The Last Citadel: Petersburg, June 1864–April 1865

By Noah Andre Trudeau

The revised and updated groundbreaking study of the most extensive military operation of the Civil War—from the author of Bloody Roads South.

The Petersburg campaign began on June 9, 1864, and ended on April 3, 1865, when Federal troops at last entered the city. It was the longest and most costly siege ever to take place on North American soil, yet it has been overshadowed by other actions that occurred at the same time period, most notably Sherman’s famous “March to the Sea,” and Sheridan’s celebrated Shenandoah Valley campaign. The ten-month Petersburg affair witnessed many more combat actions than the other two combined, and involved an average of 170,000 soldiers, not to mention thousands of civilians who were also caught up in the maelstrom. By its bloody end, the Petersburg campaign would add more than 70,000 casualties to the war’s total.

With the same dogged determination that had seen him through the terrible Overland Campaign, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant fixed his sights on the capture of Petersburg. Grant’s opponent, General Robert E. Lee, was equally determined that the “Cockade City” would not fall. Trudeau crafts this dramatic and moving story largely through the words of the men and women who were there, including officers, common soldiers, and the residents of Petersburg. What emerges is an epic account rich in human incident and adventure. Based on exhaustive research into official records and unpublished memoirs, letters, and diaries, as well as published recollections and regimental histories, The Last Citadel also includes twenty-three maps and a choice selection of drawings by on-the-spot combat artists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940669564

Noah Andre Trudeau

Noah Andre Trudeau is the author of Gettysburg. He has won the Civil War Round Table of New York's Fletcher Pratt Award and the Jerry Coffey Memorial Prize. A former executive producer at National Public Radio, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Book preview

Preface

The Last Citadel is a direct sequel to my first book, Bloody Roads South . It picks up the action immediately following the conclusion of Grant’s Overland campaign of May-June 1864 and follows it to early April 1865 —the very threshold of Union victory in the East.

No campaign of the Civil War equaled the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. Petersburg was the object of the longest military action ever waged against an American city. More battles were fought and more lives lost in its defense than over any of the other, better-known Southern citadels: Richmond, Atlanta, and Vicksburg.

For 292 days one of the great dramas of the Civil War played out over the fate of the city that historian Fletcher Pratt called the last bulwark of the Confederacy. Petersburg…, wrote Richard J. Sommers, was the guardian of Richmond’s lifeline to the Southern heartland. Through it channeled supply lines vital to the Confederate capital. Without Petersburg, Richmond was doomed: it was that simple. Ulysses S. Grant wanted Petersburg; Robert E. Lee was equally determined that it would not succumb. When someone remarked to Grant that the Petersburg siege brought to mind the legendary Kilkenny cats, which fought until only their tails were left, he replied bluntly, Our cat has the longer tail.

Beyond the story of warfare, the siege of Petersburg is emblematic of the very clash of cultures that brought on the Civil War. Petersburg was the South’s Gethsemane, the place where its moral character and its belief in its righteous cause faced their ultimate testing. Time and again outnumbered Confederate armies had won incredible victories. By the summer of 1864, despite a preponderance of men and materiel, despite the attrition brought about by the bloody campaign waged from the Wilderness to the gates of Petersburg, victory for the North seemed no closer than it had been in the spring. It was at Petersburg, Southerners believed, that their God-blessed cause would prove stronger than the North’s stomach for further bloodletting. We heard much about the demoralization of Grant’s army, and of the mutterings of discontent at home with the conduct of the campaign, Confederate officer E. M. Law declared, and we verily believed that their patience would soon come to an end.

Southern hopes had a real basis in fact. Abraham Lincoln faced a difficult reelection in the fall of 1864; his decision to try again for the presidency flew in the face of the popular notion that no President should occupy the office for more than one term. (The last to do so had been Andrew Jackson.) There was reluctance on the part of the Radical Republicans to support him, and even the members of his party’s mainstream were uncomfortably aware of newspaper editor Horace Greeley’s declaration that Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He can never be elected.

Lincoln looked in vain to the rutted battlegrounds of Petersburg for a victory. Press coverage of the campaign was without precedent. Each move and countermove was reported in detail, and each failure exposed in blaring headlines. Public opinion became a force to reckon with as the siege continued for month after month without a major Union victory. The response of the Democratic party was to nominate military hero George B. McClellan for President, on a platform that denounced the war as a failure. So likely did Lincoln think his defeat at the polls that he secretly prepared his administration to relinquish power. More than flesh and blood was on the line at Petersburg—the belief in union itself was given a severe testing.

The human side of the Petersburg siege is a dramatic tale of civilians under fire. The hundreds of men, women, and children in the city learned to cope with shelling, shortages, and the tension of living with the enemy at their gates.

Southern morale was surprisingly high at the beginning of the siege, but the military situation at Petersburg meant a slow death for the once mighty Army of Northern Virginia. Disease, starvation, desertions, and the incremental attrition of trench warfare all combined to sap the living spirit of the Confederate soldier. A sallow-faced Confederate veteran summed up service on the Petersburg front with the comment, Living cannot be called a fever here, but rather a long catalepsy. By the spring of 1865, thousands of Rebel soldiers had deserted, and hundreds more were leaving every day. In a last, desperate search for men to fill their ranks, the Confederate leaders voted to arm and train slaves. But it was too late—the final actions of the war were at hand.

In spite of its length and the amount of combat activity surrounding it, the Petersburg siege has received remarkably little attention. A number of individual battles have been examined in detail in books and articles, and the overall course of the campaign has been touched upon in general surveys of the war. Yet the great, sprawling mass of events during the Petersburg siege has defied the attempts of more than one modern writer to compress its jumble of oddly named battles into capsule form. Here, then, for the first time, is the full panoply of one of the greatest campaigns of the Civil War.

Preface to the Sesquicentennial Edition

It is both daunting and exhilarating to revisit what I might call (with apologies to the composer Rossini) one of the sins of younger age. My deep personal thanks to Thedore P. Savas of Savas Beatie LLC for his willingness to take on not only a reprinting, but allowing (even encouraging) me to revise the original book.

Those revisions lie in several areas. On a visual level I have reworked all the maps with what I hope is a touch more skill than I possessed when I crafted the originals in 1991 (my first effort in that direction!), and even added a couple. Text-wise, and in my eternal search for perfection, I corrected all errors of fact (thankfully, not many) that were pointed out to me in reviews and conversations about the book, and even a couple I found on my own. I would like to especially thank Dr. Richard J. Sommers, who took time off from his busy schedule to read me through the notes in his annotated copy, which directed me to details I am pleased to have now attended to. Thanks also to historians Chris Calkins and James H. Blankenship, Jr., who passed along corrections. I also took advantage of the fact that Savas Beatie was not merely reprinting the original to add several pages of new material. I’ll ‘fess up to having learned a few things in the years since the book first appeared, and in some places changed the text to better reflect what I now know, or think I do.

I remain proud of the original version which has stood the test of time and remains the only significant one volume history of the overall Petersburg campaign. I commend this new edition to you with (I hope all) warts removed and text refreshed. Enjoy!

Author’s Note

The Union Army of the Potomac and Army of the James and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia were organized along the same lines. Each was first divided into corps, which were then successively subdivided into divisions, brigades, regiments, and companies. I have generally referred to the various corps, divisions, and brigades of both sides by the names of their commanders: for example, Hill’s corps, Gibbon’s division, and Bartlett’s brigade. This was a common practice in the Confederate armies, but not so in the Union forces. To differentiate between these official unit names and my own unofficial designations, the unit name is capitalized in the former case but not in the latter. When the full name of a unit commander is employed, standard grammatical rules are followed. Some Confederate brigades retained the name of a former commander (Kershaw’s Brigade, for instance, was led by Colonel John Henagan), while others, such as the Laurel Brigade, enjoyed officially sanctioned nicknames. When it was more appropriate to refer to a brigade, division, or corps by its number, the number is spelled out: First Brigade, Second Division, Fifth Corps. References to regiments are always by number and state, hence 13th Virginia and 32nd Maine.

The armies marched in long columns, four abreast. When it was time to fight, these columns changed into double-ranked lines of battle. Either end of a line of battle was its flank, while the regimental and national flags were usually carried in the center of the line. Geographic directions are always given from the perspective of the side under discussion.

In order to free the text from numerous uses of the qualifier sic, I have adapted a variable rule on spelling. Misspellings that convey a sense of character have been preserved, while those that reflect outdated word usages have been changed. Place names and words that normally appeared in slightly alternate versions (Tar Heel versus Tarheel; entrench versus intrench) have also not been altered.

A Note on the Illustrations

The ten-month-long Petersburg campaign did not lack for photographic coverage, and many images from the siege are familiar fixtures in texts about the Civil War, although the most famous one showing huddled Union soldiers in a trench with officers standing above them was actually taken at Fredericksburg. I have opted not to travel over that well-trod ground but have instead chosen (as I did in my first book) to emphasize the work of the Special Artists. These illustrator-correspondents went into the field with the troops and, working from soldiers’ accounts and firsthand observations, sketched all aspects of the siege, from the deadly tedium of trench warfare to the violent moments of combat. Their work during the Petersburg siege has generally been overshadowed by the photographic record of the campaign, which is unfortunate as both have their merits. I have selected some of their original field sketches for inclusion, since these images seem to me to capture the vividness of the moment in a way unequaled by any other medium of the time.

The works shown come from the pencils, charcoal sticks, and paintbrushes of ace Special Artists Edwin Forbes, Alfred Waud, and Alfred’s equally talented brother William.

Prologue

A DISTANT THUNDER

Petersburg, Virginia: A Rebel battery on outer line of the Confederate entrenchments, captured on June 15, 1864. Library of Congress

Chapter 1

Petersburg is to be and shall be defended

Events to June 12, 1864

Ulysses S. Grant

Final Report of Operations, March 1864 - May 1865

Ihave the honor to submit the following report of the operations of the armies of the United States from the date of my appointment to command the same:

From an early period in the rebellion I had been impressed with the idea that active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field…were necessary to a speedy termination of the war… .

The enemy had concentrated the bulk of his forces east of the Mississippi into two armies, commanded by Generals R. E. Lee and J. E. Johnston, his ablest and best generals… .

In addition to these armies, he had a large cavalry force under [Nathan B.] Forrest in Northeast Mississippi; a considerable force of arms in the Shenandoah Valley and in the western part of Virginia and extreme eastern part of Tennessee… . Maj. Gen. W. T. Sherman … was instructed to move against Johnston‘s army, to break it up, and to go into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as he could… .

Maj. Gen. George G. Meade … was instructed that Lee’s army would be his objective point… .

Maj. Gen. B. F. Butler [was to] … operate on the south side of the James River, Richmond being [his] … objective point… .

General Butler moved his main force up the James River [and on] … the 5th [of May, 1864,] he occupied, without opposition, both City Point and Bermuda Hundred, his movement being a complete surprise… .

On the 6th he … commenced intrenching. On the 7th he made a reconnaissance.

On the evening of the 13th and morning of the 14th he carried a portion of the enemy’s first line of defenses at Drewry’s Bluff … with small loss. The time thus consumed from the 6th lost to us the benefit of the surprise and capture of Richmond and Petersburg, enabling, as it did, [Confederate General P.G.T.] Beauregard to collect his loose forces in North and South Carolina, and bring them to the defense of those places. On the 16th the enemy attacked General Butler [and he] … was forced back, into his intrenchments between the forks of the James and Appomattox Rivers… . His army, therefore … was as completely shut off from further operations directly against Richmond as if it had been in a bottle strongly corked… .

On the 9th of June General Butler sent a force of infantry under General Gillmore, and of cavalry under General Kautz, to capture Petersburg if possible, and destroy the railroad and common bridges across the Appomattox.

*   *   *

War came to Petersburg like the ominous wind gusts of an approaching storm. It lurked just below the horizon, threatening but not yet dangerous.

Even at a distance, the conflict had brought change. Tobacco had helped to make the town’s merchants rich in the 1850s, but that trade was doomed once Federal warships anchored in Hampton Roads and blocked access to the sea. Cotton, another big part of Petersburg’s prewar economy, boomed, with six mills operating at full capacity. Other industries appeared. There were factories to produce military supplies as well as offices to manage the labor needs of the vital Richmond-Petersburg region. And as a sign of the terrible power of that distant storm, military hospitals were established.

Petersburg, located on the south bank of the Appomattox River, was linked by water and rail to the James River, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean. Goods from all around the world came into Petersburg, something the United States government had acknowledged by building a Customs House in the city. That building, once a source of civic pride, now bore silent testament to the fact that the world had changed.

Petersburg’s young men marched toward that dark horizon in proud little units; the Petersburg Rifles, the Petersburg Grays, Graham’s Battery, the Lafayette Guards, and the Archer Rifles were just some of the seventeen separate units that disappeared into the maw of Mars.

As the short war went on and on, the land around Petersburg was refashioned into alien shapes. Captain Charles H. Dimmock came down from Richmond in 1862 with orders to erect an earthen shield for the city. Slaves labored to sculpt the sandy gray soil into trench lines and forts, while stands of trees fell before axes to clear fields of fire. When Captain Dimmock moved on, he left behind him ten miles of fortifications, with positions for fifty-five batteries.

The still-distant war caused odd things to happen. One day a warning arrived that the Union gunboat Pawnee was coming from Hampton Roads to shell the town. By the time the story (later found to be false) spread into nearby Prince George County, folks were told that the Pawnee was an Indian tribe sent by the U.S. to ravage the country. Frightened and terrified refugees filled Petersburg’s streets for the first time.

There were tangible symbols of the town’s proud past that remained despite the war. A visitor traveling along the Jerusalem Plank Road from the southeast passed through the Blandford neighborhood, with its cemetery and its Cockade Monument – erected to honor the Petersburg men who had fallen in the War of 1812. The monument’s name came from the rosette that the Petersburg volunteers wore on their caps; such was their dedication to the cause that an admiring President James Madison referred to their home as the Cockade City, a nickname that stuck.

Petersburg’s population was 18,266 at the start of the war; an accounting that included 3,164 free blacks and 5,680 slaves. Their city boasted main streets of cobblestone and granite Belgian block, brick sidewalks illuminated by gas lighting, a municipal water system (which included a reservoir on the town’s eastern side and the waterworks on St. Andrew Street), two daily newspapers, eight banks, a canal system bypassing the Appomattox River rapids, and well-traveled roads radiating out in all directions.

Petersburg’s strategic importance was further emphasized by the five railroads that converged here. The South Side Railroad ran out the city’s western side connecting to the state’s interior. Materials from the south and North Carolina seaboard arrived via the Petersburg & Weldon or the Norfolk & Petersburg railroads. Petersburg’s most direct link to the outside world was the railroad to the east that started at City Point (a port town located where the Appomattox River emptied into the James). Long known as the City Point Railroad, it was properly a spur of the South Side operation, but most residents called it by its old name. All of these routes then funneled northward to Richmond on a single line.

Petersburg passed along more goods to the other parts of the Confederacy during the early war years than it kept. Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, the wife of a Southern military man and former U.S. congressman, moved to her husband’s old district from overcrowded Richmond in the winter of 1863. Petersburg was already virtually in a state of siege, she insisted. Not a tithe of the food needed for its army of refugees could be brought to the city. By January merchants were selling flour at $200 per barrel, butter at $6 per pound, with bushels of wheat costing $25 and bean bushels $30. Yet a special occasion could still unlock hidden pantries. Young Charles Friend never forgot a dinner his father attended in April 1864 in honor of one of the city’s pastors: The menu for the supper was waffles, oysters and coffee, real coffee, then so rare as to give all who partook a sleepless night.

Suddenly, some might say inevitably, the war was no longer just a distant inconvenience. On May 5, 1864, a great Federal fleet steamed up the James River from Hampton Roads. A brigade of black troops landed late that day at City Point to secure it, putting them not ten miles northeast of Petersburg. But even as City Point was coming under Federal control, soldiers from Major General Benjamin F. Butler’s Army of the James were splashing ashore at Bermuda Hundred, a thirty-square-mile peninsula just north of Petersburg, formed by the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers. More than fifteen thousand Yankees were ashore by dawn on May 6, with more coming.

The next weeks were anxious ones for Petersburg. Train after train arrived from the south to disgorge battalions of Confederate soldiers who hastily formed ranks and marched north to confront the invaders. Directing the defensive operations was one of the South’s first war heroes, General P. G. T. Beauregard. Combat erupted on May 7 at Port Walthall Junction, a mere six miles up the Richmond Turnpike from Petersburg’s northern corporate limits. At the same time, blue-coated cavalry operating out of Suffolk, to the south, tore up sections of the Norfolk and Weldon railroads. On May 9, units from two Union corps pushed south along the Richmond Turnpike and threatened to cross Swift Creek, the last significant water barrier shielding Petersburg above the Appomattox. This threat evaporated as Confederate forces from Richmond engaged the other wing of the Yankee army at Chester Station on May 10. The Federals concentrated their force northward, and for four days – from May 12 to May 16 – gunfire rattled and cannon boomed around the earthworks protecting Drewry’s Bluff.

The mounted Federal raiders returned, this time striking at the South Side Railroad. Then, incredibly, the outnumbered Confederates rolled the enemy back into the Bermuda Hundred peninsula. They frantically scratched a line of trenches across its relatively narrow neck, effectively blocking any further westward movement by Butler’s men.

Among the Petersburg soldiers killed during this period was Julian Ruffin, a gunner in Martin’s Battery. His body was brought home, where Bessie Callender was among the mourners. There were no pall bearers, she recalled, only a few old men and Mrs. Pickrell and myself helped to lift the body in a hearse; only one buggy to follow, the others walked over the hills. I never saw a worse storm than came on when we were in Blandford [cemetery]. We all took refuge in the old church. Thunder and lightning were severe; at the same time shelling was going on at the Point of Rocks on the Appomattox River. It was hard to tell the thunder from the shelling.

Former Virginia governor Henry A. Wise now directed the city’s defenses. He found himself in charge of a patchwork force made up of two thin veteran units, one light artillery battery, and two battalions of town militia—perhaps a thousand men in all. Wise was convinced that the greatest threat came from the Union troops at City Point, so he posted most of his command along the eastern Dimmock line to block the direct routes from that quarter.

The optimistic were willing to believe that the worst danger had passed by early June. Butler remained bottled and inactive in Bermuda Hundred. The main combat was north of the James, where the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had been slugging it out since May 5. Many citizen-soldiers began taking unauthorized furloughs to attend to business in town. During a surprise visit to Major Fletcher H. Archer’s militia camp, General Wise asked for the unit’s commander and was told he was away in Petersburg. Yes, Wise fumed, and if the enemy were to come, you would all be there in less time than it would take a cannon ball to reach there.

*   *   *

The morning of June 9th came quietly [in Petersburg], remembered Bessie Callender. Anne Banister recollected the start of this day with a touch more poetry: The sun had risen that morning over the sleepy old town brightly and except for anxious thoughts of the absent ones, all hearts were happy and bright as the day. Sarah Pryor’s first impressions were olfactory ones: The magnolia grandiflora was in full flower, bee- haunted honey-locusts perfumed the warm air, almost extinguishing the peachy odor of the microphylla roses, graceful garlands of jessamine hung over the trellised front porches.

It was about 9:00 a.m.

Recalled Fanny Waddell, [A] sound broke upon our ears which palsied our very hearts. It was the sullen roar of cannon and musketry along our lines, and the tolling of the City Hall bell, the signal which summoned grandsires and boys to the defence of their homes. [Every] bell in the town began to toll and to clang, seconded Anne Banister, until every household was aroused and alarmed to know what could be the matter.

Standing in the doorway of her home, located on south Jefferson Street along Petersburg’s southern heights, Bessie Callender asked a friend what was happening. There is a heavy force advancing up the Jerusalem Plank Road and few of the home guard are there to prevent their taking the town, was the chilling reply.

Men who had been going about their normal routines dropped everything, grabbed the antique firearms they had been issued, and hurried over crossroads and paths to rally at Major Archer’s camp, about two miles out the Jerusalem Plank Road from the city limits. Banker William C. Banister, though too old for military service and nearly deaf, hefted his musket to join the trickle of men, explaining, This is no time for anyone to stand back. The others who moved toward the threatened point included Anthony Keiley, a young lawyer and legislator who was exempt from military service; Raleigh Colston, a Confederate officer in town awaiting reassignment; druggists George B. Jones and Francis Major; and Bessie Callender’s husband, David. The youngest among this scratch force was fourteen; at sixty-one, William Banister was the oldest. By 10:00 a.m. those prepared to fight had cleared the streets. The city now belonged to the women, children, and men who were not able or willing to take up arms.

The next hours passed slowly. It was, Fanny Waddell remembered, a long weary day. She lay at home in bed, sick with fever, listening. I could hear the roar and the din of the fierce conflict going on at our very doors nearly; sometimes the firing would be so near, our hearts would stand still expecting every minute to see the enemy rush in.

After watching her husband troop off toward the Jerusalem Plank Road, Bessie Callender waited fretfully for news. A slave who had been working outside in the garden came indoors sometime between noon and 1:00 p.m. and exclaimed, Missus, don’t you hear firing where Master is? Bessie went out into the garden, the servant following. Missus, he said, the Yankees are very near here. Don’t you hear them cheering? I see them coming back of the reservoir. If correct, this meant that the enemy riders had overwhelmed the militia line and were entering Petersburg itself. Bessie Callender returned inside and climbed the stairs to an upper window with a commanding view of the open ground east of the reservoir. I saw that it was true, she remembered thinking, that the enemy was near the city … . I knew the men I saw were Federal soldiers by the caps they wore, our men wearing slouch hats. She ran from the house to spread the alarm.

Other people were gathering near the city waterworks, anxious for news. Then, dramatically, help began to arrive. Graham’s Virginia Battery had force-marched seven miles from Port Walthall Junction, and its commander, Captain Edward Graham, was in no mood for polite behavior. Lossie Hill was one of the civilians who scattered frantically as Graham’s gunners careened along Bollingbrook and Sycamore streets. I thought I would be run over, she recalled. Capt. Ned Graham seeing me, and possibly others in the way, impatiently said to his men, ‘Damn the women! Run over them if they don’t get out of the way!’

In E. O. Hinton’s drugstore, on the corner of Sycamore and Lombard streets, several city officials had gathered to discuss matters. One of them, Thomas Campbell, scoffed at the idea that a large Federal force could be on the plank road and warranted that if he had 2,500 men, he would drive every Yankee this side of City Point into [the] James River before sunset. A messenger from the front appeared at that moment and shouted, Gentlemen, hell is to pay! The Yankees in considerable force have advanced…on the Jerusalem Plank Road, [and] have broken our lines. The discussion group scattered, and Tom Campbell vanished like a sora, a skittish marsh bird.

Druggist Hinton ran outside in time to see Graham’s battery rattle past. He was startled to see one of the cannon barrels slide off its wheels and tumble into a heap. The frantic gunners clambered over the wreckage, replaced a coupling pin, and, Hinton remembered with proud wonder, on went the gun seemingly as rapidly as before. Hardly had Graham’s dust settled when elements of Colonel Dennis D. Ferebee’s 4th North Carolina Cavalry, also detached from Bermuda Hundred, galloped by on their way toward the broken lines. Riding with them was Brigadier General James Dearing. These horsemen, and Graham’s cannoneers, represented all the help Beauregard could provide in response to Henry Wise’s urgent requests for reinforcements. Minutes afterward, Hinton continued, the welcome booming of the artillery … showed that Graham … was at work with his guns. Graham’s and Dearing’s bold defense southeast of town along Lieutenant Run stopped a Federal thrust westward from the Jerusalem Plank Road. A second Yankee group pushing northward along the lane collided with a scratch force of convalescents and veteran units hustled over from the eastern Dimmock line. This swarming defense not only halted the hesitant probe but turned it back on its tracks. By 3:00 p.m., the firing had died down to an occasional shot, and then the blue-coated raiders were gone.

It would be afterwards determined that three strong Union columns had threatened Petersburg this day. A 5,300-man infantry force led by Major General Quincy A. Gillmore moved against the Dimmock line from the northeast, following the City Point road and railroad. These Yankees drew up menacingly before the Confederate earthworks, but beyond some exploratory forays against the line, there was no serious assault. A second body of infantry approached from the east, along Jordan Point Road. This force, made up of 1,300 black soldiers, also did little more than demonstrate. For all intents and purposes, the fighting northeast and east of town was over by noon.

It was around that time when a third Federal column—a 1,300-man cavalry command led by Brigadier General August V. Kautz, which had swung wide to the east and south—pushed north along the Jerusalem Plank Road. Kautz’s leading elements hit the town militia guarding the Dimmock line near the point where it crossed the plank road, at Battery 27, not far from Rives’ Farm. Major Archer’s civilians held their line against those first probings, but a coordinated Union assault at around 1:15 p.m. collapsed the defenses like a row of dominoes. However, Archer’s stubborn stand bought enough time for Henry Wise to detach three companies of the veteran 46th Virginia and a detachment of the 7th Confederate Cavalry from the eastern Dimmock line to counter the threat. The citizen-soldiers of Petersburg had made this possible, but at a terrible cost: of the 125 or so who made their stand near Battery 27, fifteen were killed, eighteen wounded, and forty-five captured.

Raleigh Colston, Francis Major, and David Callender survived the action. Anthony Keiley, the exempt Confederate politician, was among those taken prisoner. The list of the dead included John E. Friend, druggist George Jones, and William Banister. It was said that the latter’s deafness prevented him from hearing demands to surrender and he fought until the Yankees shot him down. Anne Banister was standing on her porch with her mother and sister when my uncle … drove up in a wagon with my father’s lifeless body shot through the head, his gray hair dabbled in blood … . [In] a few seconds [my mother] … was kneeling by my father in such grief as I had never seen before. Anne’s mother was not alone in her sorrow. Recalled Charles Friend, That evening universal mourning was over the town, for the young and old were lying dead in many homes.

The funerals began the next day and continued into Saturday. Dr. John Herbert Claiborne, a Petersburg native and director of the city’s military hospitals, wrote to his wife on Sunday, Yesterday was a gloomy day here—funerals all day and the enemy constantly looked for in force.

Federal reports claimed to have battled forces many times larger than were actually present, and coordination among the three attacking columns was virtually nonexistent. In a lengthy postwar defense of his actions, Brigadier General Kautz noted the irony that at the very moment his cavalrymen were breaking through the Rebel defenses, Major General Gillmore was marching away from the fighting. It took a teenage Petersburg girl named Margaret Stanly Beckwith to best sum it up, when she wrote: The hand of Providence was with us.

The surprise victory energized Brigadier General Wise, who, in his Special Orders No. 11, proclaimed, Petersburg is to be and shall be defended on her outer walls, on her inner lines, at her corporation bounds, on every street, and around every temple of God and altar of man, in her every heart, until the blood of that heart is spilt. Roused by this spirit to this pitch of resolution, we will fight the enemy at every step, and Petersburg is safe.

Wise’s order was dated June 12, 1864.

Chapter 2

It was a marvel of a move

June 12 - 14, 1864

Ulysses S. Grant

Final Report of Operations, March 1864 - May 1865

The movement of the Army of the Potomac commenced early on the morning of the 4th of May, [1864,] under the immediate direction and orders of Major-General Meade… . Early on the 5th the advance corps… . met and engaged the enemy outside his intrenchments near Mine Run. The battle raged furiously all day… .

The battle of the Wilderness was renewed by us at 5 o’clock on the morning of the 6th, and continued with unabated fury until darkness set in, each army holding substantially the same position that they had on the evening of the 5th… . On the night of the 7th the march was commenced toward Spotsylvania Court-House, the Fifth Corps moving on the most direct road… . On the 8th General Warren met a force of the enemy which had been sent out to oppose and delay his advance, to gain time to fortify the line taken up at Spotsylvania… . The 9th, 10th, and 11th were spent in maneuvering and fighting, without decisive results… . Early on the morning of the 12th a general attack was made on the enemy in position… . But the resistance was so obstinate that the advantage gained did not prove decisive. The 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th were consumed in maneuvering and awaiting the arrival of re-enforcements from Washington. Deeming it impracticable to make any further attack upon the enemy at Spotsylvania Court-House, orders were issued … with a view to a movement to the North Anna… . The Fifth Corps reached the North Anna on the afternoon of the 23d, closely followed by the Sixth Corps. The Second and Ninth Corps got up about the same time …

Finding the enemy’s position on the North Anna stronger than either of his previous ones, I withdrew on the night of the 26th to the north bank of the North Anna, and moved via Hanovertown to turn the enemy’s position by his right… . On the 29th and 30th we advanced, with heavy skirmishing, to the Hanover Court-House and Cold Harbor road, and developed the enemy’s position north of the Chickahominy… . On the 31st … General Sheridan … reached Cold Harbor, and held it until relieved by the Sixth Corps and General Smith’s command, which had just arrived, via White House, from General Butler’s army.

On the 1st day of June an attack was made … by the Sixth Corps and the troops under General Smith… . This resulted in our carrying and holding the enemy’s first line of works… . The 2d was spent in getting troops into position for an attack on the 3d. On the 3d of June we again assaulted the enemy’s works… . In this attempt our loss was heavy, while that of the enemy, I have reason to believe, was comparatively light .

I was still in a condition to either move by his left flank and invest Richmond from the north side, or continue my move by his right flank to the south side of the James… . I … determined … to move the army to the south side of the James River… . The movement from Cold Harbor commenced after dark on the evening of the 12th.

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More than a hundred thousand Union soldiers were moving along dusty roads on the hot night of June 12. The entire Army of the Potomac, wrote one New Hampshire soldier, was on a wild, night tramp to the James River. For a few tense hours, everything hinged on the actions of a few Federals standing near the north end of a burned Virginia bridge. Their mood was as sour as the smell of the nearby swamplands. Men from Brigadier General James H. Wilson’s cavalry division were to cross the Chickahominy River at Long Bridge to screen the advance of Major General Gouverneur Warren’s Fifth Corps. The Federal riders, under the command of Colonel George H. Chapman, arrived soon after dark to find that work had not even begun on the pontoon bridge that was needed for them to pass over the river. As Wilson remembered it, the engineer officer in charge of the pontoons seemed somewhat timid, and General Warren…would give him no assistance. Lieutenant Colonel Ira Spaulding of the engineers saw it differently, later writing, Reports as to the nature of the crossing were conflicting, and the enemy’s sharpshooters being in possession of the south bank, it was difficult to ascertain the facts. Fifth Corps staff officers had reported that only a hundred feet of stream needed to be spanned at this point, but engineers who had scouted the location were confident that there were two streams, with an island between. The latter opinion proved correct, Spaulding added.

The two officers in immediate command of the site began to work together. Major George W. Ford put one of his wooden pontoon boats in the water, manned by a detail of engineers. Colonel Chapman ordered his men to dismount at the same time, sending the 22nd New York on a flanking swing above Long Bridge, while a squad from the 3rd Indiana crossed with the engineers. A second boatload of pontoniers and cavalrymen was almost over when the Confederates realized what was happening. For perhaps twenty minutes flashes of gunfire sparkled in the night. One of the Hoosiers later described the firing as like shaking a pepper-box. The Indiana troopers scrambled ashore on the far bank, formed a line of battle, and cleared away the Tarheel pickets.

Now the engineers got busy. One group dragged three pontoons across the island to bridge the south branch of the river. The remaining engineers corduroyed the approaches to the north branch, cleared away the debris of the old bridge, anchored their wood pontoons in place, and laid the flooring. The remainder of Colonel Chapman’s brigade crossed the Chickahominy at midnight; right behind them were the waiting columns of Warren’s Fifth Corps. Grant’s movement to the James was under way.

Ulysses Grant had made his decision to move south of the James on June 5, two days after his bloody failure at Cold Harbor. In a communication that day to Henry Halleck in Washington, Grant rejected the suggestion that he place the army between Lee’s men and Washington. He also instructed Phil Sheridan to take most of his cavalry on a raid against Confederate rail lines northwest of Richmond as a diversionary action. Sheridan departed on June 7, leaving behind just Wilson’s division to scout and screen for the infantry.

The plan Grant had determined to follow was a daunting one, requiring disengagement along an almost ten-mile front, a march of nearly fifty miles across swampy, ravine-rippled ground, and the bridging of a tidal river at a point where it was a half-mile wide. To further complicate matters, the crossing place could be reached by Confederate gunboats operating out of Richmond.

Grant dispatched his aides Cyrus Comstock and Horace Porter on June 6 to coordinate the planned movement with Benjamin Butler, whose army held positions south of the James, at Bermuda Hundred and City Point. The lieutenant general instructed George Meade on June 9 to have his Chief of Engineers, Major James C. Duane, select and intrench a line in the rear of the position at Cold Harbor, to be held while the army was withdrawing. Duane finished the job on June 11. Grant promptly ordered Meade to see that all preparations may be made for the move tomorrow night.

Robert E. Lee was anticipating the move even before Grant finalized his decision. He warned his corps commanders as early as June 4 that the enemy is preparing to leave us tonight, and I fear will cross the Chickahominy. Lee’s only hope was to catch the Union army in motion. General Lee is exceedingly anxious to be advised of any movement the enemy may undertake, a First Corps circular noted on June 7. His intentions once the Federal withdrawal was detected had been explained to one of his corps commanders three days earlier. The instant that Grant’s army was discovered to be leaving its trenches, Lee would move down and attack him with our whole force, provided we could catch him in the act of crossing [the Chickahominy].

Even as he waited for Grant to make his move, Lee’s attention was also on the Shenandoah Valley, where Federal activities so threatened the Confederate breadbasket that help was urgently required. Lee sent off 2,100 men under Major General John C. Breckinridge on June 7. Wade Hampton rode out of camp two days later with most of the Confederate cavalry to intercept Sheridan’s raiders. Richmond continued its pressure on Lee to send even more men north. Lee grumbled in a June 11 note to Jefferson Davis that it would take at least a corps to properly do the job. He would release that many men if Richmond so ordered, but warned, I think that is what the enemy would desire. Nevertheless, the next day Lee issued instructions to Jubal Early to move, with the 2nd. corps, to the Shenandoah Valley. Early’s men set out on the morning of June 13.

Horace Porter and Cyrus Comstock returned from their reconnaissance south of the James early that same morning. The two could not give their reports to Grant fast enough to suit him. Porter later reflected that the general showed the only anxiety and nervousness of manner he had ever manifested on any occasion.

While the music of Federal brass bands resounded along the whole line, Warren’s Fifth Corps began its march southward at around 6:00 p.m. on June 12. His men had been given the assignment of protecting the vulnerable right flank of the multi-pronged Union advance to the James. With frequent delays we marched to the Chickahominy, recalled Charles E. Davis of the 13th Massachusetts, where we waited for two hours until a pontoon bridge across the river was completed. A reporter traveling with the corps reminded his readers that the Chickahominy is a sluggish and muddy stream, resembling a Louisiana bayou more than a river…. It runs in the midst of a morass almost as dense as an Indian jungle.

Once over, Brigadier General Samuel Crawford’s division, preceded by Chapman’s cavalry, swung west, skirting the southern reaches of White Oak Swamp. It was a part of Grant’s plan to feint toward Richmond with a small force while the bulk of the army moved quickly to the north bank of the James. Near the intersection of the road from White Oak Bridge, Crawford’s men formed a line of battle, threw up breastworks, and endured an enemy shelling. Our action, of course, noted John H. Dusseault, a Massachusetts soldier, was a bluff.

Covered by Warren’s and Wilson’s men, the rest of the Army of the Potomac went into motion on the night of June 12. Major General William F. Baldy Smith’s Eighteenth Corps moved east to White House, where the men would board river transports for Bermuda Hundred. Private George Buck never forgot the march. Rapid travelling in the sultry heat induced profuse perspiration, which forming a combination with the dense, suffocating dust, literally encased the men in an earthen armor, and the horrible odors from the dead mules and horses scattered along the road was such to make an occasional breath of fresh air a heavenly luxury.

Hancock’s and Wright’s men pulled out of their positions soon after dark and fell back to the holding line established by Major Duane. This was abandoned beginning at around 11:00 p.m., when the Second Corps followed in Warren’s wake toward the Chickahominy. A short time later, Wright’s men moved out. Covering the rear of the withdrawing infantry was another of Wilson’s brigades. Wright’s destination was Jones Bridge, four miles downstream from Long Bridge. Jones Bridge also had to be rebuilt. Federal engineers began work on the afternoon of June 13 and were open for business an hour and a quarter later.

Once Baldy Smith had cleared the roads, Major General Ambrose Burnside’s Ninth Corps eased out of its trenches, holding the right flank of the army, and followed the Sixth Corps toward Jones Bridge. Though the moonlight cheered us, wrote a soldier in the 7th Rhode Island, the march was unsteady and severe because of our wagon train.

The movement was well under way when Grant joined it. Horace Porter observed: Although there was moonlight, the dust rose in such dense clouds that it was difficult to see more than a short distance, and the march was exceedingly tedious and uncomfortable.

The withdrawal was carried out smoothly and quietly for the most part. A Connecticut man noted approvingly that it was not now the custom to inform the rank and file, and the newspapers, and the enemy, of intended movements. Nearly forgotten amid the great movements of the Union army were the small squads of pickets that held the main trenches until the very last moment.

A detail of troops from the 66th New York and 116th Pennsylvania along Hancock’s old Cold Harbor lines was not notified nor relieved until the army had been gone for some hours. Lieutenant Colonel Hammill, the picket officer, succeeded in forming his men in the dark and, before dawn, led them on a forced march to rejoin the corps.

The newly arrived 187th Pennsylvania, posted along the Chickahominy, was also forgotten in the shuffle. The pickets could hear our troops moving all that night…but no one notified them to leave. Lieutenant John E. Reilly gathered his men and found a main road, where he had to guess the direction, as the passing wagons had completely obliterated all footprints.

In was a nerve-racking march. At one point a party of Confederate riders threatened to overrun the small column, but it was scared off by a well-aimed volley. Not until nearly midnight did Reilly and his forgotten force find the army. The young officer was spotted by the captain in charge of the division pickets, whose job it was to withdraw the men. Recalled one Pennsylvanian, He met Lieutenant Reilly with the demand to know where he had been. Reilly’s answer was that he had been doing his duty, and that was more than he, the Captain[,] could say.

Robert E. Lee learned at daybreak on June 13 that Grant’s army had slipped away during the night. According to Eppa Hunton, one of George Pickett’s brigadiers, It was said that General Lee was in a furious passion—one of the few times during the war. When he did get mad he was mad all over.

Artilleryman Robert Stiles put it this way, When we waked on the morning of the 13th and found no enemy in our front we realized that a new element had entered into this move—the element of uncertainty…. [Even] Marse Robert, who knew everything knowable, did not appear to know just what his old enemy proposed to do.

Lee’s first reaction was to cover the approaches to Richmond south of the Chickahominy. A Georgia soldier named Joseph Fuller scribbled in his diary this day, At 8 o’clock a.m. we received orders to march immediately. The Army of Northern Virginia—now reduced to just Anderson’s First Corps and A. P. Hill’s Third—crossed the Chickahominy, moved onto the Charles City Road, and headed toward Riddell’s Shop. Remembered J. F. J. Caldwell of McGowan’s Brigade, 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. As it was, a good many straggled.

When a great army moves, it fills all the roads, wrote correspondent Charles Page. It seeks every country cross-road, every farm by-road and uses it, no matter how circuitous the road, no matter what direction it pursues; so that it intersects some road that does make toward the right point, it must be used. Troops often march ten or fifteen miles, and the point reached shall not be five from that of starting.

Almost all the Union commands traveled hard this day. A weary sergeant in Hancock’s corps remembered, It was an awful tramp for us and half the boys’ feet were blistered. The forced pace also extracted its deadly price. In the 8th New York Heavy Artillery they mourned Lieutenant Henry R. Swan who died of lung congestion aggravated by the exertion. According to a letter to the regiment’s hometown newspaper, he gave out from sheer exhaustion, and was put into an ambulance, but died during the night. Crossing at Long Bridge after Warren, the Second Corps pushed on southward, and by late afternoon it was drawn up in a defensive position near Wilcox’s Landing, on the north side of the James.

Surgeon George Stevens, marching with Wright’s Sixth Corps, later wrote that the men almost suffocated with the dust, which hung over the column like a huge cloud, no halt was made at noon, and the men, deprived of their coffee, choked with dust, and burned with heat, marched wearily toward night.

Wright’s men were the first over the Chickahominy at Jones Bridge, followed by Burnside’s corps. The crossing was completed by 10:00 a.m. on June 14, at which time orders were given to disassemble the army’s bridge. Similar instructions had already been carried out upstream at Long Bridge, where the last elements of Hancock’s corps had trooped across late in the afternoon of June 13. A member of the Federal rear guard recalled that as soon as the pontoons had been pulled to the south bank, horsemen appeared on the [north] shore and fired at us.

Grant’s headquarters that night were at Wilcox’s Landing, where the view of all the Union activity was invigorating. A Pennsylvanian riding with Grant’s escort remembered, The sight of that grand river—it was a splendid day—the gunboats, steamers and sailing vessels, was a novel sensation. We gazed upon the scene with as much joy and eagerness as if for the first time in our lives. Another member of the headquarters’ escort, this one from the infantry, recalled, It was really a treat, a transformation of things generally, to see this river, with its steamboats and gunboats steaming up and down, and the Stars and Stripes streaming above them.

Army engineer Major Nathaniel Michler had earlier in the day selected a defensive line to cover the proposed Jamea River crossings. General Hancock’s men entrenched this line briefly before moving on to their disembarkation point, at which time General Warren’s lead elements replaced them. A reporter traveling with Grant watched as the lieutenant general was informed that the passage of the supply wagons would be delayed a several hours. When a member of the headquarters staff began to complain loudly about the delay, Grant silenced him with an unfinished sentence, saying, If we have nothing worse than this —

The great army supply train was traveling on a track well to the east of the infantry columns. Grant’s planners had hoped that this caravan could cross the Chickahominy at Windsor Shades, but when this was deemed impractical, men and equipment began to gather at Cole’s Ferry, not far from the mouth of the Chickahominy. Work on a pontoon bridge here was finished after dark on June 14, and the slow passage of the wagons began. One Sixth Corps soldier who was assigned to protect the train later estimated that it occupied fourteen hours in passing us. The rear guard and trains were over by June 16 and the temporary span was dismantled.

The Army of the Potomac’s objective was now the vital rail hub at Petersburg. Hopes were high. The capture of Petersburg, wrote Andrew Humphreys, would leave but one railroad in the hands of the Confederates…. Following the possession of Petersburg would be the turning of Beauregard’s intrenchments in front of Butler and an advance toward Richmond.

Robert E. Lee’s only solid contact with the withdrawing Federals took place on the southern fringes of White Oak Swamp, where Samuel Crawford’s infantrymen and Wilson’s cavalry were covering the roads leading east.

Prowling toward Richmond along the Charles City Road at around noon on June 13, elements from Colonel Chapman’s Union brigade came upon the enemy strongly posted in a belt of timber in front of Riddell’s Shop. These Virginia and South Carolina troopers from Brigadier General Martin W. Gary’s cavalry brigade were, in Chapman’s words, disposed to contest the position with obstinacy. It took a dismounted charge by the 3rd Indiana and 8th New York to dislodge the Rebels.

Gary’s men fell back toward Richmond until infantry support arrived from two of A. P. Hill’s brigades. Hill’s men made contact with Colonel Chapman’s line—which now consisted of the 1st Vermont, 3rd Indiana, and 8th New York, supported by the 1st New Hampshire, the 22nd New York, and artillery from Major Robert H. Fitzhugh’s reserve brigade—at about 6:00 p.m. According to adjutant Graham Daves of the 22nd North Carolina, some of the regiment passed at one time over an open knoll, which had been cleared for artillery two years before, where they received the full fire of Wilson’s men and lost heavily, but still pressed on.

Chapman’s riders retreated to the entrenched position held by Crawford’s infantrymen, and the two sides contented themselves with some long-distance shelling and sniping. Federal losses for the day were put at three hundred killed or wounded.

In his postwar memoirs, Union cavalry commander Wilson remembered this day as a period of extraordinary anxiety and hard work, during which much ammunition was expended and much noise made.

Lee informed the Confederate Secretary of War, James Seddon, of the Riddell’s Shop fighting at 10:00 p.m. on June 13. Early the next morning the Federals were found to have faded back from their entrenchments, and the few prisoners who were picked up reported that their comrades were heading toward Harrison’s Landing, a position fortified by McClellan in 1862.

Lee weighed Grant’s options. He might pull the Federal army back to those old earthworks and hold them with the aid of gunboats on the James. Or he could be planning to move troops south across the river with the view of getting possession of Petersburg before we can reinforce it. Lee was sure enough of his conclusions by 4:00 p.m. to inform Richmond that Grant will cross the James River.

The Army of the Potomac began its crossing of the James River at 11:10 a.m. on June 14. Troops from Major General David Birney’s Second Corps division clambered onto a motley collection of river craft and were carried from Wilcox’s Landing to Windmill Point. It was a cumbersome process. The means of crossing were very limited, noted Meade’s chief of staff, Andrew Humphreys, and the landing places, wharfs, and roads were incomplete. The transfer of Hancock’s corps and four batteries of artillery finished at 5:00 a.m. the next day. Considering the facilities at hand, reported a Hancock aide, the troops have been transported across the stream with remarkable promptitude and success. A member of the 108th New York recalled the trip: It was a grand moonlight evening, and as the boys had not enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of being afloat on the broad bosom of the deep for a long time, their exhilaration, caused by the fresh water zephyrs, was manifested by long and loud cheers.

The defensive pocket around the embarkation area contracted as each corps left the north bank for the south. Major Michler’s first position, marked out on June 13, stretched almost twelve miles—from Herring Creek near the old Harrison’s Landing line to the upper part of Wyanoke Neck. Three days later the engineer chose a shorter line to be held by the Sixth Corps to cover the crossing of the remainder of the army and the supply trains. The new position covered perhaps four miles, from the mouth of Queen’s Creek to Tyler’s Mill.

Work on the very long