1. The American regiments would be allowed to surrender with the full honors of war; officers to retain their swords and sidearms.12
2. All members of the American regiments would be treated as lawful prisoners of war regardless of country of birth and to be liable for exchange;
3. All civilians of Ireland who reaffirmed their loyalty to the Crown, including those who had taken up arms under the authority of the American forces, would be granted amnesty.
Grand terms they were, but they meant nothing if they were not already being made a reality by the RVCs who were marching into every corner of Ireland. Men of good sense, like Captain Norie in Donegal. For these Scots and Englishmen, Ireland was alien, almost like a distant land though their ancestors had been making their fortune there for half a millennium or more. Much of it had not recovered from the famine, its population barely more than half of its pre-famine peak of 8.5 million. Poor it was and bitter and Catholic. News of Tallaght had sent the sparks into all that bitter tinder to set a thousand smolders that here and there sparked into flame.
But Tallaght had been a false hope, more ephemeral glory than conquered and held ground. Meagher had too few men to hold anything beyond Dublin itself, and the few thousand volunteers who had flooded in right after the battle were of no use as untrained men. At best they could man the entrenchments they helped to dig around the city. So the countryside and the towns were left waiting in expectation. Those who jumped for the green flag soon found that they had no weapons and that British cavalry and RVC battalions were spreading over the island like spilled quicksilver reestablishing the Queen’s Peace with a firm but restrained hand.
So it was that Captain Norie came to those villages in Donegal with his 9th Company of the Ayrshire RVC. The first men he sought out were the village priests to pay his respects, an act they did not go unnoticed. He knew the priests were the most influential men in their parishes and there was no better way to spread the news of Crown policy and of the terms offered to Meagher and those who had gone over to him. The men of Donegal were not strangers, for thousands had fled the famine to settle in Ayrshire across the Irish Sea and not a few worked on Norie’s farm. His next visits were to the kin of these men to give them word of their relatives, again an act that did not go unnoticed. He then went to the parents of the few hotheads that were well known to plead with them to save their sons from folly. He also paid in good coin for the provisions and lodging of his men and for a few public works that put food on the table of the poorest. The handful of irreconcilable men he simply arrested and confined, again something that did not go unnoticed. Men like Norie were doing more damage to Meagher than ten thousand more British regulars.
THE WILDERNESS, VIRGINIA, 6:11 P.M., THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1864
Meade had been pitching into Lee for two days, and all he had to show for it was a growing butcher’s bill without having put a dent in the Confederate defenses. Every time he tried to outflank the enemy, Lee was there first and the ground spouting new entrenchments. Those entrenchments did much to counter the increased firepower of Union repeaters. The Confederates were better armed and supplied than Meade had ever seen before. Especially troubling was the amount and quality of their artillery and ammunition, thanks to British industry. The days appeared gone when the Confederate infantry threatened to kill their own artillerymen if they ever dared fire over them because the poor quality of Southern-made ammunition caused all too many rounds to drop among their own troops. Ironically ammunition was a headache for Meade now. Since so many of his men were armed with repeaters, they used them and expended unprecedented amount of ammunition.13 This, in turn, put even greater demands on his overland supply lines. It was there that Lee’s cavalry under Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart was raising hell, so much so that he had to detail most of a division to secure them. Lee was fighting him to an obvious standstill, which made Meade’s already sharp tongue as cutting as an obsidian razor. It did not help that Grant had pitched his own tent and headquarters only a few hundred yards away from his own.
Grant was not happy either. Meade had pitched into Lee just as Grant had ordered. Lee was altogether different from the Confederate generals he had bested in the West, a great captain as he had been warned. The staff he had brought from the West had boasted that they had seen nothing but the enemy’s backs, only to be told by the veterans of the Army of the Potomac, “You haven’t meet Bobby Lee yet.” So Grant just sat there in front of his tent, puffed on his cigar, and thought.
YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA, 2:25 P.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1864
If he had known about Grant’s cogitation, Godfrey Weitzel would have hoped that a good deal of it was about his own desperate situation. Somewhere in the fort the day before, the last hardtack had been eaten. Weitzel had already twice refused Longstreet’s demand for his surrender. Engineers like Weitzel were obdurate and clever men, but they did have to eat. With the river closed to the U.S. Navy and friendly traffic, he could look to resupply by water. He concluded that if the food could not come to his shrunken command, his command would have to go to the food. The problem was that half of one of Longstreet’s divisions lay outside like a cat in front of a mouse hole patiently flicking its tail.
The only thing that gave Weitzel any hope of escape was that Longstreet himself was not there. He was directing the siege of Fortress Monroe now that the British had supplied the heavy siege guns and mortars to pound the landward side of the fort. Wietzel’s only chance now was to break out to the north and march up the bank of the York and then along the bank of its tributary, the Paumunkey River, foraging on the Rebels as they went, find a crossing, and press on toward the Union base at Fredericksburg. As his enlisted servant blurted out, “Nobody asked me, General, but that’s a long shot with a limb in between.”
Long shot or not, Weitzel saw no other choice but a breakout. Surrender was out of the question. The breakout was planned for two in the morning.
His decision would still have stood even if Grant had informed him of his overall decision. The general-in-chief’s problem was threefold—to get Lee into the open field by threatening something he had to defend, rescue Weitzel’s command at Yorktown, and relieve Fortress Monroe and the Norfolk Navy Yard. His decision was designed to solve all three problems. He detached Hancock’s II and Wright’s VI Corps from Meade’s army and created a new force of almost sixty thousand men, the Army of the Rappahannock. Its base would be Fredericksburg, and it would advance down the Richmond, Fredericksburg, Potomac Railroad (RF&P) toward Richmond. Its immediate objective was Hanover Junction where the railroad intersected with the Virginia Central Railroad that went from Richmond west to the Shenandoah Valley. When Hancock seized that junction, he would completely sever Lee’s supply lines while at the same time being in a position to fall upon Richmond or trap Longstreet in the Peninsula (or both)—three good reasons for Lee to abandon his constant entrenching. As soon as Lee began to move, Meade would follow and engage him in the field or trap him between himself and Hancock.14 Since Hancock’s army would be the decisive maneuver force, Grant decided to accompany it.
Of course, Grant was used to the Confederate generals in the West, a far more compliant lot than those in the East who had tormented the Army of the Potomac. Indeed, he had not met Bobby Lee yet.
HEADQUARTERS, PORTLAND FIELD FORCE, PORTLAND, MAINE, 3:50 P.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 1864
Wolseley’s train ride to Portland had convinced him that the region shielding the Grand Trunk Railway line—a series of mountains and water barriers—was a defender’s dream. The closer to Portland, the better it got. From the northern tip of Long Lake to Portland was forty-two miles of lake, river, and canal. The most daunting obstacle was the twelve-mile-long Sebago Lake covering forty-five square miles. From its southern outlet was twenty miles of river and canal to Portland. In that twenty miles a small army could hold a large one for a very long time.
Unwavering confidence made it the instinctive choice. If this had been against an enemy anywhere from
Egypt to China, the British would fall upon them with a torrential rain of blows. Against a European enemy, they would strategically advance and tactically defend, allowing the enemy to impale themselves on a hedge of implacable British steel. That had worked from Agincourt to Waterloo to the Alma.
Wolseley found Doyle to be of exactly that mind. Hope Grant had nothing to worry about in the man’s aggressive spirit. There was more than simple British pugnacity. The siege of Portland had taken seven months, seven long, exasperating months, against a tenacious and skillful foe. The government had not been happy with the slow pace, and every dispatch ship had carried hectoring demands that Portland be taken forthwith. Worst of all, was the British victory at Kennebunk that should have been his. It was Doyle who had left a minimal force to hold Portland while he advanced to attack the relieving American VI Corps. Hope Grant had landed in time to race south and assume command of the battle, a resounding British victory. The laurels had fallen on Grant instead of himself.15 Rubbing salt in his wounded pride, the Americans had sortied in his absence to overrun his siegeworks and camp, something for which he was awarded complete blame. He had much riding on the coming collision.
Wolseley’s train ride had also alerted him to another reason for seeking a decisive encounter. The Grand Trunk Railway was fragile artery on which Canada depended for its life’s blood. The long stretch from New Brunswick through Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont to Quebec made it a magnet for American mischief. As the weather improved, train after train began to run off rails unbolted from their ties. Attacks on British repair crews invariably followed. Prisoners claimed to be from the state militias, but seldom wore anything that could be construed as a uniform. By the laws of war, they could then be shot out of hand and were. The British were not hesitant to do so or to burn any farm of hamlet within a mile of each attack. Surviving farms near the railroads screamed that the owner was a collaborator.
To their surprise, American attacks increased with the burnings. The subjugation of all of Maine had never been attempted; there were just too few troops. The largely rural inland counties hardly ever saw a red coat. For British purposes, control of the coastal towns and the railroad was essential. From that secure hinterland, the militias stirred with the spring. Raids on the railroad and attacks on British patrols had become a constant. So far, Doyle had used only Canadian militia to protect his lines of communications, and there were not enough of them.
Wolseley’s solution, which he put to Doyle, was to concentrate the entire recalcitrant population of the counties along the railroad into large camps to deny the militias any support. Doyle was visibly taken aback. “Look here, Wolseley, this is not India or China. We are not among the heathen. These are white people who speak English! Good God, man, I’ll hear not more it.” Wolseley tucked the idea into the pocket of his mind.16
He would have been more forceful in his argument had he known of Sherman’s interest in the same subject. At that moment Sherman was being briefed by James McPhail of the CIB’s support of the rising of the militias in the occupied areas of upper New England. “General, we have opened a second front against the enemy by smuggling weapons and ammunition and trained men into the occupied areas. We have a network of informants that gives us detailed knowledge of the railroad and British efforts to protect it. They are raising holy hell along the British line of communications. Not only is the Grand Trunk wheezing, but its protection is absorbing more and more Canadian militia. Unlike trained troops, they tend to get out of hand with reprisals and looting, which in turn drives more men into the militia.”
Sherman was a man of nervous energy, and the briefing was conducted as they walked up and down in front of his headquarters. “McPhail, we shall have a go at them presently. Can you raise the militia to a new level of enthusiasm to coincide with it?”
“Yes! Just give me a week’s notice, and we will bring the railroad to a stop.”
“More than that, McPhail. I need the militia to appear on the enemy’s communications in such numbers that they cannot be swept away by few battalions. I want to bleed Doyle just when he needs every man.”
“Just give me a week, General.”
“The clock is ticking.”
YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA, 2:00 A.M., SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1864
Weitzel was intent on his own timepiece as the second hand clicked up toward twelve and the hour hand almost full onto two. Unseen in the dark below was the huddled 11th Connecticut, the forlorn hope of his breakout plan, bayonets fixed and no rifle loaded so as not to give away the desperate lunge until it was upon the enemy.
The night was overcast, blotting out the ambient light of the stars. Only a faint glow came from the south where Longstreet’s heavy artillery was hammering away at Fortress Monroe. The only other light was from the Union garrison at Gloucester Point a quarter mile directly across the York River. So close, yet so far. British gunboats had come up as far as the fort to cut off reinforcement and resupply across the river. The fort’s guns had made that a costly effort, but it did keep the fort cut off.
Weitzel had learned of the disaster at Second Big Bethal by way of Longstreet’s demand for his surrender, which listed in detail the losses of the battle. He had replied that he would not add to Longstreet’s surfeit of good fortune by accepting his offer. Bold words, indeed, for a commander whose men had been on short rations and now had not eaten that day at all. More likely, he thought to himself, it was a case of talk was cheap. Escape was like ten years in jail, as Lincoln was wont to say—easy to say but hard to do.
What made Yorktown so easy to defend was the same thing that would make escape close to impossible. The riverfront of the fort measured 1,200 yards, the landward trace was twice as long, and most of it to the west and north was faced by a very bad swamp. No wonder Longstreet’s besiegers had not bothered to assault. Hunger would reach the garrison long before an attacker could make his way through the swamp. Yet, it was that swamp that had to be crossed for the garrison to escape. Luckily an intact bridge still ran north over the mouth of the swamp as it drained into the York River. A Confederate battery guarded the other end. That meant a sudden and silent night assault with the bayonet. The cloak of night felt heavy with dread.
He turned to give the order for the attack when he heard shouting. “Damn,” he muttered, “Who the hell is that?”
Then a familiar voice rang out, “General Weitzel, stop the attack! Stop the attack!” It was his cipher clerk. Weitzel climbed down from the redoubt as a muffled lantern cast a dull glow on the face of the clerk and another man behind him dressed in shabby clothes.
“Who the devil is this?’
The man said, “Anson Carney, scout for General Grant.”
“Sir, I was about to burn my cipher when the river guards brought this man up with cipher message from General Grant. He handed Weitzel the message. It read, “Stand fast and maintain your position. General Hancock is on his way to your relief with II and VI Corps. Expect him by the seventh of May. Grant.”
Weitzel swore. It was an order impossible to obey. His men had already gone a day without food. Their remaining energy would be better used breaking out to meet Hancock halfway. The messenger spoke, “Sir, I just came across the river from Gloucester Point; General Grant has driven a supply column to Gloucester. Everything that can float upriver has been collected there too. If your guns can hold off the British tonight, you should be resupplied for a few more days by morning. General Grant gave me a personal message for you. He said, “Hold on. I will not leave you in the lurch. Hold on.”
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS, 4:10 P.M., SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1864
Capt. Enoch Greenleafe Parrott decided he had never seen anything half so satisfying in his thirty-three years of service. He walked out onto the deck of the pilot house of the ironclad USS Canonicus and drank in the hellish results of his handiwork. The Royal Navy’s forward operating base on the island was a shattered wreck. What had not been reduced to splinters or sunk was burning i
ncluding warehouses, a dozen supply ships. Explosions in the ammunition dump sent debris and unexploded shells high into the air. Two American transports had unloaded an infantry regiment to secure the harbor and ensure that the British did not return. His ship and the double-turreted ironclad Monadnock had sortied from Boston early that morning, easily fought their way through the few enemy wooden ships on close blockade and fell upon the British base by noon. The corvette guarding the base was sunk with two hits from Canonicus’s 15-inch guns.
These two ships were only part of the fruit of the ironclad program set in motion by the building of the original monitor. They and sister ships had been rushed to completion by Carnegie’s reorganization of defense industries. The day after their sortie, five more ironclads had also pushed their way through the blockade from New York—USS Dictator, Onondaga, Tecumseh, Manhattan, and Mahopac. The last three as well as Canonicus were ships of the eponymous class. Waiting to join them on their journey south was the USS Saugus in Wilmington, Delaware, another Canonicus class monitor. The others were all the first ships of their classes. All were armed with 15-inch Dahlgren guns.17 18
As the flotilla exited the Verrazano Narrows into the Lower Bay of New York, a ship flying the Bralizian flag passed them heading up the narrows. She was hailed by Dictator and responded that she was the Dom Pedro I with a cargo of rubber. The crew took it as a good omen that the British blockade was flimsy enough to encourage foreign ships to sneak through for the premium prices offered in the North. The much closer Union blockade of Southern ports had still allowed enough foreign blockade runners to slip through to sustain the Confederacy for two years. The blockade of the North by the British was a far more arduous task.
Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South Page 35