After some discussion between the commander, Lieutenant-Commander K. R. Breese, and the senior officers, it was decided to form three divisions, each composed of the men from the corresponding division squadrons of the fleet; the first division, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander C. H. Cushman, the second under Lieutenant-Commander James Parker (who was Breese’s senior but waived his rank, the latter being in command as the admiral’s representative), the third under Lieutenant-Commander T. O. Selfridge, Jr.; a total of 1600 blue jackets, to which was added a division of 400 marines under Captain L. L. Dawson.
The whole force marched up the beach and lay down under its cover just outside rifle range, awaiting the movements of the army. We were formed by the flank, and our long line flying numerous flags gave a formidable appearance from the fort, and caused the Confederates to divide their forces, sending more than one-half to oppose the naval assault.
At a preconcerted signal the sailors sprang forward to the assault, closely following the water’s edge, where the inclined beach gave them a slight cover. We were opened upon in front by the great mound battery, and in flank by the artillery of the half-moon battery, and by the fire of a thousand rifles. Though many dropped rapidly under this fire, the column never faltered, and when the angle where the two faces of the fort unite was reached the head halted to allow the rear to come up. This halt was fatal, for as the others came up they followed suit and lay down till the space between the parapet and the edge of the water was filled. As the writer approached with the Third Division he shouted to his men to come on, intending to lead them to where there was more space; but, looking back, he discovered that his whole command, with few exceptions, had stopped and joined their comrades. Making his way to the front, close to the palisade, he found several officers, among whom were Lieutenant-Commanders Parker and Cushman. The situation was a very grave one. The rush of the sailors was over; they were packed like sheep in a pen, while the enemy were crowding the ramparts not forty yards away, and shooting into them as fast as they could fire. There was nothing to reply with but pistols. Something must be done, and speedily. There were some spaces in the palisade where it was torn away by the fire of the fleet, and an attempt was made to charge through, but we found a deep, impassable ditch,5 and those who got through were shot down. Flesh and blood could not long endure being killed in this slaughter-pen, and the rear of the sailors broke, followed by the whole body, in spite of all efforts to rally them. It was certainly mortifying, after charging for a mile,6 under a most galling fire, to the very foot of the fort, to have the whole force retreat down the beach. It has been the custom, unjustly in my opinion, to lay the blame on the marines for not keeping down the fire till the sailors could get in. But there were but 400 of them against 1200 of the garrison; the former in the open plain, and with no cover; the latter under the shelter of their ramparts.7 The mistake was in expecting a body of sailors, collected hastily from different ships, unknown to each other, armed with swords and pistols, to stand against veteran soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets. Another fatal mistake was the stopping at the sea angle. Two hundred yards farther would have brought us to a low parapet without palisade or ditch, where, with proper arms, we could have intrenched and fought. Some sixty remained at the front, at the foot of the parapet, under cover of the palisade, until nightfall enabled them to withdraw. Among the number I remember Lieutenant-Commanders Breese, Parker, Cushman, Sicard; Lieutenants Farquhar, Lamson, S. W. Nichols, and Bartlett.
A loss of some three hundred in killed and wounded attests the gallant nature of the assault. Among these were several prominent officers, including Lieutenants Preston and Porter, killed; Lieutenant-Commanders C. H. Cushman, W. N. Allen, Lieutenant G. M. Bache, wounded.
After their repulse the sailors did good service with the marines by manning the intrenchments thrown up across the peninsula, which enabled General Terry to send Abbot’s brigade and Blackman’s (27th U.S.) colored regiment to the assistance of the troops fighting in the fort. Here they remained till morning, when they returned to their respective ships. When the assault of the naval column failed, the Ironsides and the monitors were directed to fire into the gun traverses in advance of the positions occupied by the army, and by doing so greatly demoralized the enemy. About 8 P.M. that night the fort fell into our hands after the hardest fighting by our gallant troops, and with its capture fell the last stronghold of the Southern Confederacy on the Atlantic coast.
I will not go so far as to say the army could not have stormed Fort Fisher without the diversion afforded by the naval assault, for no soldiers during the war showed more indomitable pluck than the gallant regiments that stormed the fort on that afternoon; but I do say our attack enabled them to get into the fort with far less loss than they would otherwise have suffered.
As a diversion the charge of sailors was a success; as an exhibition of courage it was magnificent; but the material of which the column was composed, and the arms with which it was furnished, left no reasonable hope after the first onslaught had been checked that it could have succeeded.
While kept under the walls of the fort, I was an eye-witness to an act of heroism on the part of Assistant-Surgeon William Longshaw, a young officer of the medical staff, whose memory should ever be kept green by his corps, and which deserves more than this passing notice. A sailor too severely wounded to help himself had fallen close to the water’s edge, and with the rising tide would have drowned. Dr. Longshaw, at the peril of his life, went to his assistance and dragged him beyond the incoming tide. At this moment he heard a cry from a wounded marine, one of a small group who, behind a little hillock of sand close to the parapet, kept up a fire upon the enemy. Longshaw ran to his assistance, and while attending to his wounds was shot dead. What made the action of this young officer even more heroic was the fact that on that very day he had received a leave of absence, but had postponed his departure to volunteer for the assault.
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1 The total number of guns and howitzers in the fleet was over 600, and the total weight of projectiles at a single discharge of all the guns (both broadsides) was over 23 tons.—EDITORS.
2 In a note to the editors Colonel Lamb says:
“The guns of Fort Fisher were not silenced. On account of a limited supply of ammunition, I gave orders to fire each gun not more than once in thirty minutes, except by special order, unless an attempt should be made to run by the fort, when discretion was given each gun commander to use his piece effectively. There were forty-four guns. On the 24th of December 672 shots were expended; a detailed report was received from each battery. Only three guns were rendered unserviceable, and these by the fire of the fleet disabling the carriages. On the 25th of December six hundred shots were expended, exclusive of grape and canister. Detailed reports were made. Five guns were disabled by the fire of the fleet, making eight in all. Besides, two 7-inch Brooke rifled guns exploded, leaving thirty-four heavy guns on Christmas night. The last guns on the 24th and 25th were fired by Fort Fisher on the retiring fleet. In the first fight the total casualties were 61, as follows: December 24th, mortally wounded, 1; seriously 3; slightly, 19 = 23. December 25th, killed, 3; mortally wounded, 2; severely, 7; slightly, 26. These included those wounded by the explosion of the Brooke rifled guns = 38.”
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3 According to the report of General C. B. Comstock, General Terry’s chief engineer, there were 21 guns and 3 mortars on the land front; “of these three-fourths were rendered unserviceable.” General H. L. Abbot states (“Defence of the Sea Coast of the United States,” p.31), as a result of personal inspection immediately after the capture, that out of 20 guns on the land-face “8 guns and 8 carriages (16 in all) were disabled.”—EDITORS.
4 Colonel Lamb, writing in December, 1868, says:
“There were never in Fort Fisher, including sick, killed, and wounded, over 1900 men. The sailors and marines, etc., captured from Battery Buchanan, and those captured in front of the work, while swelling the
list of prisoners, cannot rightly be counted among the defenders of the work. No new defense was added to the face of the fort between the battles. The redoubt in front of the sally-port was there in December and had been used against Butler’s skirmish-line.”
5 Colonel Lamb says on this point: “There was no ditch, merely a dry depression in front of the berme where sand had been dug out to repair work.”—EDITORS.
6 General Terry writes that the column of sailors was within 600 or 800 yards of the work before they began to charge; but Commander James Parker says that the column was under fire in marching to that point.—EDITORS.
7 Colonel Lamb, writing to the editors on the subject of the numbers defending the north-east salient, says:
“Five hundred effective men will cover all engaged in repulsing the naval column, and the destructive fire was from the three hundred, who, from the top of the ramparts and traverses, fired upon the assailants. The gallant navy need not exaggerate the number opposing them, assisted by the artillery. No apology or defense is necessary to excuse the repulse. The unorganized and improperly armed force failed to enter the fort, but their gallant attempt enabled the army to enter and obtain a foothold, which they otherwise could not have done.”
CHAPTER 3
THE RECAPTURE OF FORT STEDMAN.1
John F. Hartranft, Brevet Major-General, U.S.V.
Of the Union intrenchments in front of Petersburg, Fort Stedman, with Batteries X and IX on its right and Batteries XII and XI and Fort Haskell on its left, covered Meade’s Station on the United States Military Railroad, the supply route of the Army of the Potomac. Meade’s Station was the depot of the Ninth Army Corps. This part of the line—about a mile in length—was garrisoned principally by the Third Brigade of the First Division of the Ninth Corps, commanded by Colonel N. B. McLaughlen.
The First Division, commanded by General Willcox, was intrusted with the defense of the whole line from the Appomattox to somewhat beyond Fort Morton, and the Second Division (Potter’s) continued the defense of the line about to Fort Alexander Hays. The Third Division, under my command, was in reserve to these two divisions. The division covered four miles, with headquarters at the Avery House, in the center, the right resting at the Friend House, a mile in rear of the works, north-east of Fort Stedman, and the left behind Fort Prescott.
From the Avery House a ravine ran northerly about two-thirds of a mile in rear of the works, to the Friend House, approaching Fort Stedman to within less than one-third of a mile. From this ravine the ground rose gently to the works on the west, and more sharply to a ridge of irregular hills, on the east, behind which ran the army railroad. About one hundred yards behind Fort Stedman, between the fort and the ravine, there was a slight rise in the slope, upon which was encamped the 57th Massachusetts, and to the left of this, some old works which the enemy had abandoned as our forces pressed upon the city. Between this camp and these works ran an old country road, somewhat sunken, from the rear of Stedman to Meade’s Station. All the undergrowth and fences had long since disappeared, and the ground was generally open.
MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN G. PARKE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
Before dawn on the morning of March 25th, 1865, Major-General Gordon, of the Confederate Army, with his corps and two brigades, numbering probably 10,000 or 12,000 effectives, by a sudden and impetuous attack carried the line from Battery IX on the right to Fort Haskell on the left. This space included Fort Stedman and Batteries X, XI, and XII, and the bomb-proofs and covered ways connecting these works. It was, to a certain extent, a surprise, and the enemy captured some hundreds of prisoners, including Colonel McLaughlen. But before they were driven out of the works or captured, the troops inflicted considerable injury upon the enemy, and the attack upon Fort Haskell, made at the same time, was repulsed with heavy loss. Fortunately, upon the line taken, the enemy could not easily deploy for their farther advance upon Meade’s Station and the railroad, the enfilading fires of Battery IX and Fort Haskell forcing their troops into the bomb-proofs of the captured lines to the right and left of Fort Stedman, which was thus the only opening for their columns to enter and deploy to the rear. Great credit is justly due to the garrisons of these two points for their steadiness in holding them in the confusion and nervousness of a night attack. If they had been lost the enemy would have had sufficient safe ground on which to recover and form their ranks, the reserves would have been overwhelmed and beaten in detail by a greatly superior force, and the destruction of the railroad and supplies of the army would have delayed its final movements for a long time. The tenacity with which these points were held, therefore, saved the Union army great loss of men, time, and materials.
The alarm of General Gordon’s attack reached the headquarters of the division at 4:30 A.M., just before daybreak.
Upon receipt of this information, and of orders received from corps headquarters about 5 o’clock, the 208th Pennsylvania, the regiment nearest, was ordered to report to Colonel McLaughlen, and at the same time written orders were sent to Colonel J. A. Mathews, commanding the Second Brigade, to hold his brigade in readiness to move to the right, if needed.2 On the way over to General Willcox’s headquarters, at the Friend House on the extreme right, I met the 209th Regiment moving from Meade’s Station toward that point, and the 200th, drawn out of camp with its right resting on the Dunn House battery. These movements were by order of General Willcox, these regiments having instructions to obey orders direct from him in case of attack, to avoid delay in communicating through my headquarters, which were two miles away, owing to the great length of the line covered by my command. This movement apparently uncovered the objective point of the enemy’s attack, viz., Meade’s Station, and, although the détour of the 209th finally brought it into effective position on the extreme right, the 200th was, for the moment, the only regiment left in any position to strike the enemy.
While I was talking with General Willcox I called his attention to the puffs of smoke issuing from the wood in the rear and to the right and left of Fort Stedman. It was not yet light enough to see the enemy, nor could any sound be heard, owing to the direction of the wind, but the white puffs indicated musketry-firing, and, being in the rear of our lines, disclosed unmistakably an attack in force, and not a feint. It was a skirmish line followed by an assaulting column or a line of battle.3 It was equally evident that time must be gained, at any cost, to bring up the extended division in reserve to meet it. Requesting General Willcox to designate one of his staff-officers to conduct the 209th into position on the right, I rode down to Colonel W.H.H. McCall, of the 200th, as the one immediately in hand. A small body of the 57th Massachusetts, which had been driven from its camp, had rallied just in front of the 200th and were feebly replying to the enemy. This detachment was ordered forward to its old camp, and the 200th pushed forward to that point also without serious loss. Intending to force the fighting, no time was lost in feeling the enemy or fighting his skirmishers, but the regiment advanced in line of battle. This movement broke the enemy’s line of skirmishers, and those directly in front were driven in; but in the old country road to Meade’s Station, running from the rear of Fort Stedman, by the left of the camp, and in some old rebel works beyond the road on our left, the line was strong and the enemy was in force, while the guns of Fort Stedman just captured, turned against us, were on our right. Sending Major George Shorkley, of my staff, to hurry up the 209th to form connection on the right of the 200th, the latter was immediately led to the attack. It advanced bravely; but the enemy was too strong to be pushed, and the fire from the supports and Fort Stedman was very severe. The momentum was lost a little beyond the camp, and after a momentary wavering the 200th was forced back through the camp and took shelter in an old line of works about forty yards in its rear and to the right. From horseback at this point the enemy’s officers could now plainly be seen urging their men through Fort Stedman, and endeavoring to deploy them in the rear. To prevent or delay this would justify another attack, although the position of the e
nemy on the left, whose flag could be seen in the continuation of the old works on the other side of the road, not seventy yards away, and the supporting fire of the captured works on the front and right, plainly showed at what cost it must be made. It was better to attack than be attacked. The 200th was again led forward and responded gallantly. In the face of a galling fire in front and flanks it succeeded in reaching a fairly defensible position, and for a few moments the troops struggled tenaciously to hold it. Fighting under the eye of the general, every officer and man stood up nobly, and for twenty minutes struggled desperately to hold their own in the face of supporting batteries within a hundred yards and superior forces pressing on all sides.
This was the heaviest fighting of the day, and under a tremendous fire of small-arms and artillery the loss in twenty minutes was over one hundred killed and wounded. The regiment finally staggered and receded. But when its desperate grasp on the position was broken it fell back without confusion and rallied and re-formed at the call of its officers and myself in the old works from which it had advanced.
INTERIOR OF FORT STEDMAN. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
The fort was named after Colonel Griffin A. Stedman, Jr., of the 11th Connecticut, who was mortally wounded in front of Petersburg on August 5, 1864.
While the enemy was shaking off these fierce assaults, the 209th had been able to push its way to a good position, its left resting on the old works to which the 200th had fallen back, with the right of which it now connected and its right toward Battery IX, with which it was connected by the 2d and 17th Michigan Volunteers, two small regiments of the First Division, which also had thus had time to come up and complete the line. This information was brought to me, while ordering the operations of the 200th, by Captain L. C. Brackett, the staff-officer designated by General Willcox, as requested, for that purpose—who also brought word of the wounding of Major Shorkley, of my staff, on the same errand. The 20th Michigan on the line to the right of Battery IX had also been crowded forward into the work, which was now fully manned, and had opened fire vigorously and effectively. A solid line was thus formed against the advance of the enemy in this direction. A ride around the line to Colonel McLaughlen’s headquarters on the left showed that a corresponding line had been formed on the south. While the enemy was engaged with the 200th this had been done without interruption or difficulty. Captain Prosper Dalien had succeeded in placing the 208th, which had been ordered in the morning to report to Colonel McLaughlen, in a good position, its left connected with Fort Haskell by about 200 men mostly from the 100th Pennsylvania, and some few from the 3d Maryland, who had been driven from Batteries XI and XII and were now formed on the left of the 208th. The 205th and 207th regiments, which had promptly reported at division headquarters, were conducted by Captain J. D. Bertolette, of my staff, by the right through the ravine toward the road leading to Meade’s Station. This he was doing in consequence of orders direct from corps headquarters to cover Meade’s Station with the Second Brigade. They were halted in continuation of the southern line, when the left of the 207th connected with the 208th. The 211th, encamped three miles from the field of action, had been notified and was rapidly approaching. The field-artillery, directed by Brevet Brigadier-General Tidball, commanding the artillery brigade of the corps, had taken position on the hills in the rear of Fort Stedman, and with Fort Haskell and Battery IX opened on the captured works and the space around, driving the enemy to the bomb-proofs and materially interfering with the deployment of a line of battle. There was still a distance of three hundred yards between the left of the 200th and the right of the 205th, through which ran the road to Meade’s Station, uncovered. A short time before, Colonel Loring, of General Parke’s staff, had delivered to me, on the way over from the right to the left, orders to put the Second Brigade in position on the hills directly covering Meade’s Station. But the positions of the 205th and 207th of this brigade were so favorable, and the spirit of the order had been so effectually carried out, that it was unnecessary to obey it literally, and only the 211th, now at hand after a three-miles march, was ordered to deflect to the right and take post on the hills covering the station and in support of the artillery.
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