Warner, Generals in Blue, 370–71. Pierce’s brigade alignment is in John D. Smith, Nineteenth Maine, 206. For Pierce’s brigade strength, see Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 391, and Jacob Bechtel to “Miss Candis,” June 24, 1864, Jacob Bechtel Letters, Gettysburg National Military Park. 85. OR, 40(1):369–70; John D. Smith, Nineteenth Maine, 207; Andrew Elmer Ford, Fifteenth Massachusetts, 334.

566

Notes to Pages 239–43

86. Bruce, Twentieth Massachusetts, 408–9; Richard F. Miller, Harvard’s Civil War, 395–96; Miller and Mooney, Civil War, 111; OR, 51(2):1026; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 162–63. 87. OR Supplement, 317; W. M. Harris, Movements of the Confederate Army in Virginia, 31; OR, 40(1):758. 88. OR, 40(2):311–12, (1):187–88; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 165–66. 89. OR, 40(1):327. George Armes inserts himself into all this communication and adds the unsubstantiated claim that Birney declined Warren’s assistance, being “too proud to have it said another corps could retake a lost battery that he had failed to take . . . and seemed to display a feeling of jealousy.” Armes, Ups and Downs, 106. Given Armes’s devotion to Hancock and the tendency for some in the Second Corps to blame Birney for the reverses of June 22, Armes’s testimony is suspect. 90. OR, 40(1):367, 371, 379; John J. Sherman to his mother, June 24, 1864, John Jay Sherman Letters, Library of Congress. The units supplied by Blaisdell were the 170th New York and the 182nd New York. Pierce would be reinstated as a brigade commander in Mott’s division two days later, the injustice of his removal trumping Gibbon’s effort to blame his brigade commanders for his division’s travails. 91. OR, 40(2):309, (1):367; Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, 574; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 167–68. 92. OR, 51(2):1025–26; OR Supplement, 317; Harris, Harris Diary, 31–32; Nathaniel Harris to William Mahone, August 2, 1866, Mahone Family Papers. 93. John D. Smith, Nineteenth Maine, 210; Mulholland, 116th Pennsylvania, 243; Blakemore letter to Mahone, untitled pamphlet, 19–20, Mahone Family Papers. 94. Wilcox Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers; Wilcox, “Military Operations around Petersburg,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Venable Papers. 95. Graham Diary, June 22, 1864; OR, 40(2):314; OR Supplement, 290, 297–99, 302–3; Young to Mahone, n.d., and Gordon McCabe to William Mahone, July 17, 1872, Mahone Family Papers; Alfred M. Scales to “My own precious wife,” June 29, 1864, Alfred M. Scales Papers, East Carolina University. Scales’s near miss may have occurred later in the afternoon as his brigade moved north toward Mahone’s position. 96. Wilcox, Campaign Report, R. E. Lee Headquarters Papers; Wilcox, “Military Operations around Petersburg,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Venable Papers; James Eldred Phillips Memoir, 58, James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society. Little is known of Hill’s activities or whereabouts on June 22. His biographer has him personally leading Mahone’s march up the Lieutenant Run ravine, but offers no evidence for such an assertion, which no one in Mahone’s attack force mentioned. See James I. Robertson Jr., General A. P. Hill, 286. 97. Blakemore letter to Mahone, untitled pamphlet, 19–20, Mahone Family Papers; William Mahone, “The Occasion of 22nd June Fought on Johnson’s Farm,” Mahone Family Papers. Blakemore names himself as the courier in his letter to Mahone, but Gordon McCabe identifies Capt. Victor Girardey as the messenger. McCabe quotes Wilcox as admitting to Girardey that “I don’t know what I was sent here to do.” This unlikely confession and other details of McCabe’s story render his testimony unreliable. 98. Graham Diary, June 22, 1864; OR, 40(2):316; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 169–70. 99. OR, 40(2):309, 316; Alfred S. Roe, Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 111–12; Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, 577.

Notes to Pages 243–47

567

100. Henry P. Burnham to “Dear Sister Emma,” June 23, 1864, Burnham Letters; Graham Diary, June 22, 1864; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 181. 101. Young to Mahone, n.d., Mahone Family Papers; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 126–27; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 217; OR, 40(2):316; Graham Diary, June 22, 1864. 102. Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 544, 546; OR, 40(1):327; 51(2):1025–26; John Gibbon to “My dear Maria,” June 23, 1864, John Gibbon Letters, United States Military Academy; Augusta (Ga.) Daily Constitutionalist, July 20, 1864; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 247; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 144; John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Ma,” June 28, 1864, Sanders Collection; Armes, Ups and Downs, 106; Russell C. White, Civil War Diary, 267; Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 460; Silliker, Rebel Yell and Yankee Hurrah, 175; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 24, 1864; Richmond Daily Examiner, June 25, 1864; Mitchell Diary, June 23, 1864. 103. Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 247; John H. Bowman to “Dear Cousin,” June 28, 1864, bound vol. 289, Fredericksburg National Military Park; John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Ma,” June 28, 1864, Sanders Collection; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 217; William Tomlinson to “Dear Wife,” June 23, 1864, United Daughters of the Confederacy Transcripts, Georgia Department of Archives and History; William S. Hubbard to “Dear Father,” June 25, 1864, Private William S. Hubbard Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield. 104. Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 546. 105. OR, 40(2):304, 310, 316–17. 106. OR, 40(2):331, 338–39, 348, (1):379, 391; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 449; New York Times, June 26, 1864; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 171–72. The Sixth Corps used the Greek Cross as its corps badge. 107. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 174; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 223; OR, 40(2):349. 108. OR, 40(2):350, (1):501–2; George E. Chamberlin, Letters, 339–40; Benedict, Vermont, 2:357, 1:475; Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, 577; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 174; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 223; David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 16; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 173. None of the Sixth Corps officers take credit for dispatching Beattie to the railroad and Lyman says that this “little captain” “actually did something saucy and audacious,” implying that Beattie may have personally assumed the initiative for his reconnaissance. Bryan’s cavalry consisted of two battalions of the Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, the Third New Jersey Cavalry, and a detachment of the Twenty-­Second New York Cavalry, along with individual troopers from various units. One of the cavalrymen confessed, “Our command is mostly an unorganized force of recruits from all regiments.” Carlos Parsons Lyman to “Dear ones at Home,” June 24, 1864, Lyman Papers. 109. Carlos Parsons Lyman to “Dear ones at Home,” June 24, 1864, Lyman Papers; OR, 40(1):502; Benedict, Vermont, 2:357–58, 1:475–76; George E. Chamberlin, Letters, 339–40; David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 19–20. 110. OR, 40(2):350–52; Chapman, More Terrible Than Victory, 205; Charles E. Denoon to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 25, 1864, Denoon Family Papers, Library of Virginia (hereafter cited as Denoon Family Papers); Harris to Mahone, August 2, 1866, Mahone Family Papers; Benedict, Vermont, 2:358; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 177–79; David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 24–25. Mahone reported in 1887 that his force numbered 6,000 on June 23, but Cross pre­sents a strong case that many fewer made the march. See Benedict, Vermont, 2:362, and David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 76. Wright’s, Sanders’s, and Kirkland’s

568

Notes to Pages 247–51

Brigades in addition to Mahone’s Florida Brigade all advanced under temporary commanders on June 23. 111. OR, 40(2):350–52, (1):502; Lewis Grant to “My dear sir,” April 21, 1884, Benedict Family Papers, Bailey-­Howe Library, University of Vermont (hereafter cited as Benedict Family Papers); Benedict, Vermont, 2:358–60, 1:476; Luther A. Rose Diary, June 23, 1864, Library of Congress; George E. Chamberlin, Letters, 340; David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 14, 20–22, 239n2; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 176, 181. The staff officer was Capt. William H. Long of the Second Division. 112. OR, 40(2):340, 352, (1):502; Benedict, Vermont, 1:476–78, 2:359–61; Francis E. Rew to “My dear Parents,” June 26, 1864, Francis E. Rew Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 181; David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 25, 27–28. 113. OR, 40(1):497, 502, (2):341, 415; Benedict, Vermont, 1:476–79, 2:360–63; Edward F. Griswold to “Dear Sir,” November 16, 1886, Benedict Family Papers; Charles Denoon to “Dear Father and Mother,” June 25, 1864, Denoon Family Papers; OR Supplement, 317; James Paul Verdery to “Dear Father Mother & all,” June 25, 1864, Eugene and James Verdery Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University; Roney, “Reminiscences,” 24; Hillhouse, Heavy Artillery and Light Infantry, 87–88. A detailed account of Mahone’s attack is in David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 29–70, which provides a careful and complete recounting of the fighting on June 23. It should be noted that Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 178–81, reverses the positions of the Mississippi and Florida Brigades during Mahone’s attacks. Girardey had just replaced Maj. Thomas Sumter Mills, who had been captured the previous day. 114. OR, 40(2):356–59. 115. Lewis A. Grant to “Dear Sir,” April 21, 1884, Benedict Family Papers; David Faris Cross, Melancholy Affair, 74, 78; Benedict, Vermont, 2:363; Lewis A. Grant, “Old Vermont Brigade,” 391–92; Aldace F. Walker to “Dear Father,” June 26, 1864, Aldace F. Walker Letters, Vermont Historical Society; John Henry Newton to “My dear Wife,” June 24, 1864, John Henry Newton Papers, Minnesota Historical Society; John B. Southard to “Dear Sister Allie,” June 24, 1864, Southard Family Correspondence, New-­York Historical Society; OR, 40(2):334. 116. OR, 51(2):1027; 40(2):685. 117. Wagstaff, “Letters of Thomas Jackson Strayhorn,” 320; L. W. Cobb to “My dear friends,” June 23, 1864, Farrar Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Mullen Diary, June 22–23, 1864; Brady, Eleventh Maine, 215–16. Birney claimed that he opposed the Second Offensive as Grant and Meade conceived it. See Birney to “My dear Gross,” July 4, 1864, David B. Birney Papers, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Birney Papers); Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 188. 118. OR, 40(2):444–45; Gottfried, Stopping Pickett, 226. Richard J. Sommers, the leading expert on the Petersburg Campaign (which he stubbornly insists on calling a “siege”) prefers calling the action on June 22–23 First Weldon Railroad. 119. OR, 40(2):468; Birney to Lt. Col. F. A. Walker, June 28, 1864, Birney Papers; Meade, Life and Letters, 208–9; Badeau, Military History, 2:386–87. 120. DeMontravel, Hero to His Fighting Men, 33; Washington A. Roebling to “Dearest Emily,” June 23, 1864, Roebling Family Papers, Rutgers University; Olsen, Upon the Tented Field, 247; Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 388; OR, 40(2):385; Alderson and Alderson, Letters Home to Sarah, 54–55.

Notes to Pages 252–55

569

121. Charles Lewis Anthony to “Dear Pa,” June 25, 1864, Anthony Family Personal Papers, Library of Virginia; Richmond Examiner, June 23, 1864; James T. Perry Diary, June 24, 1864, Virginia Historical Society. 122. Nevins, Diary of Battle, 431; OR, 40(2):330–31; Caukin, “From Cold Harbor to Petersburg,” 461. Chapter 7 1. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 215–27. The battle of Lynchburg and Early’s pursuit of Hunter is beyond the scope of this study. See Gary C. Walker, Hunter’s Fiery Raid, 269–414, for a thorough discussion of these events. 2. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 133; U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 36(1):785 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Morris, Sheridan, 7–22. Sheridan stated that he was born on March 6, 1831, in Albany, New York, but his biographer wrote that a case could be made for Sheridan’s birthplace as “Ireland, Canada, Boston, or the high seas.” See Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, 1:2, and Morris, Sheridan, 10–11. 3. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 216; Nathan B. Webb Diary, June 14, 1864, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Webb Diary); Daniel C. Snyder to “My Dear Wife,” June 22, 1864, Daniel C. Snyder Letters, bound vol. 385, Fredericksburg National Military Park. 4. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 220–23; OR, 36(3):901. 5. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 240–42; S. Millett Thompson, 13th New Hampshire, 422; OR, 36(3):793, (1):798; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, ser. 1, 10:​​ 166. 6. OR, 36(1):798; Neese, Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery, 296–98; Joseph Frederick Waring Diary, 1864–65, June 20, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Waring Diary). 7. Webb Diary, June 21, 1864; Waring Diary, June 21, 1864; Neese, Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery, 298–300; Strang, Sunshine and Shadows, 52–53; OR, 40(3):14; 36(1):798, 855. 8. OR, 36(3):779, 781–82, 784, 795; 40(2):209, 231–32, 255. Grant’s purpose in establishing a bridgehead at Deep Bottom had included providing Sheridan with a ready means to cross the James. 9. OR, 36(1):798; 40(3):14, (2):402; Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 255–56; Kidd, Personal Recollections, 369; Strang, Sunshine and Shadows, 53. 10. OR, 36(1):798, 810, 844, 855; Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):331 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 257–58, 263; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 296; Charles Gardner, “Three Years’ Experience in the First Maine Cavalry,” Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; “Reminiscences of Confederate Soldiers of Gloucester County, Va,” 41, bound vol. 92, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Waring Diary, June 23, 1864; Webb Diary, June 23, 1864; Crist, Papers of Jefferson Davis, 479. The Federals routinely referred to Samaria Church as St. Mary’s Church, and some Confederates did so as well. 11. OR, 36(1):798–99, 855; Webb Diary, June 25, 1864; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 293; Tu570

Notes to Pages 255–62

ton, “St. Mary’s Church”; Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 265. The temperature reached 102 degrees that day. 12. OR, 36(1):855; Stanton P. Allen, Down in Dixie, 389; Tremain, Memorial, 33; Tuton, “St. Mary’s Church”; Gardner, “First Maine Cavalry”; Webb Diary, June 25, 1864; Thompson A. Snyder, “Recollections of Four Years with the Union Cavalry,” bound vol. 42, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 297; Wells A. Bushnell Memoir, 291, Western Reserve Historical Society (hereafter cited as Bushnell Memoir); Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 266–67. 13. OR, 36(1):855; Stanton P. Allen, Down in Dixie, 389; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 294; Wittenberg, Little Phil, 46, 56n76. Wittenberg is the closest student of this engagement and admits that his calculation of Gregg’s strength as 2,157 is only an estimate. 14. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 264–65, 268; Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 130; George William Beale, Lieutenant of Cavalry, 162; Waring Diary, June 24, 1864; Robert Thruston Hubard Jr. Journal, Petersburg National Battlefield. It is apparent that Gary was on the Confederate left and Chambliss next to him but the alignment of the rest of Hampton’s brigades is speculative. 15. Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 268; George William Beale, Lieutenant of Cavalry, 162; OR, 36(1):855; Tuton, “St. Mary’s Church”; Gardner, “First Maine Cavalry”; Webb Diary, June 25, 1864. 16. Calhoun, Liberty Dethroned, 132; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 220; Webb Diary, June 25, 1864; Snyder, “Recollections”; Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 130–31; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 369; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 294; Ricaud, Family of Edward and Ann Snead Crosland, 440. Colonel Smith would be brevetted to brigadier general for his actions this day. 17. Ricaud, Family of Edward and Ann Snead Crosland, 440; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 369; Tuton, “St. Mary’s Church”; Mohr and Winslow, Cormany Diaries, 438. 18. Tuton, “St. Mary’s Church”; Gardner, “First Maine Cavalry”; Webb Diary, June 25, 1864; Bushnell Memoir, 292. 19. OR, 36(1):856; Ricaud, Family of Edward and Ann Snead Crosland, 440; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June, 27, 1864, and July 4, 1864; “Reminiscences of Confederate Soldiers of Gloucester County,” 42; Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 275–81. 20. George William Beale, Lieutenant of Cavalry, 163–64; William H. Locke to “My Dear Wife,” June 26, 1864, William Herrod Locke Letters, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 298; Waring Diary, June 24, 1864; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 220–22; Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 132; Leiper Moore Robinson Reminiscences, 16, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Robinson Reminiscences); OR, 36(1):856; 40(2):688; Tremain, Memorial, 36; OR Supplement, 331; Bushnell Memoir, 292. Robinson’s first name sometimes appears as “Luper.” 21. Tremain, Memorial, 33; Webb Diary, June 25, 1864; OR, 36(1):856, 1097; 40(1)205; George William Beale, Lieutenant of Cavalry, 164; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 27, 1864; Tap, Over Lincoln’s Shoulder, 24, 175–76; Wittenberg, Glory Enough for All, 285. 22. OR, 36(1):799, (3):792–93; 40(2):374, 423, 431; David D. Roe, Civil War Soldier’s Diary, 223. 23. OR, 36(1):799, (3):794–97; Halliburton, Saddle Soldiers, 151; Wittenberg, “We Have It Damn Hard Out Here,” 126; Kidd, Personal Recollections, 369; Webb Diary, June 28, 1864; Justus G. Matteson to “Dear Friend Mary,” June 27, 1864, Matteson Letters, Civil War Voices Notes to Pages 263–67

571

(accessed November 22, 2012); James Dugue Ferguson Diary, June 26, 1864, Munford-­Ellis Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 228. 24. OR, 40(1):761. 25. OR, 40(1):799, 804–5; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 402. 26. Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 402; Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 47–48, George H. Moffett Family Papers, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia”). 27. Warner, Generals in Gray, 121–22; Current, Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, 728–29; Virgil Duc to unknown, June 26, 1864, Brian and Maria Green, Inc., Catalog 68, 10. 28. OR, 40(1):802; Hagood, Memoirs, 281; Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 193–94. 29. Hagood, Memoirs, 272; OR, 40(1):797, 799, 803; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 403, 405. 30. Bearss, Petersburg Campaign, 193; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 85; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 403; Hagood, Memoirs, 272; OR, 40(1):797, 803; Giles Buckner Cooke Diary, June 24, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Cooke Diary); Francis Marion Coker to “My dearest wife,” June 26, 1864, Francis Hodgson Heidler Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia (hereafter cited as Heidler Collection). 31. Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 141; New York Times, June 28, 1864; OR, 40(1):711, 797; Kreutzer, Ninety-­Eighth N.Y., 216; Charles W. Smith to “Dear Emma,” June 24, 1864, Charles W. Smith Letters, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 32. OR, 40(1):803; Hagood, Memoirs, 272; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 403; Robert E. L. Krick, Staff Officers in Gray, 62; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 84–85. 33. Hagood, Memoirs, 276–78; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 85; OR, 40(1):711, 716, (2):401; James Adger Smyth to “My own Precious Wife,” June 25, 1864, James Adger Smyth Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as Smyth Correspondence); Buckingham, All’s for the Best, 281; Hiram A. Barton to “Dear Sister,” July 8, 1864, Barton Family Letters, Vermont Historical Society. 34. Buckingham, All’s for the Best, 281; Kreutzer, Ninety-­Eighth New York, 217; Frank Moore, Rebellion Record, 577–78; Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 142; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 85–86; Hagood, Memoirs, 273, 278; OR, 40(1):711, 716, 803, (2):401; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 404. 35. Hagood, Memoirs, 273–74, 277; OR, 40(1):804; Hagood, “Hagood’s Brigade,” 404. 36. Field, “Campaign,” 550; OR, 40(1):797–98; Hagood, Memoirs, 271; Cooke Diary, June 24, 1864. 37. OR, 40(1):804; DuBose, 21st South Carolina, 97; James Adger Smyth to “My own Precious Wife,” June 25, 1864, Smyth Correspondence; Theodore A. Honour to “My dear Beckie,” June 26, 1864, Theodore A. Honour Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Honour Letters). Smyth’s surname is sometimes rendered Smythe. 38. Theodore A. Honour to “My dear Beckie,” June 26, 1864, Honour Letters; Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 47–49, Moffett Family Papers; Hagood, Memoirs, 277; OR, 40(1):797–99. 39. Field, “Campaign,” 550; OR, 40(1):799. 40. Moffett, “With Hagood’s Brigade in Virginia,” 47–49, Moffett Family Papers; Hagood,

572

Notes to Pages 267–72

Memoirs, 276; Willie Pegram to “My Dear Jennie,” June 28, 1864, Pegram-­Johnson-­McIntosh Family Papers, 1825–1941, Virginia Historical Society; Francis Marion Coker to “My dearest wife,” June 26, 1864, Heidler Collection; OR, 40(1):798. 41. James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 452; OR, 40(1):620, (2):139; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 131–32. Mount Sinai Church was located about two miles south of Prince George Court House near Blackwater Creek. 42. Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 123; August V. Kautz Diary, June 21, 1864, Au­gust V. Kautz Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Kautz Diary). Information on Wilson’s background and military career may be found in Longacre, From Union Stars to Top Hat. Much of Kautz’s diary has been published in OR Supplement, 1(7): 237–46. 43. OR, 40(2):232, 256–57. Butler retained the services of two small cavalry regiments that had not been brigaded. 44. OR, 40(2):267, 285–86. 45. OR, 40(2):286, James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 458. 46. Kautz Diary, June 20–21, 1864; OR, 40(1):730, 733, 739; Coburn, “Wilson Raid,” 187; Fletcher, “First D.C. Cavalry”; Starr, Union Cavalry, 178n9; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 332; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 456; James H. Wilson, “Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,” 59. The First D.C. Cavalry probably received its horses from the Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry, whose poor performance at Baylor’s Farm caused the army to dismount them. 47. Civil War Memoirs, 76, Roger Hannaford Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society (hereafter cited as Hannaford Papers); Thomas R. Wills Diary, June 21, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Wills Diary); Henry C. Carr Diary, June 21, 1864, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Samuel J. B. V. Gilpin Diary, June 21, 1864, E. N. Gilpin Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Gilpin Diary). 48. OR, 40(1):621, 634; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 458. 49. Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 133; OR, 40(1):634, 645, 733, 739; Fletcher, “First D.C. Cavalry”; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 7; Longacre, From Union Stars to Top Hat, 135; Coburn, “Wilson Raid,” 190; Civil War Memoirs, 77, Hannaford Papers. 50. Lieutenant Nathaniel Miller Talmage Memoir, June 22, 1864, bound vol. 142, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Talmage Memoir); Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 133; Kautz Diary, June 22, 1864; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534; OR, 40(1):645, 731, 739; Civil War Memoirs, 77, Hannaford Papers; Augustus V. Hanly Diary, June 22, 1864, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Hanly Diary); Cruikshank, Back in the Sixties, 69; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 334; Gause, Four Years, 277; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 284; Starr, Union Cavalry, 181; Longacre, From Union Stars to Top Hat, 135; Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 34; Gilpin Diary, June 22, 1864. 51. Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 34–35; Gilpin Diary, June 22, 1864; OR, 40(1):621, 634, 645, 731, (2):669; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 284; Richmond Examiner, June 25, 1864; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 24, 1864; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 133–34; OR Supplement, 310; W. A. Curtis, “Reminiscences of the War,” Confederate Veteran Collection, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as W. A. Curtis, “Reminiscences”); Kautz Diary, June 22, 1864; Barringer, “Ninth Regiment,” 434; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534;

Notes to Pages 273–77

573

Civil War Memoirs, 78, Hannaford Papers. Thomas R. Wills of the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry thought the name of the county seat was Dingwatty Court House. See Wills Diary, June 22, 1864. 52. Richmond Examiner, June 25, 1864; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 11–13. Pryor would make his escape after dark. 53. Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 133–34; Richmond Examiner, June 25, 1864; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 460; OR, 40(1):634, 731, 733; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 334; Kautz Diary, June 22, 1864; Wills Diary, June 22, 1864. The Second New York Cavalry performed much of the destruction at Ford’s Depot assisted by West’s brigade, while Spear’s men dismantled the facilities at Sutherland’s Depot. 54. OR, 40(1):621, 733, 739; Wills Diary, June 23, 1864; History of the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, 127; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 334; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 26; Kautz Diary, June 23, 1864; Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 35. Blacks & Whites, a reference to competing taverns, is modern Blackstone, Virginia. 55. Cruickshank, Back in the Sixties, 69; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 128; OR, 40(1):625, 733, 739. 56. Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 26–28; OR, 40(1):625, 634, 645; Talmage Memoir, June 23, 1864; Civil War Memoirs, 78, Hannaford Papers. 57. Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 28; Peter Batte Epes, “The Battle of Oak Grove,” Epes Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Galloway, “Sixty-­Third Regiment,” 538; “Cavalry Sketches,” Charlotte (N.C.) Democrat, January 1, 1892; OR, 40(1):621, 645; Harrell, 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, 298–99. The Grove was the home of R. W. Tuggle. 58. OR Supplement, 310–14, originally appearing in the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, July 14, 1864; Means, “Sixty-­Third Regiment,” 612–14; OR, 40(1):626, 645; Trout, Galloping Thunder, 545; W. A. Curtis, “Reminiscences”; Harrell, 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, 298–99; Barringer, “Ninth Regiment,” 433. 59. OR Supplement, 310–14; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 29–37; OR, 51(1):272; 40(1):626, 645; Roberts, “Additional Sketch Nineteenth Regiment,” 102–3; Galloway, “Sixty-­Third Regiment,” 538–39; Means, “Additional Sketch Sixty-­Third Regiment,” 613–14; Benedict, Vermont, 2:650; Barringer, “Ninth Regiment,” 433–34; W. A. Curtis, “Reminiscences”; Trout, Galloping Thunder, 545–46. Trout identifies the temporarily captured guns as belonging to Graham’s Battery, although some of the contemporary sources mention only McGregor’s artillery being under fire. 60. James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 461–62; Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 35–36; Dyer, Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, 947, reports 102 Union casualties; OR, 40(1):621; 51(1):272; Talmage Memoir, June 24, 1864; Civil War Memoirs, 80, Hannaford Papers; Harrell, 2nd North Carolina Cavalry, 299–300; OR Supplement, 314. “Grant” tallies the losses in Dearing’s two regiments at sixty-­four, including forty-­one in the Sixty-­Second Georgia Cavalry, while Dearing pegs his casualties at ten killed and about forty wounded. See James Dearing to “Dearest Sala,” June 24, 1864, Dearing Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. “Grant” grossly overestimated the Federal casualties at 415 and inflated Chapman’s 1,500 sabers to 5,000. Lt. Lee Barfield of the Sixty-­Second Georgia told his wife that they were outnumbered twenty-­to-­one. See Lee Barfield to “My Dear Wife,” June 30, 1864, “Confederate Letters Written by Mr. Lee Barfield of Dooly County, Georgia, 1861–1865,” Georgia Department of Archives and History. The sources disagree regarding the circumstances of Andrews’s wounding. See W. A. Curtis, “Reminiscences,” for the most persua574

Notes to Pages 277–80

sive version. Sgt. Samuel J. Gilpin of the Third Indiana Cavalry recorded a loss of ninety in Chapman’s brigade that day. See Gilpin Diary, June 24, 1864. 61. OR, 51(1):272; 40(1):732, 734, 739. The best indication of Kautz’s instrumental role in determining the course of the raid on the morning of June 24 comes from Wilson, who wrote on July 3, “having heard of Kautz’s success at Burkeville [from Whitaker], and that he proposed to move to Meherrin Station on the Danville road.” See Wilson’s report, OR, 40(1):626. 62. Kautz Diary, June 24, 1864; OR, 40(1):621, 626, 634, 639, 646, 648–49, 739; Civil War Memoirs, 80–82, Hannaford Papers; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 134–35; Tenney, War Diary, 121; Talmage Memoir, June 24, 1864; Matthew Walton Venable, Eighty Years After or Grandpa’s Story, 36–37. 63. OR, 40(1):642; Cruickshank, Back in the Sixties, 70; Hartford Courant, August 1, 1864; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 134–35; Talmage Memoir, June 24, 1864; Gilpin Diary, June 24, 1864; Pope, “Personal Experience,” 587; Benedict, Vermont, 2:654; Civil War Memoirs, 80–81, Hannaford Papers. 64. Civil War Memoirs, 80–81, Hannaford Papers; Pope, “Personal Experience,” 587. For examples of the Southern perspective, see Robert H. Allen Diary, June 27, 1864, Allen Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Allen Diary), and Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 1, 1864. 65. Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 334–35; Civil War Memoirs, 80–81, Hannaford Papers; Richmond Examiner, June 28, 1864; Hartford Courant, August 1, 1864; Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 28, 1864. 66. Gilpin Diary, June 24, 1864; W. A. Curtis, “Reminiscences”; Civil War Memoirs, 82, Hannaford Papers; Allen Diary, June 27, 1864. 67. Civil War Memoirs, 82, Hannaford Papers; OR, 40(1):621, 626, 635, 646, 732, 734, 740; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 462; Wills Diary, June 25, 1864; Hanly Diary, June 25, 1864; Talmage Memoir, June 25, 1864; Tenney, War Diary, 121. 68. OR, 40(1):635, 646; 51(1):272; Gilpin Diary, June 25, 1864; Barringer, “Ninth Regiment,” 433; Daughtry, Gray Cavalier, 190–91; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 81. 69. OR, 40(1):764; Bolte, “‘Bridge Too Far,’” 28–29; Maury, “Remarkable Victory,” 51–52; Farinholt, “Gallant Defence,” 323–24; Headspeth, Staunton River Bridge, 18–19; Starr, Union Cavalry, 191. Farinholt provided both figures for his total strength in various sources. In a letter published in the Richmond Times of November 22, 1891, he stated that he first learned of the raid on June 22 via a telegram from Petersburg sent by General Beauregard. See Farinholt, “Staunton River Fight,” 202. Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 56–60, provides a summary of the evidence enumerating the composition of Farinholt’s eclectic command. 70. OR Supplement, 269–70; OR, 40(1):631, 765; Captain J. W. Lewis, “Account,” 56; Gilliam, “Staunton River Fight,” 3–4. Farinholt’s report written shortly after the battle specified that his ordnance included a three-­inch rifle, two twelve-­pounders, and three iron six-­ pounders, but in a postwar article he remembered commanding two twenty-­pounders, two rifled six-­pounders, and four smoothbore six-­pounders. See OR, 40(1):764; Farinholt, “Gallant Defence,” 323. Gilliam provides another version of the placement and composition of the ordnance. These artillery positions, modified after the battle, are well preserved in the Staunton River Battlefield State Park. 71. OR, 40(1):764; Farinholt, “Staunton River Fight,” 203; Headspeth, Staunton River Bridge, 12–13, 26–28; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 59–62; Gilliam, “Staunton River Fight,” Notes to Pages 281–85

575

3–4. Some sources credit Coleman with devising the defenses north of the river, an assertion that Farinholt bitterly contested. Hoyt may have only been a lieutenant at the time of the battle. 72. Farinholt, “Staunton River Fight,” 203–4; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 57, 62–63; Farinholt, “Gallant Defence,” 323; OR, 40(1):764. 73. OR, 40(1):621; Headspeth, Staunton River Bridge, 12–13; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 335; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 55–56. The battlefield in 2017 retains much of its wartime integrity. 74. McPhail, “Another Account of the Fight,” 55; OR, 40(1):727, 764; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 63–65; Haskin, First Regiment of Artillery, 205; Gilliam, “Staunton River Fight,” 7; Headspeth, Staunton River Bridge, 13–14; Eason, “Battle of Staunton River Bridge,” 19. 75. OR, 40(1):734; Lawrence G. Kautz, August Valentine Kautz, 139; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 63, 65; Maury, “Remarkable Victory,” 53; Farinholt, “Staunton River Fight,” 205; Headspeth, Staunton River Bridge, 25. 76. OR, 40(1):626–27, 731, 734, 764–65; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 64; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 130. 77. 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 129; Civil War Memoirs, 83, Hannaford Papers. Marye’s Heights marked the unassailable high ground at the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. 78. OR, 40(1):734, 764–65; Eason, “Battle of Staunton River Bridge,” 19; Captain J. W. Lewis, “Account,” 56; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 68–69. 79. OR, 40(1):734, 740; Tobie, First Maine Cavalry, 340; Fletcher, “1st D.C. Cavalry.” 80. OR, 40(1):621–22, 627, 639, 646, 731; “First Regiment Connecticut Cavalry,” Connecticut War Record, September 1864, 270; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 81–82. 81. Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 36; OR, 40(1):731, 734, 765; Headspeth, Staunton River Bridge, 15–16; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 85–86; Bolte, “‘Bridge Too Far,’” 30; OR Supplement, 268–69; Withers, Autobiography, 205; Civil War Memoirs, 83, Hannaford Papers; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 130–31; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 463–64. 82. James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 464; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 135; Talmage Memoir, June 26, 1864, bound vol. 142, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Talmage Memoir); OR, 40(1):622, 627, 740; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 290; Hanly Diary, June 26, 1864. 83. OR, 40(2):697, 701–2; Appeal to the citizens of Charlotte and Halifax Counties, Benjamin Lyons Farinholt Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Eanes, “Destroy the Junction,” 85. 84. 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 130; OR, 40(1):627, 635, 642, 645, 732, 734, 740; OR Supplement, 240; Tenney, War Diary, 122; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 464– 65; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 135; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 286; Civil War Memoirs, 85, Hannaford Papers. Wylliesville is modern Wylliesburg, although some historic maps reference Wylliesburg. The spelling also varies. Christianville is modern Chase City, renamed in honor of Salmon P. Chase by the Northern transplants who populated the town after the Civil War. 85. Tenney, War Diary, 122; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 135; Talmage Memoir, June 26, 1864; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 130; Civil War Memoirs, 85, Hannaford Papers; Louis Napoleon Beaudry, Fifth New York Cavalry, 148; OR, 40(1):635; History of the First Regiment

576

Notes to Pages 285–90

of Artillery, 205; Cruickshank, Back in the Sixties, 70; Gilpin Diary, June 26, 1864; Coburn, “Wilson Raid,” 198. 86. Means, “Sixty-­Third Regiment,” 615–16; Barringer, “Ninth Regiment,” 434; OR Supplement, 314. 87. Civil War Memoirs, 87, Hannaford Papers; OR, 40(1):635, 642, 645, 740; Talmage Memoir, June 27, 1864; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 135–36; OR Supplement, 240; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 131. 88. OR, 40(1):807–8; Ulysses R. Brooks, Butler and His Cavalry, 271–72; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 236–37; Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 37. 89. Ulysses R. Brooks, Butler and His Cavalry, 272–74; W. R. Brooks, “Hot Night Fight,” 152. 90. OR, 40(2):462–63, 472–73, (1):274. 91. Pope, “Personal Experience,” 587; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 286; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 131; OR, 40(1):635, 642, 645, 740; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 136; Talmage Memoir, June 28, 1864. 92. OR, 40(1):622, 627; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 465; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 131. 93. OR, 40(1):808; W. R. Brooks, “Hot Night Fight,” 152–53. Holcombe’s Legion, a unit of Elliott’s Brigade, had been detached earlier to guard the railroad at Nottoway Bridge and Stony Creek. 94. OR, 40(1):635, 645, 808; Gilpin Diary, June 28, 1864; Balfour, 13th Virginia Cavalry, 34. 95. Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 132–33; Balfour, 13th Virginia Cavalry, 34; Ulysses R. Brooks, Butler and His Cavalry, 274; Washington, Laurel Brigade, 233–34; Waring Diary, June 28, 1864; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 237; OR, 40(1):622– 23, 635–36, 642, 808; Civil War Memoirs, 88–89, Hannaford Papers; Tenney, War Diary, 122; Gilpin Diary, June 28, 1864. 96. Civil War Memoirs, 88–89, Hannaford Papers; Ulysses R. Brooks, Butler and His Cavalry, 274; Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 134. 97. James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 466; OR, 40(1):622–23, 627, 634–36, 642, 645; Civil War Memoirs, 89, Hannaford Papers; Pope, “Personal Experience,” 588; James H. Wilson, “Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,” 63. 98. Talmage Memoir, June 29, 1864; OR, 40(1):622–23, 628, 636, 646, 808; Ide, 1st Vermont Cavalry, 189; Pope, “Personal Experience,” 588–89; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 467; Ulysses R. Brooks, Butler and His Cavalry, 275–76; Washington, Laurel Brigade, 265; Robinson Reminiscences, 17–18; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 237–38; Vogtsberger, Dulanys of Welbourne, 174–75. 99. OR, 40(1):642; Benedict, Vermont, 2:653; Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 134. Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 46, estimates Chambliss’s loss at about a dozen and speculates that the casualties in the Second Ohio Cavalry and First Vermont Cavalry represented the bulk of Wilson’s dead and wounded. Suderow thinks that 175 of Chapman’s men became prisoners of war on the morning of the 29th. One Confederate source counted an unlikely 800 men captured from Chapman’s brigade. See Washington, Laurel Brigade, 265. 100. Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 45–46; Civil War Memoirs, 91, Hannaford Papers. 101. OR, 40(1):623, 628, 731–32, 735, 740, 758; Kautz Diary, June 29, 1864; Cruikshank,

Notes to Pages 291–97

577

Back in the Sixties, 71; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 132; Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 1, 1864; John C. Carter, Hour of Conflict, 261–62, 265; George Clark, Glance Backward, 56–57; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 145; J. William Jones, Army of Northern Virginia, 145; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 467; Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 46. Willie Pegram commanded two artillery batteries at Reams’ Station—Brander’s and the Purcell Battery—but it is unclear which guns fired the opening shots of the battle. 102. OR, 40(1):169, 623, 628, 636, 732, 735; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 132; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 467–68; James H. Wilson, “Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,” 64; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 359–60. Whitaker and eighteen men of his escort would make it to Meade’s headquarters and Whitaker would receive the Medal of Honor for his feat. See OR, 40(2):493. 103. James H. Wilson, “Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,” 64–66. 104. August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534; OR, 40(1):629, 637, 642, 653; Civil War Memoirs, 92, Hannaford Papers; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 136. 105. OR, 40(1):642; Civil War Memoirs, 93, Hannaford Papers; Ferguson Diary, June 29, 1864, Munford-­Ellis Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; OR Supplement, 332–33; Private William S. Hubbard Letters, 104–5, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Hubbard Letters). 106. OR Supplement, 332–33, 340–41; Jones, Memorial Volume, 145; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 5, 1864, Eugene and James Verdery Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University. 107. Jones, Memorial Volume, 145–46; John C. Carter, Hour of Conflict, 262, 265; OR Supplement, 332–33; OR, 40(1):629, 637, 642, 732; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 471; Dorman, Fifty Years Ago, 14. 108. Civil War Memoirs, 93–94, 97, Hannaford Papers; OR, 40(1):642–43, 732, 735, 741; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 133; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534; Richard Lee Turberville Beale, Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 135–36; Hutchinson, “My Dear Mother & Sisters,” 129; Halliburton, Saddle Soldiers, 152. The Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry credited their own major, Franklin A. Stratton, as the man consulting the compass from his saddle, not Kautz. 109. OR, 40(2):512; Civil War Memoirs, 97, Hannaford Papers; 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry, 133; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534. 110. Gill, Reminiscences of Four Years, 106–7; OR, 40(1):629; Cruickshank, Back in the Sixties, 72–73; Richard E. Beaudry, War Journals, 136; Beaudry, Fifth New York Cavalry, 149. Kautz’s two regiments were the Third New York Cavalry and Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry. 111. Cruickshank, Back in the Sixties, 74; OR, 40(1):629; Beaudry, Fifth New York Cavalry, 150; Trout, Galloping Thunder, 547–48; OR Supplement, 333; Gill, Reminiscences of Four Years, 106. 112. Hubbard Letters, 104–15; OR Supplement, 332, 334. 113. Gill, Reminiscences of Four Years, 107; Couture, Charlie’s Letters, 226; Ide, 1st Vermont Cavalry, 190–91. Denoon’s original letter in the Denoon Family Papers, Library of Virginia, is dated July 7, 1864, although the published version is dated July 8. There are numerous references to the abandoned African American babies, some accounts painfully poignant. See, for example, William M. Dame to an unknown correspondent, July 19, 1864, William Meade Dame Letters, bound vol. 138, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Brother,” July 24, 1864, Henry Augustine Minor Papers, Spe578

Notes to Pages 297–301

cial Collections Library, University of Virginia; Civil War Memoirs, 91, Hannaford Papers; Gilpin Diary, June 30, 1864; Beck, “Letters of a Civil War Surgeon,” 159–60; Frank M. Myers, Comanches, 311–12. 114. OR, 40(1):624, 629–30, 646–47, 809; OR Supplement, 333, 341; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 241–42; Hoffman, Vermont Cavalryman, 291; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 472–76; James H. Wilson, “Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,” 67–71; Beck, “Letters of a Civil War Surgeon,” 159. 115. James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 469–70. 116. OR, 40(2):493–94, 504–6. Meade’s inclination to avoid relying on Wright may have stemmed from that officer’s tentative performance during the Second Offensive. 117. Letter of July 4, 1864, in Thomas W. Hyde, Civil War Letters, unpaginated; Thomas W. Hyde, Following the Greek Cross, 217–18; OR, 40(1):495, 497–98, 503, (2):509; Charles B. Putnam letter, June 30, 1864, Charles B. Putnam Papers and Diary, Vermont Historical Society; Diary of Captain Chester W. Dodge, June 29, 1864, John H. Macomber Papers, Minnesota Historical Society; Henry Houghton, “Ordeal of Civil War,” 38; Wilbur Fisk Diary, June 29, 1864, Minnesota Historical Society; Rosenblatt and Rosenblatt, Hard Marching, 233; Lyman S. Williams to “Dear Sister,” July 3, 1864, Lyman S. Williams Papers, Vermont Historical Society; Frank C. Morse to “My dear Nellie Love,” June 30, 1864, Frank C. Morse Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Olcott, Civil War Letters of Lewis Bissell, July 2, 1864. Various participants estimated the distance from their camps to Reams’ Station as between six and twelve miles. One Federal account characterized the fighting that evening as “fierce in intensity” but brief. See Grayson M. Eichelberger Memoir, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 118. Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 182; Robert Hunt Rhodes, All for the Union, 166; Dayton E. Flint to his sister, July 5, 1864, Dayton E. Flint Papers, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Swinfen, 122nd New York, 49; John Hoffman Diary, June 30, 1864, John Hoffman Letters and Diary, bound vol. 24, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Donald Chipman, “Essex County Soldier,” 298; Brewer, Sixty-­First Pennsylvania, 105. Meade ordered Wright to halt about halfway back to the army’s main lines. 119. OR, 40(2):448–49, 462–63, 472–73; 36(3):797. 120. Wittenberg, Sergeant Thomas W. Smith Letters, 126; Webb Diary, June 28, 1864; Kidd, Personal Recollections, 369; Strang, Sunshine and Shadows, 53; Sheridan, Personal Memoirs, 441–42; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 228; James H. Wilson, “Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac,” 73. Chapter 8 1. New York Times, July 6, 1864. 2. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(1):29–30, 624, 647, 733, 735–36, 809–10 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 243; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 480; Haskin, First Regiment of Artillery, 207; August V. Kautz, “Operations,” 534; Calhoun, Liberty Dethroned, 135; Suderow, “Wilson-­Kautz Raid,” 49–51. Suderow’s research is definitive and lists casualties for every Confederate unit. 3. OR, 40(2):560; Civil War Memoirs, 98, Roger Hannaford Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society. Notes to Pages 301–5

579

4. Meade, Life and Letters, 209–10; Jeffrey D. Marshall, War of the People, 248; Beck, “Letters of a Civil War Surgeon,” 134–35. 5. Vogtsberger, Dulanys of Welbourne, 175; Samuel S. Brooke to “My dear Sister,” July 3, 1864, John Milton Binckley Papers, Library of Congress; Wells, Hampton and His Cavalry, 248. 6. OR, 40(2):632–33. 7. OR, 40(3):15–16, 113. 8. OR, 40(3):68–69; Charles Dana to Edwin Stanton, July 7, 1864, Edwin M. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress; Dana, Recollections, 226–28. 9. OR, 40(2):560–63; James Harrison Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 481–527; Meade, Life and Letters, 210. 10. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 813; Beauregard to Martin, June 29, 1864, Personal Letter Book, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Beauregard Papers); Barefoot, General Robert F. Hoke, 215–16. Just a few weeks later, Martin transferred to a command in western North Carolina, and Gen. James A. Walker succeeded him in charge of defending the Richmond & Danville Railroad. Meanwhile, Gen. Wil­liam W. Kirkland replaced Martin in brigade command. 11. Daniel C. Snyder to “My Dear Wife,” June 28 [June 30], Daniel C. Snyder Letters, bound vol. 385, Fredericksburg National Military Park. 12. Murray Forbes Taylor to “Dearest Cousin,” July 3, 1864, Murray Forbes Taylor Papers, Virginia Historical Society; John Bratton to “Dear Bettie,” July 9, 1864, John Bratton Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History; Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 96; Leiper Moore Robinson Reminiscences, 18, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Robinson Reminiscences). 13. OR, 40(3):753–54; Alfred Landon Rives to “My Dearest Sadie,” July 2, 1864, Rives Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Johnston, “Lee’s Last Lifeline,” 295; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 55–56; Johnston, Virginia Railroads, 213–15; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 12, 1864, Eugene and James Verdery Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University; Matthew Walton Venable, Eighty Years After or Grandpa’s Story, 36–37. Confederate teamsters told Charles Campbell on July 6 that the railroad would be operational within a few days. Charles Campbell Diary, July 6, 1864, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary (hereafter cited as Campbell Diary). Wilson would claim that “it was nine weeks, or sixty-­three days, before a train from the south ran into Petersburg,” which was patently false. See Under the Old Flag, 462–63. 14. OR, 40(1):29–30; Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 2, 1864; Eanes, Virginia’s Black Confederates, 11; John Hampden Chamberlayne to “My dear Mother,” July 1, 1864, Chamberlayne Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Chamberlayne Family Papers); James T. Perry Diary, July 1, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Perry Diary); James Eldred Phillips Memoir, 58–59, James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Phillips Papers); Captain Joseph Banks Lyle Diary and Letters, June 30, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Lyle Diary and Letters); Thomas Claybrook Elder to “My dear Wife,” July 1 1864, Thomas Claybrook Elder Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Elder Papers). 15. Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):341; John Hampden Chamberlayne to “My dear Mother,” July 1, 1864, Chamberlayne Family Papers; Perry Diary, July 1, 1864; Robinson Reminiscences, 18. 580

Notes to Pages 305–9

16. William M. Dame to an unknown correspondent, July 19, 1864, William Meade Dame Letters, bound vol. 138, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Dame Letters); George Clark, Glance Backward, 57; Charles E. Denoon to “Dear Father and Mother,” July 7, 1864, Denoon Family Papers, Library of Virginia (published in Couture, Charlie’s Letters, 226, under date of July 8, 1864); Phillips Memoir, 58–59, Phillips Papers. 17. Mary Curtis Burgess, “A True Story,” 3, Petersburg National Battlefield; William S. Hubbard to “Dear Father,” July 9, 1864, Private William S. Hubbard Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Hubbard Letters); William M. Dame to an unknown correspondent, July 19, 1864, Dame Letters; Westwood Todd, “Reminiscences of the War between the States, April 1861–­July 1865,” 229, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 6, 1864. 18. Daniel Snyder to “My Dear Wife,” June 28 [June 30], 1864, Snyder Letters; Robert H. Allen Diary, July 3, 1864, Allen Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 19. John H. Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” June 12, 1864, Claiborne Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Claiborne Family Papers); Petersburg Daily Register, June 14 and June 15, 1864; Nathaniel Richard Tunstall to “Dear Father,” June 15, 1864, Lucy Tunstall Alston Williams Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina. 20. Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 10; Campbell Diary, June 15, 1864; Hall T. McGee Diary, 24, South Carolina Historical Society. 21. James Montgomery Holloway to “My Dearest Wife,” June 16, 1864, James Montgomery Holloway Letters, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Holloway Letters); MacRae, Americans at Home, 159; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, 50–51; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 188; Crabtree and Patton, Journal of a Secesh Lady, 579; Campbell Diary, June 18, 1864. For a recent and illuminating treatment of the civilian experience in Petersburg, see Janney, “War Thoroughfare.” 22. Richmond Examiner, June 18, 1864, quoting from the Petersburg Register, June 17, 1864. 23. Billings, Tenth Massachusetts Battery, 283; George E. Lewis, Battery  E, First Rhode Island Light Artillery, 328; James Adger Smyth to “My own precious wife,” June 18, 1864, James Adger Smyth Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society; Henderson, Petersburg in the Civil War, 114–15; Richmond Examiner, June 18, 1864; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 279–80. 24. Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 279; Hilton A. Parker to “Dear Sister,” July 2, 1864, Lieutenant Hilton A. Parker Letters, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan; Oliver Wilson Davis, Life of David Bell Birney, 231; Roemer, Reminiscences, 225; C. G. Chamberlayne, Ham Chamberlayne, 242. 25. Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 204; Henry A. Wise to “My beloved Wife,” June 27, 1864, Wise Family Papers, 1816–1898, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Wise Family Papers); Thomas Claybrook Elder to “My Dear Wife,” July 1, 1864, Elder Papers. 26. Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 206, 240; Bessie Meade Callender to Charlotte Meade Ruffin, July 25, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers); Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Brother,” July 24, 1864, Henry Augustine Minor Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Major Albert Brooker to “Dear Mother,” July 24, 1864, Albert Brooker Letters, bound vol. 53, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Shaver, Sixtieth Alabama, 59; George S. Thomas to “My dear Moll,” July 7, 1864, George S. Thomas Notes to Pages 309–13

581

Letters, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (hereafter cited as Thomas Letters); Corson, My Dear Jennie, 122. 27. Eleanor Platt to “My dear Sister,” July 11, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers; M. W. Venable, “In the Trenches,” 61; Campbell Diary, July 3, 1864; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 279; “Midnight Ride,” 705–6. 28. Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 388–89; Drake, Ninth New Jersey, 125; Kenneth Wiley, Norfolk Blues, 132; Campbell Diary, July 16, 1864. 29. Trout, Galloping Thunder, 550; Crabtree and Patton, Journal of a Secesh Lady, 579; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 279; Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 204. 30. Richmond Examiner, June 18, 1864; Petersburg Daily Register, June 18, 1864; Elias Davis to “Dear Georgie,” June 20, 1864, Elias Davis Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 187. 31. Campbell Diary, June 30 and July 22, 1864; Henderson, Civil War Petersburg, 124; Richmond Examiner, June 27, 1864; Bessie Meade Callender to Charlotte Meade Ruffin, July 25, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers; Eleanor Platt to “My dear Sister,” July 11, 1864, Ruffin-­ Meade Family Papers. 32. Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 102; Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 240; Thomas Claybrook Elder to “My Dear Wife,” July 27, 1864, Elder Papers. 33. Charles Henry Dimmock to his wife, July 8, 1864, Charles Henry Dimmock Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Dimmock Papers); John Cowper Granbery to his wife, July 14, 1864, John Cowper Granbery Letters, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (hereafter cited as Granbery Letters); Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 191; Henderson, Petersburg in the Civil War, 124; Campbell Diary, July 3 and July 22, 1864; Anne Banister Pryor, “Child’s Recollection of War,” 55; Margaret Stanly Beckwith “Reminiscences, 1844–1865,” 20–21, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Beckwith, “Reminiscences”). 34. Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 206, 240; Roney, “Reminiscences,” 24–25. 35. Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 206, Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 281; John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” June 19, 1864, John H. Claiborne Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (hereafter cited as Claiborne Papers). 36. Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 206, 240; Wiatt, 26th Virginia Infantry, 181–82; Campbell Diary, July 4 and July 14, 1864. Campbell is the source for mentioning the red flags, although yellow flags usually marked hospital facilities. 37. Mrs. Bessie Callender, “Personal Recollections of the Civil War,” Bird Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Bird Family Papers). 38. Giles Buckner Cooke Diary, June 20, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Cooke Diary); Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 21 and June 22, 1864; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 191. 39. Robert Taylor Scott to Fanny Scott [his wife], July 4, 1864, Keith Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Keith Family Papers); James W. Albright Diary, June 20, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Albright Diary); Avary, Virginia Girl, 300; Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936–1938, Interview of Mrs. Fannie Berry, Virginia Narratives, 17:6, Library of Congress. 40. John B. Evans to “Dear Companion,” July 3, 1864, and to “Honorable Father and Mother,” July 6, 1864, John B. Evans Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Beckwith, “Reminiscences,” 22; Campbell Diary, July 3, 1864; John Esten Cooke, “Around Petersburg 582

Notes to Pages 313–18

Being the Notes of a Confederate Soldier in That Region,” July 5, 1864, John Esten Cooke Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Cooke, “Around Petersburg”); Robert Taylor Scott to Fanny Scott [his wife], July 4, 1864, Keith Family Papers; George S. Thomas to “Dear Moll,” July 7, 1864, Thomas Letters. 41. Unidentified Confederate officer to “My own dearest wife,” July 7, 1864, Mary Eliza (Fleming) Schooler Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Schooler Papers); Cooke Diary, July 7, 1864; Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 101; Campbell Diary, June 29, July 2, and July 3, 1864. 42. Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 102; Susan Minor Blackford, Letters from Lee’s Army, 2:215; Styple, Writing and Fighting the Confederate War, 230–31; William Ross Stillwell to “Dear Mollie,” July 4, 1864, William Ross Stillwell Civil War Papers, Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as Stillwell Civil War Papers); John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 11, 1864, Claiborne Papers. 43. P. F. Ruffin to “My dear Father,” July 6, 1864, Ruffin Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Avary, Virginia Girl, 305; Journal of Emma Mordecai, July 4, 1864, Mordecai Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; New York Times, August 5, 1864. 44. William Ross Stillwell to “Dear Mollie,” July 4, 1864, Stillwell Civil War Papers; Shaver, Sixtieth Alabama, 60; Unidentified Confederate officer to “My own dearest wife,” July 7, 1864, Schooler Papers; Emerson and Stokes, Faith, Valor, and Devotion, 291; Avary, Virginia Girl, 306. 45. Thomas Claybrook Elder to “My Dear Wife,” July 11, 1864, Elder Papers; John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 11, 1864, Claiborne Papers; Campbell Diary, July 3, 1864; John Cowper Granbery to his wife, July 14, 1864, Granbery Letters; Shaver, Sixtieth Alabama, 59–60. The turning basin belonged to the Upper Appomattox Canal and was located opposite Campbell’s Bridge and well west of the range of Union artillery. 46. Eleanor Platt to “My dear Sister,” July 11, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers; Ed­ward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 102; Anne Banister Pryor, “Child’s Recollection of War,” 54–55; Albright Diary, June 27, 1864; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 195–96. 47. John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 14, 1864, Claiborne Papers. 48. William Izard Clopton to “My Dear Mother & Sisters,” June 22, 1864, Clopton Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 204–6; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 278–81; Shaver, Sixtieth Alabama, 60; David Washington Pipes Memoir, 50–51, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Pipes Memoir); William Miller Owen, In Camp and Battle, 332; Eleanor Platt to “My Dear Sister,” July 11, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers; Campbell Diary, June 30, 1864. 49. John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 14, 1864, Claiborne Papers; Robert P. Scarborough to “Dear Cousin,” July 22, 1864, R. P. Scarborough Papers, Confederate Miscellany Collection, Emory University. 50. Charles Henry Dimmock to his wife, July 8, 1864, Dimmock Papers; Campbell Diary, July 15, 1864; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 10. 51. Campbell Diary, July 9, 1864; Pipes Memoir, 50–51; Thomas Jordan to Henry Wise, July 13, 1864, Beauregard Papers; Petersburg Common Council Minutes, July 13 and July 15, 1864, Office of the Clerk of City Council, Petersburg, Va. (hereafter cited as Common Council Minutes). 52. Styple, Writing and Fighting the Confederate War, 232–33; John H. Kinyoun to “My Notes to Pages 318–22

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dear and beloved wife,” July 19, 1864, in Joseph Kinyoun Houts Jr., “A Darkness Ablaze: The Civil War Medical Experiences and Diary of Dr. John Hendricks Kinyoun of the 66th North Carolina Infantry Regiment,” Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as “Darkness Ablaze”); William Biggs to “Sister Pat,” June 27, 1864, Asa Biggs Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Styple, Writing and Fighting from the Army of Northern Virginia, 289. 53. John R. Turner letters, June 26 and July 18, 1864, John R Turner Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Laban Odom to “Dear Wife,” June 20, 1864, Laban Odom Letters, Georgia Department of Archives and History; William Izard Clopton to “My dear Sister Joyce,” June 29, 1864, Clopton Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University. 54. Petersburg Daily Register, June 28 and June 29, 1864; M. W. Venable, “In the Trenches,” 60. 55. Beckwith, “Reminiscences,” 20; Charles Henry Dimmock to “My dearest Lissie,” June 30, 1864, Dimmock Papers. 56. Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 388; Welch, Confederate Surgeon’s Letters, 102; Blesser, Hammonds of Redcliffe, 122–23; Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 102; Frank M. Myers, Comanches, 309; Henry A. Wise to “My beloved Wife,” June 27, 1864, Wise Family Papers. 57. John H. Kinyoun to “My dear and beloved wife,” July 19, 1864, in “Darkness Ablaze”; Cooke, “Around Petersburg”; W. W. Blackford, “Memoirs: First and Last, or Battles in Virginia,” 451–52, Library of Virginia; Bessie Meade Callender to Charlotte Meade Ruffin, July 25, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers; Charles Henry Dimmock, Letter, June 26, 1864, Dimmock Papers. 58. John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 11, 1864, Claiborne Family Papers; James Montgomery Holloway to “My Dearest Wife,” June 29, 1864, Holloway Letters. 59. Shaver, Sixtieth Alabama, 59; Campbell Diary, July 2 and July 8, 1864. 60. Campbell Diary, July 6 and July 8, 1864; Charles Henry Dimmock to his wife, July 8, 1864, Dimmock Papers. 61. List of Soldiers and Sailors Families—Residents of Petersburg, Va., September 1864, Museum of the Confederacy; Campbell Diary, July 6 and July 8, 1864; John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 11, 1864, Claiborne Family Papers; Common Council Minutes, July 1, 1864. 62. Campbell Diary, July 21, 1864; Eleanor Platt to “My dear Sister,” July 7, 1864, Ruffin-­ Meade Family Papers; Callender, “Personal Recollections,” 7, Bird Family Papers; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences, 283. 63. Henderson, 12th Virginia Infantry, 79; Elliott Lemuel Story Diary, July 13, 1864, Virginia Historical Society; Petersburg Daily Register, June 27, 1864; [Eugene H. Levy], “The Siege of Petersburg, Va: A Transcript from a Confederate Soldier’s Diary,” John Edwin Roller Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; William S. Hubbard to “Dear Father,” July 9, 1864, Hubbard Letters; James King Wilkerson to “Dear Mother,” July 17, 1864, James King Wilkerson Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; John Cowper Granbery to his wife, June 24, 1864, Granbery Letters. Relative prices between Richmond and Petersburg fluctuated constantly in accordance with an uneven and unpredictable supply situation. A month after Granbery found Petersburg prices a bargain, Pvt. Edward Bagby of the Thirty-­Fourth Virginia declared Petersburg costs much higher than those in the capital. See Edward Bagby to “My dear Sue,” July 24, 1864, Clarke Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 64. Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936–1938, Inter584

Notes to Pages 322–27

view of Mrs. Fannie Berry, Virginia Narratives, 17:6, Library of Congress. For a provocative and wide-­ranging discussion of the weakening of slavery during the war, see Levine, Confederate Emancipation. 65. Petersburg Daily Register, June 30, 1864; Campbell Diary, June 24, July 2, and July 11, 1864; Miss Vic Dodson, “Early Reminiscences of the War between the States during the Siege of Petersburg, 1864–65,” Bird Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Beauregard to Colonel Alfred Roman, June 30, 1864, Personal Letter Book, Beauregard Papers; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 200–201, 310n26. 66. Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 388; Campbell Diary, July 6 and July 16, 1864; William Russell Diary, July 15, 1864, William Russell Diary and Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Beauregard to Colonel Alfred Roman, June 30, 1864, Personal Letter Book, Beauregard Papers; Cooke Diary, June 30, 1864; Bessie Meade Callender to Charlotte Meade Ruffin, July 25, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers. 67. Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 248; Campbell Diary, July 3, 1864. 68. Cooke, “Around Petersburg”; Lyle Diary and Letters, July 4, 1864; Campbell Diary, July 4, 1864; Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 102. 69. Campbell Diary, July 3, 1864; Jennifer Ford, Hour of Our Nation’s Agony, 159–60; Cooke Diary, July 10, 1864; J. William Jones, Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee, 318; Tower, Lee’s Adjutant, 171, 173–74; “A Rebel,” Lowry Shuford Collection, State Archives of North Carolina; George Henry Venable to “Dear Mother,” July 24,1864, George Henry Venable Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 197, 202–3. The “Rebel” was probably Mrs. Fannie E. Waddell of Petersburg and Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Reverend Platt appealed to General Meade to cease the practice of firing on the city’s churches during standard times of worship, and the general acquiesced. See Scott and Wyatt, Petersburg’s Story, 219. 70. Jennie F. Stephenson, “My Father and His Household,” 39–40, Blanton Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; “Midnight Ride,” 704. 71. Cockrell and Ballard, Mississippi Rebel, 281. Holt mistakenly dated this episode to June 15. 72. Levy diary quoted in Rosen, Jewish Confederates, 190. Perhaps Levy’s virtue was more apparent than real, as his service record includes documentation that he was treated for syphilis. See Eugene H. Levy service file, Captain Landry’s Company (Donaldsonville) Artillery, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from Louisiana (M320), War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives. My thanks to William Marvel for questioning my characterization of Levy as “upstanding.” 73. Owen, Washington Artillery, 332–33; Robert E. L. Krick, Staff Officers in Gray, 118. 74. Petersburg Express, June 29, 1864; Campbell Diary, July 14 and July 22, 1864; Carmichael, Lee’s Young Artillerist, 142. 75. Captain Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Lee, 132–33; Bessie Meade Callender to Charlotte Meade Ruffin, July 25, 1864, Ruffin-­Meade Family Papers. 76. John Herbert Claiborne to “My dear Wife,” July 14, 1864, Claiborne Family Papers; Petersburg Daily Express, July 7, 1864. 77. Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:527; Petersburg Daily Register, June 29, 1864; Campbell Diary, July 21, 1864. 78. Miers, Wash Roebling’s War, 159; Richmond Enquirer, August 30, 1864. Notes to Pages 327–31

585

Chapter 9 1. Jennifer Ford, Hour of Our Nation’s Agony, 161; Sam Brooke to “My dear Sister,” July 3, 1864, John Milton Binckley Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Binckley Papers). 2. Jennifer Ford, Hour of Our Nation’s Agony, 161; Samuel Catawba Lowry Diary, July 18, 1864, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter cited as Lowry Diary); Paul M. Higginbotham to “Dear Brother,” July 1, 1864, Paul M. Higginbotham Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Higginbotham Papers); James Adger Smyth to “My own dear Wife,” July 4, 1864, James Adger Smyth Correspondence, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as Smyth Correspondence); Welch, Confederate Surgeon’s Letters, 102; Julius A. Lineback, July 24, 1864, Julius A. Lineback Papers and Diary, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina. 3. John Bratton to “Dear Wife,” July 13, 1864, in Austin, General John Bratton, 226; John Bratton to “Dear Wife,” July 2, 1864, John Bratton Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History; William Biggs to “Sister Pat,” June 27, 1864, Asa Biggs Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Biggs Papers); Joseph B. McCallum to “Dear Sister,” July 4, 1864, Catherine Blanche McCallum Collection, East Carolina University; Lowry Diary, June 23 and July 19, 1864; Charles M. Cooke, “Fifty-­Fifth Regiment,” 307; Charles G. Elliott, “Martin’s Brigade,” 195–96; Corbin, Letters, 51. 4. John Bratton to “Dear Wife,” July 13, 1864, in Austin, General John Bratton, 227; Charles G. Elliott, “Martin’s Brigade,” 195; William B. Green to “Dear Wife,” July 2, 1864, William B. Green Letters, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; Lowry Diary, June 23, 1864; Corbin, Letters, 51. 5. Lowe and Hodges, Letters to Amanda, 158–59; William A. Miller to “Dear Brother John,” July 21, 1864, William A. Miller Letters, bound vol. 168, Fredericksburg National Military Park. 6. William Biggs to “Sister Pat,” June 27, 1864, Biggs Papers; James Adger Smyth to “My own darling Wife,” July 7, 1864, Smyth Correspondence; Paul M. Higginbotham to “Dear Brother,” July 1, 1864, Higginbotham Papers; John R. Turner, [no salutation], June 26, 1864, John R. Turner Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University. 7. William C. Nelson to “My Dearest Mother,” July 16, 1864, in Jennifer Ford, Hour of Our Nation’s Agony, 161; Lowe and Hodges, Letters to Amanda, 161; Sam Brooke to “My dear Sister,” July 3, 1864, Binckley Papers. 8. Robert Taylor Scott to Fanny Scott [his wife], July 4, 1864, Keith Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; C. J. C. Hutson to “Dear Charley,” July 27, 1864, Hutson Family Papers, Tulane University Special Collections; W. H. Sanders to “Dear Father,” July 7, 1864, John C. C. Sanders Collection, University of Alabama. See M. Keith Harris, “We Will Finish the War Here,” 210–27, for more evidence of high Confederate morale. 9. David B. Harris to “Dear Mrs. Harris,” June 27, 1864, David Bullock Harris Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Harris Papers); John Godwin to “My darling good wife,” July 15, 1864, Godwin Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 10. William Biggs to “My dear Pa,” July 19, 1864, Biggs Papers; John Cherry to “My dear Sister,” July 6 and July 21, 1864, Lucy Cherry Crisp Papers, East Carolina University (hereafter cited as Crisp Papers); Charles Henry Dimmock to his wife, July 8, 1864, Charles Henry Dimmock Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Dimmock Papers);

586

Notes to Pages 332–35

Rufus Barringer to “Dear Father,” July 6, 1864, in Troxler and Barrier, Dear Father, 58. Private Barringer should not be confused with the cavalry general of the same name. 11. Robert C. Mabry to “My Dear Wife,” July 3, 1864, Robert C. Mabry Papers, State Archives of North Carolina; Styple, Writing and Fighting the Confederate War, 235; Stephen Elliott to “My dear wife,” June 26, 1864, Elliott Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (hereafter cited as Elliott Family Papers). 12. Hugh Denson to “Miss Dossie,” July 24, 1864, Emily Smith York Papers and Diary, 1864, Auburn University; Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Brother,” July 24, 1864, Henry Augustine Minor Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Joseph Frederick Waring Diary, 1864–65, July 7, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Waring Diary). 13. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 37(1):767; 40(3):793, 745 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Wright, Letters of Benjamin H. Freeman, 49. 14. Ramsdell, “Lee’s Horse Supply,” 768; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 815; William Nelson Pendleton Letter Book, July 12, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy. 15. Robert E. Lee to A. R. Lawton, July 27, 1864, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 16. Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):251–52, 322–25 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); OR, 40(2):703–4, (1):760–62; Joseph Mullen Diary, July 2–4, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy; Coski, Capital Navy, 164–65. 17. OR, 40(2):670, 707–8, (3):761–62, 822. On July 31 Ewell’s numbers dwindled to 4,395. Numbers quoted in “The Confederate Army,” in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 594, vary slightly from these totals. 18. Folsom, Heroes and Martyrs of Georgia, 31; Major General Bushrod Johnson Diary, July 12–27, 1864, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives (hereafter cited as Johnson Diary). 19. Natalie H. Lee, Dear Isa, Dear Johna, 128; Wade G. Chick to “Dear Miss Flora,” July 14, 1864, Michael Musick Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; OR, 40(3):818. 20. Croner, Sergeant’s Story, 125; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 438; John L. Smith, 118th Pennsylvania, 491–92; Addison S. Boyce to “Dear Beloved Mary,” July 15, 1864, Addison S. Boyce Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield; John E. Irwin to “Dear Sister,” July 15, 1864, Irwin Family Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, July 14, 1864, New York Public Library; William Beynon Phillips to “Dear Annie,” July 20, 1864, Phillips Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). 21. Stephen Elliott Welch to “Dear Mother and Annie,” July 3, 1864, Stephen Elliott Welch Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; William H. Locke to “My darling Wife,” July 17, 1864, William Herrod Locke Letters, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; OR, 40(3):816–17; Major Francis W. Smith to “My own Darling Wife,” July 12, 1864, Smith Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 22. George Philip Clark Diary, July 7, 1864, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Day, “In the Trenches,” 23; M. W. Venable, “In the Trenches,” 61; Judge David A. Christian, “Reminiscences of Confederate Army Life,” bound vol. 151, Richmond National Battlefield Park; OR, 40(1):274–75.

Notes to Pages 335–39

587

23. David B. Harris to “My darling wife,” July 10, 1864, Harris Papers. 24. Folsom, Heroes and Martyrs of Georgia, 111–12; Livermore, Days and Events, 377; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 441–43; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 842– 43, 859; Eggleston, “Artillery Experiences,” 364–65. 25. Thomas Jordan to Walter Stevens, July 12, 1864, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Beauregard Papers); W. W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart, 264–65. 26. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 816; Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:512. 27. OR, 40(2):702–3; Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 816, 825; Willie Pegram to “My dear Jennie,” July 14, 1864, Pegram-­Johnston-­McIntosh Family Papers, 1825–1941, Virginia Historical Society; Sommers, Richmond Redeemed, 2. 28. Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:513–14. 29. John Hendricks Kinyoun to “My dear and beloved wife,” July 19, 1864, in Joseph Kinyoun Houts Jr., “A Darkness Ablaze: The Civil War Medical Experiences and Diary of Dr. John Hendricks Kinyoun of the 66th North Carolina Infantry Regiment,” Petersburg National Battlefield; William C. Nelson to “My Dear Mother,” July 5, 1864, Jennifer Ford, Hour of Our Nation’s Agony, 159–60; OR, 40(3):784. 30. William C. Nelson to “My Dear Mother,” July 5, 1864, in Jennifer Ford, Hour of Our Nation’s Agony, 159–60. A number of monographs detail Early’s July campaign. One good choice is Cooling, Jubal Early’s Raid on Washington, 1864. 31. George E. Waller to “Dear Sister,” July 14, 1864, George E. Waller Letters, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; J. Mark Smither to “Dear Mother,” July 17, 1864, Major J. Mark Smither Papers, Confederate Research Center, Hill College; James Montgomery Holloway to “My Dearest Wife,” July 16, 1864, James Montgomery Holloway Letters, Virginia Historical Society. 32. William Drayton Rutherford to “My own best beloved,” July 14, 1864, William Drayton Rutherford Letters, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; Stephen Elliott to “My own dear wife,” July 14, 1864, Elliott Family Papers; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 440. 33. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 807–8; Bradley T. Johnson, “My Ride around Baltimore,” 251–53. See Cooling, Jubal Early’s Raid, 157–76, for a brief account of this episode. Even had the Confederates reached Point Lookout and extricated the prisoners, how they would have been armed to cooperate in the effort against Washington adds another element of improbability to this unlikely scheme. 34. OR, 40(1):697–98, (2):426; James H. Clark, Iron Hearted Regiment, 139–41. 35. Bryant, Diary, 166–67; Isaiah Price, Ninety-­Seventh Pennsylvania, 301–2; OR, 40(1): 703–4. 36. Johnson Diary, June 30, 1864; Allardice, Confederate Colonels, 155. Fulton’s successor, Colonel Richard H. Keeble, was also killed on June 30. 37. OR, 40(1):698, (2):538; Bryant, Diary, 170–71; Charles Kline to “Dear Mother & Sisters,” July 12, 1864, Charles Kline Civil War Letters, South Carolina Historical Society. Barton would go on sick leave, but return to command his brigade on August 27 and receive a brevet to the rank of brigadier general in March 1865. OR, 42(1):105. 38. Ephraim P. Nye Diary, July 4, 1864, bound vol. 180, Richmond National Battlefield Park; John Cherry to “My dear Sister,” July 6, 1864, Crisp Papers; John W. Stott Diary, July 4, 588

Notes to Pages 339–44

1864, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Francis Marion Coker to “My dearest precious wife,” July 4, 1864, Francis Hodgson Heidler Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia; Anderson, Fifty-­ Seventh Massachusetts, 154; Corbin, Letters, 50–54; James Adger Smyth to “My own dear wife,” July 4, 1864, Smyth Correspondence. The Federals did fire artillery salutes in honor of the day, using live ammunition aimed randomly at Petersburg. See Hilton A. Parker to “Dear Father,” July 9, 1864, Lieutenant Hilton A. Parker Letters, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan. 39. Marcus, Memoirs, 301; Kenneth Wiley, Norfolk Blues, 130–31; Ritchie, Four Years, 174; George Hugunin Diary, July 4, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Hugunin Diary); Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 181–82; Henry H. B. Chamberlain to “Dearest Minnie,” July 8, 1864, Henry H. B. Chamberlain Papers, Cornell University (hereafter cited as Chamberlain Papers). 40. Cutchins, Famous Command, 147–48; Harvey, Recollections, 15; Palladino, Diary of a Yankee Engineer, 150. 41. Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 101–2; Greenleaf, Letters to Eliza, 114; Hugunin Diary, July 4, 1864; Petersburg Express, July 7, 1864; Ely Parker to William R. Rowley, July 8, 1864, William R. Rowley Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (hereafter cited as Rowley Papers). Both the Federals and the Confederates claimed to have initiated the dog incident. 42. Thomas Bolling to “Dear Mrs. Harris,” July 10, 1864, Harris Papers; Beauregard to Hoke, July 8, 1864, Personal Letter Book, Beauregard Papers. 43. George Bernard Diary, July 8, 1864, in Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 249; McCarty quoted in Power, Lee’s Miserables, 119; Edward Richardson Crockett Diary, July 8, 1864, Edward Richardson Crockett Diary and Papers, 1864–65, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas; Austin, General John Bratton, 225; OR, 40(1):761. 44. Longacre, Lee’s Cavalrymen, 308. 45. Charles Grattan to “My Dear Mary,” July 19, 1864, Mary E. Grattan Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Neese, Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery, 303–4; Washington, Laurel Brigade, 266. 46. A. B. Mulligan to “My Dear Sister Eliza,” July 10, 1864, in Hutchinson, “My Dear Mother & Sisters,” 132–33; OR Supplement, 342–43; Lee Barfield to “My Dear Wife,” July 13, 1864, “Confederate Letters Written by Mr. Lee Barfield of Dooly County, Georgia, 1861– 1865,” Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as Barfield Letters); Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 283. 47. Longacre, Jersey Cavaliers, 217–18; Lloyd, First Pennsylvania Cavalry, 105–6. See chapter 8 on the reopening of the Petersburg Railroad. 48. OR Supplement, 343; Freeman and McWhiney, Lee’s Dispatches, 283; OR, 40(3):198; Lloyd, First Pennsylvania Cavalry, 106. 49. OR, 40(3):180, 183, 185; Chapman, More Terrible Than Victory, 209; William E. Endicott to “Dear Mary,” July 14, 1864, William E. Endicott Papers, Auburn University; Longacre, Jersey Cavaliers, 217; Lee Barfield to “My Dear Wife,” July 13, 1864, Barfield Letters. 50. OR, 40(1):762, (3):313; OR Supplement, 251; R. E. Lee to W. H. F. Lee, July 18, 1864, Robert E. Lee Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University; Captain Joseph Banks Lyle Diary and Letters, July 17, 1864, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Lyle Diary and Letters). Notes to Pages 345–48

589

51. OR, 40(1):762, (3):290–91, 313; OR Supplement, 252; Lyle Diary and Letters, July 18, 1864; Telegram, July 17, 1864, Joseph R. Hawley Correspondence and Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Hawley Correspondence and Papers); Dobbins, Grandfather’s Journal, 204. 52. Meade, Life and Letters, 213–14; Gouverneur K. Warren to “My pretty one,” July 17, 1864, G. K. Warren Papers, New York State Library. 53. OR, 40(1):762; OR Supplement, 252. 54. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 19, 1864; Davie A. Hampton to “Dear Uncel,” July 21, 1864, Caleb Hampton Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Charles Henry Dimmock to his wife, July 24, 1864, Dimmock Papers. One report credited sharpshooters for inflicting Grant’s fatal wound. See OR Supplement, 344. 55. J. Herbert Claiborne to “My dear wife,” July 21, 1864, Claiborne Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; William Biggs to “My dear Pa,” July 19, 1864, Biggs Papers; Waring Diary, July 25, 1864; Jesse R. Bowles to “Dear Sister,” July 21, 1864, Bowles Family Papers, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary; Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 19, 1864. 56. Collier and Collier, Yours for the Union, 350; Justus G. Matteson to “Dear Friend Mary,” June 27, 1864, Matteson Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012); Andrew Jackson Crossley to “Friend Sam,” July 15, 1864, Samuel Bradbury Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Bradbury Papers); David B. Birney to “My dear Gross,” June 26, 1864, David B. Birney Papers, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Birney Papers); Charles Chipman to “Dear Lissie,” July 25, 1864, Charles Chipman Papers, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Chipman Papers); Charles M. Coit to “Dear All,” July 28, 1864, Captain Charles M. Coit Papers, Yale University (hereafter cited as Coit Papers). 57. Post, Soldiers’ Letters, 423; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 137; John Rumsey Brinckle to “My Dear Brother,” July 6, 1864, John Rumsey Brinckle Letters, Library of Congress; McBride, In the Ranks, 51; Paul E. Wilson and Harriet S. Wilson, Civil War Diary of Thomas White Stephens, 201; William B. Phillips to “Dear Annie,” July 20, 1864, Phillips Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). 58. James Flansburgh to “Dear Brother,” July 21, 1864, James Flansburgh Letters, bound vol. 39, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Charles Kline to “Dear Mother and Sister,” July 4, 1864, Kline Letters, South Carolina Historical Society; David F. Dobie to “My dear friend Hattie,” July 18, 1864, David F. Dobie Letters, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Charles Chipman to “Dear Lissie,” June 29, 1864, Chipman Papers. “Sink” was the Civil War term for latrine. 59. Warren S. Gurney to “Dear Mother,” July 19, 1864, Warren S. Gurney Papers, John Hay Library, Brown University; Henry Pippitt to “Dear Mother,” July 8, 1864, Henry Pippitt Papers, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Pippitt Papers); Hazard Stevens to “Dear Mother,” June 28, 1864, Hazard Stevens Family Papers and Journal, Library of Congress; Roemer, Reminiscences, 226; Priest, One Surgeon’s Private War, 111. 60. Alfred S. Roe, Address of Alfred S. Roe, 7; Henry Pippitt to “Dear Mother,” July 29, 1864, Pippitt Papers; John Chester White Memoir, n.d., Library of Congress; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 137; Middletown (Conn.) Constitution, July 20, 1864; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 371; Livermore, Days and Events, 379. 590

Notes to Pages 349–51

61. George Stearns to “Dear Brother,” July 22, 1864, George Stearns Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 181–82; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 113. 62. Bilby, 69th New York and the Irish Brigade, 114. The roster of the Sixty-­Ninth New York lists a private Michael Delaney but no Michael De Lacy. 63. Samuel H. Edwards to “My Dear Puss,” June 21, 1864, Samuel H. Edwards Letters, New York Public Library; Andrew Jackson Crossley to “Friend Sam,” July 15, 1864, Bradbury Papers. 64. Andrew Jackson Crossley to “Friend Sam,” July 15, 1864, Bradbury Papers; Jo­seph D. Galloway Diary, July 15, 1864, New York Public Library; New York Times, June 30, 1864. Gordon served in the Seventy-­Second New York. Geary may have been a member of the Sixth New York Cavalry. 65. Meade, Life and Letters, 206–7; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 179; Paxton, Sword and Gown, 387. 66. Hazard Stevens to “Dear Mother,” June 28, 1864, Stevens Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Stevens Papers); Nathan Hayward to “Dear Father,” July 6, 1864, Nathan Hayward Letters, Massachusetts Historical Society; Claron Miltimore to his mother, July 10–11, 1864, Ira Miltimore Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society. 67. Warren H. Freeman to “Dear Father and Mother,” July 12, 1864, Freeman Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). 68. Jackson and O’Donnell, Back Home in Oneida, 144; Hazard Stevens to “Dear Mother,” June 28, 1864, Stevens Papers; Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” July 3, 1864, Charles Cummings Papers, Vermont Historical Society. 69. Henry C. Hall to “My dear Sister,” June 25, 1864, Henry C. Hall Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 458; Henry E. Taintor to “Dear Mother,” June 19, 1864, Henry E. Taintor Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University. 70. Amanda to “Dear Uncle Lemuel,” June 28, 1864, Lemuel Thomas Foote Papers, Library of Congress; John Dentzer to “Dear Mother,” July 5, 1864, Dentzer Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Charles Kline to “Dear Mother and Sister,” July 4, 1864, Kline Letters, South Carolina Historical Society. 71. Henry C. Newton to “Dear Brother,” July 13, 1864, Henry C. Newton Letters, Gettysburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Newton Letters); James Coe to Robert Crouse, July 7, 1864, Robert Crouse Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Collier and Collier, Yours for the Union, 345. Goodspeedville was a village in Warren County, New York, now known as West Glens Falls. 72. Albert Brooker to “My dear Mother,” July 24, 1864, Albert Brooker Letters, bound vol. 53, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Brooker Letters); Wil­liam L. Heermance Diary, July 13, 1864, bound vol. 487, Fredericksburg National Military Park (hereafter cited as Heermance Diary); Meade, Life and Letters, 207. 73. Heermance Diary, July 13, 1864; Letter in Walton’s Evening Journal, June 23, 1864, Charles B. Putnam Papers and Diary, Vermont Historical Society; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 458–59. 74. Henry E. Hall to “Dear Father,” July 29, 1864, Henry E. Hall Letters, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Roemer, Reminiscences, 229–30. 75. Valentine, 23d Massachusetts, 130–31; William B. Phillips to “Dear Annie,” July 20, 1864, Phillips Letters, Civil War Voices (accessed November 22, 2012). Notes to Pages 352–56

591

76. Henry L. Abbot, Siege Artillery in the Campaigns against Richmond, 23; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 462; Livermore, Days and Events, 378–79; OR, 40(3):19, 83–86, (1):672. 77. McFarlane, Reminiscences, 58–59; Drake, Ninth New Jersey, 229; Nathan B. Webb Diary, July 8, 1864, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 273; Cheek and Pointon, Sixth Wisconsin, 120; Wil­ liam S. Stewart Memoir, bound vol. 152, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Albert Brooker to “My dear Mother,” July 24, 1864, Brooker Letters; Hastings, Letters from a Sharpshooter, 238; Taylor and Hatfield, First Connecticut Artillery, 21; Lieutenant Andrew Knox to “My dear Wife,” July 11 and July 19, Andrew Knox Letters, Gregory Coco Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Sage, “Before Petersburg”; Luther A. Rose Diary, July 24, 1864, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Rose Diary); Cassedy, Dear Friends at Home, 529. The Petersburg Express, according to one source, was one of a battery of powerful guns the soldiers nicknamed the “Seven Sisters.” See George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 273. I found no references at this period to “the Dictator,” the name famously applied to the thirteen-­inch mortar on display at Petersburg National Battlefield. 78. OR, 40(1):169; Gilbert Thompson, “Engineer Battalion,” 74; Newton Bibbins to “Dear Parents,” July 13, 1864, Newton Bibbins Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Henry H. B. Chamberlain to “Dearest Minnie,” July 8, 1864, Chamberlain Papers. 79. Thomas and Sauers, “I Never Want to Witness Such Sights,” 213; Cassedy, Dear Friends at Home, 529–30; Warren, Two Reunions, 37–38; Appleton et al., 5th Massachusetts Battery, 873; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 437. Fort Davis is in excellent condition and maintained for visitors by the City of Petersburg. Fort Sedgwick, once a major tourist attraction, was demolished in the 1960s to build a retail establishment, long since defunct. The Federals initially named their forts after generals in their respective sectors, but on September 21, 1864, they renamed their strongholds south of the Appomattox River after senior officers who had been killed in battle between May 5 and September 10. See Roemer, Reminiscences, 229. General Orders Number 80 in Butler’s Department formally redesignated all the forts in Bermuda Hundred from numbers to such officers’ names. OR, 40(3):270–71. My thanks to Richard J. Sommers for clarifying the pedigree of this nomenclature. 80. OR, 40(3):224; Henry C. Newton to “Dear Brother,” July 13, 1864, Newton Letters; Rose Diary, July 14, 1864; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 463. Meade reported all the old Confederate works leveled on July 17. See OR, 40(3):290. 81. OR, 40(1):177–78, (2):542, 622–23, (3):105, 313, 361, 365; “The Opposing Forces at Petersburg and Richmond,” in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 593; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 548–49; Hazard Stevens to “Dear Mother,” June 28, 1864, Stevens Papers; J. B. V. Gilpin Diary, July 21, 1864, E. N. Gilpin Papers, Library of Congress. 82. OR, 37(2):384; Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 448–49, 452. 83. James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 453–54; OR, 40(3):394–95; Delevan Bates to “Father,” July 16, 1864, Civil War Letters of Delevan Bates (accessed February 17, 2011). 84. OR, 40(3):9, 46; Oliver Edwards Memoir, 175, Edwards-­Johnston Family Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; “Interesting Letter from the 122nd New York,” Sandusky (Ohio) Register, July 9, 1864. Other proposed reorganizations, such as Warren’s efforts to eliminate the Fourth Division of the Fifth Corps, caused additional consternation. 85. OR, 34(4):514–15, 528; 40(2):432; Welcher, Union Army, 488–89; Gibson, Assault and 592

Notes to Pages 356–59

Logistics, 435. Some of Emory’s white troops, Third Division, Nineteenth Corps, did not transfer to Virginia. 86. Phelan, Tramping out the Vintage, 292–93; Welcher, Union Army, 489–91. 87. OR, 40(2):618, (3):3–5; Feis, Grant’s Secret Service, 221; Feis, “Union Military Intelligence Failure,” 215–23. 88. OR, 40(3):4, 31–33, 35, 37, 45–46, 49–50, 59; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 184–85; Haynes, Tenth Vermont, 183. 89. OR, 40(3):72, 91–93, 95. 90. OR, 40(3):101–3, 106–7, 122, 127; George E. Lewis, Battery E, First Rhode Island Light Artillery, 339; Hazard Stevens to “Dear Mother,” July 9, 1864, Stevens Papers; Ely Parker to “Dear Col.” [William R. Rowley], July 9, 1864, Rowley Papers. 91. OR, 40(3):121–23; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 238. 92. OR, 40(3):143, 176. The best treatment of events following Early’s retreat from Washington is Patchan, Shenandoah Summer. 93. OR, 40(3):762. For an argument that Early’s move across the Potomac prolonged the Petersburg Campaign, see Leepson, Desperate Engagement, 223. Patchan points out that whatever disadvantage Wright’s detachment inflicted on Grant was offset by Early’s absence from Lee. See Shenandoah Summer, 155–56. 94. Smith to Franklin, April 28, 1864, quoted in David M. Jordan, Winfield Scott Hancock, 145. 95. OR, 40(2):299–301. John H. Martindale was the offending division commander. In his postwar memoirs, Smith accused Butler of possessing “an overmastering vanity . . . and irritability,” and he found it “incredible that such vanity, such unwillingness to accept suggestions should have been developed in any human being,” accusing Butler’s incompetence as “costing us the lives of thousands of brave and patriotic men.” He also argued that the premise of Butler’s criticism was wrong. See William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 154–56, 160–62. For Butler’s spin on the issue, see Benjamin F. Butler, Butler’s Book, 693–94. 96. Smith quoted in Longacre, General Ulysses S. Grant, 243; OR, 40(2):301, 202–3, 458– 59, 489. 97. Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 111; OR, 40(2):594–95. 98. Charles Dana to Edwin Stanton, July 1, 1864, Edwin M. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress; Simon, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 11:​​155–56 (hereafter cited as Grant Papers); OR, 40(2):558–59, 598. A good overview of the situation is in Brooks D. Simpson, Ulys­ses S. Grant, 350–51. 99. OR, 40(3):31, 59, 69; Grant Papers, 11:​​176; Mallam, “Grant-­Butler Relationship,” 262– 64. 100. Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 353; Mallam, “Grant-­Butler Relationship,” 262– 63; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 481; OR, 40(3):114, 118–19. Edwin Stanton’s biographer, William Marvel, attributes Schaffer’s acquisition of General Orders 225 to the secretary of war. Marvel to the author, August 2, 2016. 101. Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 481; Mallam, “Grant-­Butler Relationship,” 263; OR, 40(3):122–23. Franklin had been captured by Confederate cavalry in Maryland but managed to escape. 102. OR, 40(3):313, 334, 577; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 115–16; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 193. Notes to Pages 360–65

593

103. The text of Smith’s letter to Foot is in Grant Papers, 11:​​207–9. For the longer version of Smith’s tale, see Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 109–16. 104. Rejections of Smith’s story are found in Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 349–50; Nash, Stormy Petrel, 201–2; and Mallam, “Grant-­Butler Relationship,” 263–64. See Longacre, General Ulysses S. Grant, 243–44, for one writer who is persuaded by Smith’s narrative. For other explanations, see Butler, Butler’s Book, 695–96; Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 353–54, 358; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 323–24. Smith posed the question in William Farrar Smith, From Chattanooga to Petersburg, 130–32. Franklin had arrived at City Point seeking a senior position following his escape. 105. Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 401–2; David Birney to “My dear Gross” [George I. Gross], July 29, 1864, Birney Papers; Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 282; Schiller, Autobiography of William F. Smith, 116. 106. Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 400; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 192; OR, 40(3):359; Charles M. Coit to “Dear All,” July 28, 1864, Coit Papers; Soldier letter reprinted in New York Times, August 3, 1864. 107. OR, 40 (3):144, 253–55, 330, 359; Grant Papers, 11:​​259–60. For Butler’s kind letter to Brooks expressing his regret at Brooks’s departure, see Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 508–9. Ord spent several months perfecting an invention after resigning from Sigel’s department in the spring. See Grant Papers, 10: 235. 108. OR, 40(3):327–28, 355–56; Edward O. C. Ord to “Dearest,” July 20, 1864, and to “My dearest,” July 26, 1864, Edward Otho Cresap Ord Letters, Stanford University (hereafter cited as Ord Letters). 109. David B. Birney to Butler, July 16, 1864, Benjamin F. Butler Papers, Library of Congress; Birney to “My dear Gross” [George I. Gross], July 29, 1864, Birney Papers; Oliver Wilson Davis, Life of David Bell Birney, 233. 110. OR, 40(3):361, 376; Edward O. C. Ord to “Dearest,” July 20, 1864, and to “My dearest,” July 26, 1864, Ord Letters; David B. Birney to “My dear Gross,” July 23, 1864, Birney Papers; Joseph Hawley to “My beloved Matron,” July 23, 1864, Hawley Correspondence and Papers; Captain Charles M. Coit to “Dear All,” July 23 and July 28, 1864, Coit Papers. 111. OR, 40(2):202–3, 458–60, 469, 489; Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 133; Charles J. Paine to “Dear Father,” July 19, 1864, Charles Jackson Paine Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Welcher, Union Army, 482–83. Paine received his promotion to brigadier general effective July 4, 1864. 112. OR, 40(1):35–36. 113. Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 395; Gibbon, Personal Recollections, 239–40; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 484; Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 279; OR, 37(2):331; Daniel Reed Larned to “My dear Sister,” June 23 and June 24, 1864, Daniel Reed Larned Papers, Library of Congress. 114. OR, 40(3):393–94; Warren quoted in Jordan, Life of Warren, 175; Grant Papers, 11:​​311; OR, 37(2):408, 433; Meade, Life and Letters, 218–19. See chapter 6 for Meade’s short-­lived intention to fire Warren. 115. OR, 40(2):431; Gibbon, Personal Recollections, 247. 116. OR, 40(2):599, 619. 117. OR, 40(3):5, 72–73. 118. Meade, Life and Letters, 205; OR, 40(1):286–87; Hess, In the Trenches, 42–44. 119. OR, 40(3):124–25, 147. 594

Notes to Pages 366–71

120. OR, 40(3):175–79; Ely Parker to William R. Rowley, July 11, 1864, Rowley Papers. 121. Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 243–44; OR, 40(3):241, 246, 255–56. Sheridan’s horses had yet to fully recover. As late as July 23, he ordered the arrest of any man caught riding his mount faster than a trot or a slow cantor “and will dismount them unless they can show proper authority for such riding.” Circular of July 23, Philip H. Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress. 122. OR, 40(2):619. Chapter 10 1. Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 163–64; Pleasants, Tragedy, 14–16; Razza, “Man Behind the Mine,” 23; Hess, Into the Crater, 3–4. Pleasants replaced Joshua K. Siegfried in regimental command and John I. Curtin in brigade command. The sources disagree regarding Pleasants’s age, some suggesting that he was only twenty-­eight in June 1864. 2. Holahan, Diary, 229; Green, “Horseshoe.” 3. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(2):220 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted). 4. OR, 40(2):319, (1):58; Pleasants, Tragedy, 32–33; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 165. 5. OR, 40(2):396–97, 417; Pleasants, Tragedy, 34–35; Report of the Joint Committee, 85, 112. McKibben is misidentified in various sources as Lt. Robert F. McKibben or Capt. David McKibben. Burnside misdated the meeting with Potter and Pleasants in his testimony to the Court of Inquiry and in his official report. See Report of the Joint Committee, 13, and OR, 40(1):523. 6. OR, 40(2):417, 423. For the strained relationship between Meade and Burnside, see Marvel, Burnside, 373, 392; Pleasants, Tragedy, 54; OR, 40(2):608–9; Hess, Into the Crater, 4; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 5; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 177, 188. 7. Report of the Joint Committee, 13, 112; OR, 40(1):524, 58, (2):431; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 213–14. 8. Bernard, War Talks, 208; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 432, 435; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 561. 9. Barnwell, “View on the Crater Battle,” 176–77; Henry Goddard Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 563; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 561. 10. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 146; Bernard, War Talks, 208; Welburn J. Andrews, 23d South Carolina, 20; Hess, In the Trenches, 86. 11. Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 3–7; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 173–75, 283n15. 12. Stone, Wandering to Glory, 31–167; Beaty, “Battle of the Crater,” 47; Hess, Into the Crater, 9; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 16; McMaster, “Battle of the Crater,” 123; Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 393; OR, 40(2):707; Stephen Elliott to “My dear old wife,” July 10, 1864, Elliott Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. Johnson’s Division, of which Elliott’s Brigade was a part, counted 8,478 men present on June 30. Elliott’s strength is extrapolated from reports of the number of casualties sustained on July 30 and the number of men unscathed. 13. Hess, Into the Crater, 9; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 346; J. Thomas Goode to “My dear Sir” [George S. Bernard], February 7, 1911, Petersburg National Battlefield; Chambers, “Bloody Crater,” 174; Thrash, “Vivid Reminiscence,” 508; OR, 40(3):814. Notes to Pages 371–77

595

14. Hess, Into the Crater, 72–73; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 450; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 148; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 839, 867; Bernard, War Talks, 205; Day, “Battle of the Crater,” 355; Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 165. Day credits Wright with six guns and Wise reports at one point that Wright had five Napoleons. The consensus seems to be that on the day of the battle the Halifax Artillery manned four guns. 15. Hess, Into the Crater, 73; Bernard, War Talks, 203, 229; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 866–67; Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 165. The Federals called these guns the Suffolk Road Battery. Hess mentions that the other section of Davidson’s Battery was “in a less advantageous position north of the Baxter Road,” but it is unclear exactly where these guns unlimbered. Capt. David N. Walker, commander of the Otey Battery, stated that Davidson commanded four guns, one bearing “directly to the front—eastwardly—the other southeastwardly.” Bernard, War Talks, 204. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 146, mention only two of Davidson’s guns in their inventory of Confederate artillery. 16. Hess, Into the Crater, 73–74; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 146–47; Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater, 165; Bernard, War Talks, 203, 229. 17. Hess, Into the Crater, 74–75; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 911–12; Eggleston, “Artillery Experiences,” 354–55; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 147–48; Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 165; Maury Klein, Edward Porter Alexander, 123. Some Confederates refer to the Gee house as “Paine’s House.” See, for example, Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 82, Museum of the Confederacy, who said that “the Paines may not have been owners but only tenants of Gee; or Gee may have received title from the Paines, who abandoned the property . . . during the siege, owing to its dangerous exposure.” 18. Report of the Joint Committee, 112; Culver, “Petersburg Mine”; Pleasants, Tragedy, 37; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 53; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 214; OR, 40(2):484; Hess, Into the Crater, 11. 19. Rickard, “Mine Explosion”; Henry Clay Heisler to “Dear Sister,” July 20, 1864, Henry Clay Heisler Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Heisler Papers); Hess, Into the Crater, 11; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 5–6; Schmutz, Crater, 54; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 33, 35. There is some uncertainty regarding Reese’s age at this time, although the best evidence is that he was twenty-­seven. Reese had acquired the moniker “Snapper,” but that stemmed from a postwar incident when Reese served as a policeman. See “Sketch of His Life,” Leonard M. Faust to John F. Marler, August 29, 2000, Petersburg National Battlefield. 20. Report of the Joint Committee, 112–13; Samuel A. Beddall Diary, 1864–65, June 26, 1864, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Beddall Diary); Branson, “Petersburg Mine”; Corporal Henry C. Metzger Journal, July 21, 1864, Corporal Henry C. Metzger Papers, John L. Nau III Civil War Collection; Slotkin, No Quarter, 34–35; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 215; Schmutz, Crater, 55; OR, 40(2):611; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 5; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 168; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 102; Hess, Into the Crater, 11–12; Hess, In the Trenches, 45. 21. Report of the Joint Committee, 113; Branson, “Petersburg Mine”; Hess, In the Trenches, 45; OR, 40(1):556–57; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 60; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 33; Pleasants, Tragedy, 42; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 214; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 165; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 370; Hess, Into the Crater, 11; Schmutz, Crater, 55–57; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 103; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 6. 596

Notes to Pages 378–80

22. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 6; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 545; Schmutz, Crater, 57; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 168; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 35; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 59–60; Hess, In the Trenches, 45; Slotkin, No Quarter, 36. 23. OR, 40(1):557, (2):590; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 168; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 35; Pleasants, Tragedy, 45–46; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 215; Way, “The Battle of the Crater; Holahan, Diary, 238; Hess, Into the Crater, 12, 254n5; Schmutz, Crater, 60–61; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 8. 24. Hess, Into the Crater, 12, 14–15; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 370; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 103; Branson, “Petersburg Mine”; Hess, In the Trenches,” 45; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 167; OR, 40(1):557–58; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 69; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 36–38; Pleasants, Tragedy, 42–43; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 214; Slotkin, No Quarter, 35; Schmutz, Crater, 61; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 9. Hess mentions the existence of a door in the canvas partition. 25. OR, 40(1):558; Report of the Joint Committee, 113; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 71–72; Pleasants, Tragedy, 43–45; Gould, Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, 212–13; Slotkin, No Quarter, 42–43; Schmutz, Crater, 57–58; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 8–9; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 164; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 214; Branson, “Petersburg Mine.” Slotkin dates Pleasants’s readings as occurring between July 3 and July 5. This is plausible although Slotkin pre­sents no explicit evidence to support these dates. Pleasants said that on July 3 he was still waiting to receive his theodolite. See Tragedy, 54. 26. Pleasants, Tragedy, 54; Report of the Joint Committee, 113; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 166; Hess, Into the Crater, 15; OR, 40(1):45, 112; De Trobriand, Four Years, 610–11; Schmutz, Crater, 59; Marvel, Burnside, 128, 352, 391; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 28. 27. OR, 40(2):610–11; Henry Pleasants to “Dear Uncle,” July 23, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield. 28. Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 209; Branson, “Petersburg Mine”; William L. Hyde, One Hundred and Twelfth New York, 92–93; Buell, Cannoneer, 255; Cutcheon, “Twentieth Michigan,” 130. 29. Holahan, Diary, 231; Private George A. Spencer to “Dear Parents,” June 29, 1864, Spencer Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield; John Wesley Ringler to “Dear Parents,” June 29, 1864, John Wesley Ringler Papers, Virginia Historical Society; William L. Hyde, One Hundred Twelfth New York, 93; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 197. 30. Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” July 3, 1864, Charles Cummings Papers, Vermont Historical Society; John Parris Sheahan to “My Dear Father,” July 6, 1864, John Parris Sheahan Collection, Maine Historical Society. 31. Jacob Siebert to “My Dear Parents,” July 7, 1864, Siebert Family Papers, Harrisburg Civil War Round Table Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 459; Cassedy, Dear Friends at Home, 526; William F. Smith to “Dear Mother,” July 17, 1864, William F. Smith Letters, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; William E. Endicott to “Dear Mary,” July 17, 1864, Endicott Papers, Auburn University; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 437. 32. Henry Clay Heisler to Dear Sister, July 20 and July 26, 1864, Heisler Papers; Weld, War Diary, 349. 33. William L. Hyde, One Hundred Twelfth New York, 93; Cassedy, Dear Friends at Home, 526; Luther A. Rose Diary, July 22, 1864, Library of Congress; James I. Robertson Jr., McAllister Letters, 465; Poriss and Poriss, While My Country Is in Danger, 113; William B. Barker to Notes to Pages 380–84

597

“Luther,” July 15, 1864, Lunt Family Collection, Maine Historical Society; De Trobriand, Four Years, 596. 34. Branson, “Petersburg Mine”; Report of Joint Committee, 114. 35. Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 563–65; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 445–46; Klein, Alexander, 124–25. 36. Beauregard to Johnson, July 2, 1864, Personal Letter Book, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Library of Congress; William Henry Harder Memoir, 527–29, Tennessee State Library and Archives; Archibald Gracie Jr. to Major A. M. Macmurphy, September 9, 1908, Archibald Gracie Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History; Bernard, War Talks, 206; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 351–52. 37. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 449; W. McDonald to Richard Anderson, July 4, 1864, Marshall McDonald Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 259–60. 38. D. H. Hill to William A. Graham, July 7, 1864, in Max R. Williams, Papers of William Alexander Graham, 153; OR, 40(3):771; Hess, In the Trenches, 47; Hess, Into the Crater, 18; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 61. 39. Hugh T. Douglas, “Confederate Countermining in Front of Petersburg: Experience and Recollection,” 1, Petersburg Crater Collection, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Hess, In the Trenches, 48; Hess, Into the Crater, 18–19; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 61–62. 40. Walter Stevens to Hugh Douglas, July 11, 1864, Hugh Thomas Douglas Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; OR, 40(3):771–72; Hess, Into the Crater, 19; Hess, In the Trenches, 48; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 62. General Smith received a transfer to the Army of Tennessee on July 20, and Stevens inherited his position as chief engineer of the Army of Northern Virginia. See OR, 40(3):787–88. 41. Douglas, “Confederate Countermining,” 2; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 62; Hess, Into the Crater, 19; Hess, In the Trenches, 48; OR, 40(3):776–77. 42. OR, 40(3):777–78; Douglas, “Confederate Countermining,” 2. 43. Douglas, “Confederate Countermining” 2; M. W. Venable, “In the Trenches,” 60; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 66; Hess, Into the Crater, 19; Hess, In the Trenches, 48. 44. Hess, Into the Crater, 20; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 66–69. For Douglas’s daily reports, see OR, 40(3):778–81, 784–85, 789, 791–92, 795, 797, 801, 806–8, 813, 816. 45. OR, 40(3):790; Hess, In the Trenches, 48–49; Hess, Into the Crater, 21; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 12; Harold B. Simpson, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 426; Schmutz, Crater, 70–71; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 11. One report stated that the Confederates had “cartridges of combustibles, the smoke from which would suffocate a man,” to be used if the counterminers located a Union shaft. See Wyndham Miles, “Suffocating Smoke,” 34–35. 46. OR, 40(3):816; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 450; Harry L. Jackson, Lee’s Combat Engineers, 73. 47. OR, 40(3):300–301; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 215–16; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 74–76; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 370; Hilton A. Parker to “Dear Sister,” July 26, 1864, Lieutenant Hilton A. Parker Letters, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan. 48. Richmond Examiner, July 14, 1864; Thomas Strayhorn to “Dear Sister,” July 18, 1864, 598

Notes to Pages 384–89

Thomas Strayhorn Letters, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina; Samuel Biddle to “My dear pa,” July 24, 1864, Samuel Simpson Biddle Letters, 1860–66, Perkins Library, Duke University; Charles I. Browne quoted in New York Times, July 26, 1864. 49. William Goodridge Morton to “Dear Mother,” July 14, 1864, William Goodridge Morton Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Corson, My Dear Jennie, 121–22; Tower, Lee’s Adjutant, 175–77. 50. Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 216; OR, 40(3):557; Report of the Joint Committee, 114. 51. OR, 40(3):354, (1):557; Beddall Diary, July 20–22, 1864; Report of the Joint Committee, 2–3; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 216; Henry Pleasants to “Dear Uncle,” July 23, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield. 52. Henry Pleasants to “Dear Uncle,” July 23, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield. 53. OR, 40(1):137, 557; Report of the Joint Committee, 114; Hess, Into the Crater, 21, 51; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 45. An illustration of the hoppers is in OR, 40(1):561. 54. OR, 40(1):46, 59, (3):438, 477, 479. 55. OR, 40(3):266, 463, 529–30, (1):557; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 281–82; Hess, Into the Crater, 51. One source claims that the work was done entirely in the dark to avoid the threat of a spark, but that is unlikely. The danger of working in the pitch black would outweigh the advantages of eliminating all open flames. See Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 98. 56. Beddall Diary, July 27–28, 1864; OR, 40(1):557; Report of the Joint Committee, 114; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 216. 57. OR, 40(1):137, (3):477, (2):528; Hess, Into the Crater, 52–53; Bosbyshell, “Petersburg Mine,” 216; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 12; Report of the Joint Committee, 114; Pleasants, Tragedy, 66. 58. Pleasants, Tragedy, 66–67; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 99–100; Report of the Joint Committee, 114; OR, 40(1):557; Hess, Into the Crater, 53. Asst. Surg. John B. Culver of the Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania claimed that Pleasants tested the blasting fuse to determine its rate of burn and its reliability. See Culver, “Petersburg Mine.” 59. OR, 40(3):477–78, 565. 60. OR, 40(3):416, 424, (1):129–30. 61. OR, 40(3):424–26, 428, (1):130–32; Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 212–13. 62. OR, 40(3):437–38. 63. OR, 40(3):443, 458–61, (1):444. 64. OR, 40(2):608–9, 629–30; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 14–16. 65. Report of the Joint Committee, 91, 106; OR, 40(1):58; Weld, Diary and Letters, 333. 66. Lowe, Meade’s Army, 228; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 180; OR, 40(3):252, 364; Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, 181; William Glenn Robertson, “From the Crater to New Market Heights,” 178–81. 67. Hess, Into the Crater, 54. Brig. Gen. Julius White assumed temporary command of Ferrero’s division. See chapter 11. 68. Walcott, Twenty-­First Massachusetts, 341; John Rumsey Brinckle to “My Dear Brother,” July 2, 1864, John Rumsey Brinckle Letters, Library of Congress; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 165; Henry A. Wise to “My beloved Wife,” June 27, 1864, Wise Family Papers, 1816–1898, Virginia Historical Society; Lorraine Griffin Walker to “Dear father and family,” June 20, 1864, John L. Nau III Civil War Collection. 69. David Coon to “My dear wife,” July 23, 1864, David Coon Civil War Letters, Library Notes to Pages 389–96

599

of Congress (hereafter cited as Coon Letters); William Wirt Henry to “My beloved wife,” July 3, 1864, William Wirt Henry Family Papers, Vermont Historical Society; Kevin C. Murphy, Civil War Letters, 200; Rosenblatt and Rosenblatt, Hard Marching, 229–31; Andrew Jackson Crossley to “Friend Sam,” July 17, 1864, Samuel Bradbury Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Josiah N. Jones Diary, July 11, 1864, New Hampshire Historical Society; Elon J. Mills to “Dear Folks,” June 22, 1864, Elon J. Mills Diary and Letters, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Mills’s first name may have been Eben. 70. OR, 40(1):59, 136; Report of the Joint Committee, 106; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 563; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 231; Hess, Into the Crater, 53; Slotkin, No Quarter, 73–74; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 16; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 52; Schmutz, Crater, 90–91; Hess, In the Trenches, 87. 71. OR, 40(1):58–59, 524. 72. Report of the Joint Committee, 4, 79, 89; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 232; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 563; Rickard, “Services with Colored Troops,” 28–29; William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, July 29, 1864, New York Public Library; Leander O. Merriam, “Personal Recollections of the War for the Union,” bound vol. 190, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Ervin T. Case, “Battle of the Mine,” 285; OR, 40(1):59. 73. Bernard, War Talks, 182–83; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 221; Richards, “Blunder of the Petersburg Mine.” 74. OR, 40(3):234, 240, 304, 320–21; Michael E. Stevens, As If It Were Glory, 178; Beecham, “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man.” 75. OR, 40(1):93, 595–96; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 102, 113–14, 119; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 55; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 229; John K. Dentzer to “Dear Brother,” July 24, 1864, Dentzer Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; William Glenn Robertson, “From the Crater to New Market Heights,” 181. 76. Trudeau, Like Men of War, 232, offers one reasonable conclusion. 77. OR, 40(1):138. 78. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 308, 310; OR, 40(3):437–38, 458–59, 461, 468. Grant may have also been motivated to assume the offensive as an antidote to the Lincoln administration’s fears of another raid across the Potomac following the Confederate victory at Second Kernstown on July 24. See James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 50. 79. OR, 40(3):437, 443, 448, 377, 496. Hancock’s and Sheridan’s strength is from Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 19, and James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 51. 80. OR, 40(3):465–66, (1):425–26, 308, 321; Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 189; Badeau, Military History, 2:470. 81. Aubery, Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin, 103; OR, 40(1):331; David Coon to “My Own Dear Wife,” July 31, 1864, Coon Letters; Keating, Carnival of Blood, 231–32. 82. Meier, Memoirs, 173; George C. Hand Diary, July 27, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 560; Aubery, Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin, 103; Cowtan, Tenth New York, 304; Hart, Plodding and Thinking, 24; OR, 40(1):321, 331, 389, 392, (3):509–10; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 21. 83. Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 21; Denison, First Rhode Island Cavalry, 366; Staats, Grassroots History, 233; Longacre, Army of Amateurs, 186. The pontoon bridge across the Appomattox had been relocated from Broadway Landing to Point of Rocks after the First Offensive. 84. Price calls Hancock’s decision the “deathblow to the entire campaign,” which over600

Notes to Pages 396–401

states the case considering Hancock’s opportunities later in the day. James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 56. Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 21, is more measured, deeming the change of plan “a souring effect.” See also Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 560, 562. 85. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 825; OR, 40(3):745, 795–96, 822, (1):768; Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell, 404–5, 408; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 219–21; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 132–33; Conner, Letters, 139; John Purifoy Memoir, Alabama Department of Archives and History; Private William Andrew Mauney Diary, July 21–22, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Mauney Diary); William D. Alexander Diary, July 2–3, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Alexander Diary). For a brief summary of events north of the James prior to the First Deep Bottom action, see James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 40–48, and Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 18. Conner’s men replaced two of Heth’s brigades, which returned to the Petersburg front. Graham’s Battery belonged to Thomas Carter’s Second Corps artillery, two battalions of which had been left behind when Early moved west in mid-­June. McGowan had been wounded on May 12 at Spotsylvania and would return to duty shortly after the action at First Deep Bottom. Lane suffered a wound at Cold Harbor and would also regain the field later that summer. Lt. Col. I. F. Hunt and Col. John D. Barry, respectively, commanded the brigades. 86. Terry Jones, Campbell Brown’s Civil War, 267; Wyckoff, 2nd South Carolina, 132; Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 389–90; Hess, Into the Crater, 37; Maxfield and Brady, Company D of the Eleventh Maine, 39; Brady, Eleventh Maine, 224–26; letter from Chaplain Henry C. Trumbull, 10th Connecticut, Hartford (Conn.) Daily Courant, August 3, 1864; Samuel A. Root Memoir, July 25–26, 1864, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Root Memoir); OR, 40(1):692–96, (3):400, 406–7, 434, 494–95. An excellent summary of the complex but ultimately indecisive sparring along the James that summer is Suderow, “War Along the James,” 12–23. For the action around Tilghman’s Gate on July 24–26, see Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 18–19, and James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 48–49. 87. OR, 40(1):309, 321–22, 331–32, 392–93, 426; De Trobriand, Four Years, 605–6; Cowtan, Tenth New York, 304–5. The regiment from the Second Division was probably the Nineteenth Maine. 88. OR, 40(3):451, (1):800; Humphreys’s Report, July 30, 1864, Benjamin Grubb Humphreys Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (hereafter cited as Humphreys Papers); James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 59. Wofford’s Georgians were not deployed with the rest of Kershaw’s brigades early that morning. 89. OR, 40(1):392–93; De Trobriand, Four Years, 605–6; Barnard, Irish Brigade, 120. 90. De Trobriand, Four Years, 606; OR, 40(1):309, 331–32, 335, 426, 692–96; Trumbull letter, Hartford (Conn.) Daily Courant, August 3, 1864; Taylor and Hatfield, First Connecticut Artillery, 523–24; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 562–63; Barnard, Irish Brigade, 121. 91. James M. M. Davis Diary, July 27, 1864, bound vol. 19, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as James Davis Diary); James Rawlings to “Dear Mother,” July 27, 1864, Rawlings Family Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Thomas M. Wade to “Dear Lou,” July 28, 1864, Thomas M. Wade Letters, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Wade Letters); Wyckoff, 2nd South Carolina, 132; Alfred L. Rives to “My dear Sallie,” July 27, 1864, William Cabell Rives Papers, Notes to Pages 402–5

601

Library of Congress; Sarah Wiggins, Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 124; OR, 40(1):800; Richmond Daily Examiner, August 1, 1864; Humphreys’s Report, Humphreys Papers. 92. James Davis Diary, July 27, 1864; Thomas M. Wade to “Dear Lou,” July 28, 1864, Wade Letters; OR, 40(1):322, 426, 800, (3):598; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 563. Wyckoff, 2nd South Carolina, 132, estimates Henagan’s losses at forty men, half of whom were captured. Three of the guns had been taken at Winchester in 1863 and the other at Harpers Ferry in 1862, although several Federals believed that the guns had been lost either at Drewry’s Bluff in May or during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. See OR, 40(1):800; Hart, Plodding and Thinking, 24; Cowtan, Tenth New York, 305. A more detailed description of this fight is in James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 59–69. 93. OR, 40(3):811–12; Barnard, Irish Brigade, 121; Humphreys’s Report, Humphreys Papers; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 22. James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 69–73, provides a detailed description of the combat between Gary and De Trobriand. 94. OR, 40(3):808–12; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 25–26; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 75–76. 95. Dowdey and Manarin, Wartime Papers, 826; Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 7(1):252 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); Hess, Lee’s Tar Heels, 239; Joseph Mullen Diary, July 27, 1864, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Mullen Diary); Wright, Letters of Benjamin H. Freeman, 48; Wyckoff, 2nd South Carolina, 134. 96. OR, 40(3):511–12. 97. OR, 40(1):322, 309–10, (3):516–17; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 74. 98. Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 284; Brady, Eleventh Maine, 229; Jessie Ames Marshall, Private and Official Correspondence, 551; Priest, One Surgeon’s Private War, 116. 99. OR, 40(3):531–32, (1):310; August V. Kautz Diary, July 27, 1864, August V. Kautz Papers, Library of Congress; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 563–64; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 26; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 79. 100. Frank M. Kelley to “My Dear Mother,” July 28, 1864, Wiley Sword Collection, Pamplin Historical Park; OR, 40(3):502, 512; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 564; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 81. 101. OR, 40(3):536, 545, 532, (1):692–93, 322; Root Memoir, July 27, 1864; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 26; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 77–78, 82–83. Suderow identifies Torbert’s opponents as the Hampton Legion. 102. OR, 40(3):512–13, 502, 505, 532. 103. OR, 40(3):514–15, 504–5, 536, 548, 571; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 27; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 84. 104. OR, 40(1):310, 322, (3):560; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 87–88. 105. Report of J. S. Harris, July 29, 1864, James Lane Collection, Auburn University (hereafter cited as Report of J. S. Harris); Hardy, Thirty-­Seventh North Carolina, 204; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 222; Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 137; Clemmer, Valor in Gray, 295–96; Wyckoff, 2nd South Carolina, 134; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 27; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 88–91. 106. Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 138; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 223; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 91. The First and Fourteenth South Carolina went rightward with Cowan. 602

Notes to Pages 405–11

107. Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 138–39; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 224; McDaid, “Four Years of Arduous Service,” 301–2; James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 91–94. 108. OR, 43(1):470–71; William G. Hills Diary, July 28, 1864, Library of Congress; Foster, 6th New York Cavalry, 86; Hall, Besley, and Wood, Sixth New York Cavalry, 208. 109. OR Supplement, 301–2; Conner, Letters, 144; Report of J. S. Harris; Rodenbaugh, From Everglade to Canyon, 332; McDaid, “Four Years of Arduous Service,” 303; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 226; Cheney, Ninth New York Cavalry, 200; Shore quoted in Power, Lee’s Miserables, 119. A detailed description of this fighting is available in James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 91–100. 110. Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 138; Nathan B. Webb Diary, July 28, 1864, James S. Schoff Collection, Clements Library, University of Michigan; OR, 40(1):612–14, 618–19, 652; Miers, Ride to War, 235–36. 111. Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters, 139; Caldwell, Brigade of South Carolinians, 223; Clemmer, Valor in Gray, 295–96; OR, 40(1):615–16, 619, 652–53. One wonders about the condition of Ballenger’s posterior after straddling a hot cannon tube. 112. Lloyd, First Pennsylvania Cavalry, 108; Staats, Grassroots History, 233; James Franklin Wade to “Dear Mother,” August 1, 1864, Benjamin Franklin Wade Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter cited as Wade Papers); OR, 40(1):619; soldier in the Third South Carolina Battalion quoted in James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 107; Conner, Letters, 144. Price provides a detailed account of this stage of the battle, 101–7. 113. Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 30; OR, 40(3):569; Staats, Grassroots History, 233; James S. Harris, Seventh North Carolina, 53; Wood, Sixth New York Cavalry, 208; Cheney, Ninth New York Cavalry, 201; Badeau, Military History, 2:471. 114. OR, 40(1):613–14; Foster, 6th New York Cavalry, 90; Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 30. Gregg mentioned one pursuing regiment shortly after the battle, but used the plural in his report penned in November. 115. OR, 40(3):561, (1):322; Gibbon, Personal Recollections, 248–49. 116. OR, (3):561–62, 815, (1):311, 322, 332, 619; Gibbon, Personal Recollections, 249; OR Supplement, 253. 117. OR, 40(3):586–88, (1):323; David Dixon Porter, Naval History, 480; Wright, Letters of Benjamin H. Freeman, 48; Mullen Diary, July 28, 1864; Hess, Lee’s Tar Heels, 239. MacRae was in command of William W. Kirkland’s North Carolina Brigade, Kirkland having been wounded on June 2, 1864. 118. OR, 40(3):812–13; John W. Stott Diary, July 28, 1864, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; OR Supplement, 252. 119. OR, 40(3):552, (1):311, 16; Badeau, Military History, 2:472; Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 84. 120. OR, 40(1):332; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 239; Bliss Perry, Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson, 226. 121. OR, 40(1):389, (3):589. 122. OR, 43(1):471; 40(3):599; Wood, Sixth New York Cavalry, 208; Cowtan, Tenth New York, 305; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 260–61. 123. OR Supplement, 333; Stocker, From Huntsville to Appomattox, 182–83; J. Christopher Winsmith to “My dear Kate,” August 3, 1864, Captain John Christopher Winsmith Letters, Museum of the Confederacy; Captain John W. McLure to “My Dearest Kate,” July 28, 1864, McLure Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; Rob­ert F. Notes to Pages 411–16

603

Davis Diary, July 28, 1864, Emory University; Winkler, Confederate Capital, 184; Bratton, “Report of Operations,” 552; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 454. 124. OR, 40(1):323, 619, 693, (3):591, 598–99; Francis A. Walker, History of the Second Army Corps, 566. According to Suderow, “Glory Denied,” 30, after Mott’s departure Hancock still commanded about 20,000 men north of the James. Price numbers the combined forces of Gibbon and Miles at 14,437. James S. Price, First Deep Bottom, 118. 125. Gibbon, Personal Recollections, 250–51. 126. Mullen Diary, July 29, 1864; OR, 40(3):814–16, 819; Mauney Diary, July 29, 1864; James Dugue Ferguson Diary, July 29, 1864, Munford-­Ellis Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; James Davis Diary, July 29, 1864; Joseph Pryor Fuller Diary, July 29, 1864, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Harold B. Simpson, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 430; Wright, Letters of Benjamin H. Freeman, 49; Alexander Diary, July 29, 1864. 127. OR, 40(1):312, 323, (3):600–603, 620, 630; OR Supplement, 246; James Franklin Wade to “Dear Mother,” August 1, 1864, Wade Papers; Cowtan, Tenth New York, 305; George H. Washburn, 108th New York, 82; Aubery, Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin, 104. 128. OR, 40(3):620, 630. 129. OR Supplement, 253; Mullen Diary, July 30, 1864; Mauney Diary, July 30, 1864; James Davis Diary, July 30, 1864; Ewell quoted in Pfanz, Richard S. Ewell, 409; John Bratton to “Dear Bettie,” July 30, 1864, John Bratton Papers, South Carolina Department of Archives and History; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 454. 130. David B. Birney to “My dear Gross,” August 4, 1864, David B. Birney Papers, Army Heritage and Education Center; Luigi Palma di Cesnola to “My dear Friend,” August 1, 1864, Luigi Palma di Cesnola Letters, Dartmouth College; OR, 40(1):242–46; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 144. Chapter 11 1. U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(3):468 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted). 2. OR, 40(3):590–91, 596–97; Report of the Joint Committee, 46. 3. Benjamin F. Wade to “Dear Mother,” August 1, 1864, Benjamin Franklin Wade Papers, Library of Congress; OR, 40(3):620, 631–35; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 25; Hess, Into the Crater, 55, 69. 4. OR, 40(3):518, 564–65, 604–5, 607, (1):446–47. 5. OR, 40(1):278–80, 288, (3):581, 597; Naisawald, Grape and Canister, 405–8; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 197; Major Albert Brooker to “My Dear Mother,” August 3, 1864, Albert Brooker Letters, bound vol. 53, Richmond National Battlefield Park (hereafter cited as Brooker Letters). Hunt testified on August 31 that he had 80 guns in place along with 18 siege guns, 18 large mortars, and 28 Coehorns. See OR, 40(1):96. 6. Schmutz, Crater, 100; Slotkin, No Quarter, 145; William Glenn Robertson, “From the Crater to New Market Heights,” 182; OR, 40(3):609; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 24; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 125, 133. 7. Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 125–26, 133; Arthur B. Wyman to “My dear sister,” July 19, 1864, Arthur B. Wyman Diary and Letters, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Weld, War Diary, 339; Palfrey, Memoir of William Francis 604

Notes to Pages 416–21

Bartlett, 117; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 160–61. Bartlett’s wounds came while serving in the Twentieth Massachusetts, Forty-­Ninth Massachusetts, and Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts. 8. OR, 40(1):60, 46; Report of the Joint Committee, 5, 17–18, 38, 49; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 429. According to Stephen Weld, 1,150 Ninth Corps men were killed or wounded from picket firing or shelling between June 20 and July 30. See Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 216. Few students of the campaign ascribe Meade’s decision to racial prejudice. 9. OR, 40(1):61; Report of the Joint Committee, 18; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 237. Meade sent Burnside notification of Grant’s decision at 10:​​15 a.m., but evidently Meade and Ord preceded its arrival. See OR, 40(1):137, (3):608. General Potter remembered that Ledlie was present when Meade arrived. See Report of the Joint Committee, 85. 10. OR, 40(1):47, 61; Report of the Joint Committee, 18, 50–51; Potter, “General Robert B. Potter,” 481; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 549; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno at Petersburg, 112–13; Henry Goddard Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 563; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 221–22. William Marvel, Burnside, 395, describes the lots as scraps of paper drawn out of a hat. 11. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 199; Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 217; Lowe, Meade’s Army. Marvel, Burnside, 412, argues that Burnside knew little of Ledlie’s shortcomings, which itself would be a serious indictment of his leadership. 12. OR, 40(1):47, 136; Sparks, Inside Lincoln’s Army, 404; Brooks D. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 362; Hess, Into the Crater, 56. Meade denied in his testimony to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War that he interfered with Burnside’s plan other than to reject the Fourth Division spearheading the attack. See Report of the Joint Committee, 40. Meade’s orders for the attack are in OR, 40(3):596–97. Section 8 clearly articulates the role of the initial attackers. 13. OR, 40(1):61, 158–59, (3):611–12, 656. 14. Meade, Life and Letters, 217; David B. Birney to “My dear Gross,” July 29, 1864, David B. Birney Papers, Army Heritage and Education Center; Gouverneur K. Warren to “My Sweet Emmie,” July 29, 1864, G. K. Warren Papers, New York State Library. 15. OR, 40(3):566, 596, (1):68–69, 110, 116–17; Report of the Joint Committee, 106; Marvel, Burnside, 396. 16. Charles H. Houghton, “In the Crater,” 561; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire,495; Don E. Scott to “My darling Mother,” August 2, 1864, Scott Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina (hereafter cited as Scott Family Papers); Aubery, Thirty-­Sixth Wisconsin, 111; John K. Dentzer to “Dear mother,” July 29, 1864, Dentzer Family Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Henry Clay Heisler to “Dear Sister,” July 29, 1864, Henry Clay Heisler Papers, Library of Congress. 17. Polley, Hood’s Texas Brigade, 247; James Montgomery Holloway to “My Dearest Wife,” July 29, 1864, James Montgomery Holloway Letters, Virginia Historical Society. 18. Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 203; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 199. 19. OR, 40(3):611, (1):158; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 204; Osborne, Twenty-­ Ninth Massachusetts, 316. 20. OR, 40(1):535, 47; Weld, Diary and Letters, 351; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 334–35; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 373–74; Benedict, Vermont, 2:515–16. See Hess, Into the Crater, 58–59, for a thoughtful explanation of these events. 21. Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Reformer, August 13, 1864; George Washington Ward, HisNotes to Pages 422–27

605

tory of the Second Pennsylvania Veteran Heavy Artillery, 90, 204; OR, 40(1):63, 535, 538, 541; Charles H. Houghton, “In the Crater,” 561; Hess, Into the Crater, 65–66. Colonel Lyman provided detailed commentary on covered ways: “A covered way is singularly named, as it is open on top. It is simply a trench, about four feet wide, with the dirt thrown up on the side towards the enemy. . . . The great thing is, so to run it that the enemy cannot get a sight of it lengthwise, as they could then enfilade it. To this end the way is run zig-­zag, and advantage taken of every hollow, or knoll, that may afford shelter.” Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 203. Burnside estimated the length of the two covered ways that connected The Horseshoe with the main Union lines as about one thousand yards, including zigzags. See OR, 40(1):71. 22. OR, 40(1):538; Weld, Diary and Letters, 351–52; Private Ethan S. Morehead to “Dear Brother,” August 4, 1864, 100th Pennsylvania, Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment website (accessed November 24, 2012); John W. Morrison, “Reminiscences of the Mine Explosion,” Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Hess, Into the Crater, 66. 23. OR, 40(3):612, (1):61; Report of the Joint Committee, 86; James Judson Chase, Charge at Day-­Break, 29; Daniel White, “Charging the Crater”; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire, 495; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 363; Hess, Into the Crater, 67. 24. OR, 40(3):665, (1):88; Report of the Joint Committee, 86, 95; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 373–74; Cushman, 58th Massachusetts, 13–14; Loving, Letters of Whitman, 126; Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 15; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 24; Hess, Into the Crater, 67. 25. Schmutz, Crater, 112; Herek, These Men Have Seen Hard Service, 217; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 137–39; Byron Cutcheon Memoir, 138, Byron Cutcheon Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Cutcheon Memoir); Claudius Buchanan Grant to “My Dear Carrie,” August 1, 1864, Claudius Buchanan Grant Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Claudius Grant Papers); OR, 40(1):574; Robert Garth Scott, Forgotten Valor, 558; Hess, Into the Crater, 68. The Seventeenth Michigan of Humphrey’s brigade acted as engineers for the division. 26. Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 122; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 564; David Edwin Proctor to “Friend Harvey,” August 1, 1864, David Edwin Proctor Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield; Redkey, Grand Army of Black Men, 113–14; OR, 40(1):595; Hess, Into the Crater, 68–69. 27. Cortland G. Stanton to “My Dear Minnie,” August 1, 1864, Cortland G. Stanton Papers, John L. Nau III Civil War Collection; Cresap, Appomattox Commander, 127; OR, 40(3):632, (1):83; Bryant, Diary, 175; Major Albert Brooker to “My Dear Mother,” Au­gust 3, 1864, Brooker Letters; Hess, Into the Crater, 69. 28. Joseph J. Scroggs Diary, July 30, 1864, Joseph J. Scroggs Diary and Letters, Civil War Times Illustrated Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Scroggs Diary and Letters); OR, 40(3):656, 665, (1):139, 557; Report of the Joint Committee, 114; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 26–27, 37; Pleasants and Straley, Inferno, 119–20; Schmutz, Crater, 126; Corrigan, 48th Pennsylvania, 65. Hess, Into the Crater, 77, does not include Reese and Douty in the initial foray into the mine. 29. Bernard, War Talks, 209; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 250; Day, “Breastworks,” 174. Hamilton was the senior lieutenant. Bernard misidentifies him as “Lt. Hamlin.”

606

Notes to Pages 428–30

30. OR, 40(1):787; Barnwell, “View on the Crater Battle,” 177; Sibley, Confederate Order of Battle, 124, 340; Beaty, “Battle of the Crater,” 47; Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 393. 31. Stone, Wandering to Glory, 180–81; Sibley, Confederate Order of Battle, 124, 340; OR, 40(1):790. For biographical sketches of the field officers in Elliott’s Brigade, see Robert K. Krick, Lee’s Colonels. 32. Cutchins, Famous Command, 155; Cunningham, 118th New York, 139; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 262. 33. Report of the Joint Committee, 51; OR, 40(1):47, 62, 139, (3):657; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 240; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 198. 34. Francis B. Wallace, Memorial, 343; Report of the Joint Committee, 114–15; OR, 40(1):557; Guthrie, Camp-­Fires, 528; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 169–70; Hess, Into the Crater, 77–79. There are numerous versions of how Reese and Douty relit the fuse, many of them containing dramatic if doubtful details. For example, see Slotkin, No Quarter, 173; Culver, “Petersburg Mine”; Henry Pleasants Jr., Tragedy, 74, and “The Petersburg Mine,” Philadelphia Weekly Press, April 24, 1880. Reese’s and Douty’s exploits evidently made the rounds as Pvt. Don E. Scott of the Eleventh New Hampshire recited a slightly garbled version of it in a letter home. See Scott to “My darling Mother,” August 2, 1864, Scott Family Papers. 35. Report of the Joint Committee, 95–96; OR, 40(1):66, 147, (3):657, 685; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 263; Marvel, Burnside, 398. 36. OR, 40(1):62; Bryant, Diary, 176; Claudius Buchanan Grant to “My Dear Carrie,” August 1, 1864, Claudius Grant Papers; Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 151; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 285. 37. Priest, One Surgeon’s Private War, 117; Benjamin P. Thomas, Three Years with Grant, 244; Loving, Letters of Whitman, 126; Story of the Twenty-­First Connecticut, 270; Francis W. Knowles Journal and Diary, 1864, East Carolina University (hereafter cited as Knowles Journal); Ritchie, Four Years, 177; Howard Thomas, Boys in Blue, 213; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 206; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 263. 38. Priest, One Surgeon’s Private War, 117; Story of the Twenty-­First Connecticut, 270; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 299; Charles A. Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 194; Herek, These Men Have Seen Hard Service, 217; Culver, “Petersburg Mine”; Bryant, Diary, 176; Weld, Diary and Letters, 353. Some of those estimating 100 feet included Harry Reese; Guthrie, Camp-­Fires, 529; Colonel Cutcheon; Herek, These Men Have Seen Hard Service, 217; Capt. Charles Houghton of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 385; Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes of Wisconsin, Dawes to “My dear wife,” July 31, 1864, Rufus R. Dawes Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society; and Lieutenant Ritchie, in Ritchie, Four Years, 177. The 200-­foot estimate can be found in regimental histories of the Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, Fourth Rhode Island, Fourth New York Heavy Artillery, Twentieth Michigan, and Ninth New Hampshire. Colonel Porter and Maj. Washington A. Roebling are among those who also thought the explosion reached the height of a twenty-­story building. 39. Burbank, “Battle of ‘The Crater,’” 286; Kenfield, “Captured by Rebels,” 232; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 97. 40. Knowles Journal; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 170; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 285; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 97; Story of the Twenty-­First Connecticut, 270; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 299; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 263; Benedict, Ver-

Notes to Pages 431–34

607

mont, 2:516; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 235; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 176; Marcotte, Private Osborne, 230; Waldo Turner to “My dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Turner Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield. 41. New Orleans Times, July 21, 1902; Govan and Livingood, Haskell Memoirs, 72; William Russell Diary and Papers, 50, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Russell Diary and Papers; Day, 49th North Carolina, 82; Racine, Recollections, 111; Thomas H. Cross, “Crater Battle,” and “Battle of the Crater.” These two articles are similar, but not identical. The Mississippian quoted is Pvt. James Norwood of the Eleventh Mississippi, in Stubbs, 11th Mississippi, 587; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War, 289–90. It is unclear what Norwood and his company were doing south of the Appomattox River on July 30. 42. Elihu Toland, “Terrible Story of the Crater,” Rutland (Vt.) Weekly Herald and Globe, October 3, 1877; J. W. Pursley to “Dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Mary Frances Jane Pursley Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Pursley Papers); OR, 40(1):788; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 131. 43. William B. Green to “Dear Wife,” July 3 [probably August 3], 1864, William B. Green Letters, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina; OR, 40(1):759, 788. The best analysis of Confederate casualties caused by the blast is Hess, Into the Crater, 85. The traditional figure of 278 men killed and wounded comes from Bushrod Johnson’s report, quoting acting brigade commander McMaster, in OR, 40(1):788. Capt. John Floyd in a postwar account published in Stone, Wandering to Glory, 205, stated that Elliott’s Brigade lost 457 men, a figure that is unsubstantiated. Pegram provided the casualty count for his battery in Bernard, War Talks, 209. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 40–41, provide thoughtful analysis as well. 44. Stone, Wandering to Glory, 190; Don E. Scott to “My darling Mother,” August 2, 1864, Scott Family Papers; Edward B. Williams, Rebel Brothers, 115; James Judson Chase, Charge at Day-­Break, 19–20; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 99; Elon J. Mills, [no salutation], July 30, 1864, Elon G. Mills Diary and Letters, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 45. J. W. Pursley to “Dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Pursley Papers; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire, 491; OR, 40(3):820; Toland, “Crater”; Greer, “Member of Company A,” 280–81; John William Ford Hatton Memoir, July 30, 1864, Library of Congress. Enough sources mention the transformation in hair color to lend this anecdote credibility. 46. Henry White Diary, July 30, 1864, American Antiquarian Society; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 131; Wise cited in Hess, Into the Crater, 85; OR, 40(3):820. In 1962 the staff at Petersburg National Military Park measured the crater at 120 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 18 feet deep. See Joseph P. Cullen, “A Report on the Physical History of the Crater,” 5, Petersburg National Battlefield. 47. J. W. Pursley to “Dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Pursley Papers; Beaty, “Battle of the Crater,” 48; McMaster, “Battle of the Crater,” 120. 48. C. R. Jackson, “Report on the Artillery Operations in the Battle of the Crater,” 2, Petersburg National Battlefield; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Eugene and James Verdery Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Verdery Letters); Thomas H. Cross, “Battle of the Crater”; Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 78; Fortin, “Colonel Hilary A. Herbert’s History,” 66. 49. Gilbert Thompson Memoir, July 30, 1864, Library of Congress; Richards, “Blunder of the Petersburg Mine”; Joseph J. Scroggs to “Dear Wife Maggie,” July 31, 1864, Scroggs

608

Notes to Pages 435–37

Diary and Letters; Daniel Graham to “Dear Sister,” August 2, 1864, bound vol. 87, Richmond National Battlefield Park. 50. Page, Letters of a War Correspondent, 195; Nevins, Diary of Battle, 445; OR, 40(1):484– 85, 600; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 302. 51. Joseph J. Scroggs to “Dear Wife Maggie,” July 31, 1864, Scroggs Diary and Letters; OR, 40(1):672–73, 726–27; Benedict, Vermont, 2:722–23; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 305–6. 52. Beaty, “Battle of the Crater,” 49; “A Brief History of the Soldier Life of J. M. Cutchin,” Cutchin Family Papers, East Carolina University; Kirk, Heavy Guns and Light, 305–6; OR, 40(1):485; Report, August 13, 1864, Henry J. Hunt Papers, Library of Congress. 53. Charles H. Houghton, “In the Crater,” 561–62; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 264; Report of the Joint Committee, 36; Washington A. Roebling Journal of Military Service, bound vol. 150, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Thomas F. Walter Memoir, 66–67, bound vol. 420, Fredericksburg National Military Park. 54. Thomas, Boys in Blue, 214; OR, 40(1):527, 541; Sergeant Schuyler Gardner, Letter, August 3, 1864, Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Reformer, August 13, 1864; George Washington Ward, Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, 196–97, 204; Caleb Hadley Beal to “Dear Uncle,” August 5, 1864, Caleb Hadley Beal Letters, Massachusetts Historical Society; William A. Childs to “Dear Friend Spalding,” August 1, 1864, Spalding Family Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Merrill, “Court-­Martial of Private Spencer,” 36; Waldo Turner to “My dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Turner Letter, Petersburg National Battlefield. 55. OR, 40(1):69; Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 267; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 285; Private Ethan S. Morehead to “Dear Brother,” August 4, 1864, 100th Pennsylvania, Veteran Volunteer Infantry Regiment website (accessed November 24, 2012); Report of the Joint Committee, 107; Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 208; Trudeau, “Chaos in the Crater,” 31; Clarence Wilson, “Petersburg Mine”; Robert Garth Scott, Forgotten Valor, 555– 56; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 42. 56. Charles H. Houghton, “In the Crater,” 562; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 385; Gardner Letter, Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Reformer, August 13, 1864; George Washington Ward, Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, 196–97; OR, 40(1):541. 57. Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 177; OR, 40(1):538; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 249; Weld, Diary and Letters, 353; John W. Morrison, “Report on the Battle of the Crater,” Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 58. Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 268; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 190; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 264; Francis B. Wallace, Memorial, 344; Charles Mead to “Bro Gil,” August 5, 1864, Charles Mead Correspondence, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Joseph T. Wilson, Black Phalanx, 415–16; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 552–53. 59. Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 270; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 171. 60. OR, 40(1):88–89; Report of the Joint Committee, 86–87; Cleveland, New Hampshire Fights the Civil War, 108; Houston, Thirty-­Second Maine, 362–63; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire, 490, 496. Potter’s testimony to the Court of Inquiry and the Joint Committee is inconsistent and ambiguous as to whether Griffin’s lead regiments went forward on their own volition or responded to explicit orders from Potter following the explosion. In either case, it is clear that Potter acted without Burnside’s knowledge or overt approval. See OR, 40(1):70, for Burnside’s understanding of these events.

Notes to Pages 438–42

609

61. Marvel, Race of the Soil, 264; Don E. Scott to “My darling Mother,” August 2, 1864, Scott Family Papers; OR, 40(1):567; Benedict, Vermont, 2:516; James Judson Chase, Charge at Day-­Break, 19–20; Hess, Into the Crater, 92–94. 62. OR, 40(1):578–79; Frank M. Phelps to “My Dear Friends,” August 5, 1864, Frank M. Phelps Letters, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. Hartranft advanced the Twenty-­Seventh Michigan, Thirty-­Seventh and Thirty-­Eighth Wisconsin, 109th New York, and Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry (dismounted) in his initial attack. 63. OR, 40(1):574–75; Robert Garth Scott, Forgotten Valor, 558; Knowles Journal; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 99; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 141; Schmutz, Crater, 184. 64. Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 553; Hess, Into the Crater, 96–97. 65. OR, 40(1):103; Hess, Into the Crater, 98. 66. OR, 40(1):103, 105, 118–19; Cogswell, Eleventh New Hampshire, 423; Hess, Into the Crater, 98. 67. William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, July 30, 1864, New York Public Library; OR, 40(1):48, 140, (3):657–58; Report of the Joint Committee, 53; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 200; Marvel, Burnside, 401; Hess, Into the Crater, 98–99. Col. Charles Loring was assigned to Ledlie, Maj. James L. Van Buren to Potter, and Maj. William Cutting to Willcox. 68. OR, 40(3):644–46, 651–53. 69. OR, 40(3):646, 652. I wish to acknowledge Bryce Suderow for focusing my attention on alternative operational schemes at the crater. 70. OR, 40(3):685, 659, (1):63–64; Marvel, Burnside, 403. The exact timing of Warren’s arrival at the Fourteen-­gun Battery and his inspection of the front with Burnside is subject to interpretation. 71. OR, 40(1):142, (3):660. 72. OR, 40(1):143, (3) 660; Report of the Joint Committee, 55; Marvel, Burnside, 403–4. 73. OR, 40(1):66–67, 140–41, 143–44; Marvel, Burnside, 403; Report of the Joint Committee, 55, 72. 74. Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 200; Report of the Joint Committee, 110; Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 264–67; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 564; OR, 40(3):636, 673. Several witnesses, including Colonel Thomas, confirm Grant’s first visit to the front that morning, although Porter’s account is suspect in its details and should be used with caution. Grant’s whereabouts during the first five hours after the explosion are speculative. He apparently returned to the front later in the morning. 75. Hess, Into the Crater, 103; Bernard, War Talks, 193–94; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 206–7. 76. Stone, Wandering to Glory, 192–93, 200, 207; Bernard, War Talks, 195–97; OR, 40(1):790; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 359; McMaster, “Battle of the Crater,” 121; Bishop, “Fight Turned,” 50; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 15–16. Elliott sustained his wound either in the shoulder or in his lung, possibly both. 77. Coit, “Battle of the Crater,” 126–27; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 570– 71; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 555; OR, 40(1):789; Bernard, War Talks, 194–95, 205, 209; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 15. A detailed map showing the spring appears between pages 316 and 317 in Bernard, War Talks. 78. Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 166; Cavanaugh, Otey, Ringgold and Davidson, 59; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 866; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 205; OR,

610

Notes to Pages 443–50

40(1):760. Lieutenant Otey, the only officer in Lee’s artillery corps during the war to abandon his battery under fire, was convicted of cowardice and condemned to death. President Davis issued a pardon before the sentence could be executed. See Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 466; C. G. Chamberlayne, Ham Chamberlayne, 258; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 866. 79. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 349, 545; Schmutz, Crater, 165–66. Richard Pegram’s visit to Cameron’s home suggests that he, too, enjoyed a personal relationship with the wealthy tobacconist. 80. Hess, Into the Crater, 112; Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 166; OR, 40(1):760; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 867; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 570; Susan P. Lee, Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton, 358; Schmutz, Crater, 166; Cavanaugh, Otey, Ringgold and Davidson, 59; Bernard, War Talks, 203, 210; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 466; McMaster, “Battle of the Crater,” 120–21. The sources disagree as to whether Gibbes’s wound was to the arm or the neck and collarbone, but the universal determination that the hurt was dangerous suggests the latter. Joseph and John Cheves Haskell were brothers. 81. Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 166; Bernard, War Talks, 203–4; Jennings Cropper Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 866–67; OR, 40(1):760, 792; Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs, 570; Hess, Into the Crater, 112; Schmutz, Crater, 166–67. 82. Robinson, “Artillery in the Crater,” 165–66; Bernard, War Talks, 203. 83. Cavanaugh, Otey, Ringgold and Davidson, 59; Bernard, War Talks, 313; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 147. 84. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 147–48; OR, 40(1):789; Bernard, War Talks, 210; Eggleston, “Artillery Experiences,” 357; Joseph W. Eggleston Memoirs, 37–38, 45, Virginia Historical Society; Govan and Livingood, Haskell Memoirs, 75. 85. Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 147; Flanner, “Flanner’s North Carolina Battery,” 247; Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):263 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted); Flanner, “Flanner’s Battery at the Crater, 30 July, 1864,” 617–18; Letter from “M” August 3, 1864, Raleigh (N.C.) Daily Conservative, August 9, 1864; Jones, Memorial Volume, 154; Armistead C. Gordon, Memories and Memorials of William Gordon McCabe, 380. 86. Ferguson, “Twenty-­Fifth Regiment,” 298–99; OR, 40(1):790; Timothy S. McAllister to “Dear Father,” July 31, 1864, Nicholas (W.Va.)Chronicle, March 20, 1906, Civil War Miscellaneous Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Day, “Breastworks,” 174; Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 209–10; Day, 49th North Carolina, 82–83; Roulhac, “Forty-­Ninth Regiment,” 142; Robert J. Stevens, Captain Bill, 21; Chambers, “Bloody Crater,” 178; Hess, Into the Crater, 106–7, 109. 87. Cutchins, Famous Command, 154; OR, 40(1):791; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 585–86; Wiatt, 26th Virginia Infantry, 29–30; Pollard, “Edward Bagby,” 456; Russell Diary and Papers, 50–51; Chambers, “Bloody Crater,” 178; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 178; Joseph T. Wilson, Black Phalanx, 416; Walker Burford Freeman, Memoirs, 43; Hess, Into the Crater, 108. 88. J. Thomas Goode to “My dear Sir” [George S. Bernard], February 7, 1911, Petersburg National Battlefield; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 358–59; Bernard, War Talks, 152; OR,

Notes to Pages 450–54

611

40(1):789; OR Supplement, 303–4; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 585; Hess, Into the Crater, 109–10. Colquitt’s Brigade had been temporarily assigned to Johnson’s Division. See OR, 40(1):787. 89. “Notes of Genl Beauregard on W. J. Marrin’s Acct. of the Explosion of the Federal Mine at Petersburg, Va., July 30, 1864,” July 17, 1876, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (hereafter cited as “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers); Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 263–64. There are many versions of the events surrounding the actions of Beauregard, Lee, and Hill that morning. I have attempted to use the most credible ones in crafting this portion of the narrative. The Gee house was described by one witness as “a white cottage surrounded by a young orchard and situated on rising ground . . . and admirably located for viewing the battlefield.” See R. O. Whitehead to “Dear Friend” [Colonel William Stewart], October 23, 1903, Crater Collection, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Crater Collection). 90. Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 464; William H. Palmer to Colonel Wil­liam H. Stewart, November 3, 1903, Crater Collection; William H. Palmer to Mahone, untitled pamphlet, Mahone Family Papers, Library of Virginia (hereafter cited as Mahone Family Papers); “General A. P. Hill: Presentation of His Statue,” 203; David A. Weisiger to “Dear Sir” [Hon. B. Perry], Woodbury, New Jersey, April 26, 1896, David Addison Weisiger Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Jethro Raiford to William H. Stewart, September 23, 1903, “Charge of the Crater,” Museum of the Confederacy; Hess, Into the Crater, 114. Considerable doubt exists as to which officer first arrived at Mahone’s headquarters. Palmer asserts that Hill stopped at the Gee house en route to Mahone’s headquarters, raising questions as to his ability to arrive there before Venable, although Colonel Weisiger remembered that Hill was “on the spot” before he received the orders to withdraw. Taylor almost disappears from the narrative, although David Weisiger’s aide, Drury A. Hinton, remembered an unnamed staff officer arriving at brigade headquarters before 7:00 a.m. in search of Mahone. This man might have been Taylor. Lt. Col. Richard O. Whitehead of the Sixteenth Virginia does identify Taylor as delivering Hill’s orders. See Bernard, War Talks, 223–24, and Rich­ ard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 81. This is one of several details regarding the Confederate high command that morning about which the sources disagree. 91. Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 467; Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, Mahone Family Papers; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 289; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 361; “General A. P. Hill: Presentation of His Statue,” 203; William H. Palmer to Colonel William H. Stewart, November 3, 1903, Crater Collection. Thus no fewer than six people headed for Mahone’s headquarters that morning: Johnson’s emissary, Taylor, Venable, Hill, Palmer, and Lee. Camp rumors imbued Lee with an even greater aura of control than he actually exhibited that morning. One Virginia officer wrote, “A gentleman told me that when a courier told Genl Lee that the enemy had blown up a battery and had captured our outer works he did not even get out of his chair but simply said to drive those people out of our works. Is it not hard to imagine such coolness and such perfect confidence in troops?” Colonel Richard Dulany to “My Dear Sister,” August 3, 1864, DeButts Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. 92. Mahone, Crater, 4–5; William Mahone, rebuttal to Cadmus Wilcox, New Orleans Times, January 1, 1872, Mahone Family Papers; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 4; Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, Mahone Family Papers; Bernard, War Talks, 149–50, 213, 223– 612

Notes to Pages 454–55

24; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, 33; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Verdery Letters; Ott, “Civil War Diary of James J. Kirkpatrick,” 212. Capt. William Fagan of the Eighth Alabama placed General Lee at Mahone’s headquarters at 7:00 a.m., as does William Stewart of the Sixty-­First Virginia and Capt. George Clark of Sanders’s staff, but the bulk of the evidence makes this unlikely. Capt. Tom Bernard of Mahone’s staff delivered Mahone’s orders to Weisiger and Hall. See Stewart, “Carnage,” 41; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 153; Thomas H. Cross, “Crater Battle”; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; George Clark, Glance Backward, 58. 93. Mahone, Crater, 5–6; William Mahone, rebuttal to Cadmus Wilcox, New Orleans Times, January 1, 1872, Mahone Family Papers; OR, 40(3):643; Bernard, War Talks, 213; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 6; William F. Baugh to “My dear Colonel” [Wil­liam H. Stewart], December 4, 1905, William Fielding Baugh Letter, Library of Virginia, and Statement No. 72, December 4, 1905, Crater Collection, 118, Museum of the Confederacy; Cummings, Yankee Quaker, 298; De Peyster, “Military Memoir of William Mahone,” 403. Mahone identified the staff officer as “Lieutenant Harris” and provided explicit accounts of his meeting with Johnson and Beauregard. Curiously, Beauregard did not mention the meeting, stating instead that Mahone met only with Johnson. See “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers. 94. “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers; Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, Mahone Family Papers; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 469; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 289; “General A. P. Hill: Presentation of His Statue,” 203. Colonel Venable claimed that Hill was with Lee at Rives Salient for a brief time, and Beauregard mentioned nothing about seeing Hill at the Gee house. See Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 5, and John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 361. If Mahone’s version of events is to be believed, he must have joined Beauregard at Johnson’s headquarters before Beauregard made his initial trip to the Gee house. 95. Hess, Into the Crater, 115; James I. Robertson Jr., General A. P. Hill, 292; Cummings, Bushrod Johnson, 298; New Orleans Times, January 1, 1872, Mahone Family Papers; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 359, 361; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 35; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 289; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 464; Carmichael, Lee’s Young Artillerist, 129–30. 96. “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers; Eggleston, “Artillery Experiences,” 357; Corporal Andrew Sydnor Barksdale to “Dear Sister Omis,” August 1, 1864, Corporal Andrew Sydnor Barksdale Letters, Museum of the Confederacy; Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 469; Hess, Into the Crater, 115. E. P. Alexander had Lee arriving at the Gee house “soon after 6 a.m.,” clearly an erroneous assertion. See Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 464. 97. OR, 40(1):125, 528, (3):666; Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 375. Hess, Into the Crater, 117–21, provides a detailed description of Bliss’s assault, and my narrative borrows liberally from this account. 98. Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 375; OR, 40(1):549; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 201. 99. OR, 40(1):547, 549–50; Report of the Joint Committee, 87; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 554; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 202. The Seventh Rhode Island remained in reserve, and the Thirty-­Sixth Massachusetts stayed in the trenches, uninvolved in Bliss’s attack. 100. Thomas T. Smith et al., Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 376; OR, Notes to Pages 456–59

613

40(1):551, 554, (3):666; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 287–88; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 202; Shearman, “Crater,” 12–13; Cushman, 58th Massachusetts, 15. Bliss claimed in his memoirs that although his attacks failed to capture Wright’s Battery, they succeeded in driving the cannoneers from their guns and silencing them for the rest of the day, an obvious fabrication. 101. OR, 40(1):698–99, 707; Report of the Joint Committee, 119; Hess, Into the Crater, 122. 102. OR, 40(1):699; Report of the Joint Committee, 119–20. There is no biography of Turner, but his life is profiled in the usual encyclopedic sources and a large number of the general’s papers are at the Army Heritage and Education Center. 103. OR, 40(1):108, 122, 707–8; Livermore, Days and Events, 384–85; Cresap, Ord, 128. Hess, Into the Crater, 123, fails to mention Ord’s encounter with Ames, although the testimony of both Ames and Livermore suggests such a meeting occurred. 104. OR, 40(1):596, 598; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 31; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 222; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 564; Warren H. Hurd Diary, July 30, 1864, Historical Society of Schuylkill County (hereafter cited as Hurd Diary). 105. OR, 40(1):64, 103, 118, 528, 595; Report of the Joint Committee, 92–93; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 556; Hess, Into the Crater, 124–25. 106. Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 31–32; Bowley, “At the Crater”; Proctor, “Massacre in the Crater”; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 222, 246; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 101; Bosbyshell, 48th Pennsylvania, 174; Bowley, “Crater,” 425; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 129; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 69; Charles F. Stinson to “Dear Ones at Home,” August 1, 1864, Charles F. Stinson Papers, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 138; Cuffel, Durell’s Battery, 196; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 180. 107. OR, 40(1):596; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 32; Bowley, “Crater,” 426; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 130; Coco, Through Blood and Fire, 138; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 101–2; Hurd Diary, July 30, 1864. 108. Day, 49th North Carolina, 83; Day, “Breastworks,” 174–75; Bates, “Day with the Colored Troops.” Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River above Memphis had been the scene earlier in the year of an alleged massacre of black troops by Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalry. 109. OR, 40(1):93, 596; Bowley, “At the Crater”; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 33; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 131–32; Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 211; Bates, “Day with the Colored Troops”; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 236, 247; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 69–70; Burkhardt, Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath, 163; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 392–93; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 180. 110. Day, 49th North Carolina, 83; Day, “Breastworks,” 175; OR, 40(1):598; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 565; Captain Robert Porter to Col. Grimshaw, August 1, 1864, William Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society. 111. Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 34; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 565; Bowley, “At the Crater”; OR, 40(1):64, 598; Bernard, War Talks, 183; Bates, “Day with the Colored Troops”; Report of the Joint Committee, 95–96; Proctor, “Massacre in the Crater”; Trudeau, Like Men of War, 242; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 70–71; Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 210. 112. Robert Garth Scott, Forgotten Valor, 560; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 196; Bernard, War 614

Notes to Pages 459–63

Talks, 183; Proctor, “Massacre in the Crater”; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 34–35; Bowley, “At the Crater”; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 133. 113. OR, 40(1):598–99; Thomas, “Colored Troops at Petersburg,” 565; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 71, 100; Hodges and Levene, Illinois Negro History Makers, 25–26; Swazey, Memorial of Colonel John A. Bross, 6–8, 31–32; Michael E. Stevens, As If It Were Glory, 184. 114. Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 210; McMurray, Recollections, 44; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 102; Walter H. Taylor, General Lee, 260; Cutchins, Famous Command, 155. The Sixth U.S. Colored Troops now served in Carr’s division. 115. Report of the Joint Committee, 120–21. 116. OR, 40(1):699, 701–4; Report of the Joint Committee, 121; Bryant, Diary, 176; Waite, New Hampshire, 245. Hess, Into the Crater, 131–33, provides a more detailed tactical account of Turner’s advance. 117. OR, 40(1):575, 586, 590; Knowles Journal; Cutcheon Memoir, 288; Cutcheon, “Twentieth Michigan,” 142; Claudius Buchanan Grant to “My Dear Carrie,” August 1, 1864, Claudius Grant Papers. 118. OR, 40(1):575, 586; Cutcheon Memoir, 283. 119. Schmutz, Crater, 231; Bernard, War Talks, 170–71; Slotkin, No Quarter, 246; Hess, Into the Crater, 135. Hess counts thirty-­nine out of fifty Ninth Corps regiments in the captured works with Turner, Ames, and the Second and Fifth Corps either at the front or in supporting distance. 120. OR, 40(3):652–53, (1):449–51; Hess, Into the Crater, 138–39. Capt. Charles H. Porter advances this argument in “Petersburg Mine,” 232–35. 121. OR, 40(3):644–46, (1):312–13, 390; Priest, One Surgeon’s Private War, 117; Hess, Into the Crater, 139. 122. OR, 40(1):86–87, 708; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 242; Hess, Into the Crater, 138. Ord is the only source for his chance encounter with Grant that resulted in orders to suspend the assaults. Ord stated that he delivered Grant’s message to Burnside, but Burnside made no mention of receiving such a message from Ord. In any event, Burnside would have received Grant’s instructions via Ord after he had committed Ferrero and Humphrey. Horace Porter’s claim that Grant personally delivered his instructions to Burnside is unreliable. See Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 266–67. Chapter 12 1. Samuel Z. Ammen, “Maryland Troops in the Confederate Army,” Thomas Clemens Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. The rest of this doggerel reads: Your underground line Was all very fine And created some little sensation; But sub terra won’t do To put your troops through To Richmond, the hub of the nation The fact, sir, is plain— And you mustn’t refrain— Notes to Pages 463–67

615

If in Richmond you’re anxious to dine, sir, You’d much better try A trip through the sky, And fight it out on an “air line,” sir. 2. Evans, 16th Mississippi, 279. 3. Bernard, War Talks, 214; Mahone, Crater, 6–7; De Peyster, “Military Memoir of William Mahone,” 403. 4. Bernard, War Talks, 214, 220; William Mahone, rebuttal to Cadmus Wilcox, New Orleans Times, January 1, 1872, Mahone Family Papers, Library of Virginia; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 360. Bernard identified the courier who received Mahone’s orders to Sanders as James H. Blakemore, but Blakemore’s own testimony refutes this assertion. 5. John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 362; Govan and Livingood, Haskell Memoirs, 75; First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 58, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Crater Collection). 6. Corporal John O. Hillsman, “Recapture of the Crater Again,” Atlanta Journal, December 28, 1901; Whitehead, “Retaking of the Lines,” 469; Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 80. 7. Thomas H. Cross, “Battle of the Crater”; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 154–55. 8. Bernard, War Talks, 199, 214, 220; James Eldred Phillips to William Stewart, date unknown, James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Captain James E. Phillips, Statement No. 64, October 1, 1903, Crater Collection, 97; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 155; Hess, Into the Crater, 146. McMaster’s claim that he indicated the place to deploy Mahone’s troops is not corroborated, but neither is it refuted by other sources. I have chosen to credit his account, but with reservations. J. D. Mitchum, a courier on Elliott’s staff, also claimed, with little credibility, to have shown Mahone the shallow ravine. See Mitchum, “Battle of the Crater,” 110. 9. David A. Weisiger to “Dear Sir” [Hon. B. Perry], Woodbury, New Jersey, April 26, 1896, David Addison Weisiger Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Weisiger Papers); Rogers, “Crater Battle,” 12; Whitehead, “Retaking of the Lines,” 469–70; Elmore, Diary of J. E. Whitehorne, 33–34; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Eugene and James Verdery Letters, Perkins Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as Verdery Letters); Blake, William Mahone, 56; Bernard, War Talks, 178, 190, 220, 224; Thomas H. Cross, “Battle of the Crater”; First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No, 47, Septem­ber 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 58–59. 10. Bernard, War Talks, 153, 186–87; Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 79; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 85–87; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 7; U.S. War Department, War of the Rebellion, 40(1):791 (hereafter cited as OR; all references are to series 1 unless otherwise noted); Govan and Livingood, Haskell Memoirs, 75–76; Private Richard Asbury Whitworth to “Dear Wife,” August 13, 1864, Richard Asbury Whitworth Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield (hereafter cited as Whitworth Letters); Stone, Wandering to Glory, 197; Folsom, Heroes and Martyrs of Georgia, 92; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 134; Stewart, “Carnage,” 41. Reports regarding the timing of Mahone’s deployment vary. Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 81, stated that the attack commenced at 8:45 a.m. Cadmus M. Wilcox, in “Military Operations around Petersburg, the Mine, etc.,” New Orleans Times, n.d., Charles S. Venable Papers, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas, and Mahone Family Papers, Library of Virginia, asserted that the assault began around 10:​​00 a.m. Charles Ven616

Notes to Pages 467–70

able, Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, 23, Mahone Family Papers, Library of Virginia (hereafter cited as Mahone Family Papers), specified 9:00 a.m., and that seems to be a reasonable estimate. See Bernard, War Talks, 215, and Mahone, Crater, 8, for Mahone’s confirmation of this and Bernard, War Talks, 200, for more evidence. The brigade’s sharpshooter battalion had been replaced on the picket line by a portion of the Sixth Virginia on the night of July 29–30. Thus they participated in the march to the Crater, while those men of the Sixth Virginia who served on the picket line remained south of the city. See Bernard, War Talks, 186. 11. First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 59; Bernard, War Talks, 180, 190; John Edgar Foreman, Statement No. 5, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 9. The Confederates reported various numbers of Union flags in their front without consensus. 12. Richmond Times, June 4, 1899; Major R. W. Jones, Statement No. 67, n.d., Crater Collection, 105; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 8; Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 81; Stewart, “Carnage,” 41–42; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 155–56; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 134; Bernard, War Talks, 224. Weisiger would claim after the war that Mahone never left the shelter of the covered way. A recent study dismisses this charge as the product of postwar political matters. See Levin, Remembering, 63–65. 13. Folsom, Heroes and Martyrs of Georgia, 92, 102; Clyde G. Wiggins III, My Dear Friend, 137; William M. Key, “3rd Ga., Wright’s Brigade, in Charge on ‘The Crater,’” Atlanta Journal, February 8, 1902; Capt. Cresswell A. C. Waller, “The Battle of the Crater. One Who was Present Tells the Story of the Fight,” Charleston News and Courier, September 2, 1906; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 198; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 362; Mahone, Crater, 7; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 8; Beaty, “Battle of the Crater,” 55; Corporal John O. Hillsman, “Recapture of the Crater Again,” Atlanta Journal, December 28, 1901; OR, 40(1):791; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 586; Edmund Curling, Statement No. 45, August 28, 1903, Crater Collection, 55; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 87–88; Hess, Into the Crater, 148, 152. Colonel Hall stipulated that only one regiment and half of another of his brigade had deployed when the attack began. See Hewett, Trudeau, and Suderow, Supplement to the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 1(7):310 (hereafter cited as OR Supplement; all references are to part 1, volume 7, unless otherwise noted). 14. Bernard, War Talks, 217. 15. John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 362; “Gen. Weisiger’s Reply to Gen. Mahone,” Jed Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress; David A. Weisiger to “Dear Sir” [Hon. B. Perry], April 26, 1896, Weisiger Papers; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 291. 16. Bernard, War Talks, 224. For an example of a common soldier who credited Weisiger with ordering the attack, see N. J. Floyd, “Concerning Battle of the Crater,” 159. 17. Bernard, War Talks, 214; Mahone, Crater, 7–8. 18. Etheredge, “Crater Battle,” 204; Govan and Livingood, Haskell Memoirs, 75–76; First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 59–60; Amnon Peek, Statement No. 48, September 15, 1903, Crater Collection, 62; Bernard, War Talks, 315. 19. Charles Haynes Andrews, “A History of the Campaigns of the 3d Georgia Regiment from 26th April 1861 to 9 April 1865,” Charles Haynes Andrews Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 87; Levin, Remembering, 63–65, ascribes much of Weisiger’s testimony to postwar politics. Notes to Pages 470–74

617

20. William H. Stewart, Statement No. 6, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 11; Bernard, War Talks, 187; William H. Etheredge, Statement No. 30, July 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 38; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 134; Beatty, “Battle of the Crater,” 55. 21. Bernard, War Talks, 180, 186, 214; Chambers, “Bloody Crater,” 175–76; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 291–92; Folsom, Heroes and Martyrs of Georgia, 92; Captain James E. Phillips, Statement No. 64, October 1, 1903, Crater Collection, 97; Ferguson, “Twenty-­Fifth Regiment,” 298–99; William M. Key, “3rd Ga., Wright’s Brigade, in Charge on ‘The Crater,’” Atlanta Journal, February 8, 1902; Blake, William Mahone, 57–58n130; OR, 40(1):791; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 585; “Notes of Genl Beauregard on W. J. Marrin’s Acct. of the Explosion of the Federal Mine at Petersburg, Va., July 30, 1864,” July 17, 1876, P. G. T. Beauregard Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (hereafter cited as “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers); Thrash, “Vivid Reminiscence,” 509; Lieutenant Colonel Mathew N. Love to “Dear Mother,” August 6, 1864, Love Family Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield; Beaty, “Battle of the Crater,” 55–56; Hess, Into the Crater, 152. 22. “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers; Carter R. Bishop to “Dear Madam” [Miss Laura Lee Richardson], February 13, 1932, Petersburg National Battlefield; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 462, 465; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 366; Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 83; Bernard, War Talks, 316; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 23; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 71–72. 23. Rogers, “Crater Battle,” 1; Dickert, Kershaw’s Brigade, 401; William L. Hyde, One Hundred and Twelfth New York, 94; James H. Clark, Iron Hearted Regiment, 150; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 291; Bernard, War Talks, 186–87, 315; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 9; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 290; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 364; William Fielding Baugh, Statement No. 72, December 4, 1905, Crater Collection, 119; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 255; Day, “Battle of the Crater,” 356; Major R. W. Jones, Statement No. 67, n.d., Crater Collection, 105; First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 59; William H. Stewart, Statement No. 6, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 11; Josiah Frank Cutchin to “Dear Cousin Jennie,” August 7, 1864, bound vol. 135, Richmond National Battlefield Park; Fred Harris to “My dear Uncle,” July 31, 1864, David Bullock Harris Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; David A. Weisiger to “Dear Sir” [Hon. B. Perry], April 26, 1896, Weisiger Papers; Private J. Thomas Dunn, Statement No. 26, July 22, 1903, Crater Collection, 35; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 134; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 23; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 88. 24. Bernard, War Talks, 180; McMurray, Recollections, 44; John Floyd, “First Fighting at the Crater,” Confederate Veteran Collection, Perkins Library, Duke University; Govan and Livingood, Haskell Memoirs, 75–76; OR, 40(1):759–60; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 365; Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 85–86; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire, 498; Francis W. Knowles Journal and Diary, 1864, East Carolina University. Bushrod Johnson stated that Captain Lamkin had one Coehorn and two twelve-­pounder mortars in the ravine where Mahone deployed along with two mortars near Wright’s battery. See OR, 40(1):789. 25. Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 155; William Pate, Statement No. 3, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 7; Charles Pinckney Elliott, Elliott’s Brigade, 23; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 251; Hess, Into the Crater, 155. 618

Notes to Pages 475–76

26. Major R. W. Jones, Statement No. 67, n.d., Crater Collection, 105; Etheredge, “Crater Battle,” 205; Private Henry E. Chase, Statement No. 44, August 17, 1903, Crater Collection, 54; Day, “Breastworks,” 175; Bernard, War Talks, 219; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 156; Robert Garth Scott, Forgotten Valor, 560; Beyer and Keydel, Deeds of Valor, 386; OR, 40(1):579; Whitehead, “Retaking of the Lines,” 470. It is interesting to note that in a 1911 speech given to dedicate a plaque honoring the Confederate “Heroes of the Crater,” Bernard claimed that the attackers suffered significant casualties in crossing the open ground, in contrast to the impression recorded in his diary. See Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 255. 27. Thomas H. Cross, “Battle of the Crater”; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 291; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 1, 1864; Bernard, War Talks, 190; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 364; First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 60; William H. Etheredge, Statement No. 30, July 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 38; Private Virgil Dunford, Statement No. 25, July 17, 1903, Crater Collection, 34; Amnon Peek, Statement No. 48, September 15, 1903, Crater Collection, 62; Stewart, “Carnage,” 42; Calvin L. Peek, Statement No. 43, August 15, 1903, Crater Collection, 53; Edmund Curling, Statement No. 45, August 28, 1903, Crater Collection, 55–56; Private Robert F. Norfleet, Statement No. 50, September 15, 1903, Crater Collection, 65–66. 28. First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 61. The best explication of Confederate attitudes toward U.S. Colored Troops at the Crater is Levin, Remembering, 25–32. 29. Rogers, “Crater Battle,” 12–13; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 291; Captain James E. Phillips, Statement No. 64, October 1, 1903, Crater Collection, 97; Etheredge, “Crater Battle,” 205; William Pate, Statement No. 3, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 7. 30. Stewart, Spirit of the South, 135; Day, “Breastworks,” 356; Private Virgil Dunford, Statement No. 25, July 17, 1903, Crater Collection, 34. 31. Private Julius Tyler, Statement No. 12, July 7, 1903, Crater Collection, 18; Bernard, War Talks, 187; Amnon Peek, Statement No. 48, September 15, 1903, Crater Collection, 62; Edmund Curling, Statement No. 45, August 28, 1903, Crater Collection, 56; John Edgar Foreman, Statement No. 5, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 9; Private J. Thomas Dunn, Statement No. 26, July 22, 1903, Crater Collection, 35. 32. OR, 40(1):554; Wilkinson, Mother, May You Never See, 255; William Hamilton Harris Journal and Papers, July 30, 1864, New York Public Library; Beecham, “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man”; Ransom F. Sargent to “My dear Wife,” July 30, 1864, Ransom F. Sargent Papers, Dartmouth College; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 152–53. 33. Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 72; Weld, “Petersburg Mine,” 211; Cleveland, New Hampshire Fights the Civil War, 108; Bernard, War Talks, 157; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 251. 34. Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 14–15; Bernard, War Talks, 159–60; Day, 49th North Carolina, 83; Clyde G. Wiggins III, My Dear Friend, 137–38; Kilmer, “Dash into the Crater,” 775–76. For examples of Confederate humanity toward blacks, see Josephus Scott, Statement No. 32, August 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 42, and First Lieutenant John T. West, Statement No. 47, September 27 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 60. 35. Rogers, “Crater Battle,” 13; Etheredge, “Crater Battle,” 205; William H. Etheredge, Statement No. 30, July 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 39–40; Stewart, Description of the Battle of the Crater, 10; Stewart, Spirit of the South, 135; John C. Miller, Statement No. 16, July 8, 1903, Crater Collection, 21; Thomas H. Cross, “Battle of the Crater.” Notes to Pages 477–80

619

36. Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 78; Bernard, War Talks, 179, 187; Williamson Smith, Statement No. 10, July 6, 1903, Crater Collection, 15; Private Henry E. Chase, Statement No. 44, August 17, 1903, Crater Collection, 54. 37. David A. Weisiger to “Dear Sir” [Hon. B. Perry], April 26, 1896, Weisiger Papers; Bernard War Talks, 218–19, 222–23, 225; Bernard, “Great Battle,” 205, 209–11, 217; Whitehead, “Retaking of the Lines,” 470; Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, unpaginated; Hess, Into the Crater, 157, 169. Winfield Scott had allegedly said of Johnston’s record in the Mexican War, “Johnston is a great soldier, but he has an unfortunate knack of getting himself shot in nearly every engagement.” Perhaps Mahone’s comment referenced this historical remark. See Detzer, Donnybrook, 27. 38. Bernard, War Talks, 225; Susan P. Lee, Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton, 358; Gordon McCabe, untitled pamphlet, 18, Mahone Family Papers, Library of Virginia; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 364; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 91. 39. Bernard, War Talks, 219; Bernard, “Great Battle,” 205; Hess, Into the Crater, 167–68. 40. OR, 40(1):567, (3):677; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 465; William A. Childs to “Dear Friend Spalding,” August 1, 1864, Spalding Family Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Hess, Into the Crater, 155–56. It should be noted that some witnesses, particularly officers from the U.S. Colored Troops units, blamed the initial panic on white troops. See, for example, Sigfried’s report in OR, 40(1):597; Warren H. Hurd Diary, July 30, 1864, Historical Society of Schuylkill County (hereafter cited as Hurd Diary); Captain Albert L. Dodge, 39th United States Colored Troops, [to Laura Dodge, his wife], July 31, 1864, Albert F. Dodge Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield. 41. Henry F. Young to “Dear Delia,” August 4, 1864, Henry Falls Young Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society; William Stowell Tilton Diary, July 31, 1864, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter cited as Tilton Diary); William Hamilton to “Dear Boyd,” August 3, 1864, William Hamilton Letters, 1864–65, Library of Congress. No matter what their motive, the Confederates did levy a heavy toll on the white officers of U.S. Colored Troops units. Capt. Robert Porter of the Twenty-­Ninth U.S. Colored Troops, for example, explained that by the time Weisiger’s men reached the Union line, he was the only officer in his regiment who was not killed, wounded, or captured. See Captain Robert Porter to Col. Grimshaw, August 1, 1864, William Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society. 42. OR, 40(1):103, 599; Orrin Sweet Allen to “Dear Frank,” August 3, 1864, Orrin Sweet Allen Letters, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Allen Letters); William Fielding Baugh, Statement No. 72, December 4, 1905, Crater Collection, 120. 43. OR, 40(1):120, 699, 701, 704; Orrin Sweet Allen to “Dear Frank,” August 3, 1864, Allen Letters; William L. Hyde to “My dear Wife,” August 1, 1864, William L. Hyde Letters, John L. Nau III Civil War Collection; James Helme Rickard to “Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, James H. Rickard Civil War Letters, American Antiquarian Society; Waite, New Hampshire, 245; Bryant, Diary, 178; William Taylor to “Dear Jane,” July 31, 1864, William Taylor Letters, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William & Mary; Edward L. Cook to “My dear sister Laura,” August 4, 1864, Edward L. Cook Letters, University of California at Santa Barbara; Louis Bell to “Dear George,” August 12, 1864, Louis Bell Letters, Bell Family Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society. The Thirteenth Indiana allegedly “deliberately shot down many of the retreating soldiers,” and a surgeon in the Twentieth Massachusetts claimed that 620

Notes to Pages 480–83

officers in his unit shot the blacks. See Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 74, and Martha Derby Perry, Letters from a Surgeon of the Civil War, 218. 44. OR, 40(1):791; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 465; Rogers, “Crater Battle,” 13; Hess, Into the Crater, 158–60, 166; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 89–90. 45. OR, 40(1):567, 710; Hess, Into the Crater, 158; Lord, Ninth New Hampshire, 502; Marvel, Race of the Soil, 269, 465; Warren S. Gurney to “Dear Folks at Home,” August 2, 1864, Warren S. Gurney Papers, John Hay Library, Brown University (hereafter cited as Gurney Papers); Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 260; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 88–89. 46. OR, 40(1):597, 599, (3):676–77; John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 365; Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 78–79; Hess, Into the Crater, 157–58, 160, 164–65. 47. Bernard, War Talks, 215; Hess, Into the Crater, 166–67. 48. OR, 40(1):144, 155, 165, (3):646, 662; Andrew A. Humphreys, Virginia Campaign, 261. 49. Robert K. Krick, Lee’s Colonels, 156; Allardice, Confederate Colonels, 178; Crist, Papers of Jefferson Davis, 580n13, 581n22. 50. Bernard, War Talks, 181, 215; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 198; Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, 23, Mahone Family Papers; OR Supplement, 309– 10; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 15; Hess, Into the Crater, 173. 51. OR, 40(1):579; Barrett, “Civil War Service of John F. Hartranft,” 181; William J. Murphy, Statement No. 42, August 14, 1903, Crater Collection, 51; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; Bernard, War Talks, 215–16; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 198; Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, 23, Mahone Family Papers; De Peyster, “Military Memoir of William Mahone,” 403; Private Richard Asbury Whitworth to “Dear Wife,” August 13, 1864, Whitworth Letters; OR Supplement, 310; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 15; Etheredge, “Crater Battle,” 205–6. 52. Allardice, Confederate Colonels, 140–41; Crist, Papers of Jefferson Davis, 581n23; Wil­ liam J. Murphy, Statement No. 42, August 14, 1903, Crater Collection, 51; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater:”; Bernard, War Talks, 215–16; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 198; Charles S. Venable, untitled pamphlet, 23, Mahone Family Papers; De Peyster, “Military Memoir of William Mahone,” 403; Folsom, Heroes and Martyrs of Georgia, 102–3; Corporal John O. Hillsman, “Recapture of the Crater Again,” Atlanta Journal, December 28, 1901; Private A. H. Draper, “With the 64th Ga. at the Crater,” Atlanta Journal, March 29, 1902; Private Richard Whitworth to “Dear Wife,” August 13, 1864, Whitworth Letters; C. M. Sanders, untitled article, Atlanta Journal, January 11, 1902; Clyde G. Wiggins III, My Dear Friend, 137–38; OR Supplement, 310; Suderow, “Confederate Casualties at the Crater,” 26. 53. Bernard, War Talks, 181, 215; Crist, Papers of Jefferson Davis, 577; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 16; Etheredge, “Crater Battle,” 206; George Washington Clark, Statement No. 71, November 13, 1905, Crater Collection, 116; William H. Etheredge, Statement No. 30, July 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 40; C. M. Sanders, untitled article, Atlanta Journal, January 11, 1902; De Peyster, “Military Memoir of William Mahone,” 403; Stone, Wandering to Glory, 198; OR, 40(1):792; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 157; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; Hess, Into the Crater, 174, 295n15. 54. Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 181; Charles F. Stinson to “Dear Ones at Home,” August 1, 1864, Charles F. Stinson Papers, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center (hereafter cited as Stinson Papers); Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 155–56; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 103; Charles H. Houghton, “In the Crater,” 562. Notes to Pages 483–87

621

55. Richards, “Blunder of the Petersburg Mine”; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 37; Bowley, “Crater,” 427; OR, 40(1):575, 759–60; Woodbury, Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, 445; Hess, Into the Crater, 174. Bowley must have been mistaken as to the identity of the unfortunate major, as no officer of that rank from a Maine regiment died during the battle. 56. Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 143; Byron Cutcheon Memoir, 289, Byron Cutcheon Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Cutcheon Memoir); Slotkin, No Quarter, 275–76, 373n7; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 181– 82; Hurd Diary, July 30, 1864; Hess, Into the Crater, 176. 57. William T. Ackerson Papers, Monmouth County Historical Association Library and Archives. 58. William H. Randall, Reminiscences and Diary, 89, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter cited as Randall Reminiscences and Diary); Bowley, “Crater,” 427; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 38; Hess, Into the Crater, 175; Hauptman, “Into the Abyss,” 48; Berg, “Inured to Hardships,” 53–54. A group of Catawba Indians in the Seventeenth South Carolina exchanged shots with the Native Americans from Michigan. 59. Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 155; Bowley, “Crater,” 427; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 104. 60. OR, 40(1):119; Hurd Diary, July 30, 1864. 61. Gould, Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, 239; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 37; Albert, Forty-­ Fifth Pennsylvania, 156; OR, 40(1):575; Cutcheon Memoir, 289; Randall Reminiscences and Diary, 89–90; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 182. 62. Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 38; Bowley, “Crater,” 427; Randall Reminiscences and Diary, 90. 63. Lieutenant William Baird Memoir, Baird Family Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 64. Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 558–59; Squire D. Rhodes, “Battle of the Crater.” 65. Hess, Into the Crater, 181; OR, 40(1):555; Jackman, Sixth New Hampshire, 316; Gould, Forty-­Eighth Pennsylvania, 238; Shearman, “Crater,” 14; Bowley, “Crater,” 427; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 105–6; Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 558; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 143; Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 155–56; Squire D. Rhodes, “Battle of the Crater.” 66. Jackman, Sixth New Hampshire, 316–17. 67. OR, 40(1):575, (3):668; Herek, These Men Have Seen Hard Service, 223; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 103; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 37. 68. Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 183; Unidentified soldier to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Petersburg National Battlefield; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 103; Charles F. Stinson to “Dear Ones at Home,” August 1, 1864, Stinson Papers; Poirier, “By the Blood of Our Alumni,” 223; OR, 40(1):539. 69. Powell, “Petersburg Crater,” 557; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 104; Cutcheon Memoir, 289; Bowley, “Petersburg Mine,” 38; Bowley, “Crater,” 427; OR, 40(1):529, 575; Hess, Into the Crater, 178–79. 70. OR, 40(1):555–56; Ervin T. Case, “Battle of the Mine,” 29; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 104; Cutchins, Famous Command, 156; Anderson, Fifty-­Seventh Massachusetts, 181; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 143. 71. OR, 40(3):662–63, (1):102, 529; Marvel, Burnside, 406; Cutcheon Memoir, 289; Cutcheon, Twentieth Michigan, 143; Hess, Into the Crater, 180–81.

622

Notes to Pages 487–92

72. OR, 40(3):661, (1):64–65; Report of the Joint Committee, 7–8, 23–24, 57–58, 74–75; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 242; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 200; Marvel, Burnside, 406. Both Adam Badeau and Horace Porter asserted that Grant had been present near the front when the panic-­stricken troops fled for the rear and told Burnside in no uncertain terms that the offensive was over and that the men should be withdrawn immediately. No contemporary evidence confirms this story. See Badeau, Military History, 2:482–83, and Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 267. 73. OR, 40(3):662–63, (1):64–65, 90, 165; Report of the Joint Committee, 7–8, 24, 57–58, 75; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 243; Agassiz, Meade’s Headquarters, 201. 74. Sumner, Diary of Cyrus B. Comstock, 285. 75. OR, 40(3):636. Grant’s message to Halleck is datelined City Point and timed at 10:00  a.m. Because Grant was present at Meade’s field headquarters at 10:30 a.m., he must have wired his message to general headquarters at City Point from Meade’s command post for transmission to Washington. 76. Fortin, “Colonel Hilary A. Herbert’s History,” 175; Manuscript Biography of John C. C. Sanders, John C. C. Sanders Collection, University of Alabama (hereafter cited as Sanders Collection); Warner, Generals in Gray, 268; George Clark, Glance Backward, 58; George Clark, “Alabamians in the Crater Battle,” 68. Many sources spell the general’s name Saunders, suggesting that he pronounced his name as that spelling would dictate. 77. Bernard, War Talks, 216; OR, 40(1):792; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 586, 589; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 161; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 360–62; John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; George Clark, “Crater Battle,” 68; John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Pa,” August 3, 1864, Sanders Collection; Joseph Draper, “Who Fought in the Battle of the Crater?,” 502; John C. Carter, Hour of Conflict, 262; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198. For Beauregard’s claim that he and Lee were the real architects of Sanders’s attack, see “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers. No explicit evidence has surfaced to support this claim, although it is entirely plausible that Lee and Beauregard shared Mahone and Johnson’s inclination to employ Sanders and support him with the troops already near the front. 78. George Clark, Glance Backward, 58–59; William H. Stewart, Statement No. 6, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 12. 79. Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 360; C. W. Sanders, article in Petersburg Daily Index, June 6, 1896; Vance, “Incidents,” 178; John C. Carter, Hour of Conflict, 262; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; Hess, Into the Crater, 183. One source states that Mahone advised the Alabamans of the black troops’ battle cry of “No Quarter” and to take no prisoners. See B. F. Phillips, “Wilcox’s Alabamians in Virginia,” 490. 80. George Clark, Glance Backward, 59; Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 84; George Clark, “Crater Battle,” 68; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 359, 361; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; Vance, “Incidents,” 178; John C. Carter, Hour of Conflict, 262; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 161. 81. John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Pa,” August 3, 1864, Sanders Collection; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; Correspondence of the Daily Reporter, August 4, 1864, Sanders Collection; John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906. 82. OR, 40(1):792; Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, 586, 589; Bernard, War Talks, 163, 216; William H. Stewart, Statement No. 6, July 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 12; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 361–63; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31,

Notes to Pages 492–96

623

1864, Verdery Letters; “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers; Correspondence of the Daily Reporter, August 4, 1864, Sanders Collection; Robert W. Hicks Diary, July 30, 1864, Robert W. Hicks Diary and Letters, bound vol. 18–08, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198; McCabe, “Defence of Petersburg,” 293; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; George Clark, Glance Backward, 59; Hess, Into the Crater, 182–83; Schmutz, Crater, 270–71. Sanders left the brigade sharpshooters on the line south of Petersburg along with about 125 men in the trenches there, perhaps 250 men altogether, which helps account for the small number of Alabamans in line prior to the attack. See Elias Davis to “Dear Georgie,” August 3, 1864, Elias Davis Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, and Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 197. At least a few of Hall’s men joined the attack as well. See Dorsey Binion to “Dear Sister,” August 10, 1864, Dorsey Binion Letter, Confederate Miscellany Collection, Emory University (hereafter cited as Binion Letter). 83. Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; George Clark, Glance Backward, 59; Vance, “Incidents,” 178; John C. Carter, Hour of Conflict, 262; Featherston, Battle of the Crater, 20; Bernard, War Talks, 216; Sanders article, Petersburg Daily Index, June 6, 1896; Correspondence of the Daily Reporter, August 4, 1864, Sanders Collection; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 161; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 363; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198; Zerah Coston Monks to “My Dear Sister,” August 2, 1864, Monks-­Rohrer Letters, Confederate Miscellany Collection, Emory University. Monks transferred from the Sixty-­Second Pennsylvania to the 155th Pennsylvania on July 2, 1864. My thanks to Richard Sommers for pointing this out. 84. John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 363–64; Hess, Into the Crater, 185; Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Henry Augustine Minor Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (hereafter cited as Minor Papers). 85. C. W. Sanders article, Atlanta Journal, January 11, 1902; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Verdery Letters; George Clark, Glance Backward, 60; Hess, Into the Crater, 185. 86. George Clark, Glance Backward, 60; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 364; Featherston, Battle of the Crater, 21; John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; Vance, “Incidents,” 178; Fagan, “Petersburg Crater”; MacRae, Americans at Home, 175–76; Hess, Into the Crater, 188. 87. Gordon McCabe quoted in Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years, 227; Bowley, “Crater,” 428; C. W. Sanders article, Atlanta Journal, January 11, 1902; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 363; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 161; Stewart, “Charge of the Crater,” 83. 88. OR, 40(1):102; Bowley, “Crater,” 429; “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198; Hess, Into the Crater, 185. 89. Bernard, War Talks, 216; Private George Isbell Turnley, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198. 90. Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 198. 91. George Clark, Glance Backward, 60; John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; Bernard, War Talks, 216. 92. Henry H. Humphreys, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, 244; George Clark, Glance Backward, 60; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 365; Alfred Lewis Scott, “Memoir of Service in the Confederate Army,” 27, Alfred Lewis Scott Memoirs, 1910, Virginia Historical Society

624

Notes to Pages 496–500

(hereafter cited as Scott Memoirs); David Washington Pipes Memoir, 53, Virginia Historical Society; Hess, Into the Crater, 186. 93. Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 365; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Verdery Letters; Cockrell and Ballard, Mississippi Rebel, 288; Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Minor Papers; John C. C. Sanders to “Dear Pa,” Au­gust 3, 1864, Sanders Collection. 94. A. T. Fleming to “My dear and affectionate wife,” August 3, 1864, Fleming Letter, Historical Society of Schuylkill County; Laban Odom to “Dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Laban Odom Letters, Georgia Department of Archives and History; James Paul Verdery to “My Dear Sister,” July 31, 1864, Verdery Letters; Hall T. McGee Diary, July 30, 1864, South Carolina Historical Society (hereafter cited as McGee Diary); Kenfield, “Captured by Rebels,” 233; James Monroe Lyon to “Dear Parents,” August 1, 1864, James Monroe Lyons Papers, New-­York Historical Society; Bell I. Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb, 314–15. 95. Kenfield, “Captured by Rebels,” 233; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 77; Marvel, Race of the Soil, 270; Kilmer, “Dash into the Crater,” 776. 96. Willie Pegram to “My dear Jennie,” August 1, 1864, Pegram-­Johnston-­McIntosh Family Papers, 1825–1941, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Pegram-­Johnston-­ McIntosh Family Papers); Corporal Andrew S. Barksdale to “Dear Sister Omis,” August 1, 1864, Barksdale Letters, Museum of the Confederacy (hereafter cited as Barksdale Letters); Dorsey Binion to “Dear Sister,” August 10, 1864, Binion Letter; James M. Henderson to “Dear Wife and Child,” July 31, 1864, James M. Henderson Papers, Pack Memorial Library; Troxler and Barrier, Dear Father, 60–61. 97. Andrew J. Perkins to “Dear Uncle Newt,” August 2, 1864, United Daughters of the Confederacy Typescripts, vol. 5, Georgia Department of Archives and History; Troxler and Barrier, Dear Father, 60–61; Private Henry Van Leuvenigh Bird to Margaret Randolph Bird, August 5, 1864, Bird Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society (hereafter cited as Bird Family Papers); Thomas A. Smith to “My dear Sister,” August 4, 1864, Thomas A. Smith Letters, Special Collections Library, University of Virginia; Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:518. 98. John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 366; Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Minor Papers; Cockrell and Ballard, Mississippi Rebel, 287; Anderson, Fifty-­ Seventh Massachusetts, 193; Gallagher, Fighting for the Confederacy, 462. Kevin Levin argues persuasively in support of Alexander’s explanation. See Levin, Remembering, 27–29. 99. Henry A. Biggs to “My Dear Sister,” August 3, 1864, Asa Biggs Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Richard P. Allen to “Dear Companion,” August 1, 1864, Richard P. Allen Letters, Museum of the Confederacy; Corporal Andrew Sydnor Barksdale to “Dear Sister Omis,” August 1, 1864, Barksdale Letters; Mahone, Crater, 12. 100. Eugene Levy, “Donaldsonville Cannoneers,” New Orleans Times, June 23, 1902; Evans, 16th Mississippi, 281; Henry Van Leuvenigh Bird to Margaret Randolph Bird, Au­gust 5, 1864, Bird Family Papers; Willie Pegram to “My dear Jennie,” August 1, 1864, Pegram-­Johnston-­ McIntosh Family Papers; McGee Diary, July 30, 1864; Edward A. Miller Jr., Black Soldiers of Illinois, 77; Dorsey Binion to “Dear Sister,” August 10, 1864, Binion Letter; John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906. 101. Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Minor Papers; Willie Pegram to “My dear Jennie,” August 1, 1864, Pegram-­Johnston-­McIntosh Family Papers;

Notes to Pages 500–504

625

Perkins Letter, United Daughters of the Confederacy Typescripts, vol. 5, Georgia Department of Archives and History; McGee Diary, July 30, 1864; Washington A. Roebling Journal of Military Service, bound vol. 150, Richmond National Battlefield Park. 102. Richmond Enquirer, August 1–2, 1864; Scarborough, Diary of Edmund Ruffin, 3:518. Again, Levin is the authority for this interpretation. 103. Henry Augustine Minor to “My dear Sister,” August 1, 1864, Minor Papers; Alfred Lewis Scott, “Memoir of Service in the Confederate Army,” 27, Scott Memoirs; Dudley Diggs Pendleton to “Dear Mama,” July 31, 1864, Dudley Diggs Pendleton Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University; Richmond Dispatch, August 2, 1864; William M. Dame, [no salutation], July 31, 1864, William Meade Dame Letters, bound vol. 138, Fredericksburg National Military Park; Neese, Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery, 307. 104. Lieutenant George H. Wing to “Dear Captain,” July 18, 1865, Wiley Sword Collection, Pamplin Historical Park (hereafter cited as Sword Collection); Alfred Lewis Scott, “Memoir of Service in the Confederate Army,” 27, Scott Memoirs; W. W. Blackford, “Memoirs: First and Last, or Battles in Virginia,” 462, Library of Virginia; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 161. 105. Kenneth Wiley, Norfolk Blues, 138; Lieutenant George Wing to “Dear Captain,” July 18, 1865, Sword Collection; William Miller Owen, In Camp and Battle, 345; Rickard, “Services with Colored Troops,” 31; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 145. 106. Lieutenant William Baird Memoir, 79, Baird Family Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Beecham, “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man”; Bowley, “Crater,” 430; Lieutenant George Wing to “Dear Captain,” July 18, 1865, Sword Collection; Shearman, “Crater,” 16; Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 145–46. 107. OR, 40(3):637–38. 108. OR, 40(3):638–41, 648–49, 654–55. 109. Report of the Joint Committee, 24, 58; OR, 40(3):664, 676; Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 469–70. 110. “Notes of Genl Beauregard,” Beauregard Papers; John C. Featherston to “My dear Wife,” August 2, 1864, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; OR, 40(3):818; Hess, Into the Crater, 196–97. 111. Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 27 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 87–88; Private George Isbell Turnley, Houston Daily Post, April 22, 1906; Alfred Lewis Scott, “Memoir of Service in the Confederate Army,” 27, Scott Memoirs; Private William Emmerson, Statement No. 22, July 16, 1903, Crater Collection, 32; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 162; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 365; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 19; Hess, Into the Crater, 197. 112. Petersburg Express, quoted in J. Cutler Andrews, South Reports, 411; Pearce, Diary of Captain Henry A. Chambers, 210; Welburn J. Andrews, 23d South Carolina, 24–25; George Washington Ward, History of the Second Pennsylvania Veteran Heavy Artillery, 91. 113. Cassedy, Dear Folks at Home, 552; Alfred Lewis Scott, “Memoir of Service in the Confederate Army,” 27, Scott Memoirs; Charles C. Caruthers Memoir, bound vol. 403, Fredericksburg National Military Park; OR, 40(3)699. 114. Henry Goddard Thomas, “Twenty-­Two Hours Prisoner,” 29–30; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 244; Addison S. Boyce, [no salutation], August 3, 1864, Addison S. Boyce Letters, Petersburg National Battlefield; Elisha O. Drake, [no salutation], August 1, 1864, Elisha Drake Letters, Lewis Leigh Collection, Army Heritage and Education Center. 626

Notes to Pages 504–9

115. Beecham, “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man.” 116. Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 148–49; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 231; Beecham, “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man”; Lieutenant George Wing to “Dear Captain,” July 18, 1865, Sword Collection; Bowley, “Crater,” 430; Kenfield, “Captured by Rebels,” 234; Shearman, “Crater,” 17–18. 117. John Sergeant Wise, End of an Era, 368–69; Claiborne, Seventy-­Five Years; Henderson, Petersburg in the Civil War, 129–30; Greene, Civil War Petersburg, 210. The Union doctors had been captured at Reams’ Station. Confederate wounded filled all of Petersburg’s military hospitals. 118. Kenneth Wiley, Norfolk Blues, 140; Tevis and Marquis, History of the Fighting Fourteenth, 180; OR, 40(3):695; McMurray, Recollections, 44. 119. OR, 40(3):701, 703; Scott, Forgotten Valor, 562; Chandler, “Petersburg”; William H. Washburn, “The Life and Writings of Jerome A. Watrous Soldier-­Reporter Adjutant of the Iron Brigade,” Petersburg National Battlefield; Aston, Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 109; D. Porter Marshall, Company K, 155th Pa, 190; Cuffel, Durell’s Battery, 199; Cutcheon Memoir, 328; Kenneth Wiley, Norfolk Blues, 140; John L. Smith, 118th Pennsylvania, 496. The flap concerning the telegraph operators stemmed from Burnside authorizing them to provide him with messages from army headquarters not directed to the Ninth Corps commander, acts that Meade had proscribed. 120. OR, 40(3):667, 702, 686, 640. For an example of Meade’s critics, see Marvel, Burnside, 408. 121. OR, 40(3):691, 702–5; Cutcheon Memoir, 327–28; Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 366–67; George Clark, “Crater Battle,” 68. 122. Featherston, “Graphic Account,” 367; OR, 40(3):691, 705, 821; Hess, Into the Crater, 207–8. 123. Lee, Pendleton Memoirs, 359; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 3, 1864; New York Times, August 4, 1864; Josiah N. Jones Diary, August 1, 1864, New Hampshire Historical Society (hereafter cited as Jones Diary); Chandler, “Petersburg”; George Clark, “Crater Battle,” 68; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 209–10; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 244; Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 279. Meade reported that he received Beauregard’s message consenting to the truce at 6:00 a.m., an hour after most accounts document its commencement. See OR, 42(2):3. The New York Times misidentified Major Doran as Joseph and belonging to the Twenty-­Second New York Cavalry. 124. Day, “Breastworks,” 175; Day, 49th North Carolina, 85–86; Owen, Washington Artillery, 346; Phillips Diary and Memoir, 60–61, James Eldred Phillips Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Chandler, “Petersburg”; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 292–93; Cutcheon Memoir, 330. 125. Chandler, “Petersburg”; Lowe, Meade’s Army, 244; Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 68–69; William H. Etheredge, Statement No. 30, July 27, 1903, Crater Collection, 40; Bernard, “Battle of the Crater,” 21; Newsome, Horn, and Selby, Civil War Talks, 251; Owen, Washington Artillery, 346–47; George H. Allen, Fourth Rhode Island, 293; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 210; Cutcheon Memoir, 330; C.[harles] W. Owen, First Michigan Infantry, n.p.; Henry Goddard Thomas, “Twenty-­Two Hours Prisoner,” 29–30; Warren S. Gurney to “Dear Folks at Home,” August 2, 1864, Gurney Papers; Henry Seymour Hall, “Mine Run to Petersburg,” 241; Lee, Pendleton Memoirs, 360; Day, “Breastworks,” 175; Kenneth Wiley, Norfolk Blues, 140; Gavin, Campaigning with the Roundheads, 526–27. Notes to Pages 509–13

627

126. Fortin, “8th Alabama,” 69; Denny, 25th Mass., 363–64; Jones Diary, August 1, 1864; Day, “Breastworks,” 175; New York Times, August 4, 1864; Owen, Washington Artillery, 347; Trudeau, Last Citadel, 125; Stewart, Pair of Blankets, 164; Richmond Daily Dispatch, Au­gust 3, 1864; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 210; Henry Goddard Thomas, “Twenty-­Two Hours Prisoner,” 30; Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 148. 127. OR, 40(1):753; 42(2):10; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 3, 1864; New York Times, August 4, 1864; Hopkins, Seventh Rhode Island, 210; Cuffel, Durell’s Battery, 200; Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 279–80. 128. Denny, 25th Mass., 364; Chandler, “Petersburg”; Albert, Forty-­Fifth Pennsylvania, 148; Owen, Washington Artillery, 347; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 3, 1864; Carruth et al., Thirty-­Fifth Massachusetts, 280. 129. Henry Goddard Thomas, “Twenty-­Two Hours Prisoner,” 30–48; OR, 42(2):31–32; Lieutenant Colonel Richard O. Whitehead, Statement No. 62, September 7 and October 3, 1903, Crater Collection, 90–91; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 4, 1864; John Bell Vincent Diary, August 1, 1864, Virginia Historical Society. Colonel Lyman did not think much of Thomas. “I wish the rebs’ had kept him,” he wrote. “He is a low-­minded, scheming fellow.” See Lowe, Meade’s Army, 249. 130. OR, 40(1):17–18, 134, 167, 246–49, 313, 452, (3):707; Livermore, Numbers and Losses, 116. Livermore served on General Ord’s staff during the battle of the Crater. 131. OR, 40(1):248; Bowley, “Crater,” 430; Beecham, “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man”; Suderow, “Battle of the Crater,” 219–25; Urwin, Black Flag over Dixie, 207–8. Lieutenant Bowley would later calculate that the Twenty-­Third U.S. Colored Troops lost 310 men on July 30. See Keith Wilson, Honor in Command, 156. 132. OR, 40(1):529, 536, 567; Charles Cummings to “My Dear Wife,” July 31, 1864, Charles Cummings Papers, Vermont Historical Society. 133. Suderow, “Confederate Casualties at the Crater,” 22–23; Cavanaugh and Marvel, Crater, 129; Schmutz, Crater, 356. Hess, Into the Crater, 200, prefers the lower estimate of 1,140 total Confederate losses and Slotkin, No Quarter, 318, offers yet a third figure: 1,491. 134. OR, 40(1):754–55, 810–13; Hess, Into the Crater, 204; Schmutz, Crater, 358–59; Paul M. Higginbotham, August 1, 1864, Paul M. Higginbotham Papers, Virginia Historical Society. Twenty-­four Union officers and soldiers received the Medal of Honor for their service on July 30. For a list of recipients, see Schmutz, Crater, 357–58. 135. John B. Foote to “Dear Sister & Mary,” August 5, 1864, John B. Foote Papers, 1862–65, Perkins Library, Duke University; Alfred Mordecai to “My dearest Mother,” July 31, 1864, Alfred Mordecai Papers, Library of Congress; Tilton Diary, August 1, 1864; Irving, “More Than Conqueror,” 168–69. A regimental historian called the battle “a national disaster,” and claimed that “it dejected the country and so strengthened the peace party of the North as to throw many obstacles in the way of a vigorous prosecution of the war.” See Hall and Hall, Cayuga in the Field, 253. 136. OR, 40(1):17; Warren S. Gurney to “Dear Folks at Home,” August 2, 1864, Gurney Papers; Meade, Life and Letters, 2:218.

628

Notes to Pages 513–16

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Index

Abbot, Col. Henry L., 438 Abbott, Maj. Lemuel, 110 Abercrombie, Brig. Gen. John J., 259 Ackerson, Capt. William T., 487 Adams, Capt. Charles Francis, 210–11 Albemarle (Virginia) Battery, 93, 103–4 Albright, Sgt. James W., 317 Alexander, Brig. Gen. Edward Porter, 27, 49, 119, 339, 342, 450; on pontoon bridge across James River, 64–65; on David Harris, 171; on Kershaw, 176–77; estimates casualties, 212; on deception of Lee, 218; on fortifying, 223; on position of Wright’s Battery, 378; discovers the mine, 384–85; on countermining, 388; on First Deep Bottom, 418; and battle of the Crater, 475, 481, 502 Alexander, Peter Wellington, 321, 335 Alexander, Pvt. William D., 173 Allen, Pvt. Orrin Sweet, 123, 482 Allen, Robert H., 283 Ames, Brig. Gen. Adelbert, 51, 84, 128, 208, 420, 542n13; at battle of the Crater, 459 Ames’s division: and battle of the Crater, 429, 444 Andrews, Col. Clinton Milton, 280 Andrews, Lt. Garnett, 270 Anderson, Brig. Gen. George “Tige,” 177; and attack on June 24, 269–72 Anderson, Capt. John, 502 Anderson, Maj. Gen. Richard H., 20, 23, 27, 123, 125, 161, 171–72, 177, 348–49, 549n110; at First Deep Bottom, 406, 410, 413, 415–17

Anderson’s (Georgia) Brigade, 177, 269–71 Anderson Seminary, 310 Andersonville (prison camp), 145, 254, 510 Angel, Capt. James R., 88 Anthony, Sgt. Charles Lewis, 255 Appomattox County, Va., 317 Appomattox River, 2, 4, 6–7, 10–11; railroad bridge over, 9, 190; supports industry, 35; crossing of on June 15, 86 Archer, Maj. Fletcher H., 4–5, 93 Archer’s Hill (house), 95, 133, 223, 226, 339, 356 Armstrong, Lt. Robert W., 462 Army of Northern Virginia, 10; and Overland Campaign, 15, 19, 22–25, 27; and Grant’s movement to James River, 55–57, 59, 71, 79; and manpower shortage, 223–24; and poor generalship, 272; soldier life in, 332–34; optimism of soldiers, 334–36; shortage of horses, 336; deployment of, 337; strength of, 337; casualties in, 338; and desertion, 338; builds fortifications, 338–40 Army of the James, 9–10, 20, 24, 27, 30–31, 48, 61; and responsibility for attacking Petersburg, 75; performance of on June 16, 138–39; attitude of, 216; and Second Offensive, 226; and Lincoln, 229–30; command changes in, 362–68 Army of the Potomac, 9–11; and Overland Campaign, 12–13, 18, 21–23, 25–26; and George McClellan, 12, 354–55; movement to James River, 44, 48, 50–51, 74; depredations of, 73, 80, 135,

679

180, 258; condition of, 215, 350, 353; and desertion, 338, 353; and life in trenches, 350–52; vice in, 352–53; morale in, 354; and Grant, 354–55; and attitude toward Copperheads, 355; and attitude toward Virginia civilians, 355–56; and artillery fire, 356–57; builds fortifications, 357–58; strength of, 358; and new troops, 358–59; reorganized, 359 Aston, Sgt. Howard, 434, 461, 487, 490–91 Atlanta, Ga., 18, 362 Atrocities against U.S. Colored Troops, 478–80, 483, 500–505 Atrocities by U.S. Colored Troops, 111, 271, 461–62 Austin, Pvt. Charles D., 166 Avery house (plantation), 131, 136, 156, 166, 182, 226; described, 153 Aylett, Col. William R., 124–25, 209, 542n2 Ayres, Brig. Gen. Romeyn B., 45, 47, 53, 199–200; background of, 198; wounded, 351 Ayres’s division, 60, 135, 153; on June 18, 182, 191, 198–200; and battle of the Crater, 420 Babcock, Lt. Col. Orville E., 60, 154 Badeau, Lt. Col. Adam, 118 Bagby, Capt. Alexander F., 451 Bagby, Pvt. Edward, 451 Bailey house, 178 Bailey’s Creek (north), 401–2, 404–8, 413–16 Bailey’s Creek (south), 96, 113 Baird, Lt. William, 489, 506 Baker, Col. John A., 232–33 Ballenger, Sgt. Adam, 412–13 Ballier, Col. John F., 236 Banister, Anne, 1 Banister, William, 1 Barker, Capt. William B., 384 Barksdale, Cpl. Andrew Sydnor, 501, 503 Barlow, Brig. Gen. Francis C., 59, 115, 136, 141, 143–44, 175, 233, 240; wife’s death, 415 Barlow’s division, 66, 79, 115; attack on June

16, 136, 143; on June 17, 152, 166, 168; on June 18, 180; and the Second Offensive, 226, 230, 232–33, 254; on June 22, 235–36, 239–40, 244; on June 23, 249; at First Deep Bottom, 400, 402, 404, 407, 414, 416 Barnard, Brig. Gen. John G., 44, 134, 136, 229, 382 Barnes, Pvt. James, 483 Barnes, Lt. Col. Joseph H., 163–65, 426 Barney, Lt. Col. Benjamin Griffin, 163–64 Barrier, Maj. Rufus A., 501–2 Barringer, Brig. Gen. Rufus: defends at Long Bridge, 52, 55, 57; at White Oak Swamp, 57–59, and Second Offensive, 232; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 291 Barringer, Pvt. Rufus A., 335 Barringer’s Brigade, 232; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 277, 280, 283, 288 Barry, Col. John D., 408, 566n71, 601n85 Barry, Pvt. William R., 131 Bartlett, Brig. Gen. William Francis: background of, 421, 605n7; and attack orders, 426; and battle of the Crater, 442, 444, 457, 461, 489–90, 500; and prisoner parade, 509 Bartlett’s brigade, 425–26; strength and deployment of, 427; starts attack, 441; and battle of the Crater, 441, 515 Barton, Lt. George C., 479 Barton, Col. William B., 343–44, 588n37 Barton’s brigade, 343 Bassett, Pvt. John E., 95 Batchelder, Lt. Col. Richard N., 69 Bates, Col. Delevan, 359, 397–98, 461–63; wounded, 463 Bates, Edward, 230 Bates, Col. James Lawrence, 57–58, 191 Bates’s brigade, 191 Batkins, Lucy B., 227, 563n43 Batte, Maj. Peter V., 93, 98, 103 Battery 1 (Dimmock Line), 93, 106, 120–21 Battery 2 (Dimmock Line), 106, 120–21, 268 Battery 3 (Dimmock Line), 105–6, 108, 141, 268, 546n61 Battery 4 (Dimmock Line), 99, 120

680Index

Battery 5 (Dimmock Line), 93, 114, 339; attacked and captured, 94–95, 99, 101–5, 107–8, 120, 538n57 Battery 6 (Dimmock Line), 97, 99, 103, 105, 107, 111, 120, 268 Battery 7 (Dimmock Line), 98–99, 103, 107–10, 115, 268 Battery 8 (Dimmock Line), 107–9 Battery 9 (Dimmock Line), 96, 104, 108–9 Battery 10 (Dimmock Line), 96–97, 109–10 Battery 11 (Dimmock Line), 109–10, 115, 132 Battery 12 (Dimmock Line), 121, 132 Battery 13 (Dimmock Line), 121, 132, 143, 546n61 Battery 14 (Dimmock Line), 93, 98, 121, 131, 143, 546n61 Battery 15 (Dimmock Line), 121, 131, 143, 148, 150–52, 164 Battery 16 (Dimmock Line), 93, 152, 164 Battery 22 (Dimmock Line), 199 Battery 23 (Dimmock Line), 93, 199 Battery 24 (Dimmock Line), 98, 268 Battery 25 (Dimmock Line), 431 Battery 29 (Dimmock Line), 249 Battery 35 (Dimmock Line), 431 Battery 40 (Dimmock Line), 93 Battery A, Second U.S. Artillery, 412–13 Battery A, Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery. See Walker’s (Virginia) Battery Battery B, First New Jersey Light Artillery. See Clark’s Battery Battery B, Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery. See Dickenson’s (Virginia) Battery Battery C, Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery. See Davidson’s Lynchburg (Virginia) Battery Battery Dantzler, 155, 234 Battery E, First Rhode Island Light Artillery, 311 Battery E, Fourth U.S. Artillery, 297 Battery E, Third New York Artillery, 109 Battery F, First Pennsylvania Artillery, 555n43 Battery K, Third New York Light Artillery, 88, 96 Index

Battery L, First New York Light Artillery, 110 Battery M, Third New York Light Artillery, 133 Baugh, Lt. William Fielding, 482 Baxter Road, 96–97, 113, 122, 131, 135, 156, 170–71, 178, 182, 191, 194, 219, 269, 348, 377–78, 385, 452, 483, 537n38 Baylor’s Farm, battle of, 87–91, 94, 100, 107, 110, 130 Beal, Cpl. Caleb H., 439 Beale, Col. Richard L. T., 266 Beattie, Capt. Alexander M., 250, 568n108 Beaty, Capt. B. Lewis, 437–38 Beauregard, Gen. P. G. T., 4, 11, 14, 25; and Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 7, 9–10, 41; and Grant’s movement to James River, 31, 41, 55–56; and Grant’s threat to Petersburg, 76–78, 532n94; on June 15, 91, 93, 98, 100, 119–23; on June 16, 125, 141, 145; and communications with Lee regarding Grant, 146, 156, 162, 218–19; on June 17, 157, 161–62, 169; establishes the Harris Line, 170–71; on June 18, 172, 184; reports casualties, 211–12; generalship analyzed, 217–19, 561n13; rejects request for truce, June 19, 220; and attack of June 24, 267–68, 272; recommends evacuation of Petersburg, 317; on firefighting, 321; increases provost guard, 327; attends services, 329; trust in, 334–35, headquarters of, 337; strength of troops, 337; orders attack on July 8, 345–46; believes Grant is dead, 349; and the mine, 385–86; and battle of the Crater, 454–57, 463, 470, 475, 495, 499, 507, 623n77; compliments Weisiger, 481, and truce, 512–13 Beaver, Col. James A., 143 Beckwith, Margaret Stanly, 317, 323 Beckwith, Dr. Thomas Stanly, 314 Beddall, Sgt. Samuel, 379 Beecham, Lt. Robert K., 398, 506, 509, 514 Belfield, Va., 296 Bell, Col. Louis, 84, 104, 343, 483 Beller, Lt. James W., 441 681

Bell’s brigade, 95, 99, 102, 343; at battle of the Crater, 457, 459, 464, 482 Beman, Pvt. Torrey, 90 Benbow, Col. Henry L., 431 Benedict, George G., 253 Benham, Brig. Gen. Henry W., 62, 64, 530n55 Benning’s Brigade. See DuBose’s Brigade Berdan’s Sharpshooters, 220 Bermuda Hundred, Va., 6–7, 9–11, 20, 24–25, 43–44, 47–49, 51, 56, 65, 67, 123– 24, 175, 360, 372, 401; Smith’s troops disembark at, 61, 76, 83, 85–86, 534n9; combat on June 16, 126–29, 136–39; combat on June 17, 154–56, 160–62; on June 18, 208–9 Bernard, Sgt. David Meade, 470 Bernard, Pvt. George S., 328, 470, 476, 479 Berry, Fannie, 317, 327 Bethesda Church, battle of, 25–26 Biddle, Sgt. James W., 124 Bidwell, Brig. Gen. Daniel, 236 Bidwell’s brigade, 236 Bigelow, Capt. John, 194, 196 Biggs, Lt. Col. Herman, 62 Biggs, Capt. William, 322, 334–35, 349 Biles, Col. Edwin R., 402 Birchett house, 507 Bird, Pvt. Henry V. L., 503 Birge, Brig. Gen. Henry, 409 Birge’s brigade, 409, 415–17 Birney, Maj. Gen. David B., 113–14, 415, 418; on June 16, 132, 142; on June 17, 147; replaces Hancock, 175; on June 18, 180, 183, 186, 188, 200, 205; background of, 200; and Second Offensive, 226, 233, 254, 569n117; on bombarding Petersburg, 227; on June 22, 235, 241, 243–44, 248; on June 23, 249; on heat, 350; on Smith, 366; commands Tenth Corps, 368; pessimistic about Burnside’s attack, 424 Birney’s division, 66, 70, 79–80, 112–13, 115, 154; attack on June 16, 136, 142, 175; on June 18, 185 Blackford, Capt. Charles Minor, 56, 318 Blackford, Lt. Col. William W., 324, 505

Blacks & Whites, Va., 278, 281, 574n54; battle of, 280 Blackwater River (Swamp), 188, 301 Blaisdell, Col. William, 235, 244, 249 Blaisdell’s brigade: on June 22, 235, 243–44 Blakemore, Pvt. J. Hamilton, 247, 567n97 Blandford (neighborhood), 311, 314–15 Blandford Church and Cemetery, 5, 339, 378, 386, 396, 420, 423, 425–26, 442–43, 445–46, 451, 453–54, 456, 458–59, 462, 464–65, 487 Bliss, Col. Zenas R., 390, 428; at battle of the Crater, 457–58 Bliss’s brigade: deploys for attack, 428; at battle of the Crater, 457, 464 Blount, Capt. Joseph G., 132 Boernstein, Maj. Augustus S., 107 Bosbyshell, Maj. Oliver C., 460 Bottom’s Bridge, 122, 261 Boudrye, Chaplain Louis, 300 Bowen, Sgt. Charles Thomas, 199, 383–84, 508 Bowles, Pvt. Jesse R., 349 Bowley, Lt. Freeman S., 398, 429, 487–89, 499, 506, 509, 514 Boyce, Hospital Steward Addison S., 508 Boydton Plank Road, 35, 291 Bradford, Capt. William D., 180 Brady, Mathew, 228 Bragg, Gen. Braxton, 14, 56, 77–78, 91, 120, 123, 125, 146, 258 Bragg, Col. Edward S., 197 Brainerd, Maj. Wesley, 69 Branch, Thomas, 37 Branch (Dr.) house, 454, 456 Brander’s (Virginia) Battery, 578n101 Branson, Sgt. Daniel F., 382, 384 Bratton, Brig. Gen. John, 161, 308, 346, 418 Bratton’s Brigade, 161, 177 Breathed, Maj. James, 300 Breck, Sgt. George, 110 Breckinridge, Maj. Gen. John C., 14, 23, 27, 30, 32, 341 Brent, Col. George W., 317 Brewster, Col. William R., 202 Brewster’s brigade, 202, 205

682Index

Brinckle, Lt. John Rumsey, 350 Broadbent, Capt. Wallace, 480 Broadway Landing, 10, 61, 75, 85–86, 88, 399, 401, 600n83 Brooke, Capt. Samuel S., 305, 334 Brooker, Maj. Albert F., 111, 312, 355, 357 Brooks, Brig. Gen. William T. H., 50–51, 105, 114–15; background of, 83; commands Tenth Corps, 208, 222, 365; resigns, 367; described, 562n28 Brooks’s division: on June 15, 85–86, 88, 94–101, 105–7, 115, 120; on June 16, 133; on June 17, 175, 178; on June 18, 208; commanded by Stannard, 223 Bross, Lt. Col. John A.: background of, 463; killed, 463; prompts Confederate counterattack, 474 Brown, Capt. Augustus C., 438 Brown, Pvt. Joel F., 204 Browning, Orville, 230 Bruce, Capt. George A., 94, 100, 117 Brunswick County, Va., 277, 291 Bryan, Col. Timothy M., 250, 275, 568n108 Bryan’s Brigade, 402 Bryant, Pvt. Elias, 343–44, 433 Bryant house, 96, 113–14 Buckhorn Creek, 290 Burbank, Capt. Horace H., 433 Burkeville (Jct.), Va., 274, 278, 280–81 Burne, Alfred, 218 Burnett, Capt. Eugene P., 186 Burnham, Sgt. Franklin, 436 Burnham, Pvt. Henry, 155 Burnham, Brig. Gen. Hiram, 101, 104, 420 Burnham’s brigade, 101–2, 105 Burnham’s division, 429 Burnside, Maj. Gen. Ambrose E., 19–20, 22, 82–83, 366; and movement to James River, 47, 54–55, 72; on June 16, 134; on June 17, 147, 150–52; on June 18, 153, 180, 182, 186, 205–6, 208; and Meade, 369, 382, 394, 432, 445–48, 507, 510, 627n119; and the mine, 374–75, 379, 381–82, 388– 92; and Duane, 382; plans attack at the mine, 394–96, 399, 419–20; and Ferrero’s division, 397; and Ledlie, 421, 605n11; and Index

selection of attack leader, 421–23; attack orders, 423, 425; preparations for attack, 424; and ignition of the mine, 429, 432; and battle of the Crater, 445, 460, 491– 93, 615n122; and truce, 510–11; and burial of dead, 513 Bushnell, Lt. Wells A., 265 Butler, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F., 13, 20, 30, 356; and battle of June 9, 1864, 1–3, 31; background and appearance of, 5–6, 367, 521n11; and Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 7–10, 41, 524n53; and early attempts to capture Petersburg, 11; and Grant’s crossing of James River, 43–45, 48, 60, 65; and pontoon bridge across James River, 61–62, 64; and plans to attack Petersburg, 67–68, 70, 74, 76; described by Smith, 82, 363–64; on June 15, 85, 101, 114–17, 119, 126; on June 16, 126, 128–29, 136–38; on June 17, 147, 154–55, 161–62, 169, 550n115; on June 18, 208; on Army of the Potomac, 216; and Deep Bottom, 222; and Grant, 223; and Second Offensive, 226; meets Lincoln, 229; reinforces Sheridan, 267; assigns Kautz to Wilson, 273, 573n43; and controversy with Smith, 363–67; replaces corps commanders, 367–68, 562n28; and Meade, 369; and First Deep Bottom, 400, 407–9, 417 Butler, Brig. Gen. Matthew C., 259, 291–92, 294, 346 Butler, Sarah (Mrs. Benjamin), 61, 101, 169, 223 Butler’s Brigade, 263–64, 295 Cabin Creek, 88, 532n99 Callais, Capt. William J., 412 Callender, Bessie Meade, 1, 316, 324 Callender, David, 35, 316, 325 Cameron, William, 430, 450, 611n79 Campbell, Charles, 310, 317–19, 321, 324–25, 327–28, 331 Campbell, Col. Cleaveland J., 489 Campbell’s Bridge, 315 Canby, Maj. Gen. Edward R. S., 359 683

Carle, Col. James J., 58, 166 Carr, Brig. Gen. Joseph B., 420, 428, 464, 482 Carr’s division, 429, 510 Case, Capt. Ervin T., 397 Cavalry Corps (CSA), 347; strength of, 337 Cavalry Corps (USA), 371 Cedar Level depot, 87 Cemetery Hill. See Blandford Church and Cemetery Cesnola, Col. Luigi di, 418 Chaffin’s Bluff, 56, 122–23, 156, 162, 267, 336–37, 386; and First Deep Bottom, 393, 400–402, 405–9 Chamberlain, Capt. Henry H. B., 357 Chamberlain, Col. Joshua Lawrence, 191, 194–97, 217, 556n72, 557n75; background of, 192, 194, 556n66 Chamberlain, Capt. Tom, 196 Chamberlain’s brigade, 191–92, 194–95, 197, 199, 557n74 Chamberlayne, Lt. John Hampden, 312 Chambers, Capt. Henry, 508 Chambersburg, Pa., 507 Chambliss, Brig. Gen. John R., 259, 264 Chambliss’s Brigade, 259, 261, 264, 267, 291–92, 294–96 Chandler, Lt. Christopher S., 430 Chaplin, Col. Daniel: background of, 201; on June 18, 201, 203, 205, 559n99; on June 22, 235, 240 Chaplin’s brigade, 201, 203, 240 Chapman, Col. George H., 47, 51–52, 55, 57, 71; and skirmish at Glendale, 58–60; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 277, 295, 297 Chapman’s brigade, 275, 278–80, 283, 295– 97, 575n60 Charles City Court House, Va., 45, 47, 54, 65, 67, 262–63, 266; described, 70–71 Charles City Road, 408–9 Charlotte Court House, Va., 283 Chase, Pvt. Henry, 477 Chase, Sgt. John W., 355 Chase, Salmon P., 222 Cherry, Pvt. John, 335 Chester (Station), Va., 8, 120, 128

Chesterfield County, Va., 41, 171, 178, 315, 317, 329 Chesterfield Heights. See Archer’s Hill Chew, Maj. R. Preston, 294 Chew’s Battalion, 314 Chickahominy River, 27, 29–31, 261, 401, 406, 409; and movement to James River, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53–57, 59, 61, 67, 71–74, 77 Chieves house, 231, 233, 564n53 Chipman, Maj. Charles, 350 Chippokes Creek, 301 Chisholm, Lt. Alexander R., 172, 552n5 Choate, Capt. Francis E., 96 Christ, Col. Benjamin C., 157, 166 Christian Commission, 513 Christiansville, Va., 290, 576n84 Christ’s brigade, 157, 160, 546n53 Chubb, Surg. Orville P., 444, 482 City Point, Va., 6–7, 9, 25, 31, 35, 43, 48–49, 64, 68, 70, 75, 85, 115, 130, 228, 351, 360–61, 371, 390, 400, 405, 413; Grant’s headquarters at, 114, 119, 130, 134, 169, 175, 214, 217, 222–23, 225, 229–30, 257, 365, 408–9, 466, 514 City Point Railroad, 33, 35, 87, 95, 106, 141, 175–76, 178, 356, 534n15 City Point Road, 85–86, 88, 95, 105–6, 121– 22, 131, 176, 178, 185, 189–90, 228, 267, 269; Iron Bridge on, 269, 271 Claiborne, John H., 41, 310, 315–16, 318–21, 324–25, 330–31, 349, 509–10 Clark, Pvt. Albion W., 174 Clark, Capt. George, 309, 494–96, 498–500, 511 Clark, Sgt. George Philip, 339 Clark, Capt. Judson A., 236, 242–43 Clark, Capt. Linus R., 216 Clark, Capt. William S., 202 Clarke, Lt. Hermon, 111, 354 Clarke, Capt. Thomas W., 425–26 Clark’s Battery, 236, 242 Clay house, 128, 160; as Lee’s headquarters, 155, 172 Cleary, Maj. Joseph P., 219 Cleveland, Adj. Morgan Smith, 499

684Index

Clingman’s Brigade, 120, 122, 127, 132, 142, 159, 164, 166–68, 176, 386, 515 Clopton, Judge, 72 Clopton, Lt. William Izard, 322 Clutter, Capt. Valentine J., 243 Clutter’s (Virginia) Battery, 243, 250 Coan, Lt. Col. William B., 459, 464 Coan’s brigade, 459, 464, 482 Coats, Sgt. James A., 479 Cobb’s Hill, 114, 155 Coe, Pvt. James, 355 Coffin, Sgt. George H., 202, 204 Coit, Capt. Charles M., 86, 104, 134, 350, 367 Coit, Maj. James C., 375, 449–50 Coit’s Battalion, 375, 377 Coker, Capt. Francis Marion, 272 Cold Harbor: battle of, 25–28, 524n59; burial of dead at, 28–29; conditions at, 50 Coleman, Col. Henry Eaton, 284–85, 287, 289–90 Cole’s Landing (Ferry), 43, 55, 73–74 Colquitt, Brig. Gen. Alfred H., 121 Colquitt’s Brigade, 120, 122, 166, 176, 180, 186, 204–5, 454, 515 Colquitt’s Salient, 340, 343; on June 18, 186, 201, 204; countermining at, 386–88 Colston, Brig. Gen. Raleigh, 2, 93, 98 Columbia, S.C., 509 Company F, Thirteenth Battalion North Carolina Artillery. See Flanner’s (North Carolina) Battery Comstock, Col. Cyrus B., 43–45, 48–49, 61, 136, 407–8, 493; on condition of the army, 215; on Butler-Smith controversy, 366 Confederate States Hospital, 316 Conner, Brig. Gen. James, 58, 238, 246, 401, 528n39; and First Deep Bottom, 406, 410–13, 417, 601n85 Conner’s Brigade, 238 Cook, Capt. Edward L., 483 Cook, Maj. John B., 106–7 Cook, Lt. Theodore P., 551n130 Cooke, Maj. Giles B., 91, 172–73, 271, 317–18 Cooke, Capt. John Esten, 317, 324 Cooke, Brig. Gen. John R., 414 Index

Cooke’s Brigade, 414 Coon, Pvt. David, 396 Cope house, 85 Corbin, Richard Washington, 333, 344 Corse, Brig. Gen. Montgomery D., 125, 136 Corse’s Brigade, 136, 209 Cottage Grove (McIlwaine house), 318–19 Councill, Lt. Col. James C., 103–5 Court of Inquiry, 398 Covington, Pvt. Lewis T., 450 Covode, Lt. Col. George, 266 Covode, John, 266 Cowan, Col. Robert V., 408, 411–12 Crater, battle of the: training for by Ferrero’s troops, 396–99; anticipation of by troops, 424–25; confusion over attack orders, 426; Union army deploys, 426–29; ignition of the mine, 429, 431–32; explosion described, 433–34; crater described, 436, 608n46; impact of explosion on Confederates, 436–37; and Union artillery fire, 437–39; Union troops go forward, 439; first Union attack, 439, 441–44; Union leadership during, 444–46, 448; Confederate resistance to first Union attack, 448–54; response of Confederate high command to explosion and first Union attack, 454–57; second Union attack, 457–59, 464–65; Ferrero’s division attacks, 459–64; Grant cancels offensive, 466; Mahone deploys Weisiger and Hall, 468–71; first counterattack, 475–81; U.S. Colored Troops retreat, 481–83, 620nn40–41; friendly fire against U.S. Colored Troops, 483, 501, 620–21n43; interlude between Weisiger’s and Hall’s attacks, 484; Hall’s counterattack, 484– 86; conditions in crater, 486–92; Sanders arrives and deploys, 493–96, 624n82; Sanders’s attack, 496, 498–500; Federals surrender, 500; and massacre of the U.S. Colored Troops, 500–505; and treatment of Union prisoners, 505–6, 509–10; burial of dead at, 507–9, 512–13; truce, 510–14; casualties at, 514–15, 628n131; reactions 685

to, 515–16, 628n135; Medals of Honor awarded, 628n134 Crawford, Brig. Gen. Samuel W., 45, 47, 53, 57–60, 71, 187–88, 255 Crawford’s division, 135–36, 153, 166, 168; on June 18, 181–83, 187, 191, 200, 209; and battle of the Crater, 420 Crenshaw (Virginia) Battery, 456 Crockett, Sgt. Edward Richardson, 346 Crosland, Pvt. Charles, 265 Cross, Pvt. Thomas H., 434, 437, 469 Crossley, Pvt. Andrew Jackson, 350, 352, 396 Crossman, Maj. Christopher V., 201 Crow, Cpl. John E., 474 Crowninshield, Capt. Benjamin W., 231, 233, 564n54 Cullen, Col. Edgar M., 270–71 Culver, Asst. Surg. John B., 433 Cummings, Lt. Col. Charles, 13, 151, 350, 354, 383 Cummings, Capt. Frederick A., 203–4 Curling, Pvt. Edmund, 478 Currie, Col. Leonard D. H., 402 Currie’s brigade, 402 Curtin, Col. John I.: background of, 149; wounded, 208, 595n1 Curtin’s brigade, 150–51, 546n53; on June 18, 181, 205–6 Curtis, Col. Newton Martin, 84, 464 Curtis, Pvt. William A., 283 Curtis’s brigade, 95, 99, 102, 105, 154, 343, 538n54; at battle of the Crater, 459, 482 Customs House (Petersburg), 184, 312, 314–15 Cutcheon, Lt. Col. Byron M., 433, 465, 511–12 Cutler, Brig. Gen. Lysander, 47, 53, 197–98; on new troops, 359 Cutler’s division, 60, 135, 153–54, 156; on June 18, 182, 191, 197–99; and battle of the Crater, 420 Cutting, Maj. William, 610n67 Dame, Pvt. William Meade, 504–5 Dana, Charles A., 24, 110, 119, 229; and Meade, 214, 368–69

Danville, Va., 224, 284–85, 509 Darby house, 409, 411–12, 414 Darbytown Road, 173, 408 Darnall, Pvt. Andrew M., 405 Davidson, Capt. George, 450 Davidson’s Lynchburg (Virginia) Battery, 378, 450–51, 465, 483, 596n15 Davies, Brig. Gen. Henry E., 263, 347–48, 412 Davies’s brigade, 263; and First Deep Bottom, 409, 412–13 Davis, Pvt. James M. M., 404–5 Davis, Jefferson, 10, 14, 56, 76, 146, 161, 262, 307, 336, 338, 340, 342, 486 Davis, Pvt. Richard B., 474 Davis house, 232, 238, 564n56 Dawes, Lt. Col. Rufus, 198 Day, Pvt. William A., 131, 339, 461–62, 477–78 Dearing, Brig. Gen. James, 4–5, 88, 281 Dearing’s Brigade, 93, 96; and WilsonKautz Raid, 277–79, 281, 284, 291 Deep Bottom, 147, 222, 253, 261–62, 267; Federals occupy, 234; and First Deep Bottom, 393 DeLacy, Pvt. Michael, 352 DeLacy, Patrick, 194 Delectable Heights, 327 Dement, Capt. William F., 239 Dement’s (Maryland) Battery, 239, 250 Dempsey, Capt. Marshall L., 462 Dennison, Lt. W. Neil, 262, 412 Denoon, Lt. Charles E., 309 Denson, Sgt. Hugh S., 335 Dent, Lt. Col. Frederick, 49, 62 Dentzer, Pvt. John K., 354, 425 Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia, 7, 91–92, 535–36nn30– 31 Department of Richmond, 92, 401; strength of, 337 Department of Virginia and North Carolina, 6, 364 Devin, Col. Thomas, 262, 411 Devin’s brigade, 262 Dickenson, Capt. Crispen, 378

686Index

Dickenson’s (Virginia) Battery, 378, 451 Dickert, Capt. D. Augustus, 323 Dinwiddie County, Va., 245, 254, 309, 317– 18; described, 346–47 Dinwiddie Court House, Va., 277, 574n51 Dimmock, Capt. Charles H., 39, 315, 321, 323–25, 335, 349 Dimmock Line, 40, 85, 88, 92–96, 100, 102, 108, 110, 119, 121, 144, 171, 176, 195, 238, 250, 311, 357–58 Dippel, Pvt. Conrad, 130 Dobbs, Lt. Lemuel D., 506 Dollard, Robert, 119 Donaldsonville (Louisiana) Artillery, 326, 345 Doran, Maj. James E., 512 Double Bridges, 292, 294, 301 Douglas, Capt. Hugh Thomas: background of, 386; and countermining, 386–88 Douthat house (landing), 63, 135, 261, 267, 273, 303 Douty, Lt. Jacob, 429, 431–32 Dow, Capt. Edwin B., 141, 201 Drake, Pvt. Elisha O., 508 Drake’s Branch Station, 283 Drewry’s Bluff, 10, 31, 41, 77–78, 91–92, 120, 124–25, 131, 162, 173, 234, 377, 406, 416, 532n92 Drummond, Miss Emma, 327 Duane, Maj. James, 44, 47, 63–64, 370; and the mine, 381–82, 390, 393; and Burnside, 382 DuBose, Col. Dudley M., 138 DuBose, William Porcher, 79 DuBose’s Brigade, 138, 161, 177, 209, 271 Dulany, Lt. Col. Richard, 263, 305 Duncan, Col. Samuel A., 83, 85, 88–89, 96, 106–7, 109–10; reports casualties, 211 Duncan’s brigade, 85, 87–88, 90–91, 96, 106, 108, 110, 178, 185, 189; casualties on June 15, 110 Dunford, Pvt. Virgil H., 478 Dunlap, Pvt. Hamilton R., 513 Dunlop Street, 315 Dunn, Capt. Andrew, 314, 330 Dunn, Pvt. J. Thomas, 478 Index

Dunn house, 110, 115, 330 Dunn’s Hill, 454 Dunn’s Mill, 161 Dushane, Col. Nathan T., 198 Dusseault, Sgt. John H., 135 Dutton, Sgt. Newell, 442 Early, Maj. Gen. Jubal A., 21, 173, 225, 257, 336, 341; replaces Ewell, 25; and Valley Campaign, 32, 79, 337, 341–43, 348, 355, 360, 362, 367–68, 370–71, 393, 507 Eaton, Capt. John B., 164 Edmunds, Capt. Paul, 285 Edwards, Col. Oliver, 185, 236 Edwards, Samuel H., 73 Edwards, Capt. William H., 449, 453 Edwards’s brigade, 185, 236 Egan, Col. Thomas W., 66, 132–33, 544nn27–28 Egan’s brigade, 132–33 Eighteenth Corps (USA, Smith), 11, 25, 27, 83, 112, 349, 364, 533n6; and movement across James River, 32, 44–45, 47, 49, 53, 61, 83, 526n9, 527n11; and responsibility for attacking Petersburg, 75, 83; strength of, 84–85, 533–34n8; on June 16, 133, 136; on June 17, 154–55, 162, 174–75; on June 18, 176, 189–90, 197; and Second Offensive, 226, 230; and attack on June 24, 270; and attack on June 30, 343–44; command of, 365, 367; and battle of the Crater, 419–20, 438; and July 31 offensive, 506 Eighteenth Georgia Battalion, 124 Eighteenth North Carolina, 412 Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 250, 275, 568n108 Eighteenth South Carolina, 206–7, 377, 431, 435–36, 448; casualties from explosion, 435 Eighteenth Virginia, 334, 502 Eighth Alabama, 308, 498–99, 508 Eighth Connecticut, 86, 94, 101, 104–5, 134, 350, 354, 367 Eighth Michigan, 157, 443 Eighth New York Cavalry, 277, 282 687

Eighth New York Heavy Artillery, 142, 244 Eighth New York Independent Light Artillery, 3 Eighth North Carolina, 335 Eighty-Eighth Pennsylvania, 191 Eighty-Fifth Pennsylvania, 126, 161, 209 Eighty-First Pennsylvania, 564n56 Eighty-Fourth Pennsylvania, 437 Eighty-Ninth New York, 95 Eighty-Second New York, 242 Eighty-Seventh Pennsylvania, 236 Eighty-Sixth New York, 202, 544n28 Elder, Maj. Thomas Claybrook, 319 Eleventh Alabama, 309, 493, 496, 499 Eleventh Maine, 126, 227; at First Deep Bottom, 402, 404, 407, 414 Eleventh New Hampshire, 149, 151, 436, 479 Eleventh New Jersey, 66–67 Eleventh New York Battery, 215, 555n43 Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry, 4, 86, 96, 277–78, 287, 296, 305, 578n108, 578n110 Eleventh South Carolina, 189, 269, 377 Eleventh Vermont, 250, 252–53 Eleventh Virginia Cavalry, 307 Ellerslie (Dunlop house), 93, 120 Elliott, Brig. Gen. Stephen, 207, 335, 430; criticizes Lee, 342; background and health of, 377; opinion of subordinates, 431; at battle of the Crater, 449; wounded, 449, 610n76 Elliott’s Brigade, 92–93, 122, 127, 130–31; on June 17, 152, 158, 164, 166–67, 176, 377; on June 18, 195, 206; strength of, 377; and countermining, 388; deployment of, 431; leadership of, 431; and battle of the Crater, 448–49, 452, 515 Elliott’s Salient. See Pegram’s Salient Embler, Capt. Henry A., 244 Emery, Lt. George, 501 Emory, Brig. Gen. William H., 359–60 Endicott, Pvt. William E., 67 Etheredge, Maj. William H., 473–75, 477, 480, 485–86, 512 Ettrick, Va., 36, 131 Evans, Brig. Gen. Clement A., 15 Evans, Lt. John B., 317–18

Evans, Col. John Wesley, 486 Evans, Brig. Gen. Nathan G., 377 Ewell, Lt. Gen. Richard S., 14, 16, 18–19, 21, 23; replaced by Early, 25; in command of Department of Richmond, 25, 56, 336–37, 401–2; and First Deep Bottom, 405–6, 414–15, 417–18 Fagan, Capt. William L., 498 Fair Grounds Hospital, 316, 330 Farinholt, Capt. Benjamin L., 284–90 Farquhar, Capt. Frank, 374 Fauquier Stribling (Virginia) Artillery, 284 Featherston, Capt. John C., 498, 500, 503 Ferebee, Col. Dennis D., 88–91, 93–94 Ferrero, Brig. Gen. Edward, 368, 394–5; background of, 395; plans for mine attack, 396–98; in Washington, 421; and preparations for attack, 424; and battle of the Crater, 444, 460, 462–63, 482, 488; and truce, 513 Ferrero’s division, 219, 380, 510: and movement to and across James River, 47, 54–55, 73–74, 129, 145, 174; and Second Offensive, 226, 230; and leadership of the attack, 394–95, 422; composition and strength of, 395; preparations for attack at the mine, 396–99; receives orders for the attack, 423; deploys for the attack, 429; and battle of the Crater, 444, 459, 479, 480–81, 491, 505; and burial of dead, 512 Field, Maj. Gen. Charles W., 161, 173; background of, 177; and attack of June 24, 269, 271–72 Field’s Division, 56, 125, 138, 146, 161–62, 171, 337, 414, 416–17, 542n3; arrives in Petersburg, 177; on June 18, 183–84, 189, 199–200, 209; and attack on June 24, 268–69, 271–72; and attack of July 18, 348 Fifteenth Alabama, 161 Fifteenth Massachusetts, 242–43 Fifteenth New York Battery, 194 Fifteenth New York Engineers, 62, 65 Fifteenth Virginia, 136 Fifteenth Virginia Cavalry, 298

688Index

Fifth Corps (Warren), 19, 22; and movement to James River, 44–45, 47–48, 52–53, 55, 57, 60, 71; crosses James River, 129–30; on June 16, 135–36; on June 17, 145, 153–54, 160, 175; on June 18, 176, 181, 183, 192, 200, 556n67; and Second Offensive, 226, 233, 253; deserters from, 384; and battle of the Crater, 420, 429, 455, 465 Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Cavalry, 88–91, 96, 573n46 Fifth New Hampshire, 79–80, 564n56 Fifth New Jersey, 240 Fifth New Jersey Battery, 128 Fifth New York, 153, 199 Fifth New York Cavalry, 280, 282, 297, 299–300 Fifth North Carolina Cavalry, 232, 277, 279–80 Fifth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 87, 97, 287 Fifth South Carolina, 79 Fifth Texas, 342 Fifth U.S. Artillery, 350 Fifth U.S. Cavalry, 228 Fifth U.S. Colored Troops, 88–90, 96, 107– 10, 185, 429 Fifth Wisconsin, 53 Fiftieth New York Engineers, 51, 55, 62, 234 Fiftieth Pennsylvania, 428, 465 Fifty-Eighth Massachusetts, 149, 457–58 Fifty-Eighth New York, 428 Fifty-Eighth Pennsylvania, 51 Fifty-Fifth Pennsylvania, 106, 141, 491 Fifty-Fifth Virginia, 349 Fifty-First New York, 148, 394, 428, 457, 459, 487 Fifty-First North Carolina, 167 Fifty-First Pennsylvania, 157, 443, 490 Fifty-Ninth Alabama, 126, 168 Fifty-Ninth Massachusetts, 163, 222, 427, 491 Fifty-Ninth New York, 242 Fifty-Ninth Virginia, 92, 120–21, 377, 453 Fifty-Seventh Massachusetts, 130, 164, 344, 433, 453, 479, 486, 502 Fifty-Seventh New York, 143 Index

Fifty-Seventh Pennsylvania, 240 Fifty-Sixth Massachusetts, 164, 210, 382, 422, 427, 479, 483 Fifty-Sixth North Carolina, 131, 138, 167, 189 Fifty-Sixth Pennsylvania, 197 Fifty-Third Virginia, 284, 389 Finegan, Brig. Gen. Joseph, 298–99 Finegan’s (Florida) Brigade, 298, 302, 338, 569n110 First Confederate Engineers, 386 First Connecticut Cavalry, 288, 290, 297, 300 First Connecticut Heavy Artillery, 111, 221, 312, 354–56, 438 First Corps (CSA, Longstreet’s/ Anderson’s), 14–16, 19–20, 26–27, 56, 59, 337 First Deep Bottom, battle of: plans for, 393; purpose of, 399; strength of Union forces, 400; on July 27, 402–9; on July 28, 409–16; casualties at, 413, 418; end of, 415–16; generalship at, 418 First District of Columbia Cavalry, 5, 274– 75; on June 15, 87; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 275, 287–90, 296, 573n46 First Maine Cavalry, 174, 258, 261–62, 265– 66, 414 First Maine Heavy Artillery, 142, 201–4, 209–10, 221, 558n89, 558n97 First Maryland Battery. See Dement’s (Maryland) Battery First Maryland Cavalry Battalion, 301 First Massachusetts Cavalry, 211, 231, 299 First Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, 142 First Massachusetts Sharpshooters, 221 First Michigan, 157 First Michigan Sharpshooters, 166, 428, 465, 488, 551n128 First Minnesota, 67, 242–43 First New Jersey Cavalry, 347–48 First New York Engineers, 63, 65 First New York Mounted Rifles, 84 First North Carolina Cavalry, 279–80, 291 First Offensive: casualties at, 211–12, 560nn118–19; analysis of, 214–19 First Palmetto Sharpshooters, 284 689

First Pennsylvania Cavalry, 263–64, 266, 347, 412 First Rockbridge Artillery, 401–2, 404–6, 601n85, 602n92 First South Carolina, 602n106 First Texas, 346 First U.S. Colored Troops, 88, 91, 97, 107–8, 110 First U.S. Sharpshooters, 201 First Vermont Cavalry, 175, 277, 280, 294, 296, 301, 305 First Vermont Heavy Artillery. See Eleventh Vermont Fisk, Pvt. Wilbur, 221–22 Fitzhugh, Lt. Charles L., 297–99 Fitzpatrick, Sgt. Marion Hill, 334 Flanner, Capt. Henry G., 378, 452 Flanner’s (North Carolina) Battery, 378, 452, 458 Fleming, Pvt. Aaron T., 500 Fleming, Maj. Charles K., 252 Fleming, Col. David G., 431 Fleming, Lt. Col. John A., 452 Fletcher, Pvt. Joseph W., 288 Florida Brigade. See Finegan’s (Florida) Brigade Flournoy, Thomas Stanhope, 285 Floyd, Capt. John, 435, 441, 448–49 Foard, Lt. Fred C., 232, 564–65n58 Foard, Capt. Noah P., 291 Follett, Capt. Frederick M., 99–100; background of, 537n48 Foot, Solomon, 365 Foote, Pvt. John P., 216, 515 Foote, Chaplain Lemuel T., 354 Force, Capt. Jacob F., 107 Ford, Maj. George W., 51–52 Ford’s Depot, Va., 277–78 Foreman, Pvt. John Edgar, 470, 478 Fort Davis, 357, 592n79 Fort Delaware, 105 Fortieth New York, 132–33 Fort Monroe, 5–6, 43–44, 49, 61–62, 64–65, 72, 104, 208, 223, 356, 359, 365, 507, 511, 562n29

Fort Pillow, 89, 111, 396, 461, 502, 504, 614n108 Fort Powhatan, 43–45, 48–49, 61–63, 65, 526n5 Fort Sedgwick, 357, 592n79 Fort Stedman, 220 Fort Walker, 431 Forty-Eighth Georgia, 322, 471, 475, 484– 85, 500 Forty-Eighth North Carolina, 39 Forty-Eighth Pennsylvania, 149, 151, 208, 354, 373, 428–29, 433, 460, 548n81; and the mine, 374, 379–80, 382–83, 388, 392, 424–25 Forty-Fifth Georgia, 334 Forty-Fifth Pennsylvania, 130, 149, 151, 206, 208, 382, 397, 428, 437, 457, 478, 489 Forty-First Virginia, 309, 470, 473, 475, 478, 485 Forty-Fourth New York, 196 Forty-Fourth North Carolina, 224, 336 Forty-Fourth Tennessee, 143, 151, 344 Forty-Ninth New York, 253 Forty-Ninth North Carolina, 131, 138, 183, 339, 377, 434, 452, 461, 471, 475, 477, 508 Forty-Second New York, 242 Forty-Second North Carolina, 349 Forty-Seventh Virginia, 305, 334 Forty-Sixth New York, 207, 428, 465 Forty-Sixth North Carolina, 39 Forty-Sixth Virginia, 2, 92–93, 166, 377, 453, 491–92 Forty-Third U.S. Colored Troops, 397, 434, 460–63 Foster, Sgt. Robert B., 491 Foster, Brig. Gen. Robert Sanford, 126–28, 136–38, 155; and Deep Bottom, 226–27; and First Deep Bottom, 400, 408, 414–17 Foster, William, 111 Foster’s brigade, 227, 234, 399; at first Deep Bottom, 404, 410 Four Mile Creek, 222, 402 Fourteen-gun Battery, 423, 425, 429, 459, 466; as Burnside’s command post, 432, 445–46, 460

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Fourteenth Alabama, 297 Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery, 164, 166–67, 219, 425, 427, 439, 441, 443, 490, 501, 505 Fourteenth South Carolina, 602n106 Fourth Alabama Cavalry Battalion, 266, 338 Fourth New Hampshire, 343, 433 Fourth New York Heavy Artillery, 180, 438 Fourth New York Cavalry, 418 Fourth North Carolina Cavalry, 4, 88, 278, 280 Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 266 Fourth Rhode Island, 457–58, 490 Fourth South Carolina Cavalry, 267 Fourth Texas, 57, 177, 346 Fourth U.S. Artillery, 118 Fourth U.S. Colored Troops, 88–90, 107–10, 185 Fourth Vermont, 252 Fourth Virginia Cavalry, 298 Fourth Wisconsin Battery, 96 Fox, Gustavus V., 228–29 Franklin, Maj. Gen. William B., 363–65, 367–69, 593n101, 594n104 Fraser, Col. John, 142, 240 Fraser, Capt. William W., 284 Fraser’s brigade, 180, 202, 205; on June 22, 236, 240 Frederick, Md., 342 Freeman, Cpl. Benjamin H., 223–24, 336 Freeman, Douglas Southall, 218, 239 Freeman, Sgt. Warren H., 353 French, Maj. Gen. Samuel G., 40 Friend, Charles (farm and house), 39, 105, 115, 133 Frost, Lt. Charles E., 151 Fry, Brig. Gen. Birkett D., 238 Fulton, Col. John S., 92, 131, 143; background of and mortally wounded, 344, 588n36 Fulton’s Tennessee brigade, 92, 122, 130–31, 142–43, 176, 344; on June 17, 148, 150–51, 153, 158, 164, 548n81; on June 18, 206 Funk, Lt. West, 196 Fussell’s Mill, 402, 408, 417

Index

Gale, Lt. John, 239–40 Gardner, Sgt. Schuyler, 441 Gary, Col. Martin W., 30, 525n68; and skirmish at Glendale, 58–59 Gary’s Brigade, 262–64; at First Deep Bottom, 401–2, 405 Gaskins, Pvt. Isaac, 503 Gates, Pvt. Samuel K., 176 Geary, Pvt. Daniel, 352–53 Gee house, 378, 451, 454–57, 463, 470, 507, 596n17, 612n89 Getty, Brig. Gen. George Washington, 174, 259 Getty’s division, 302, 361 Gibbes, Maj. Wade Hampton, 378, 450–51; background of, 450; wounded, 450, 611n80 Gibbes’s Battalion, 378, 451 Gibbon, Maj. Gen. John, 114, 202, 368; on June 16, 132; promoted, 186; on June 22, 241, 243–44, 248; and Meade, 369, 414, 416–17; on condition of the armies, 369 Gibbon’s division, 66–67, 79–80, 112–13, 115, 302; attack on June 16, 136, 142; on June 18, 180, 185–86, 188–89, 200, 205; and Second Offensive, 226, 230, 233, 254–55; on June 22, 234–36, 241, 246; on June 23, 249; at First Deep Bottom, 400, 407, 409, 414, 416–17 Gibson, Col. Augustus A., 141 Gibson, Col. William, 239, 485 Gibson’s brigade. See Wright’s Brigade Gilbreth, Lt. Samuel, 221 Gill, Pvt. John, 301 Gillmore, Maj. Gen. Quincy A., 2–3, 5–9, 11, 366, 521n5; relieved of command, 126, 175, 208, 222, 562n28 Gilmer, Col. Jeremy, 39 Girardey, Capt. Victor, 252, 469, 471, 473– 75, 512, 567n97; background of, 474 Glendale (intersection), 45, 47, 55–57; skirmish at, 58–60, 71, 77, 409 Glenn, Capt. R. H., 431 Globe Tavern, 236, 250–51, 297 Godwin, John, 335

691

Goode, Col. John Thomas, 98, 377; and battle of the Crater, 450–51, 453 Goode’s brigade, 377, 386–87; and battle of the Crater, 496 Gooseneck Battery, 339 Gordon, Pvt. Ransom S., 352 Gould, Lt. Col. Ebenezer, 210 Gould, Col. Jacob Parker, 163–68, 491 Gowen, Capt. George, 374 Grace Episcopal Church, 328, 330 Gracie, Brig. Gen. Archibald, 31, 171, 513; and the mine, 385, 388 Gracie’s Brigade, 92, 122–23, 138, 160, 164, 167–68, 176, 204–5, 343–44; and countermining, 388 Gracie’s Salient, 343, 386, 388 Grady, Maj. William S., 452 Graham, Capt. Archibald, 401, 405 Graham, Cpl. Daniel, 437 Graham, Capt. Edward, 5, 88, 94 Graham, Capt. Robert D., 189 Graham’s (Virginia) Battery, 4, 88, 90, 93, 279–80, 294, 574n59 Granbery, John Cowper, 326 Grant, Maj. Claudius Buchanan, 433 Grant, Brig. Gen. Lewis A., 250, 252–53 Grant, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S., 6–7, 9–11, 222, 348–49; and Lincoln, 12, 228–30; and relationship with Meade, 12, 306, 368–69; and strategy for 1864 campaigns, 12–13, 16; background and appearance of, 12–13, 134; and Overland Campaign, 13, 16, 18–29, 42; and the Southern press, 15, 79, 532n96; decides to cross James River, 29–32, 41–43; and movement to James River, 43–45, 48–51, 55, 60; and crossing of James River, 60, 63, 65, 74; and plans to attack Petersburg, 67–68, 70, 74–76, 80, 85, 532–33n100; describes Smith, 82; on June 15, 114–15, 129; on battle of June 15, 117; generalship on June 15, 119–20; on June 16, 130, 133–34, 136–37, 147; generalship on June 16, 139; on June 17, 147, 154–55, 161–62, 175; generalship on June 17, 169, 175; perceived by troops, 175–76, 211, 221, 516; on June 18, 176,

213–14; promotes Chamberlain, 197; strategy of, 214, 369–72, 392, 394, 399, 418, 506–7; analysis of, 216–17; and Deep Bottom, 222, 570n8; and Butler, 223, 364; and Second Offensive, 225–26, 230, 233–34, 249, 253–56; and Sheridan, 258, 261, 267; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 261, 273, 292, 305, 307; rumors of wounding and death of, 349–50, 389, 590n54; calls for reinforcements, 358; orders trenches leveled, 358, 592n80; orders Nineteenth Corps to Virginia, 359; sends troops to Washington, 360–61; declines to take command in Washington, 362; and Butler-Smith controversy, 363–67; and Warren, 369; and siege tactics, 370; and the mine, 374, 390, 392–94, 419; and Third Offensive, 392–94, 399, 600n78; and deference to Meade, 393–94, 408, 422–23, 426, 493, 511; and First Deep Bottom, 394, 399, 401, 406–9, 415, 418; on Ferrero, 395; authorizes Burnside’s attack, 419–20; awaits explosion, 431–32; and battle of the Crater, 448, 466, 484, 492–93, 511, 610n74, 615n122, 623n75; orders of after Crater, 506–7; leaves for Fort Monroe, 507, 511, 516; and casualties at Crater, 514 Grattan, Capt. Charles, 346 Great Creek, 291 Greeley, Maj. Edwin S., 126 Green, Cpl. William B., 333, 435 Greer, Sgt. Charner S., 436 Gregg, Brig. Gen. David M., 261, 263, 265, 348, 412, 414 Gregg, Col. J. Irvin, 262 Gregg, Brig. Gen. John, 138 Gregg, Capt. Theodore, 208, 478–79, 491 Gregg’s brigade, 262–63; and First Deep Bottom, 409, 413 Gregg’s division: and battle of Samaria Church, 261–62, 265–66; at Reams’ Station, 347–48; at First Deep Bottom, 401, 409, 413, 416, 603n114 Gregory, Col. Edgar M., 198 Gregory’s brigade, 199

692Index

Griffin, Brig. Gen. Charles, 47, 53, 183, 194, 197 Griffin, Brig. Gen. Simon G., 141, 434; background of, 148–49; on June 17, 149, 151; on Ledlie, 152; and battle of the Crater, 442, 444, 457, 481, 483 Griffin’s brigade, 141, 220; on June 17, 148, 150; deploys for attack, 428; and battle of the Crater, 442, 515 Griffin’s division, 60, 135–36, 153; on June 18, 182–83, 187, 191, 195, 209; and Second Offensive, 233; on June 22, 243–44 Griffith farm (and house), 122, 156, 356 The Grove, 279, 281, 574n57; battle of, 279– 81, 574n60 Gurley (Doctor’s) house, 250, 252 Gurney, Pvt. Warren S., 483 Hagood Line, 121, 123, 143–44, 148, 151, 169– 71, 178, 218, 358 Hagood, Brig. Gen. Johnson, 121, 134, 141; reports casualties, 211–12; background of, 268–69; and attack on June 24, 268–72 Hagood’s Brigade, 9, 120–22, 133, 141, 176, 180, 185, 189–90, 310, 454, 541n103; and attack on June 24, 269–72 Halifax (Virginia) Light Artillery. See Wright’s Battery Halifax Road, 35 Halifax Street, 454 Hall, Col. Bolling, 126–27, 168 Hall, Lt. Col. H. Seymour, 397, 460, 463, 509 Hall, Capt. Henry C., 354 Hall, Capt. Henry E., 356 Hall, Col. Matthew R., 455; background of, 484–85 Halleck, Maj. Gen. Henry W., 21, 23–25, 29, 38, 42–43, 60, 75, 147, 255–56, 258, 359–60, 466, 493, 514; and Butler-Smith controversy, 364–65 Hall’s brigade, 455; marches to and deploys at Crater, 468, 470–71, 473; counterattack and casualties, 484–86, 515; and Sanders’s attack, 495 Hamilton, Lt. William B., 430, 606n29 Index

Hammond, Maj. Harry, 323 Hampton, Pvt. Davie A., 349 Hampton, Maj. Gen. Wade, 30–32, 225, 257, 259, 261–62, 267, 336; at battle of Samaria Church, 263, 265–66; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 291, 294–96, 301; commands Cavalry Corps, 307, 346 Hampton’s Division, 267; and WilsonKautz Raid, 272–73, 294, 298–99, 305, 346 Hampton’s Legion, 263, 338, 602n101 Hancock, Maj. Gen. Winfield S., 22, 26–28, 67, 216, 348, 361; and movement to James River, 47, 50, 53; and movement toward Petersburg June 15, 68–70, 80–81, 100, 112–14, 119, 532–33n100; decision not to attack on June 15, 115, 117, 119; on June 16, 132–34, 136, 142, 546n53; on June 17, 147, 151, 154, 159; incapacitated, 175, 232–33, 553n14; returns to duty, 254; on Second Offensive, 254; considered for army command, 306, 369; and First Deep Bottom, 393, 400–402, 406–9, 414–18, 604n124; and Gibbon, 414, 416–17; and battle of the Crater, 445–46, 466 Hancock house, 172 Hand, Pvt. George C., 400 Hannaford, Sgt. Roger, 275, 281–83, 287, 289–91, 295–96, 299, 305; on Wilson, 298 Harder, Capt. William Henry, 158, 171, 385 Hare (Otway P.) Hill (house, plateau), 132, 136, 142, 160, 166, 176, 180, 186, 200–202, 204, 209, 220, 226, 268–69, 271, 371 Hare house (“younger”), 176, 189–90 Harris, Col. David B., 121, 144, 218, 334–35, 375, 377, 386; background of, 170–71; sent to South Carolina, 339 Harris, Brig. Gen. Nathaniel: on June 22, 243; and truce, 513 Harris, Capt. William Hamilton, 206, 397, 479 Harris Line, 171–72, 176, 180–81, 184, 218, 357 Harrison’s Creek, 80, 121, 123, 148, 185, 189–90, 201 Harrison’s Landing, 71, 77, 79, 91 Harris’s Brigade: on June 22, 243–46; on June 23, 249, 252; on July 30, 467 693

Hart, Capt. Patrick, 194 Hartranft, Brig. Gen. John F., 135, 181, 544n36; and battle of the Crater, 443–44, 485, 490, 499 Hartranft’s brigade, 135; attacks on June 17, 157–60; on June 18, 181, 206; deploys for attack, 428; and battle of the Crater, 443 Haskell, Maj. John C., 378, 434, 451–52, 468, 470, 474, 476, 487, 496, 498, 611n80 Haskell, Capt. Joseph Cheves, 450–51, 611n80 Haskell’s Battalion, 378 Hatch, Pvt. Edward D., 221 Hawkes, Lt. Col. George P., 167 Hawley, Col. Joseph R., 126 Hawley’s brigade, 126, 128, 161 Hayward, Surg. Nathan, 353 Hazard, Maj. John G., 402 Heck, Col. J. M., 319 Heckman, Brig. Gen. Charles, 7 Heermance, Capt. William L., 355 Heisler, Pvt. Henry Clay, 151, 383 Henagan, Col. John, 402, 404 Henagan’s brigade, 402, 404–5, 410–12, 602n92 Henderson, Pvt. James M., 501 Henrico County, Va., 125, 234 Henry, Col. Guy V., 50–51, 53, 86, 101, 105, 270–71, 527n18 Henry, Capt. Robert R., 468 Henry, Col. William Wirt, 396 Heth, Maj. Gen. Henry, 56, 234 Heth’s Division, 58–60, 173, 223, 337, 348; at First Deep Bottom, 406, 409–10 Hickory Hill. See Shand house Hicks, Sgt. Robert W., 98, 166 Hicksford, Va., 92, 309, 370, 535n30 Higginbotham, Pvt. Paul M., 333 High Bridge, 281 Hill, Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell, 14, 16, 18–23, 25, 71, 171–73, 238, 246, 250, 253, 255, 340–41, 567n96; and battle of the Crater, 454–56, 495, 513, 613n94; and Union prisoners, 509 Hill, Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey, 38–39, 386 Hill, Capt. Willard, 436

Hilling, Sgt. John, 428, 442 Hills, Pvt. William G., 411 Hillsman, Cpl. John O., 468 Hinks, Brig. Gen. Edward, 9, 11, 73, 83–85, 87, 90–91, 96, 111, 113–14, 133, 533n3; on Smith’s generalship June 15, 117; reassigned, 368 Hinks’s division, 75–76, 83, 85, 95–96, 174, 222, 363, 533n3; at Baylor’s Farm, 87–88, 90, 130; attacks Dimmock Line on June 15, 97–100, 102, 105–10, 113, 115, 120, 396, 539n74; on June 16, 133; on June 17, 175; on June 18, 178; and Lincoln, 229; and Second Offensive, 230 Hinton, Lt. Drury A., 471, 473, 481 Hofmann, Col. John William, 197–98 Hofmann’s brigade, 197–98 Hoge, Rev. William, 313 Hoke, Maj. Gen. Robert F., 26, 41, 122, 148, 177, 345–46; and attack of June 24, 268– 72; and battle of the Crater, 454, 495 Hoke’s Division, 25–27, 56, 92, 131, 170–71, 337, 416, 431; movement to Petersburg, 77–78, 91, 120, 122, 535n27; and attack of June 24, 268–72 Holahan, Sgt. John Frederic, 206 Holcombe Legion, 294, 377, 577n93 Holland, Orderly Sgt. Milton M., 89–90 Holloway, James Montgomery, 342 Holman, Col. John H., 83, 97, 107 Holman’s brigade, 85, 88, 91, 96, 98 Holt, Surg. Daniel M., 72 Holt, Pvt. David, 28, 329, 500, 502 Honour, Pvt. Theodore A., 272 Hood, Maj. Gen. John Bell, 177 Hood, Maj. William H., 93 Hooper, Lt. Col. I. Harris, 243 Hopewell Church, 266 “The Horseshoe,” 219–20, 226, 373, 384–85, 427, 429 Houghton, Bvt. Maj. Charles H., 439 Howe, Thomas J., 138, 200, 211, 217 Howlett house (mansion), 128, 137, 155, 161, 234 Howlett Line, 78, 92, 120, 122–25, 138, 161– 62, 177, 209, 337

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Howell’s brigade, 126, 136–37, 161, 209 Howell, Capt. John, 133 Howell, Col. Joshua B., 126, 128, 137 Hoyt, Capt. James A., 284–87, 576n71 Hubbard, Pvt. William S., 248, 326 Hubbell, Capt. William S., 86 Hudson, Lt. Col. Joshua H., 431 Huger, Col. Frank, 450–51 Hugunin, Capt. George, 183, 198 Humphrey, Col. William, 207–8; and battle of the Crater, 464–65 Humphreys, Maj. Gen. Andrew A., 16, 18, 28, 32, 45, 130, 136, 274, 302, 367; nearly wounded, 144; reports casualties, 211; drafts attack plans, 419 Humphreys, Brig. Gen. Benjamin G., 404–5 Humphrey’s brigade (USA), 428; and battle of the Crater, 464–65 Humphreys’s Brigade (CSA), 404 Hungarytown, Va., 281 Hunt, Brig. Gen. Henry, 370, 391; and artillery support at battle of the Crater, 420–21, 438, 604n5 Hunt, Col. Isaac F., 411–12, 601n85 Hunt, Capt. William J., 102–5, 107 Hunter, Maj. Gen. David, 28, 30, 32, 42, 47–48, 79, 225, 257, 261, 360, 362 Hunter, William H., 110 Hunton, Brig. Gen. Eppa, 124, 136 Hunton’s Brigade, 136, 209 Hurd, Capt. Warren H., 488 Hutson, Adj. Charles J. C., 334 Hyde, Lt. Col. Thomas, 302 Ingalls, Brig. Gen. Rufus, 49, 366, 369, 408 Irish Brigade, 144; on June 22, 236, 239–40 Iron Brigade (Bragg’s), 197–98, 557n79 Jackman, Capt. Lyman, 490 Jackson, Pvt. John, 435 Jackson, Lt. Gen. Thomas J., 19, 106, 371, 421 Jackson Flying Artillery. See Clutter’s (Virginia) Battery Jarratt’s Station, Va., 292, 296, 301, 309 Jay, Capt. William, 432 Jeff Davis Legion, 263, 266, 335 Index

Jerusalem Plank Road, 2, 4–5, 35, 40–41, 93, 121–22, 131, 156, 171, 176–77, 184, 191, 199, 217, 223, 226, 230–32, 234–36, 238, 242– 44, 246, 254, 269, 302–3, 337, 346–47, 357, 375–78, 393, 396, 423, 430, 443, 451–54, 456, 465, 467, 487; battle of, 254, 340, 405 Johnson, Col. Bradley T., 342–43 Johnson, Maj. Gen. Bushrod R., 122, 125, 131–32, 148, 152, 177, 341, 431, 514; reports casualties, 211, 344; and the mine, 385, 388, 435; and battle of the Crater, 449, 452–54, 456, 483, 494–95; reputation of, 453; and truce, 513 Johnson, William, 227–28 Johnson house, 239, 246, 566n75 Johnson’s Division, 92, 122, 130–31, 153, 157, 170–71, 337, 414, 416, 431, 535n30, 543– 44n25, 595n12; and attack of June 24, 268–69; casualties in, 338 Johnston, Gen. Joseph E., 13, 15, 18, 342, 349, 362, 371, 481, 620n37 Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 266, 397, 439, 447 Jones, Col. Hilary P., 170, 378 Jones, John B., 78 Jones, Col. John G., 167 Jones, Capt. Josiah, 396, 513 Jones, Capt. Richard W., 471, 477 Jones Bridge, 45, 47, 53–55, 72, 261–62 Jones house, 231–33, 235, 244, 251, 564n53 Jones Neck, 222, 416–17 Jones Springs, N.C., 319 Jordan, William, 161 Jordan farm (plateau), 99–101, 105, 107, 227–28 Jordan Point Road, 85, 95–97, 107, 109, 112–13 Joynes, William T., 313 Julian, Capt. George Naylor, 90, 103–4 July 4: activities on, 344–45 June 9, 1864, battle of, 1–5 Kautz, Brig. Gen. August V., 6, 11, 146; and battle of June 9, 2–5, 11; and Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 7, 9; and plans to 695

attack Petersburg, 75–76; background of, 84; on June 15, 96–98, 113; and WilsonKautz Raid, 256, 272, 274, 281, 287–88, 292, 294, 297, 299, 575n61 Kautz’s division, 225; on June 15, 85–87, 98, 113, 371, 534n11; on June 16, 135–36; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 273–76, 278, 281, 283, 285, 288, 290, 295, 297, 299, 304, 306; and First Deep Bottom, 393, 401, 407, 410, 414 Keeble, Col. Richard H., 588n36 Keiley, Anthony, 2, 4–6 Kelly, Col. Patrick, 143–44 Kelso, Lt. Francis M., 143–44 Kenfield, Capt. Frank, 433, 501 Kent, William, 117 Kershaw, Maj. Gen. Joseph, 26; background of, 176–77; commands north of James River, 401, 403; and First Deep Bottom, 405, 417 Kershaw’s Division, 26, 56, 79, 125, 146, 162, 171–73, 313, 337; arrives in Petersburg, 176–77; on June 18, 183–84, 189, 195–97, 200, 209; and attack of June 24, 268; and attack of July 18, 348; ordered north of James River, 401; and First Deep Bottom, 406, 411, 414 Ketcham, Capt. William A., 118 Kessinger, Pvt. Jacob, 208 Keysville, Va., 281–83 Kiddoo, Col. Joseph B., 89–90, 106–9 Kilmer, Pvt. George, 501 King, Maj. Robert G., 183 King, Capt. William V., 89 King & Queen County, Va., 258 Kinyoun, Surg. John H., 321, 324, 341 Kirkland, Brig. Gen. William W., 238, 580n10, 603n117 Kirkland’s Brigade, 238, 250, 252, 568– 69n110 Kirkpatrick, Sgt. James Johnson, 467 Kitching, Col. J. Howard, 198–99, 515 Kitching’s brigade, 198–99 Kline, Lt. Charles, 344, 354 Knowles, Pvt. Francis, 433

Ladies Hospital, 321 Lamkin, Capt. James N., 378, 451–52 Lamkin’s Nelson County (Virginia) Battery, 378, 451, 618n24 Lane, Brig. Gen. James, 238, 566n71, 601n85 Lane’s Brigade, 238, 245–46, 401, 408, 411 Langhorne, Capt. John B., 378, 451 Langhorne’s Battery, 378 Larned, Capt. Daniel Read, 73, 211 Laurel Brigade, 263, 294–95, 305 Lawley, Francis Charles, 385 Law’s Brigade. See Perry’s brigade Leak, Maj. Robert, 463 Leak, Pvt. William C., 167 Ledlie, Brig. Gen. James H., 23, 54, 135, 152; background of, 163; drinking of, 164, 167–68, 421, 444, 488; tries to resign, 421; selected to lead attack, 422–23; prepares for attack, 423; changes attack orders, 425–26; and battle of the Crater, 441–42, 444–45, 488, 491 Ledlie’s division, 130, 135, 181; on June 17, 147, 152–53, 163–68, 550n125; and Second Offensive, 226, 230; selected to lead attack, 422; receives attack orders, 423; deploys for attack, 426–28; and battle of the Crater, 441 Lee, Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh, 26, 30–32, 257, 298, 301, 348 Lee, Gen. Robert E., 9–11, 38; and Overland Campaign, 13–16, 18–20, 22–29; esteem for, 15; and Grant’s crossing of James River, 31, 56, 59; sends Early to Shenandoah Valley, 32, 56; and Grant’s threat to Petersburg, 76–78, 122–24, 532n91; soldiers’ confidence in, 79, 334– 35; generalship analyzed, 123, 218–19, 561n15; headquarters at Drewry’s Bluff, 125; and attempts to locate Army of the Potomac, 146, 156–57, 162; on June 17, 161; on June 18, 171–73, 184; strategy of, 224, 340–41, 362; and Second Offensive, 238– 39, 250, 253, 255; and Hampton, 259, 307; and attack of June 24, 267–69, 271–72; on repairing Richmond & Danville Railroad,

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289; on battle of Staunton River Bridge, 289–90; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 291–92; orders Petersburg evacuated, 315–16, in Petersburg, 328, 330; attends services, 329–30; and shortage of horses, 336; and supplies, 336; and plan to release Point Lookout prisoners, 342–43; orders attack July 8, 345–46; orders attack July 18, 348; and First Deep Bottom, 401, 405–6, 414– 16; and battle of the Crater, 454–57, 463, 470, 475, 495, 507, 612nn91–92, 623n77; compliments Mahone, 481; critical of Hall, 486; and truce, 511–12; and burial of dead, 513 Lee, Rear Adm. Samuel Phillips, 65, 147, 222, 229, 234 Lee, Maj. Gen. William Henry Fitzhugh “Rooney,” 30, 156, 171–72; and WilsonKautz Raid, 278, 280–81, 284, 291 Lee’s (Fitzhugh) Division, 267, 346–47, 416; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 291, 294, 298–99 Lee’s (W. H. F. “Rooney”) Division, 259, 346, 416–17; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 277, 290–92 Lee’s Mill, 347–48 Letcher (Virginia) Artillery, 456 Levy, Pvt. Eugene H., 326, 329, 345, 434, 503, 585n72 Lewis, Capt. John Willis, 284 Lieutenant Run, 238–39 Lincoln, Abraham, 37, 75, 147, 258, 361, 364, 507, 511; and Meade, 11–12, 369; and relationship with Grant, 12, 230; visits army, 228–30, 563nn45–46; orders new troops, 358 Little Roanoke River, 285 Livermore, Capt. Thomas L., 112–14, 117–18, 351, 514, 628n130 Locke, Pvt. William H., 266, 338 Lomax, Brig. Gen. Lunsford, 263 Lomax’s Brigade, 263, 298, 300 Long, Capt. William H., 569n111 Longacre, Edward, 138–39 Long Bridge, 45, 47, 51–53, 55, 59–60, 527n23 Long Bridge Road, 262, 408–9, 412, 414, 416

Index

Longstreet, Lt. Gen. James, 14–15, 19–21, 25, 314 Loring, Lt. Col. Charles G., 394, 423, 425– 26, 445, 447, 460, 610n67 Low, Lt. Frederic C., 202 Lowry, Lt. Samuel Catawba, 333 Lubey, Capt. Timothy, 62 Lunenburg County, Va., 310 Lydig, Maj. Peter, 511 Lyle, Capt. Joseph Banks, 79, 223, 348 Lyle, Col. Peter, 57–58, 191 Lyle’s brigade, 191 Lyman, Pvt. Carlos Parsons, 222 Lyman, Lt. Col. Theodore, 182, 187–88, 199, 214, 220, 232, 249–50; and Grant, 13, 147; on Duane, 44; on Chickahominy River, 52; on reaching James River, 60; on Weitzel, 62; on Benham, 64; on pontoon bridge across James River, 64; on Brooks, 83; on Smith, 118; on artillery fire June 16, 141; on Potter, 148; on Willcox, 157; on Warren, 182; on condition of army, 215, 353; on Meade, 235; on Second Offensive, 254; on truces, 352; on Butler-Smith controversy, 365; on Ferrero, 395; on Ledlie and Burnside, 422; on Marshall and his brigade, 425; on Burnside, 492; describes corpses, 508; on Tyler and Sherwood Forest, 530n65; on Captain Beattie, 568n108; describes covered ways, 606n21; on Colonel Thomas, 628n129 Lynch, Col. James C., 402, 404 Lynchburg, Va., 30, 32, 56, 79, 173, 225, 257, 278 Lynchburg (Virginia) Battery (Blount’s), 132, 548n85 Lyon, James Monroe, 501 Mabry, Cpl. Robert Cornelius, 335 MacDougall, Col. Clinton D., 143 MacDougall’s brigade, 236, 239–40 MacRae, Col. William, 414, 603n117 MacRae’s Brigade, 414 Madill, Col. Henry J., 65, 133, 200–204 Mahone, Brig. Gen. William, 56; on June

697

22, 238–39, 243–47, 249; on June 23, 249–50, 253; at first battle of Reams’ Station, 298; summoned to the Crater, 454–56, 612nn90–91, 613nn93–94; deploys division, 466–70, 616–17n10; strength of counterattack, 471; issues orders for counterattack, 471, 473– 75; first counterattack, 475–76, 481; exchange with Weisiger, 481; and Hall’s counterattack, 484–86; briefs Sanders, 494; exhorts Sanders’s Brigade, 495; and massacre of U.S. Colored Troops, 498, 502–4; seeks end to the combat, 499–500; and Union prisoners, 505; and wounded and dead, 508; and truce, 513 Mahone’s Division, 59, 173, 178, 337, 371, 416, 431; on June 22, 238, 240–41, 243, 248; on June 23, 250–52; at first battle of Reams’ Station, 297–98; and battle of the Crater, 454, 467–68, 480 Malvern Hill, 56–57, 59, 74, 79, 147, 261, 414 Marbaker, Sgt. Thomas D., 66 Marshall, Col. Elisha G., 163, 425; described, 425; and battle of the Crater, 441–42, 444 Marshall, Capt. William C., 284 Marshall’s brigade: composition of and described, 425; deploys for attack, 426– 27; and battle of the Crater, 439, 441 Marston, Brig. Gen. Gilman, 105, 222 Marston’s brigade, 105 Martin, Lt. Benjamin, 121 Martin, Brig. Gen. James G., 307, 580n10 Martindale, Brig. Gen. John H., 51, 83, 106, 119, 133, 154, 593n95; background of, 84; on June 18, 178, 185, 189–90; commands Eighteenth Corps, 365, 367; leaves field, 368 Martindale’s division: on June 15, 85–86, 95, 99–100, 102, 105–6; on June 16, 133, 141; on June 17, 175; on June 18, 178, 180, 183; and Second Offensive, 230, 233 Martin’s Brigade, 120, 122, 142, 176, 335 Maryland Brigade (Dushane’s), 182, 198–99, 244 Mason, Lt. William Taylor, 450

Matoaca, Va., 131 Mattaponi River, 258–59 McAfee, Col. Lee M., 377, 452, 454 McAfee’s brigade, 377, 387, 431; at battle of the Crater, 453, 464, 483, 496 McAllister, Col. Robert, 67, 142, 210, 221, 354–56, 358; assumes brigade command, 142; on June 18, 186; and the mine, 383– 84 McAllister’s brigade, 185, 200, 202, 205, 220; on June 22, 235, 240–41 McCabe, Adj. William Gordon, 118, 239, 456 McCarty, Pvt. Thomas L., 346 McCurdy, Sgt. Lucius L., 508 McEntee, Capt. Charles S., 69 McGee, Pvt. Hall T., 311, 501, 503 McGowan, Brig. Gen. Samuel, 601n85 McGowan’s Brigade, 223, 246, 248, 401, 411, 562n31, 564n57 McGregor, Capt. William, 277 McGregor’s (Virginia) Battery, 232, 279–80, 574n59 McIntosh, Lt. Col. David, 239, 242 McIntosh, Col. John B.: and movement to James River, 48, 55, 59, 71; and WilsonKautz Raid, 288, 290, 294–95, 297 McIntosh’s brigade, 275, 278, 280, 294–99 McIvor, Col. James P., 142, 185–86 McIvor’s brigade, 202 McKibben, Capt. Gilbert H., 374, 376, 381 McKnight, Sgt. Charles, 191 McKnight, Capt. George, 235, 242–43 McKnight’s Battery, 235, 241–44, 248, 405 McLaws, Maj. Gen. Lafayette, 76 McMaster, Col. Fitz William: described, 431; and battle of the Crater, 437, 448– 49, 469, 475–76, 479, 616n8 McMurray, Capt. John, 109, 221, 464, 476, 510 McVicar, Pvt. Charles, 314 Meade, Maj. Gen. George G., 9, 11, 31, 348–49, 516; background and personality of, 11–12; relationship with Grant, 12; and Overland Campaign, 13, 18–22, 24, 27–28; and movement to James River,

698Index

44–45, 47–49, 52, 54, 60, 64; described, 60; and crossing of James River, 67, 129; and plans to attack Petersburg, 68–70; on June 15, 114; on June 16, 130, 133–34, 136, 139–41, 144, 146; generalship analyzed, 146, 169, 307, 507; on June 17, 147, 150–54, 162–63; intends to attack on June 18, 175–76; on June 18, 178, 180, 182–90, 194, 199, 205, 213–14; estimates casualties, 211; on First Offensive, 214–15; requests a truce June 19, 220; and Second Offensive, 225–26, 230–33, 254–55; on bombarding Petersburg, 227, 585n69; meets with Lincoln, 229; and Warren, 233–34, 369; on June 22, 235–36, 243– 44, 247; on June 23, 249, 251, 253; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 261, 273–74, 292, 297, 301–3, 305–7; and Sheridan, 267, 273, 306–7; and civilian discontent, 355; and fortifications, 357; sends Sixth Corps to Washington, 360; considered for transfer, 368–69; recommends siege tactics, 370, 393; and strategy in July, 370–71, 392; and the mine, 372, 374–75, 381–82, 390, 392–94, 399, 419; and Burnside, 382, 394, 423, 445–48, 510, 559n100, 627n119; and Third Offensive, 393, 399; and First Deep Bottom, 393, 399, 401, 406, 409, 415; authorizes Burnside’s attack, 419– 20; prohibits black troops from leading attack, 421–22, 605nn8–9; and attack plans, 423, 426, 605n12; pessimistic about attack, 423–24; and ignition of the mine, 429, 432; on delay of Union attack, 439; and battle of the Crater, 445–46, 448, 460, 466, 484, 492–93, 507; and Grant’s July 31 offensive, 506; prepares for attack, 507, 510; and truce, 511–12, 627n123; and casualties at the Crater, 514 Mecklenburg County, Va., 290 Meherrin River, 290 Meherrin’s Station, Va., 281–82 Mendall, Capt. Sidney J., 89 Mendell, Capt. George H., 63–64 Merchant’s Island, 509 Merriam, Sgt. Leander O., 152, 397 Index

Merritt, Brig. Gen. Wesley, 411 Merritt’s (Reserve) Brigade, 411–12 Michie, Lt. Peter S., 48–49, 63 Michler, Maj. Nathaniel, 65 Miles, Brig. Gen. Nelson A., 143, 160, 254– 55; at First Deep Bottom, 404, 416–17; replaces Barlow, 415 Miles’s brigade: on June 22, 236, 240–41; at First Deep Bottom, 402, 407 Miller, John, 313 Miller, Pvt. John C., 480 Miller, Lt. William A., 334 Milliken, Lt. William B., 107 Mills, Capt. Charles J., 168 Mills, Pvt. Elon J., 396 Miltimore, Lt. Claron I., 353 The Mine: construction of, 379–82, 389; secrecy of and rumors about, 382–84; Confederate suspicions about, 384– 86; and Confederate countermining, 386–90; Confederate skepticism about, 389; charged with powder, 390–92; and Grant’s operational thinking, 392–93, 415; ignition of, 429, 431–32; explosion of, 432–36; casualties inflicted by, 608n43 Mine Run Campaign, 11, 233 Minor, Surg. Henry Augustine, 335, 498, 500, 502–4 Mitchell, Pvt. John R., 248 Mitchell, Maj. William G., 69, 80, 114–15, 400, 406, 414 Mix, Col. Simon H., 84, 87, 97 Moffett, Lt. George H., 190, 268, 272 Molony, Capt. Patrick K., 121 Monaghan, Sgt. Patrick, 548n81 Monks, Sgt. Zerah Coston, 211, 496, 624n83 Monocacy, battle of, 360–61 Monroe, Col. J. Albert, 438 Mordecai, Capt. Alfred, 515 Morgan, Lt. Col. Charles H., 68–70, 80, 112–15, 226, 239 Morgan, Brig. Gen. John Hunt, 306 Morgan, Lt. Col. Michael R., 68 Moroney, Maj. Richard, 236, 239–40 Morrill, Capt. Edward J., 250–51 Morris, Capt. Charles, 217 699

Morrison, Lt. John W., 428 Morrison, William E., 314 Morton, Maj. James St. Clair, 135, 549n101; background of, 157; and attack on June 17, 157–60, 549n106 Morton, Pvt. William G., 389 Mossing Ford Station, 283 Mott, Brig. Gen. Gershom, 142, 175, 205 Mott’s brigade: 235 Mott’s division: on June 18, 180, 185, 200; and Second Offensive, 226, 230, 233; on June 22, 234–36, 241, 244; on June 23, 249; at First Deep Bottom, 400, 404–5, 407, 415; and battle of the Crater, 420, 446, 466 Mount Sinai Church, 273–75, 573n41 Mulberry Hill (McPhail house), 285 Murphy, Pvt. William J., 485 Nance’s Shop, 262–63 Neese, Cpl. George M., 346, 505 Neill, Brig. Gen. Thomas H., 145; described, 174; transferred, 230 Neill’s division, 145, 175–76, 178, 185; and Second Offensive, 226, 230 Nelson, Lucy, 323 Nelson, Mary, 323 Nelson, Lt. Col. Patrick Henry, 270–71 Nelson, Lt. William Cowper, 332, 334, 341 New Bern, N.C., 292, 371 Newberry, Lt. Col. Walter C., 207 New Market Heights, 407 New Market Race Track, 37, 171, 176 New Market Road, 402, 407–9, 416 New Orleans, La., 5, 359 New Road, 5 Newton, Lt. Col. Henry C., 354 Newton, Hospital Steward John Henry, 253 Nineteenth Corps, 256, 365, 370; ordered to Virginia and Washington, 359–60, 362, 372, 593n85; at Deep Bottom, 399, 409 Nineteenth Georgia, 204 Nineteenth Indiana, 197 Nineteenth Maine, 242–44, 601n87 Nineteenth Massachusetts, 83 Nineteenth Mississippi, 332, 341

Nineteenth U.S. Colored Troops, 397, 461, 463, 486, 506 Nineteenth Virginia, 333, 515 Ninety-First Pennsylvania, 192 Ninety-Second New York, 94, 101, 105 Ninety-Second Pennsylvania, 241 Ninety-Third New York, 205, 215, 355 Ninety-Fourth New York, 501 Ninety-Seventh New York, 357 Ninety-Ninth Pennsylvania, 402, 404 Ninth Alabama, 335, 494, 498 Ninth Corps (Burnside), 13, 20, 22; and movement to James River, 47–48, 54, 72–73; crosses James River, 129–30; on June 16, 130, 134–36, 141; on June 17, 147, 157, 175; on June 18, 176, 180–81, 186–87; and Second Offensive, 226, 233; sharpshooting of, 384; and battle of the Crater, 420, 514–15; casualties in, 605n8 Ninth Massachusetts Battery, 194, 196 Ninth New Hampshire, 149, 397, 436, 442, 483, 501 Ninth New York Cavalry, 411 Ninth New York Heavy Artillery, 155 Ninth Virginia Cavalry, 263, 266, 294, 296, 308 Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, 85, 96–97, 112, 131, 153, 156, 181, 183, 187, 191, 199, 219, 343, 347, 373, 380, 396, 423, 428 North Anna River, 15–16, 22, 24; battle of, 22–23, 163 North Bend plantation, 73 Norvell, Lt. Edward, 450–51 Nottoway Court House, Va., 278; battle of, 280 Nottoway River, 292 O’Brien, Maj. Timothy, 235, 241 Odom, Sgt. Laban, 322 Old Stage Road, 128, 172, 297–99 100th New York, 161, 227, 408, 483 100th Pennsylvania, 163–64, 425, 427–28, 441, 513 106th Pennsylvania, 241 109th New York, 157–58, 160, 206, 443, 610n62

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110th Pennsylvania, 402, 404, 544n28 112th New York, 123, 382, 482 114th Pennsylvania, 227 115th New York, 61, 343–44 115th Pennsylvania, 142 117th New York, 102, 111, 118, 134, 216, 354, 515 118th New York, 94, 101 121st New York, 72 121st Pennsylvania, 194 126th Ohio, 111 133rd Ohio, 137 138th Pennsylvania, 72 140th Pennsylvania, 353 141st Pennsylvania, 66, 133, 202 142nd Pennsylvania, 194, 357 143rd Pennsylvania, 194 145th Pennsylvania, 143 146th New York, 199 147th New York, 183 149th Pennsylvania, 194 150th Pennsylvania, 135, 194 151st New York, 354 152nd New York, 205, 241 155th New York, 142, 244 155th Pennsylvania, 192, 496 157th Pennsylvania, 197 170th New York, 142, 567n90 179th New York, 163, 425, 427, 441 182nd New York, 567n90 183rd Pennsylvania, 402, 404 184th Pennsylvania, 241 187th Pennsylvania, 194–96 188th Pennsylvania, 86 Ord, Maj. Gen. Edward Otho Cresap, 361–62, 365, 422, 594n107; commands Eighteenth Corps, 367–68; and battle of the Crater, 419–20, 429, 445–46, 459, 464, 466, 492–93, 615n122 Osborn, Col. Francis, 139 Osborn, Sgt. Stephen, 143 Otey, Lt. James C., 378, 450, 611n78 Owen, Maj. William Miller, 514 Page, Charles, 437 Page, Col. Powhatan R., 92–93, 98, 131–32, 148; mortally wounded, 151 Index

Page house, 180, 185, 190 Paine, Col. Charles J., 110, 216, 222, 368, 594n111 Palmer, Col. William H., 454–56 Pamunkey River, 24–25, 45, 51, 61, 257, 259 Parke, Maj. Gen. John G., 206, 421 Parker, Col. Ely, 345, 361 Parrington, Capt. John W., 89 Pate, Pvt. William, 476, 478 Patrick, Brig. Gen. Marsena R., 73, 227; on Warren, 182; on Meade, 255, 369; on Butler-Smith controversy, 366 Patten, Sgt. Alexander S., 206 Patten, Maj. Henry L., 243 Pattison, Capt. Alexander B., 198 Paul, Col. Samuel B., 78, 121, 454–55, 481 Pavilion Hospital, 509 Paxton, Lt. John R., 353 Peck, Lt. Edwin L., 190 Peek, Pvt. Amnon, 477–78 Peek, Sgt. Calvin, 477 Pegram, Capt. Richard G., 148, 375, 430, 449–50, 611n79 Pegram, Lt. Col. Willie, 272, 375, 456, 487, 501, 503, 578n101 Pegram’s (Virginia) Battery, 148, 151, 206, 375–78, 435, 441, 448 Pegram’s Salient, 219, 339–40, 356, 372, 374, 377–79, 382–86, 394, 429, 461; origin of and described, 375–76; strengthening of, 385–86; countermining at, 386–88, 598n45; on eve of explosion, 429–31 Peirce, Col. Ebenezer W., 163 Pendleton, Capt. Dudley Diggs, 504 Pendleton, Brig. Gen. William Nelson, 20, 79, 416, 451, 481, 504 Perkins, Pvt. Andrew J., 502–3 Perkinson’s Sawmill, 87 Perry, Pvt. James T., 78, 124, 210, 255, 309 Perry, Dr. John G., 73 Perry, Col. William F., 138 Perry’s brigade, 138, 161, 177, 348 Petersburg, Va.: and Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 6–7, 11; targeted by Butler, 11, 25; strategic significance of, 32, 42; antebellum history of, 33; known as 701

the Cockade City, 33; railroads in, 33, 35; manufacturing in, 35–36; economy, culture, and religion of, 35–37; and African American population, 36–37, 40, 326–27, 525n84; antebellum politics of, 37; military units from, 37; and secession, 37; conditions in prior to campaign, 38–41; defenses constructed around, 39–40; military hospitals in, 40–41, 315–16, 582n36; bombardment of, 144, 221, 227, 311–17, 320–23, 328, 356, 585n69, 589n38; and runaway slaves, 309–10; and First Offensive, 310–11; fires in, 314, 321; citizen casualties in, 314–15; hospitals evacuated, 315–16; citizens evacuate and refugee, 316–21; crime in, 320, 327; reaction to bombardments, 320–24; reaction to military victories, 324; and food shortage, 324–26; and relief to poor, 325; and inflation, 325–26, 584n63; soldiers in, 327, 329; and July 4, 328, 344; social life in, 328–30; defiance of citizens, 330–31; and explosion of mine, 434; and prisoner parade, 509 Petersburg Artillery. See Graham’s (Virginia) Battery Petersburg Artillery (Pegram’s Battery). See Pegram’s (Virginia) Battery Petersburg Courthouse, 312 Petersburg Express, 356–57, 592n77 Petersburg Leadworks, 250 Petersburg Railroad, 7, 30, 33, 35, 209, 223, 238, 250, 522n16; as a military target, 224– 26, 230, 234, 236, 249–50, 253–54, 370–71, 392, 506; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 274, 291; repair of, 308, 347, 580n13 Philadelphia Brigade (O’Brien’s), 235–36, 241–43 Phillips, Lt. James Eldred, 246, 512 Phillips house, 263 Phillips Legion, 263, 266 Phoenix Hall, 311, 314 Pickett, Maj. Gen. George E., 6–9, 23, 27, 136, 161 Pickett’s Division, 56, 123–25, 136–38, 146, 155, 161–62, 177, 209, 337, 414

Pierce, Brig. Gen. Byron R., 180, 186, 242– 44, 567n90; background of, 242 Pierce’s brigade, 180, 185–86; on June 22, 235–36, 242, 244 Pingree, Lt. Col. Samuel E., 250, 252–53 Piper, Col. Alexander, 438 Pippitt, Pvt. Henry, 351 Plaisted, Col. Harris M., 126 Plaisted’s brigade, 136, 138, 161 Platt, Eleanor Meade, 313, 325 Platt, Rev. William H., 328, 330 Pleasants, Lt. Col. Henry: and brigade command, 208, 390; background of, 373; and the mine, 374–75, 379–82, 384, 388– 92, 429, 432, 597n25, 599n58; and battle of the Crater, 444 Pleasants’s brigade, 373 Pocahontas Bridge, 315 Pocahontas Depot, 315, 321 Point Lookout (prison), 83, 104, 342–43, 588n33 Point of Rocks, 10, 61, 83, 85, 128, 145, 155, 274, 399–400, 415, 600n83 Polley, Sgt. Maj. George F., 228 Pontoon bridge across James River, 61–65, 530n57 Poor Creek, 152, 171, 181, 187, 191, 195, 201, 206, 271, 375, 379, 427–28, 459, 555n48 Pope, Col. Edmund, 282 Pope, Maj. Gen. John, 12 Poplar Lawn, 509 Porter, Lt. Col. Horace, 43–45, 48–49, 61, 118, 214–15, 362, 408, 433–34, 439, 448; describes Lincoln, 228–29 Porter, Capt. Robert, 620n41 Port Walthall Junction, Va., 7, 78, 128, 137– 38, 146, 298 Postell, Lt. John, 386 Potter, Brig. Gen. Robert B., 54, 151; background of, 148; and the mine, 220, 374, 379, 391–92; and Ferrero’s division, 397; and battle of the Crater, 422, 429, 442, 444, 457–58, 488, 514–15, 609n60; and truce, 513 The Potteries, 407, 414 Potter’s division, 130, 134–35, 141; on June 17,

702Index

147–48, 150–53, 156, 158, 168, 547n79, 547– 48n81; on June 18, 181, 373; fortifies on June 19, 219, 373; and Second Offensive, 226; deploys for attack, 420, 428; and leadership of attack, 422–23; and battle of the Crater, 482 Powell, Lt. William H., 441, 444, 491 Preston, Capt. Samuel Davis, 166, 451 Price’s Depot, Va., 281 Prince George County, Va., 41, 66, 80, 115, 129–30, 291, 346, 352 Prince George Court House, Va., 135, 174, 273, 292, 294, 303, 347 Prince George Court House Road, 96, 109, 113–14, 121–22, 136, 142, 178, 180, 185–86, 200–201, 204, 233 Pruyn, Maj. Charles E., 94 Pryor, Roger A., 37, 277–78 Pryor, Sara Rice, 312–13, 316, 325–26, 434 Pryor, Theodorick, 277, 574n52 Purcell (Virginia) Artillery, 313, 577n101 Purington, Lt. Col. George A., 290, 299 Purnell’s Legion, 183 Pursley, Lt. J. Warren, 207, 210, 435–36 Putnam, Charles B., 355 Ragland, Reuben, 311 Ramsey, Col. John, 142 Randol, Capt. Alanson, M., 262 Ransom, Brig. Gen. Matthew, 31, 377, 535n30 Ransom’s Brigade, 92, 122–23, 130–31, 148, 151–52, 158–59, 164, 166–68, 176, 182–83, 189, 195, 377, 515, 535n30, 544n28 Raulston, Col. William C., 181, 206–7 Rawlins, Brig. Gen. John, 233, 365–66 Reams’ Station, Va., 275–76, 292, 294–96, 302–3, 306–8; first battle of, 296–99, 305, 340; operations at on July 12, 347–48, 371 Redwater Creek, 162, 177 Reese, Sgt. Harry: background of, 379, 596n19; ignites the mine, 429, 431–32; and battle of the Crater, 461 Rhodes, Capt. Elisha Hunt, 185, 302 Rhodes, Pvt. Squire D., 490 Richards, Capt. Rees G., 397, 437 Index

Richmond, Va., 2, 6–8, 10–11, 13; defense of, 14, 31; and Overland Campaign, 15–16, 18–19, 21, 25–26, 28; as destination for refugees, 317, 319; and First Deep Bottom, 393 Richmond & Danville Railroad, 30, 224– 25, 278, 281, 283, 307, 525n73; easily destroyed, 281–82; repair of, 308 Richmond & Petersburg Railroad, 7–8, 91, 128, 138, 146, 162, 173, 178, 315 Richmond Howitzers, 504 Richmond Otey Battery. See Walker’s (Virginia) Battery Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, 128, 136, 138, 171–73 Rickard, Capt. James H., 397 Ricketts, Brig. Gen. James B., 145 Ricketts’s division, 145, 162, 208, 230, 233; on June 22, 235–36, 238, 245–47; on June 23, 250, 252; goes to Baltimore, 360 Riddell’s Shop. See Glendale Ringgold Battery. See Dickenson’s (Virginia) Battery Ringler, Pvt. John Wesley, 227, 383 Ritchie, Lt. David F., 433 River Road (Charles City County), 263 River Road (Prince George County), 85, 95, 536n36 Rives, Col. Alfred Landon, 308 Rives, Timothy (farm), 2, 5 Rives’ Salient, 190–91, 199, 238, 348, 357, 456, 613n94 Roanoke Station, Va., 283–85, 289 Robbins, Capt. James L., 62 Roberts, Maj. William P., 280 Robinson, Pvt. Leiper Moore, 266, 308, 571n20 Robinson, Lt. W. P., 451 Roe, Pvt. Alfred S., 351 Roebling, Maj. Washington A., 60, 74, 153– 54, 182, 187, 255, 331, 439, 503 Roemer, Capt. Jacob, 429 Rogers, Lt. Col. George, 89, 109 Rogers, Col. George T., 478, 480–81, 483, 494 Rohoic Creek, 319 703

Roman, Lt. Col. Alfred, 172, 217–18, 552n5 Roney, Pvt. Henry Clay, 315 Ropes, John Codman, 215, 217 Rose, Luther, 384 Ross, Lt. Col. William, 462 Rosser’s Brigade. See Laurel Brigade Rowanty Creek, 297, 299 Ruffin, Edmund, 37, 39, 124, 318, 331, 340–41, 450, 502, 504 Russell, Brig. Gen. David, 145 Russell, Capt. Edward K., 110 Russell, Col. Henry Sturgis, 90, 535n22 Russell, Sgt. William, 434 Russell’s division, 145, 162; and Second Offensive, 230–31; on June 22, 235–36, 239, 245–47; on June 23, 249; and move to Washington, 361 Rutherford, Col. William Drayton, 342 Saffold’s Bridge, 290 Salem Church, 262–63 Salter, Capt. Charles H., 168 Samaria (St. Mary’s) Church, 60, 71, 262; battle of, 262–67, 571n14 Sanders, Pvt. Charles M., 486 Sanders, Brig. Gen. John C. C., 227, 511, 513; background of and described, 493, 623n76; and battle of the Crater, 493–95, 499 Sanders, Surg. William H., 334 Sanders, Capt. William W., 432, 447 Sanders’s Brigade, 239, 244, 248, 252, 296, 298, 568–69n110; and battle of the Crater, 493, 496, 498, 515, 624n82 Sappony Church, 346; battle of, 292–97, 305, 577n99 Saunders, Lt. John E., 453 Scales, Brig. Gen. Alfred, 58, 245, 567n95 Scales’s Brigade, 58, 238, 245–46 Scott, Pvt. Don E., 436 Scott, Maj. Robert Taylor, 334 Screven, Capt. Thomas F., 124 Scroggs, Lt. Joseph J., 429, 437–38 Seagrave, Capt. William H., 479 Sears, Sgt. Jerome, 205, 215, 221 Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery, 222

Second Corps (CSA), 14, 21, 25 Second Corps (USA/Hancock’s/Birney’s), 22, 26–27, 220; and movement to James River, 47, 53, 55, 59–60, 63; crosses James River, 65–68; and plans to attack Petersburg, 67–70, 74–75, 531n71; and march to Petersburg, 79–81, 112–14; deploys and fortifies on June 15, 115, 123, 540n87; on June 16, 125, 134; evening attack of, June 16, 141–44; on June 17, 152, 160, 548n83; on June 18, 176, 180, 185–86, 209; and Second Offensive, 226, 230–32, 254, 369; on June 22, 234–35, 241, 244, 248; on June 23, 249; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 274; expired enlistments in, 358; and First Deep Bottom, 393, 399–401, 405; and battle of the Crater, 419–20, 429, 466; and July 31 offensive, 506 Second Georgia, 138 Second Georgia Battalion, 248 Second Maryland (US), 149, 442 Second Michigan, 157–58, 207, 355, 428, 465, 551n127 Second Michigan Cavalry, 258 Second New York Cavalry, 283, 297, 300, 574n53 Second New York Mounted Rifles, 149, 457, 459 Second North Carolina, 39 Second North Carolina Cavalry, 279–80, 283 Second Ohio Cavalry, 84, 275, 283, 290, 294, 296–97, 299, 305 Second Pennsylvania Cavalry, 262, 347 Second Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, 141, 178, 351 Second Presbyterian Church, 277, 313, 328 Second Provisional Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, 163, 166, 425–27, 439, 441 Second Rhode Island, 185, 302 Second Swamp, 236 Second U.S. Cavalry, 412 Second U.S. Colored Artillery, Battery B, 96 Second U.S. Colored Cavalry, 119 Second Vermont, 221

704Index

Second Virginia Cavalry, 298 Seddon, James, 10, 28, 224, 289, 338, 405, 507 Sedgwick, Maj. Gen. John, 21 Seventeenth Georgia, 138 Seventeenth Maine, 66, 132–33 Seventeenth Michigan, 396, 606n25 Seventeenth North Carolina, 322, 334 Seventeenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 411 Seventeenth South Carolina, 206–7, 333, 377, 431, 437, 448–49, 452, 462, 471, 475, 495, 622n58 Seventeenth Tennessee, 151 Seventeenth Vermont, 13, 149, 151, 351, 383, 433, 442, 548n87 Seventeenth Virginia, 78, 124, 136, 209, 224, 255, 309 Seventh Confederate States Cavalry, 93, 279 Seventh Connecticut, 126, 161 Seventh Indiana, 197–98 Seventh Michigan, 242 Seventh New Hampshire, 126, 128, 136 Seventh New Jersey, 202, 205 Seventh New York Heavy Artillery, 59, 144, 400, 548n81 Seventh Rhode Island, 149, 383, 390, 428, 613n99 Seventh South Carolina Battalion, 120, 180, 185, 190, 269–70 Seventh South Carolina Cavalry, 263, 405 Seventh Virginia Cavalry, 294, 305 Seventh Wisconsin, 197, 482 Seventy-Second New York, 591n64 Seventy-Third New York, 404 Seward, William H., 163 Shafer, Col. John W., 365 Shand, William Briggs, 147–48 Shand house (ravine, plateau), 131–32, 136, 147–48, 150, 152–53, 157, 160, 164, 168, 220, 397, 543n21; Meade’s command post on July 30, 432 Shaw, A. O., 196 Shearman, Capt. Sumner U., 458, 490 Shenandoah Valley, 12, 14, 16, 23, 28, 30, 32, 337, 393, 507; and relationship to Petersburg, 362, 515–16 Shepherd, Maj. Russell B., 201 Index

Sheridan, Maj. Gen. Philip H., 10, 21, 24–26, 42, 45, 48, 123, 225, 371, 392, 595n121; and battle of Trevilian Station, 30–32, 257–58; background of, 257–58, 570n2; and White House Landing, 258–59, 261; and march to James River, 261–62, 267; crosses James River, 267; and WilsonKautz Raid, 272–73, 292, 301, 303, 306–7; detaches troops to Washington, 360; and First Deep Bottom, 393, 399–400, 406–11, 413–15, 417–18; and battle of the Crater, 419–20 Sherman, Maj. Gen. William T., 13, 18, 256, 341–42, 349, 362 Sherwood Forest, 67, 72–73 Shore, Pvt. Augustine E., 412 Sigfried, Lt. Col. Joshua K., 395, 595n1; on preparations for attack at the mine, 397; and battle of the Crater, 460–62, 488 Sigfried’s brigade, 397; deploys for attack, 429; and battle of the Crater, 459–60, 462, 464 Simmons, Col. Thomas Jefferson, 238, 246 Simms, Col. James P., 402 Simonton, Col. Charles H., 121 Simpson, Brooks, 216, 366 Sims, W. Andrew, 314 Sixteenth Maine, 191 Sixteenth Massachusetts, 142, 202, 205 Sixteenth Michigan, 168 Sixteenth Mississippi, 178, 329, 467, 500, 503 Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, 265, 414 Sixteenth Virginia, 248, 326, 434, 469–70, 478, 480, 484, 507–8 Sixth Connecticut, 161 Sixth Corps (Wright), 22, 26–27, 82–83; and movement to James River, 47–48, 53–54, 71–72, 129; ordered to City Point, 137, 145; crosses James River, 145; on June 17, 155, 162, 174; and Second Offensive, 226, 230, 232–33, 369; on June 22, 234–36, 238, 245, 247–48; on June 23, 249–53; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 274, 302, 579n117; detached to Washington, 348, 358, 360– 62, 370–72, 393; expired enlistments in, 358 705

Sixth Georgia, 186, 204, 337 Sixth Maine Battery, 141, 201 Sixth New Hampshire, 148–49, 396, 442, 490, 513 Sixth New York Cavalry, 355, 411, 591n64 Sixth Ohio Cavalry, 222, 262, 265 Sixth U.S. Cavalry, 84 Sixth U.S. Colored Troops, 88–89, 97, 108– 9, 221, 464, 476, 510, 615n114 Sixth Virginia, 335, 470, 617n10 Sixth Virginia Cavalry, 298, 300 Sixth Wisconsin, 197–98 Sixtieth Ohio, 428, 465, 551n127 Sixty-Eighth Pennsylvania, 227 Sixty-First New York, 564n56 Sixty-First North Carolina, 127, 167, 454, 470, 475, 495–96 Sixty-First Virginia, 455, 468–70, 476–78, 480, 482 Sixty-Fourth Georgia, 92–93, 144, 211, 468, 485 Sixty-Ninth New York, 236 Sixty-Ninth Pennsylvania, 241 Sixty-Second Georgia Cavalry, 93, 279–80 Sixty-Second New York, 252 Sixty-Second Pennsylvania, 183, 211 Sixty-Seventh Ohio, 126, 128, 209 Sixty-Sixth North Carolina, 321, 341 Sixty-Third New York, 352 Sixty-Third Tennessee, 151 Slaten, Capt. Charles William, 93 Slaten’s Macon (Georgia) Battery, 93, 98, 132, 148, 151 Smith, Sgt. A. Whit, 451 Smith, Col. Alexander D., 431 Smith, Col. Charles H., 265, 571n16 Smith, Surg. Hamilton E., 444 Smith, Col. Joseph S., 68 Smith, Maj. Gen. Martin L., 386, 598n40 Smith, Sgt. Thomas A., 502 Smith, Maj. Gen. William F., 6, 9, 11, 25–27, 41–42, 51; and movement across James River, 43, 47–51, 54–55, 61, 66; critical of Meade, 61, 363, 366; and movement to attack Petersburg, 74–76, 80–81, 532–33n100; described by Grant, 82; and

Butler, 82, 363; background of, 82–83; on June 15, 84–86, 91, 94, 97–101, 104–9, 112–15, 123, 536n33, 537n46; praises U.S. Colored Troops, 91, 110; analysis of generalship on June 15, 100–101, 117–19, 537n45; decides not to renew attacks on June 15, 115–19, 217; on June 16, 133–34; and Second Offensive, 230; orders attack on June 30, 343; and controversy with Butler, 362–67, 593n95; on Burnside, 363; on Grant, 363; on Hancock, 363; recommends replacements for Butler, 364; removed from command, 362, 365; troops’ opinion of, 367 Smither, Maj. J. Mark, 342 Smyth, Sgt. A. H., 436 Smyth, Sgt. James Adger, 79, 271, 334, 572n37 Smyth, Col. Thomas A., 186, 235 Smyth’s brigade, 186; on June 22, 235 Snyder, Pvt. Daniel C., 307 South Anna River, 24, 393 Southard, Pvt. John B., 253 South Carolina Military Hospital, 311 South Side Railroad, 30, 35, 224–26, 230, 234, 236, 307, 315; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 274, 277–78, 281; repair of, 308 Spaulding, Lt. Col. Ira, 55, 74 Spear, Col. Samuel, 4–5, 84; on June 15, 86–87, 96–97; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 274, 296 Spear’s brigade, 278, 281, 287–89, 291, 296, 299, 574n53 Special Orders No. 139, 122 Spencer, Pvt. George A., 383 Spotsylvania Court House, Va., 9–10, 19, 22–23; battle of, 20–21, 23, 255, 284, 311, 493, 500 Stanley, Sgt. Wesley, 485, 489 Stannard, Brig. Gen. George Jerrison, 95, 105–6, 230; reports casualties, 211; commands Brooks’s division, 223 Stannard’s brigade, 106; on June 15, 95, 105–6; on June 16, 141; on June 18, 178, 185, 189–90 Stannard’s division, 230, 270

706Index

Stanton, Edwin M., 9, 24, 78, 110, 364, 368, 593n100 Staunton (Roanoke) River, 284–85 Staunton River Bridge: defenses at, 284– 85, 575nn69–71; battle of, 285–89, 305, 576n73 Stearns, Capt. George, 351 Stedman, Col. Griffin A., 95 Stedman’s brigade, 95, 105–6, 141, 178, 185, 189–90 Steiner, Lewis H., 52, 212 Stetzel, Lt. Col. George, 86–87 Stevens, Col. Aaron F., 94 Stevens, Capt. Almon R., 102 Stevens, Lt. Col. Hazard, 230, 353–54, 358, 361 Stevens, Lt. Col. Walter H., 39, 340, 386–87 Stewart, Lt. Col. William H., 469, 474, 478, 480, 486, 494, 505, 507 Stiles, Mary E., 352 Stillwell, Pvt. Alemeron W., 53 Stillwell, Pvt. William R., 319 Stinson, Capt. Charles F., 461 St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 328 Stokes, Lt. Col. William, 267 Stony Creek, 300 Stony Creek Depot, Va., 291–92, 294–96, 299, 336 Stoodley, Capt. Nathan D., 103 St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 312–13, 328, 330 St. Peter’s Church, 261 Strawberry Plains, 399–402 Sturdivant, Capt. Nathaniel A., 93–95, 103–4 Sturdivant’s Battery. See Albemarle (Virginia) Battery Stuart, Maj. Gen. James Ewell Brown, 14, 16, 21, 25, 258 Stuart Horse Artillery, 277 Sutherland Station, Va., 274, 277, 281 Sweitzer, Col. Jacob, 183, 192 Sweitzer’s brigade, 183, 187, 191, 195, 197, 244 Swift Creek, 7–9, 92, 122, 138, 160, 164, 370 Sycamore Church, 135 Index

Sycamore Street, 178, 310–12, 318–19, 323, 329, 389 Syme, John W., 322, 326 Tabb Street Presbyterian Church, 312–13, 323 Taintor, Sgt. Henry E., 221, 354 Talmage, Sgt. Nathaniel M., 70, 282 Tannatt, Col. Thomas R., 142–43 Tayloe, Lt. Col. George P., 499 Taylor, Sgt. Joseph K., 174 Taylor, Lt. Murray Forbes, 308, 455 Taylor, Lt. Col. Walter H., 15, 172, 184, 389 Taylor house, 181, 190, 206 Taylor’s Creek. See Poor Creek Templeton, Pvt. Willard J., 151 Tenth Alabama, 296–97, 335, 500, 508 Tenth Battalion Virginia Heavy Artillery, 255 Tenth Connecticut, 126–27, 227, 234; at First Deep Bottom, 402, 404 Tenth Corps, 25, 51, 84, 126, 139, 349, 364; and responsibility for attacking Petersburg, 75; command of, 208, 222– 23, 365, 367–68; and Second Offensive, 226–27 Tenth Massachusetts, 185, 228 Tenth Massachusetts Battery, 67, 311, 555n43 Tenth New Hampshire, 94 Tenth New York Cavalry, 263, 266 Tenth Vermont, 110, 155, 236, 360, 396 Tenth Virginia Cavalry, 263, 266, 294 Terry, Brig. Gen. Alfred Howe, 43, 126, 128–29, 137, 162, 208, 222 Terry, Brig. Gen. William R., 125 Terry’s Brigade, 125, 209 Texas Brigade, 138, 161, 177 Thayer, Sgt. Edmond J., 128 Third Battalion Virginia Reserves, 4 Third Corps (CSA/ Hill’s), 14, 18, 20, 56, 125, 146, 162, 173, 189, 209, 223, 238, 337, 371 Third Georgia, 471, 475, 485–86 Third Indiana Cavalry, 294, 301, 305 Third Maryland (Battalion), 163, 425, 427, 441 707

Third Michigan, 242 Third New Hampshire, 126, 128, 136, 138, 351 Third New Jersey Cavalry, 275, 568n108 Third New York, 102 Third New York Cavalry, 87, 97, 287, 297, 578n110 Third North Carolina Cavalry, 232 Third Offensive: Grant’s conception of, 393 Third South Carolina, 323, 342 Third Vermont, 82, 221, 250, 302 Third Vermont Battery, 438 Third Virginia Cavalry, 298, 300 Thirteenth Indiana, 118, 620n43 Thirteenth Massachusetts, 191, 353 Thirteenth New Hampshire, 90, 100; on June 15, 94–95, 101–4, 538n60 Thirteenth Ohio Cavalry, 434, 443, 461, 610n62 Thirteenth South Carolina, 411–12 Thirteenth Virginia Cavalry, 265, 294–95 Thirtieth U.S. Colored Troops, 359, 397–98, 429, 460–63, 479 Thirtieth Virginia, 39 Thirty-Eighth Wisconsin, 157, 443, 551n127, 610n62 Thirty-Fifth Massachusetts, 426–27, 434, 439, 441, 512 Thirty-Fifth North Carolina, 166–67, 551n128, 551n131 Thirty-First Maine, 149, 152, 397, 433, 442 Thirty-First U.S. Colored Troops, 462–63 Thirty-Fourth New York Battery, 356, 429 Thirty-Fourth Virginia, 92–93, 98, 166, 377, 451, 453 Thirty-Ninth Illinois, 128, 136, 138, 155, 161, 209, 234, 267 Thirty-Ninth Massachusetts, 135 Thirty-Second Maine, 149, 384, 428, 442 Thirty-Seventh Massachusetts, 174 Thirty-Seventh North Carolina, 173 Thirty-Seventh Wisconsin, 130, 157, 160, 353, 396, 610n62 Thirty-Sixth Massachusetts, 149, 153, 187, 433, 548n87, 613n99 Thirty-Sixth Wisconsin, 242

Thirty-Third North Carolina, 408, 412 Thomas, Pvt. George S., 313, 318 Thomas, Col. Henry G., 395; on preparations for the attack at the mine, 397; and Grant, 448; and battle of the Crater, 460, 462–63, 482, 484; describes corpses, 508; captured and released, 514 Thomas, Lt. William M., 120 Thomas’s Brigade (CSA), 246, 564n57 Thomas’s brigade (USA): deploys for the attack, 429; sees Grant, 448; and battle of the Crater, 460, 462–64 Thompson, Cpl. Gilbert, 64, 437 Thompson, Lt. Col. Richard S., 384 Three Mile Creek, 222 Tidball, Col. John C., 141–42, 180, 186, 220, 236 Tilghman’s Gate, 402 Tilghman’s Wharf, 399, 402, 417 Tilney, Sgt. Robert, 153 Tilton, Col. William S., 183, 482, 515 Tinen, Capt. Patrick S., 241 Toland, Asst. Surg. Elihu, 435 Torbert, Brig. Gen. Alfred T. A., 261, 411 Torbert’s division, 261–63; at First Deep Bottom, 401, 408–9, 416 Totopotomoy Creek, 25 Townes, William Waverly, 317 Townsend, M. W., 196 Tramp Brigade. See Elliott’s Brigade Travers, Lt. Col. George W., 207 Tremain, Lt. Col. Frederick L., 266 Trent’s Reach, 65, 234, 337 Trevilian Station, battle of, 31–32, 79, 257, 259 Trobriand, Brig. Gen. P. Regis de, 384, 404 Trobriand’s brigade, 402, 407 Trueheart, Asst. Surg. Charles W., 308, 315, 318, 323, 328 Tunstall’s Station, Va., 51, 54–55 Turner, Sgt. John R., 322, 334 Turner, Brig. Gen. John W., 128, 137–38, 343; and battle of the Crater, 446, 459, 464; background of, 459, 614n102 Turner, Sgt. Waldo, 434, 439 Turner’s division: attacks on June 30, 343–

708Index

44; and battle of the Crater, 420, 429, 444, 482–83 Turnley, Pvt. George I., 508 Twelfth Massachusetts, 57 Twelfth New Jersey, 384 Twelfth New York Independent Battery. See McKnight’s Battery Twelfth North Carolina, 284 Twelfth South Carolina, 412 Twelfth U.S. Infantry, 199, 383, 508 Twelfth Virginia, 177–78, 241, 246, 310, 375, 469–71, 474–78, 503 Twelfth Virginia Cavalry, 263, 266 Twentieth Indiana, 132 Twentieth Maine, 192, 196 Twentieth Massachusetts, 73, 242–43, 353 Twentieth Michigan, 382, 428, 433, 444, 465, 487, 508 Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts, 402, 404 Twenty-Eighth North Carolina, 412 Twenty-Eighth U.S. Colored Troops, 463 Twenty-Fifth Massachusetts, 95, 106 Twenty-Fifth North Carolina, 452, 471, 475, 501 Twenty-Fifth South Carolina, 79, 121, 141, 185, 190, 204, 268–69, 271–72, 334 Twenty-First Connecticut, 51, 86 Twenty-First Massachusetts, 163–64, 167, 427 Twenty-First South Carolina, 189, 269 Twenty-Fourth Massachusetts, 126, 138–39, 155, 161, 227, 408 Twenty-Fourth Michigan, 197 Twenty-Fourth New York Cavalry, 207, 428, 465, 512 Twenty-Fourth Virginia, 342 Twenty-Fourth Virginia Cavalry, 263 Twenty-Ninth Massachusetts, 163, 350, 426 Twenty-Ninth U.S. Colored Troops, 463, 503, 620n41 Twenty-Second Georgia, 315, 485 Twenty-Second Massachusetts, 71, 135, 183, 192 Twenty-Second New York Cavalry, 52, 277, 568n108 Twenty-Second North Carolina, 58 Index

Twenty-Second South Carolina, 167–68, 333, 377, 431, 453, 495; casualties from explosion, 435 Twenty-Second U.S. Colored Troops, 88–90, 106–8, 111 Twenty-Seventh Georgia, 204 Twenty-Seventh Massachusetts, 95, 190 Twenty-Seventh Michigan, 54, 157, 176, 443–44, 610n62 Twenty-Seventh North Carolina, 39 Twenty-Seventh South Carolina, 121, 131, 189, 269, 271 Twenty-Sixth Michigan, 402, 404, 408 Twenty-Sixth South Carolina, 377, 431, 437, 449, 452, 471, 475 Twenty-Sixth Virginia, 92–93, 103–4, 106, 120, 377, 434, 453, 502 Twenty-Third South Carolina, 92–93, 148, 158, 166, 377, 431, 453, 495 Twenty-Third Tennessee, 158, 171, 385 Twenty-Third U.S. Colored Troops, 227, 398, 461–63, 479, 488–89, 506, 515, 628n131 Tyler, Pvt. Julius, 478 Tyler’s home. See Sherwood Forest U.S. Colored Troops: attitudes toward, 88, 90–91, 110–11, 129, 185, 219, 222, 338, 344, 367, 395–96, 460, 469, 475, 495, 510, 561n19 U.S. Sanitary Commission, 351, 510 USS Atlanta, 130, 543n20 Van Buren, Maj. James L., 428, 432, 462, 610n67 Vance, Lt. Phillip M., 496, 498 Venable, Col. Charles S., 385, 455 Venable, George Henry, 329 Verdery, Pvt. James Paul, 500 Vermont Brigade: on June 22, 236; on June 23, 250, 252–53 Violet Bank, 184, 223, 291, 329–30, 336, 384, 454, 562n30 Virginia Central Railroad, 12, 23, 30–32, 42, 45–46, 48, 225, 257, 393, 400 Voris, Lt. Col. Alvin C., 126 709

Wade, Ben, 413 Wainwright, Col. Charles S., 12, 50, 52, 71, 135, 182, 215, 383, 437–38; on Warren, 182; on Kitching, 198; on June 18, 199; on June 22, 241; on Grant, 255; on Fort Sedgwick, 357–58 Walker, Capt. Aldace F., 253 Walker, Capt. David N., 450–51 Walker, Francis, 249, 405, 407 Walker, Brig. Gen. James A., 580n10 Walker, Brig. Gen. William S., 377 Walker’s (Virginia) Battery, 378, 451 Wallace, Col. William H., 431 Waller, Hospital Steward George E., 342 Ware Bottom Church, 10, 128, 137, 155, 161, 377; burned, 224 Waring, Lt. Col. Joseph, 335, 349 Warner, Lt. Col. Augustus J., 133 Warren, Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K., 19, 22, 349, 398; and movement to James River, 45, 47, 51–53, 55, 60; on June 17, 154; background of, 181–82; on June 18, 181– 82, 186–88, 190, 194, 197, 199; and Meade, 233–34, 369; on June 22, 243–44; and role in Burnside’s attack, 419–20; attitude toward Burnside’s attack, 424; and battle of the Crater, 445–46, 465–66, 610n70 Warson, Lt. Martin L., 434 Warwick Swamp, 347 Washington Street, 310–12, 316–19, 328 Washington Street Methodist Church, 312 Waters, Lt. Benjamin, 196 Webb, Sgt. Nathan, 258, 261, 264, 266 Weisiger, Col. David A.: on June 22, 239; and battle of the Crater, 455, 469, 471, 473–75, 494, 499; wounded, 481; critical of Mahone, 481, 617n12 Weisiger’s Brigade: on June 22, 239–40, 244; on June 23, 252–53; marches to the Crater, 467–68; strength of, 470; deploys, 470; counterattacks, 474–84; and Sanders’s attack, 495; casualties in, 515 Weitzel, Brig. Gen. Godfrey: and pontoon bridge across James River, 48–49, 62–63; described, 62

Weld, Col. Stephen M., 164–65, 168, 210, 382, 384, 426, 433; on Ledlie, 422; and battle of the Crater, 479, 515 Weldon, N.C., 7, 9, 33, 224, 371, 392 Weldon Railroad. See Petersburg Railroad Wells, Col. William, 175 Wells Hill, 5 West, Lt. John T., 468, 470 West, Col. Robert M., 97; and WilsonKautz Raid, 274, 283, 287 Westervelt, Sgt. John H., 65 Westover (plantation), 77–78 West’s brigade, 275, 278, 281, 287–89, 296, 299, 574n53 Weyanoke Peninsula, 43, 49, 65 Wheaton, Brig. Gen. Frank, 178, 230, 252 Wheaton’s brigade, 178, 185, 189–90, 197 Wheaton’s division: and Second Offensive, 231; on June 22, 235–36, 247; on June 23, 250–51 Whitaker, Capt. Edward B., 241 Whitaker, Capt. Edward W., 280–81, 297, 301, 307, 577n102 White, Col. Daniel, 442 White, Capt. Edwin R., 431 White, Brig. Gen. Julius, 429, 513; background of and described, 421; as Burnside’s chief of staff, 421, 447, 493 Whitehead, Lt. Col. Richard Owen, 507 Whitehorne, Sgt. James E., 241, 311, 470, 476 White House Landing, 26, 31, 44–45, 47–51, 55–56, 61, 77, 83, 257, 259, 261, 274; ordered dismantled, 225, 261; skirmish at, 259–61 White Oak Swamp (and bridge), 47, 57–60, 74, 79 Whiting, Maj. Gen. William H. C., 10 Whitworth, Pvt. Richard Asbury, 485 Wickham, Brig. Gen. Williams, 263 Wickham’s Brigade, 263, 298, 300 Wilcox, Maj. Gen. Cadmus M., 56, 58–59, 232; on June 22, 238–39, 245–47, 249 Wilcox farm (Petersburg), 454 Wilcox house, farm, and landing (south bank), 67, 135, 174, 530n64

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Wilcox house, wharf, and landing (north bank), 71, 73–74, 77, 135 Wilcox’s Division, 58, 60, 173, 232, 414, 553n10; on June 22, 238, 245, 247, 337; ordered north of James River, 401 Wilderness, battle of, 18–19, 295 Wilkes, Lt. Clifton H., 243 Wilkeson, Pvt. Frank, 118 Willcox, Brig. Gen. Orlando B., 54, 397, 510; background of, 157; attacks on June 17, 157–60, 163; on June 18, 187, 206; reports casualties, 211; and battle of the Crater, 422, 443–44, 465, 488, 491 Willcox’s division, 130, 134–35, 141, 166; on June 18, 181, 183, 205, 207, 209; and Second Offensive, 226, 230; deploys for attack, 420, 428–29; leadership of attack, 422–23 Williams, T. Harry, 218, 366 Williams (Richard) house, 232, 236, 249, 564n55 Willsey, Pvt. Berea M., 185 Wilmington, N.C., 7, 224 Wilson, Brig. Gen. James H., 18, 123, 273; and movement to James River, 45, 47–48, 51–52, 57, 60, 70, 129, 145; described, 273, 277; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 256, 261, 272–75, 277–78, 280–81, 285–90, 292, 294–97, 299–301, 303–4, 306; describes Kautz’s division, 274–75; blames Sheridan, 307 Wilson, Capt. William P., 113–14 Wilson-Kautz Raid: Grant orders, 225–26, 273; Kautz assigned, 273–74; Meade’s instructions, 273–74; preparations for, 275; at Reams’ Station, 275, 277; at Ford’s Depot, 277; and Burkeville Jct., 278, 281; battle of The Grove, 279–81; and runaway slaves, 282, 290–92, 300–301, 308–9; horses killed in, 282–83; depredations during, 282–83, 306–8; battle of Staunton River Bridge, 285–89; battle of Sappony Church, 292–97; first battle of Reams’ Station, 296–99, 301, 309; return to Union lines, 299–301, 304; analysis of, 303, 305–7; casualties at, Index

304–5; effect on Confederate supplies, 336, 347 Wilson’s Depot, Va., 278 Wilson’s division, 225; crosses James River, 174, 273; and Wilson-Kautz Raid, 278, 290, 299 Windmill Point, 63, 66–67, 69, 85, 115, 303, 306 Windsor Shades, 47, 55, 73–74 Winfree house, 128 Wing, Lt. George H., 505–6 Winthrop, Capt. Steven, 450–51 Wise, Lt. E. N., 436 Wise, Brig. Gen. Henry Alexander, 2, 131, 141, 148, 152, 321, 473; background of, 92; as Petersburg District commander, 92, 377, 535n28; on June 15, 93, 98, 120–21, 535–36n31, 539n80; on bombardment of Petersburg, 312; on black troops, 396 Wise, John Sargent, 473 Wise’s Brigade, 92, 108, 120–21, 131, 143, 148, 151–52, 158, 164, 166, 168, 176–77, 206, 377, 431, 483, 515, 546n59 Wiswall, Cpl. Thomas, 305 Wofford, Brig. Gen. William T., 410 Wofford’s Brigade, 410–11, 601n88 Womack, Pvt. Edmund Lockett, 502 Wright, Capt. Albert D., 462 Wright, Brig. Gen. Ambrose “Rans,” 485 Wright, Lt. Benjamin, 210 Wright, Lt. Col. Elias, 107–9 Wright, Col. Gilbert J., 263, 294 Wright, Maj. Gen. Horatio G., 21–22, 26, 155, 162, 228, 302, 364; and movement to James River, 47, 54–55; on June 18, 208–9; on Meade, 214, 369; and Second Offensive, 230–31, 254; on June 22, 235– 36, 239, 245, 247–48; on June 23, 249–53; and detachment to Washington, 360–62 Wright, Capt. Samuel T., 180, 377 Wright, Col. William B., 443 Wright’s (Virginia) Battery, 104, 377–78, 596n14; at battle of the Crater, 449, 451– 53, 457, 464, 476, 487, 501 Wright’s Brigade (Gibson’s), 239–40, 244, 252 711

Wright’s Brigade (Hall’s). See Hall’s brigade Wyliesville, Va., 285, 290, 576n84 Wyman, Cpl. Arthur, 222 Young, Capt. Edward R., 132 Young, Capt. Henry F., 482

Young, Lt. William B., 499–500 Young’s Brigade, 263, 294 Young’s Yorktown (Virginia) Battery, 132, 548n85 Zimmerman, Pvt. John R., 224

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