At Spotsylvania the heroes of the first day were Dick Anderson, Jeb Stuart, Fitz Lee, and Tom Rosser. Had not the cavalry fought stubbornly and shrewdly on the eighth, the First Corps would not have been able to recover the Court House and the crossroads; but if Anderson had not started early, the cavalry would have been defeated before he could have reached the scene. The cooperation of Anderson was cool, well-balanced, and prompt, though deliberate. The modesty of his nature kept him from asserting anything more concerning his march to Spotsylvania than that he kept moving because he did not find a suitable place at which to rest. This may have been the literal fact, but behind it was the soldierly spirit which almost instinctively applies this sound principle: When on the march, the best insurance against the accidents of the road is an early start. An extra hour allowed at the beginning will compensate for an hour unexpectedly lost en route.
Anderson maintained after the eighth the excellent rating he won that day. As for Dick Ewell, it is not easy to appraise him fairly for the period from May 10 to the end of the operations around Spotsylvania. Most of the criticism of his handling of his corps spring from the existence and form of the Bloody Angle. Had the line been drawn farther southward, the difficulty of communications between the flanks would not have been comparably so serious a matter as the loss of a division was. The question as it concerns Ewell is primarily whether his part in drawing and then retaining the salient was such that he had to share the blame along with the commanding general and the chief engineer.
The principal witness is Captain W. W. Old, Johnson’s aide. After describing Johnson having to take a post on Rodes’s right in the darkness, without a guide, the night of the eighth, Old went on, “My recollection is that on the 9th of May the engineer officers, with General M. L. Smith at their head, went over the line and considered it safe with artillery.” In that event, then, Ewell is not to be blamed for the choice or occupation of the salient. Failure to complete the support line must be charged against chief engineer Smith. For the withdrawal of artillery from the salient, the blame rests on the commanding general, not on Ewell. Lee was prompted by outpost statements of enemy shifts of ground. What the intelligence officers mistook for preliminaries of a withdrawal or a new flanking operation was, in reality, the evacuation of wounded and the dispatch of vehicles for supplies. Lee was conscious of his mistake and, as always, was instant in assuming the responsibility for it.16
The next question concerns the time required to bring back the guns. Johnson’s request for their return was sent Ewell, endorsed by him, and transmitted to Long by courier. The courier had much trouble locating Long’s headquarters, and approximately three hours and forty minutes elapsed before a most urgent request from Johnson passed through corps headquarters and reached the officer, distant two miles, who was to return the artillery. To say this is to make it virtually certain that the late return of the guns, which may have been responsible for the loss of the salient, was attributable to the slow transmission of orders. In one sense, then, a courier probably cost the Confederacy the greater part of the casualties of the Bloody Angle; in a sense more accurate, the disaster was due partly to a slow and awkward method of transmitting orders. Ewell’s responsibility for this was that of any commanding officer who fails to correct what manifestly is wrong.
Ewell’s mishandling of the demonstration against the Federal right on May 19 was not subject to the reservations and allowances that have to be made in any examination of his conduct at the Bloody Angle. As he procured the consent of the commanding general to attempt an elaborate turning operation, some of the blame must be put on Lee. For managing it as he did, without his own artillery, Ewell must he held accountable, but he can be charged with nothing more specific than errors of military judgment. Small though this action was, compared to the other battles of May, it must have been regarded at army headquarters as cumulative evidence that Ewell’s mental powers were failing or else that the strains of the campaign were exhausting him dangerously. He was at the front daily, and he was as devoted as ever, but he was not the Ewell of 1862.
If it has to be concluded that Ewell was not equal to the demands of the campaign, it should be said that, next to Anderson, the most conspicuous figures of the operations around Spotsylvania were three of Ewell’s lieutenants. In the restoration of the battle on the twelfth, wrote Colonel Charles S. Venable, “Gordon, Rodes and Ramseur were the heroes of this bloody day.”17
Gordon, as the designated reserve, acted with sound judgment and the utmost speed. Instead of simply drawing a defensive line, Gordon threw forward offensively the first troops he met, formed a line as far to the front as he could, and immediately attacked. Whether or not he reasoned that he would find the enemy in confusion, he did so find them. Federal reports spoke of the counterattack as one before which the II Corps had to withdraw.
Rodes’s conduct was flawless. In the crisis, which allowed no time for deliberate reflection, he displayed the soundest economy of force. His tactics were those of protecting his flank while the greater part of his division fought its way up the earthworks. The achievement was reassuring proof that Rodes had learned much since Gettysburg in the handling of a division.
Ramseur showed once again his remarkable leadership in offensive combat. Seldom had one brigade accomplished so much in fast, close fighting. After Ramseur was wounded, Colonel Bryan Grimes handled the brigade in a manner to mark him as ripe for promotion. Nat Harris was next in merited praise for his behavior on the twelfth. Harris was a well-educated Mississippi lawyer who had raised a company and served in every capacity with the 19th Mississippi from captain to colonel. He was steady and hard-hitting.
Encouraging as were these performances, it has to be repeated that too many of the apt pupils were being killed. The schoolmaster of the army, the commanding general, had to be ceaselessly active in seeking new students, giving instructions to those who survived, and correcting the exercises of others. He explained much of his method one day near Spotsylvania while urging Powell Hill not to be severe with a brigadier who had blundered: “I cannot do many things I could do with a trained army. The soldiers know their duties better than the general officers do, and they have fought magnificently…. You’ll have to do what I do: When a man makes a mistake, I call him to my tent, talk to him, and use the authority of my position to make him do the right thing the next time.”18 It was a limping rule, but Lee could apply no other.
3
A NEW STRUGGLE FOR THE RAILROADS
The period of Lee’s grapple with Grant in Spotsylvania County was one of exciting contest for Richmond and its railroad connections. Here Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard reappeared, Beauregard Felix as some now styled him. His consistent good luck justified the nom de guerre. At Shiloh, after Albert Sidney Johnston fell, Beauregard, as the officer next in rank, held the advantage at the end of the first day’s fighting. He retreated at the close of the battle the second day, but escaped blame for the defeat. In the subsequent operations around Corinth he lost little reputation. After an interval of sickness he took his old command at Charleston, where in 1863 he conducted an excellent defense against an adversary who controlled the waterways.
It might have seemed, in April 1864, that Fortune was abandoning him. A worse assignment scarcely could have been devised than the one Mr. Davis gave him of protecting southern Virginia and North Carolina from an invasion the Federals openly were preparing to launch. Beauregard may have been a poseur, but he certainly was a patriot. On April 14, in answer to an inquiry whether his health permitted him to take the field, he gave assurance he was “ready to obey any order for the good of the service.”19 As it was not then certain where the blow would fall on the seaboard, he was ordered to Weldon, North Carolina. Beauregard named his new command the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia.
Within this large area and adjacent to it he found military jurisdiction confused. Chase Whiting commanded on Cape Fear. North of that, most of the best troops in No
rth Carolina were being concentrated in front of New Bern, where Robert Hoke, under Bragg’s direct orders, was hoping to duplicate his success at Plymouth. These operations were in the separate Department of North Carolina, the charge of George Pickett, whose headquarters were in Petersburg, Virginia. To what extent Pickett was responsible for affairs between the James and the Appomattox, Beauregard manifestly did not know. His own statement on assuming command was, in effect, that the northern boundary of his new department was “the James and Appomattox Rivers.” Beauregard’s language left in doubt the control of the heavy fortifications at Drewry’s Bluff on the James, the important “water gate” of Richmond. The Department of Richmond was about to be transferred from Arnold Elzey to Robert Ransom. Ransom would be independent unless he took the field in cooperation with Beauregard; in that event, as senior, Old Bory would exercise command. Beyond the Department of Richmond was the domain of General Lee, whose control of affairs, in an emergency, was recognized to the southern limit of Whiting’s department. Beauregard’s command, in a word, scarcely could have been more complicated or less clearly defined.
The military problem had unhappy qualities of a nature more dangerous. The War Department was anticipating Grant’s offensive on the Rapidan, and an advance up the James or inward from the Peninsula or from the Southside. The objective might be Richmond, Petersburg, the railroad between the two, or the line that joined Petersburg and Weldon. Great superiority of force was known to be on the side of the Federals. The one hope of reducing these adverse odds lay in the probability that the Unionists would draw troops from the South Atlantic coast for the advance into Virginia or upper North Carolina. Were that to occur, proportionate reduction of force could be made by the Confederates. Beauregard himself already had admitted that two brigades could be withdrawn from Charleston for service in the assailed states, and the War Department would call as many additional troops as the inactivity in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida justified. The alarming question was whether this withdrawal of men would be sufficient to hold Richmond, Petersburg, and the railroad leading from them into the Carolinas. Lee was insisting with the fullest of his polite firmness that the troops “borrowed” from the Army of Northern Virginia should be returned. Besides these, there would not be many for Beauregard.
After the universal manner of commanders who leave one post for another, Old Bory at Weldon did not think the situation at Charleston as dangerous as it had appeared from the Battery. He determined to summon the strongest of the brigades from South Carolina—Johnson Hagood’s and Henry A. Wise’s. With these troops and those already in his department, Beauregard believed he would be able to strike the rear of the Federal force expected to march inland. That was to be Beauregard’s basic plan. Bragg was so advised. Developments came swiftly. Hoke matured his plans for the capture of New Bern. From Charleston Hagood started northward by train to reinforce Lee, and Wise prepared to follow. In Petersburg Pickett was directed to proceed to Hanover Junction and assume command there of two of his brigades.20
Before Pickett could pack his kit, he was notified on the morning of May 5 that the new invasion had begun. The James River below City Point was full of transports—fifty-nine by the latest count—with barges in tow. Monitors and gunboats formed an escort. Pickett read and reflected. Although ordered elsewhere, he could not leave or refuse to act. All the troops at his disposal were one regiment of infantry, the city battalion of Petersburg, the militia, and the Washington Artillery, twenty-one guns, that had been wintering near the city. His first step was to notify Beauregard, who telegraphed him to remain in command and assume direction of troops arriving from the south. As for himself, Beauregard said he was sick and unable to come to Petersburg that night. For counsel and aid from the War Department, Pickett waited in vain.
Pickett could only chafe and wonder and take such small precautions as his force permitted. At nightfall it was reported that the invaders were at Port Walthall, above the junction of the Appomattox with the James, which would indicate their immediate objective was not Petersburg but the railroad between that city and Richmond. During the night of May 5-6 new reports reached Pickett of landings by the enemy at Bermuda Hundred, on the James opposite City Point, but in the absence of directives from the War Department he could do little and plan little. It was a black night for George Pickett. The Federals, if well led, would advance the next morning. They could wreck railroads, seize Petersburg, threaten Richmond. It was a crisis as acute as any the war had brought.21
At the darkest hour of foreboding, about 3 o’clock on the morning of May 6, there rolled into Petersburg a train aboard which were 300 infantrymen of the 21st South Carolina, Hagood’s brigade. Few as they were, they represented a troop movement which might save the city. In obedience to new orders from Richmond, Pickett had to permit the train to proceed toward the capital, but he could count on the employment of these South Carolinians against the enemy somewhere. Hope of saving Petersburg hung on the troops that would follow Hagood’s van.
Tangible assistance of a second sort reached Pickett before many hours. On the morning of May 6, D. H. Hill arrived in Petersburg. He came in the odd capacity of volunteer aide to Beauregard; he had learned of the mounting danger and tendered his services. Beauregard sent him to render such help as he could. This raised hopes a little. Pickett could take counsel with an able combat officer and with the War Department, which now seemed conscious of the desperate need at Petersburg. Bragg authorized him to hold the remaining units of Hagood’s brigade, as they arrived, and use them against the enemy who, Pickett thought, would that day seek to cut the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad. At the moment, Pickett could do nothing more than ask officials of the Petersburg and Weldon line when they expected more cars from the south.22
Before noon, as if in answer, another train arrived in Petersburg from Weldon. Its passengers were 300 more men of the 21st South Carolina, Hagood’s brigade, under Colonel R. F. Graham. Pickett directed Graham to march on the enemy. A battery was sent with him. Gideon himself would have quailed in the face of such odds. Still, orders were orders. Graham and his South Carolinians must march against the host of the invader. At length, after 4:00 P.M., they reached Port Walthall Junction, a discouraged station on the main line to Richmond from which a branch ran to the lower Appomattox. A glance showed the rails intact. Another glance disclosed the presence of troops, but they wore gray, not blue, and carried the Stars and Bars. To Graham’s surprise, they proved to be none other than men of his own regiment, the van that had reached Petersburg during the night. They had detrained at Drewry’s Bluff and marched back to meet the anticipated attack at the Junction. The two contingents had not a moment to greet one another. The enemy was reported at hand and in great strength.
Graham cast about for cover. About 300 yards east of the railroad was a sunken road and a ravine. Into this position, with a prompt decision that would have done credit to a veteran, Colonel Graham moved his 600 men. They scarcely had time to load before the bluecoats began an advance upon them. Firing rapidly, they twice drove back the invaders. After the repulse of the second assault, the South Carolinians held their ground and anxiously watched the fields and woods. Soon there was movement. Down the road from Drewry’s Bluff there marched a small brigade, 800 good Tennessee soldiers, under Brigadier General Bushrod R. Johnson.
This brigade might veritably have seemed to have dropped from heaven. Johnson and his troops had fought under Longstreet at Chickamauga and served with him in East Tennessee. Late in April they had moved from the Virginia-Tennessee border to Richmond to share in the city’s defense. On the night of May 5-6, Johnson was directed to Drewry’s Bluff, and about 11:00 A.M. on the sixth he was ordered to the Junction by the commander of the Department of Richmond, Robert Ransom. Said Ransom, “The railroad must not fall into the enemy’s hands. Rapidity is necessary. Act at once. If the enemy be at Port Walthall Junction dislodge him.” Johnson marched to the sound of the firing and assumed the command ther
e.23
Nothing quite like this small concentration, in an hour of extreme danger, had occurred previously in Virginia. The vital railroad between Richmond and Petersburg, at its most vulnerable point, now was in the keeping of some 1,400 men. The astonishing fact was that none of these soldiers ever had performed a day’s field service in Virginia. All of them were newly arrived from other states. To this narrow margin of men and time was the Confederacy reduced.
The district between Drewry’s Bluff and Petersburg involved in the operations of May 5-17, 1864.
In Petersburg Pickett had notice of yet another serious threat. Word came that 3,000 Federal cavalry with eight guns were on the move westward from Suffolk. To Pickett it must have been apparent that these cavalrymen might be seeking to cut the railway between Petersburg and Weldon, precisely as the force from the James was endeavoring to sever connection between Petersburg and Richmond. No cavalry was available to oppose these raiders. If the enemy reached the Petersburg and Weldon tracks, then the Confederate troops hurrying northward would be detained. With no information concerning the trains then moving, it was impossible for Pickett to reach any conclusion except that the race between the cavalry and the carrier might be close.
The first heat was won by the railway. After dark on the sixth a train brought to Petersburg Johnson Hagood and the 25th South Carolina. Hagood, a forthright soldier, marched directly from the railroad track to reinforce his men at the Junction. Behind his train rolled another, aboard which was the 27th South Carolina. This regiment also started off on foot. Before daylight Hagood’s command had reached the Junction and raised the defending force to 2,668 infantry under the informal command of D. H. Hill, who, at Pickett’s request, had gone to the scene to advise Johnson and Hagood. With all his old spirit of combat, Harvey Hill examined the ground and suggested dispositions his less experienced juniors cheerfully made.
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