BREVET MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN F. HARTRANFT. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
The time and opportunity to make these dispositions were due entirely to the stubborn courage of the 200th Regiment.4 Its courage and steadiness undoubtedly saved that part of the army severe punishment; and although we did not know it at the time, and were apparently awaiting the attack of a superior force, it had recaptured Fort Stedman in its twenty-minutes fight.
Riding along on the other flank, the whole scene of operations on the opposite slope was spread out before me. On a semicircle of a mile and a half, five regiments and detachments, nearly 4000 men, were ready to charge.
At 7:30 o’clock the long line of the 211th lifted itself with cadenced step over the brow of the hill and swept down in magnificent style toward Fort Stedman. The success of the manœuvre was immediate and complete. The enemy, apparently taken by surprise and magnifying the mass pouring down the hill into the sweep of a whole brigade, began to waver, and the rest of the Third Division, responding to the signal, rose with loud cheers and sprang forward to the charge. So sudden and impetuous was the advance that many of the enemy’s skirmishers and infantry in front of the works, throwing down their arms and rushing in to get out of the fire between the lines, looked in the distance like a counter-charge, and the rest were forced back into the works in such masses that the victors were scarcely able to deploy among the crowds of their prisoners. The 208th stormed Batteries XI and XII5 and the lines to the fort; the 207th carried the west angle of Fort Stedman, the 205th and 211th the rear, the 200th the east angle, and the 209th Battery X and the remaining line to the right. These were taken almost simultaneously, and it is impossible to say which flag was first planted on the works. There was a momentary hand-to-hand struggle for the rebel flags in the batteries and fort. The substantial trophies of the victory were some 1600 prisoners and a large number of small-arms. The prisoners were mostly passed through the lines to the rear, to be picked up and claimed by other commands, and all but one of the captured flags were claimed and taken from the soldiers by unknown officers.
Just as the 211th moved I received orders to delay the assault until the arrival of a division of the Sixth Army Corps, on its way to support me. As the movement was begun, it was doubtful whether the countermand would reach the regiments on the extreme right and left in time. Besides, I had no doubt of the result, and therefore determined to take the responsibility.
The losses in the assault were unexpectedly light. Then was reaped the full advantage of the work of the gallant 200th. This regiment lost in killed and wounded—mostly in its fight in the morning—122 out of a total loss for the division of 260.6 The losses of the enemy must have been very heavy.7
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1 Condensed, with revisions by the author, from the “Philadelphia Press” for March 17th, 1886.
2 General Hartranft’s division was composed of the 200th, 208th, and 209th Pennsylvania, forming the First Brigade, under Lieutenant-Colonel W.H.H. McCall, and the 205th, 207th, and 211th Pennsylvania, forming the Second Brigade, under Colonel Joseph A. Mathews.—EDITORS.
3 General Parke, in his report, calls these the enemy’s skirmishers; General A. A. Humphreys, in “The Virginia Campaign of 1864–65,” says: “Those whom General Parke calls skirmishers were probably the three detachments of Gordon’s troops sent to capture the rear forts.” General Gordon has since told me that he never heard from these detachments; not one of them returned to report. They must have been the ones who cut the telegraph lines to City Point, and I must have ridden on my way to General Willcox’s headquarters, between them and the enemy in the forts. What the 200th attacked was, in my judgment, a heavy line and groups of skirmishers.—J.F.H.
4 Officers and men of the 14th New York Heavy Artillery, who escaped from Fort Stedman, say that they formed a line at this point, fought, and captured prisoners. Major Mathews, commanding 17th Michigan, of the Second Brigade, makes a similar statement regarding his regiment.—EDITORS.
5 Lieutenant Stevenson’s letter contains the statement that Company K, of the 100th Pennsylvania, was in possession of Battery XII when General Hartranft’s men charged, having left Fort Haskell some time before.—EDITORS.
6 A writer in “The Century” magazine for September, 1887, claims for the troops in Fort Haskell, reënforced by the 14th New York Heavy Artillery, the merit of recapturing Fort Stedman, and that the Third Division of Pennsylvanians merely advanced at 8 o’clock and re-occupied the positions. Such a claim is extravagantly absurd, and disproved at once by a reference to the official table of losses. The Ninth Corps lost 507 in killed and wounded; of these 260 were in the Third Division, 73 in the 100th Pennsylvania, and 37 in the 57th Massachusetts, of the First Division, and 37 in the Artillery Brigade,—in all, 407, showing conclusively who did the bulk of the fighting. The losses of the 14th New York were comparatively light in killed and wounded, the greater part happening in Fort Stedman, where 201 of them were captured. The veteran steadiness and good fighting of the 100th Pennsylvania saved Fort Haskell, as the reports and returns clearly indicate. Since the publication of the article in “The Century” I have seen General Gordon and his adjutant-general, Colonel Hy. Kyd. Douglas, who assure me that for the moment, whatever desultory attacks may have been made on Fort Haskell, they were paying no attention to that work, but were endeavoring to deploy their troops in the rear of the captured line and hurry over supports. [But see this page.] They ascribe their failure to the delay of the latter to come up, to the promptness with which the Third Division was assembled, and to the sudden attack of the 200th Pennsylvania.
In making this criticism and correction I do not wish to be understood as detracting from the merits of the garrison at Fort Haskell, to whose nerve in holding on, under trying circumstances, I had done full justice in the above article long before September, 1887.—J.F.H.
It should be noted that the losses of the several Union organizations, cited by General Hartranft, include those sustained before the movement to re-occupy the lines began.—EDITORS.
7 I transcribe the following receipt, found among the memoranda of the fight. It tells its own story:
“Received of Major Bertolette 120 dead and 15 wounded in the engagement of the 25th March, 1865.
“FOR MAJ.-GEN. GORDON, “HY. KYD DOUGLAS, A.A. GEN.”
If the same proportion held between their dead and wounded as between ours, their total loss would have been a little over four thousand. The ratio in our case was, however, unusually high. The Confederate loss was probably over three thousand. Two thousand (1949) of these were prisoners, the rest killed and wounded.—J.F.H.
CHAPTER 4
FIVE FORKS AND THE PURSUIT OF LEE.
Horace Porter, Brevet Brigadier-General, U.S.A.
It was 9 o’clock in the morning of the 29th of March, 1865. General Grant and the officers of his staff had bidden good-bye to President Lincoln and mounted the passenger car of the special train that was to carry them from City Point to the front, and the signal was given to start; the train moved off, Grant’s last campaign had begun. Since 3 o’clock that morning the columns had been in motion and the Union Army and the Army of Northern Virginia were soon locked in a death-grapple. The President remained at City Point, where he could be promptly informed of the progress of the movement.
The military railroad connecting headquarters with the camps south of Petersburg was about thirteen miles long, or would have been if it had been constructed on a horizontal plane, but as the portion built by the army was a surface road, up hill and down dale, if the rise and fall had been counted in, its length would have defied all ordinary means of measurement. Its undulations were so striking that a train moving along it looked in the distance like a fly crawling over a corrugated washboard. The general sat down near the end of the car, drew from his pocket the flint and slow-match that he always carried, which, unlike a match, never missed fire in a gale of wind, and was soon wreathed in the smoke of the inevitable cigar. I took a sea
t near him with several other officers of the staff, and he at once began to talk over his plans in detail. They had been discussed in general terms before starting out from City Point. It was his custom, when commencing a movement in the field, to have his staff-officers understand fully the objects he wished to accomplish, and what each corps of the army was expected to do in different emergencies, so that these officers, when sent to distant points of the line, might have a full comprehension of the general’s intentions, and so that, when communication with him was impossible or difficult, they might be able to instruct the subordinate commanders intelligently as to the intentions of the general-in-chief.
MUSIC ON SHERIDAN’S LINE OF BATTLE.
For a month or more General Grant’s chief apprehension had been that the enemy might suddenly pull out from his intrenchments and fall back into the interior, where he might unite with General Joe Johnston against Sherman and force our army to follow Lee to a great distance from its base. General Grant had been sleeping with one eye open and one foot out of bed for many weeks, in the fear that Lee would thus give him the slip. He did not dare delay his movements against the enemy’s right until the roads became dry enough to permit an army to move comfortably, for fear Lee would himself take advantage of the good roads to start first. Each army, in fact, was making preparations for either a fight or a foot-race—or both. Sheridan, with his cavalry command, had been ordered to move out in the direction of Dinwiddie Court House, and to be ready to strike the enemy’s right and rear. It was the intention, as soon as he could take up a good position for this purpose, to reënforce him with a corps of infantry, and cut off Lee’s retreat in the direction of Danville, in case we should break through his intrenched lines in front of Petersburg, and force him from his position there.
The weather had been fair for several days, and the roads were getting in good condition for the movement of troops; that is, as good as could be expected, through a section of country in which the dust in summer was generally so thick that the army could not see where to move, and the mud in winter was so deep that it could not move anywhere. The general, in speaking of what was expected of Sheridan, said: “I had a private talk with Sheridan after I gave him his written instructions at City Point. When he read that part of them which directed him, in certain contingencies, to proceed south along the Danville railroad and coöperate with Sherman by operating in Joe Johnston’s rear, he looked so unhappy that I said to him, as I followed him out of the tent, that that part of the instructions was put in only as a blind, so that if he did not meet with entire success the people of the North, who were then naturally restless and apt to become discouraged, might not look upon a temporary check as an entire defeat of a definite plan,—and that what I really expected was that he would remain with the armies operating against Lee, and end matters right here. This made him happy, and he has started out perfectly confident of the success of the present movement.” Referring to Mr. Lincoln, he said: “The President is one of the few visitors I have had who has not attempted to extract from me a knowledge of my plans. He not only never asked them, but says it is better he should not know them, and then he can be certain to keep the secret. He will be the most anxious man in the country to hear the news from us, his heart is so wrapped up in our success, but I think we can send him some good news in a day or two.” I never knew the general to be more sanguine of victory than in starting out on this campaign.
UNION ARTILLERY AT PETERSBURG PROTECTED BY MAXTELETE. FROM A WAR-TIME SKETCH.
When we reached the end of the railroad we mounted our horses, which had been carried on the same train, started down the Vaughan road, and went into camp for the night in a field just south of that road, close to Gravelly Run. That night (March 29th) the army was disposed in the following order from right to left: Weitzel in front of Richmond, with a portion of the Army of the James, Parke and Wright holding our works in front of Petersburg, Ord extending to the intersection of Hatcher’s Run and the Vaughan road, Humphreys stretching beyond Dabney’s Mill, Warren on the extreme left reaching as far as the junction of the Vaughan road and the Boydton plank-road, and Sheridan at Dinwiddie Court House. The weather had become cloudy, and toward evening rain began to fall. It fell in torrents during the night and continued with but little interruption all the next day. The country was densely wooded, and the ground swampy, and by evening of the 30th whole fields had become beds of quicksand in which horses sank to their bellies, wagons threatened to disappear altogether, and it seemed as if the bottom had fallen out of the roads. The men began to feel that if any one in after years should ask them whether they had been through Virginia, they could say, “Yes, in a number of places.” The roads had become sheets of water; and it looked as if the saving of that army would require the services, not of a Grant, but of a Noah. Soldiers would call out to officers as they rode along: “I say, when are the gun-boats coming up?” The buoyancy of the day before was giving place to gloom, and some began to fear that the whole movement was premature.1
While standing in front of the general’s tent on the morning of the 30th, discussing the situation with several others on the staff, I saw General Sheridan turning in from the Vaughan road with a staff-officer and an escort of about a dozen cavalrymen, and coming toward our headquarters camp. He was riding his white pacer, a horse which had been captured from General Breckinridge’s adjutant-general at Missionary Ridge. But, instead of striking a pacing gait now, it was at every step driving its legs knee-deep into the quicksand with the regularity of a pile-driver. As soon as Sheridan dismounted, he was asked with much eagerness about the situation on the extreme left. He took a decidedly cheerful view of matters, and entered upon a very animated discussion of the coming movements. He said he could drive in the whole cavalry force of the enemy with ease, and if an infantry force were added to his command he would strike out for Lee’s right and either crush it or force him so to weaken his intrenched lines that the troops in front of them could break through and march into Petersburg. He warmed up with the subject as he proceeded, threw the whole energy of his nature into the discussion, and his cheery voice, beaming countenance, and impassioned language showed the earnestness of his convictions.
“How do you propose to supply your command with forage if this weather lasts?” he was asked by one of the group.
“Forage?” said Sheridan; “I’ll get all the forage I want. I’ll haul it out if I have to set every man in the command to corduroying roads, and corduroy every mile of them from the railroad to Dinwiddie. I tell you I’m ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things.” And, pacing up and down, he chafed like a hound in the leash. We told him this was the kind of talk we liked to listen to at headquarters, and while General Grant fully coincided in these views it would still further confirm him in his judgment to hear such words as had just been spoken; we urged Sheridan to go and talk in the same strain to the general-in-chief, who was in his tent with General Rawlins. Sheridan, however, objected to obtruding himself unbidden upon his commander. Then we resorted to a bit of strategy. One of us went into the general’s tent and told him Sheridan had just come in from the left and had been telling us some matters of much interest, and suggested that he be invited in and asked to state them. This was assented to, and Sheridan was told the general wanted to hear what he had to say. Sheridan then went in and began to speak to General Grant as he had been speaking to the staff. Several persons soon after came into the tent, and General Sheridan stepped out and accompanied General Ingalls to the latter’s tent. A few minutes later General Grant went to this tent, General Ingalls came out, and Grant and Sheridan fully discussed the situation. In spite of the opposition which had arisen in some quarters to continuing offensive operations, owing to the state of the weather and the deplorable condition of the roads, General Grant decided to press the movement against the enemy with all vigor.
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