“R. E. LEE.”
“ATLEE’S, 7½ P.M., 30th May, 1864.
“HIS EXCELLENCY JEFFERSON DAVIS, Richmond:
“General Beauregard says the Department must determine what troops to send from him. He gives it all necessary information. The result of this delay will be disaster. Butler’s troops (Smith’s Corps) will be with Grant to-morrow. Hoke’s division at least should be with me by light to-morrow.
“R. E. LEE.”
INDORSEMENT.
“OPERATOR: Read last sentence ‘by light to-morrow.’ ”
“C.S.V.,
“A.A.G.”
The battle of the 3d of June was a general assault by Grant along a front nearly six miles in length, and a complete and bloody repulse at all points, except at one weak salient on Breckinridge’s line, which the brave assailants occupied for a short time only to be beaten back in a bloody hand-to-hand conflict on the works. The Federal losses were naturally, under the circumstances, very large, and those of the Confederates very small. The dead and dying lay in front of the Confederate lines in triangles, of which the apexes were the bravest men who came nearest to the breastworks under the withering, deadly fire. The battle lasted little more than one brief hour, beginning between 5 and 6 A.M. The Federal troops spent the remainder of the day in strengthening their own lines in which they rested quietly. Lee’s troops were in high spirits. General Early, on the 6th and 7th of June, made two efforts to attack Grant’s forces on his right flank and rear, but found him thoroughly protected with intrenchments. On the 12th General Hampton met Sheridan at Trevilian and turned him back from his march to the James River and Lynchburg. General Grant lay in his lines until the night of June 12th.
On that night he moved rapidly across the peninsula. The overland campaign north of the James was at an end.
Except in the temporary driving back of Lee’s right on the morning of May 6th before the arrival of Longstreet’s divisions, the brief occupation of Rodes’s front on May 10th, Hancock’s morning assault on May 12th, and a few minor events, the campaign had been one series of severe and bloody repulses of Federal attacks. The campaign on the Confederate side was an illustration of Lee’s genius, skill, and boldness, and as well of the steadiness, courage, and constancy of his greatly outnumbered forces, and of their sublime faith in their great commander.
A CALL FOR REËNFORCEMENTS.
After the battle of Cold Harbor, Lee felt strong enough to send Breckinridge toward the valley to meet Hunter’s expedition, and on the 13th to detach Early with the Second Corps, now numbering some eight thousand muskets and twenty-four pieces of artillery, to join Breckinridge; he also restored Hoke’s division to Beauregard.
When Grant set out for the James, Lee threw a corps of observation between him and Richmond. Grant moved his troops rapidly in order to capture Petersburg by a coup de main. Smith’s corps was in front of the advanced lines of Petersburg on the morning of the 15th. The first brigade of Hoke’s division reached Beauregard on the evening of the 15th. On the night of the 15th Lee tented on the south side of the James, near Drewry’s Bluff. On the 16th and 17th, his troops coming up, he superintended personally the recapture of Beauregard’s Bermuda Hundred line, which he found to be held very feebly by the forces of General Butler, who had taken possession of them on the withdrawal of Bushrod Johnson’s division by Beauregard to Petersburg on the 16th. On the 17th a very pretty thing occurred, in these lines, of which I was an eye-witness, and which evinced the high spirit of Lee’s men, especially of a division which had been with him throughout the campaign, beginning at the Wilderness, namely, Field’s division of Longstreet’s corps. After the left of Beauregard’s evacuated line had been taken up, there remained a portion the approach to which was more formidable. The order had been issued to General Anderson commanding the corps to retake this portion of the lines by a joint assault of Pickett’s and Field’s divisions. Soon afterward the engineers, upon a careful reconnoissance, decided that a good line could be occupied without the loss of life which might result from this recapture. The order to attack was therefore withdrawn by General Lee. This rescinding order reached Field but did not reach Pickett. Pickett’s division began its assault under the first order. The men of Field’s division, hearing the firing and seeing Pickett’s men engaged, leaped from their trenches,—first the men, then the officers and flag-bearers,—rushed forward and were soon in the formidable trenches, which were found to be held by a very small force. On the 15th, 16th, and 17th battle raged along the lines of intrenchments and forts east of Petersburg, between Grant’s forces and Beauregard’s troops, who made a splendid defense against enormous odds. About dark on the 17th grave disaster to the Confederates seemed imminent, when Gracie’s brigade of Alabamians, just returned from Chaffin’s Bluff on the north side of the James, gallantly leaped over the works and drove the assailants back, capturing a thousand or more prisoners. Hoke, too, on his part of the lines, had easily repulsed Smith’s assaults. This battle raged until near midnight. Meantime Beauregard’s engineers were preparing an interior line, to which his wearied troops fell back during the night. A renewal of the attack on the lines held by the Confederate troops on the night of the 17th had been ordered by Grant along his whole front for an early hour on the 18th. But the withdrawal of the Confederates to interior lines necessarily caused delay, and, when the attack was made at noon, Lee and two of his divisions, Kershaw’s and Field’s, had reached the Petersburg lines. The attack made no impression on the lines, which were held until the evacuation on April 2d, 1865.
To some military critics General Lee seemed not to have taken in the full force of Beauregard’s urgent telegrams in those critical days of June. But it must be remembered how easy it was for General Grant to make a forced march on Richmond from the north side of the James, accompanied by a strong feint on the Petersburg lines. Then, too, any strategist will see that Petersburg, cut off from Richmond by an enemy holding the railroad between the two cities (or holding an intrenched line so near it as to make its use hazardous), would not have been a very desirable possession. The fact is, that the defense of Richmond against an enemy so superior in numbers to the defending army, and in possession of the James River to City Point as a great water-way to its base of supplies, was surrounded with immense difficulties. And, in fact, in sending back Hoke’s division to Beauregard, and in approving that general’s withdrawing of Bushrod Johnson’s division from the Bermuda Hundred line to Petersburg, Lee thereby sent him more reënforcements by far than he sent to Rodes on the 12th of May at Spotsylvania, when that general was holding the base of the salient against Hancock and Wright and Warren. Besides this, Lee had already detached Breckinridge’s division and Early’s corps to meet Hunter at Lynchburg. And, after all, the result showed that Lee’s reliance on his men to hold in check attacking forces greatly superior in numbers did not fail him in this instance; that he was bold to audacity was a characteristic of his military genius.
BELLE PLAIN, POTOMAC CREEK, A UNION BASE OF SUPPLIES. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1864.
The campaign of 1864 now became the siege of Petersburg. On the night of June 18th Hunter retreated rapidly from before Lynchburg toward western Virginia, and Early, after a brief pursuit, marched into Maryland, and on July 11th his advance was before the outer defenses of Washington.
* * *
1 R. H. Anderson was taken from Hill’s corps to command Longstreet’s, and Mahone assumed command of Anderson’s division.—EDITORS.
2 The news of Stuart’s fall reached General Lee on the 19th.—C.S.V.
3 The first dispatch is from the original in possession of General T. F. Rodenbough. The dispatch to Jefferson Davis is from the original in possession of the Massachusetts Commandery of the Loyal Legion.—EDITORS.
CHAPTER 5
THE BATTLE OF THE PETERSBURG CRATER.
William H. Powell, Major, U.S.A.
By the assaults of June 17th and 18th, 1864, on the Confederate works at Petersburg,
the Ninth Corps, under General Burnside, gained an advanced position beyond a deep cut in the railroad, within 130 yards of the enemy’s main line and confronting a strong work called by the Confederates Elliott’s Salient, and sometimes Pegram’s Salient. In rear of that advanced position was a deep hollow. A few days after gaining this position Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants, who had been a mining engineer and who belonged to the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers, composed for the most part of miners from the upper Schuylkill coal region, suggested to his division commander, General Robert B. Potter, the possibility of running a mine under one of the enemy’s forts in front of the deep hollow. This proposition was submitted to General Burnside, who approved of the measure, and work was commenced on the 25th of June. If ever a man labored under disadvantages, that man was Colonel Pleasants. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he said:
“My regiment was only about four hundred strong. At first I employed but a few men at a time, but the number was increased as the work progressed, until at last I had to use the whole regiment—non-commissioned officers and all. The great difficulty I had was to dispose of the material got out of the mine. I found it impossible to get any assistance from anybody; I had to do all the work myself. I had to remove all the earth in old cracker-boxes; I got pieces of hickory and nailed on the boxes in which we received our crackers, and then iron-clad them with hoops of iron taken from old pork and beef barrels.… Whenever I made application I could not get anything, although General Burnside was very favorable to it. The most important thing was to ascertain how far I had to mine, because if I fell short of or went beyond the proper place, the explosion would have no practical effect. Therefore I wanted an accurate instrument with which to make the necessary triangulations. I had to make them on the farthest front line, where the enemy’s sharp-shooters could reach me. I could not get the instrument I wanted, although there was one at army headquarters, and General Burnside had to send to Washington and get an old-fashioned theodolite, which was given to me.… General Burnside told me that General Meade and Major Duane, chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, said the thing could not be done—that it was all clap-trap and nonsense; that such a length of mine had never been excavated in military operations, and could not be; that I would either get the men smothered, for want of air, or crushed by the falling of the earth; or the enemy would find it out and it would amount to nothing. I could get no boards or lumber supplied to me for my operations. I had to get a pass and send two companies of my own regiment, with wagons, outside of our lines to rebel saw-mills, and get lumber in that way, after having previously got what lumber I could by tearing down an old bridge. I had no mining picks furnished me, but had to take common army picks and have them straightened for my mining picks.… The only officers of high rank, so far as I learned, that favored the enterprise were General Burnside, the corps commander, and General Potter, the division commander.”
THE APPROACH TO THE CRATER AS SEEN FROM A POINT SOUTH-EAST OF THE MOUTH OF THE MINE. FROM A SKETCH MADE IN 1864.
On the 23d of July Colonel Pleasants had the whole mine ready for the placing of the powder. With proper tools and instruments it could have been done in one-third or one-fourth of the time. The greatest delay was occasioned by taking out the material, which had to be carried the whole length of the gallery. Every night the pioneers of Colonel Pleasants’s regiment had to cut bushes to cover the fresh dirt at the mouth of the gallery; otherwise the enemy could have observed it from trees inside his own lines.
The main gallery was 510 8/10 feet in length. The left lateral gallery was thirty-seven feet in length and the right lateral thirty-eight feet. The magazines, eight in number, were placed in the lateral galleries—two at each end a few feet apart in branches at nearly right angles to the side galleries, and two more in each of the side galleries similarly placed by pairs, situated equidistant from each other and the end of the galleries.
It had been the intention of General Grant to make an assault on the enemy’s works in the early part of July; but the movement was deferred in consequence of the work on the mine, the completion of which was impatiently awaited. As a diversion Hancock’s corps and two divisions of cavalry had crossed to the north side of the James at Deep Bottom and had threatened Richmond. A part of Lee’s army was sent from Petersburg to checkmate this move, and when the mine was ready to be sprung Hancock was recalled in haste to Petersburg. When the mine was ready for the explosives General Meade requested General Burnside to submit a plan of attack. This was done in a letter dated July 26th, 1864, in which General Burnside said:
BREVET BRIGADIER-GENERAL HENRY PLEASANTS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
“It is altogether probable that the enemy are cognizant of the fact that we are mining, because it is mentioned in their papers, and they have been heard at work on what are supposed to be shafts in close proximity to our galleries. But the rain of night before last has, no doubt, much retarded their work. We have heard no sound of workmen in them either yesterday or to-day; and nothing is heard by us in the mine but the ordinary sounds of work on the surface above. This morning we had some apprehension that the left lateral gallery was in danger of caving in from the weight of the batteries above it and the shock of their firing. But all possible precautions have been taken to strengthen it, and we hope to preserve it intact. The placing of the charges in the mine will not involve the necessity of making a noise. It is therefore probable that we will escape discovery if the mine is to be used within two or three days. It is, nevertheless, highly important, in my opinion, that the mine should be exploded at the earliest possible moment consistent with the general interests of the campaign.… But it may not be improper for me to say that the advantages reaped from the work would be but small if it were exploded without any coöperative movement.
“My plan would be to explode the mine just before daylight in the morning or at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon; mass the two brigades of the colored division in rear of my first line, in columns of division,—‘double-columns closed in mass,’—the head of each brigade resting on the front line, and, as soon as the explosion has taken place, move them forward, with instructions for the divisions to take half distance, and as soon as the leading regiments of the two brigades pass through the gap in the enemy’s line, the leading regiment of the right brigade to come into line perpendicular to the enemy’s line by the ‘right companies on the right into line, wheel,’ the left companies on the right into line, and proceed at once down the line of the enemy’s works as rapidly as possible; and the leading regiment of the left brigade to execute the reverse movement to the left, moving up the enemy’s line. The remainder of the columns to move directly toward the crest in front as rapidly as possible, diverging in such a way as to enable them to deploy into column of regiments, the right column making as nearly as possible for Cemetery Hill; these columns to be followed by the other divisions of the corps as soon as they can be thrown in. This would involve the necessity of relieving these divisions by other troops before the movement, and of holding columns of other troops in readiness to take our place on the crest, in case we gain it, and sweep down it. It would, in my opinion, be advisable, if we succeed in gaining the crest, to throw the colored division right into the town. There is a necessity for the coöperation, at least in the way of artillery, by the troops on our right and left. Of the extent of this you will necessarily be the judge. I think our chances of success, in a plan of this kind, are more than even.”
With a view of making the attack, the division of colored troops, under General Edward Ferrero, had been drilling for several weeks, General Burnside thinking that they were in better condition to head a charge than either of the white divisions. They had not been in any very active service. On the other hand, the white divisions had performed very arduous duties since the beginning of the campaign, and before Petersburg had been in such proximity to the enemy that no man could raise his head above the parapets without being fired at. The
y had been in the habit of using every possible means of covering themselves from the enemy’s fire.
MOUTH OF THE MINE.
General Meade objected to the use of the colored troops, on the ground, as he stated, that they were a new division and had never been under fire, while this was an operation requiring the very best troops. General Burnside, however, insisted upon his programme, and the question was referred to General Grant, who confirmed General Meade’s views, although he subsequently said in his evidence before the Committee on the Conduct of the War:
“General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front, and I believe if he had done so it would have been a success. Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front (we had only one division) and it should prove a failure, it would then be said, and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front.”
DIAGRAM OF THE CRATER.
The mine was charged with only 8000 pounds of powder, instead of 14,000, as asked for, the amount having been reduced by order of General Meade; and while awaiting the decision of General Grant on the question of the colored troops, precise orders for making and supporting the attack were issued by General Meade.
In the afternoon of the 29th of July, Generals Potter and O. B. Willcox met together at General Burnside’s headquarters, to talk over the plans of the attack, based upon the idea that the colored troops would lead the charge, and while there the message was received from General Meade that General Grant disapproved of that plan, and that General Burnside must detail one of his white divisions to take the place of the colored division. This was the first break in the original plan. There were then scarcely twelve hours, and half of these at night, in which to make this change—and no possible time in which the white troops could be familiarized with the duties expected of them in connection with the assault.
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