The Civil War Through the Camera :: THE INVESTMENT OF PETERSBURG

THE INVESTMENT OF PETERSBURG

After the disastrous clash of the two armies at Cold Harbor, Grant remained a few days in his entrenchments trying in vain to find a weak place in Lee’s lines. The combatants were now due east of Richmond, and the Federal general realized that it would be impossible at this time to attain the object for which he had struggled ever since he crossed the Rapidan on the 4th of May—to turn Lee’s right flank and interpose his forces between the Army of Northern Virginia and the capital of the Confederacy. His opponent, one of the very greatest military leaders the Anglo-Saxon race has produced, with an army of but little more than half the number of the Federal host, had successfully blocked the attempts to carry out this plan in three great battles and by a remarkable maneuver on the southern bank of the North Anna, which had forced Grant to recross the river and which will always remain a subject of curious interest to students of the art of war.

In one month the Union army had lost fifty-five thousand men, while the Confederate losses had been comparatively small. The cost to the North had been too great; Lee could not be cut off from his capital, and the most feasible project was now to join in the move which heretofore had been the special object of General Butler and the Army of the James, and attack Richmond itself. South of the city, at a distance of twenty-one miles, was the town of Petersburg. Its defenses were not strong, although General Gillmore of Butler’s army had failed in an attempt to seize them on the 10th of June. Three railroads converged here and these were main arteries of Lee’s supply. Grant resolved to capture this important point. He sent General W. F. Smith, who had come to his aid at Cold Harbor with the flower of the Army of the James, back to Bermuda Hundred by water, as he had come, with instructions to hasten to Petersburg before Lee could get there. Smith arrived on the 15th and was joined by Hancock with the first troops of the Army of the Potomac to appear, but the attack was not pressed and Beauregard who, with only two thousand men, was in desperate straits until Lee should reach him, managed to hold the inner line of trenches.

The last of Grant’s forces were across the James by midnight of June 16th, while Lee took a more westerly and shorter route to Petersburg. The fighting there was continued as the two armies came up, but each Union attack was successfully repulsed. At the close of day on the 18th both opponents were in full strength and the greatest struggle of modern times was begun. Impregnable bastioned works began to show themselves around Petersburg. More than thirty miles of frowning redoubts connected extensive breastworks and were strengthened by mortar batteries and field-works which lined the fields near the Appomattox River. It was a vast net of fortifications, but there was no formal siege of Lee’s position, which was a new entrenched line selected by Beauregard some distance behind the rifle-pits where he had held out at such great odds against Hancock and Smith.

Grant, as soon as the army was safely protected, started to extend his lines on the west and south, in order to envelop the Confederate right flank. He also bent his energies to destroying the railroads upon which Lee depended for supplies. Attempts to do this were made without delay. On June 22d two corps of the Union army set out for the Weldon Railroad, but they became separated and were put to flight by A. P. Hill. The Federal cavalry also joined in the work, but the vigilant Confederate horsemen under W. H. F. Lee prevented any serious damage to the iron way, and by July 2d the last of the raiders were back in the Federal lines, much the worse for the rough treatment they had received.

Now ensued some weeks of quiet during which both armies were strengthening their fortifications. On June 25th Sheridan returned from his cavalry raid on the Virginia Central Railroad running north from Richmond. He had encountered Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee at Trevilian Station on June 11th, and turned back after doing great damage to the railway. Ammunition was running short and he did not dare risk another engagement. Sheridan was destined not to remain long with the army in front of Petersburg. Lee had detached a corps from his forces and, under Early, it had been doing great damage in Maryland and Pennsylvania. So Grant’s cavalry leader was put at the head of an army and sent to the Shenandoah valley to drive Early’s troops from the base of their operations.

Meanwhile the Federals were covertly engaged in an undertaking which was fated to result in conspicuous failure. Some skilled miners from the upper Schuylkill coal regions in the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania attached to the Ninth Corps were boring a tunnel from the rear of the Union works underneath the Confederate fortifications. Eight thousand pounds of gunpowder were placed in lateral galleries at the end of the tunnel. At twenty minutes to five on the morning of July 30th, the mine was exploded. A solid mass of earth and all manner of material shot two hundred feet into the air. Three hundred human beings were buried in the dÉbris as it fell back into the gaping crater. The smoke had barely cleared away when General Ledlie led his waiting troops into the vast opening. The horror of the sight sickened the assailants, and in crowding into the pit they became completely demoralized. In the confusion officers lost power to reorganize, much less to control, their troops.

The stunned and paralyzed Confederates were not long in recovering their wits. Batteries opened upon the approach to the crater, and presently a stream of fire was poured into the pit itself. General Mahone hastened up with his Georgia and Virginia troops, and there were several desperate charges before the Federals withdrew at Burnside’s order. Grant had had great expectations that the mine would result in his capturing Petersburg and he was much disappointed. In order to get a part of Lee’s army away from the scene of what he hoped would be the final struggle, Hancock’s troops and a large force of cavalry had been sent north of the James, as if a move on Richmond had been planned. In the mine fiasco on that fatal July 30th, thirty-nine hundred men (nearly all from Burnside’s corps) were lost to the Union side. The Confederate loss was about one thousand.

In the torrid days of mid-August Grant renewed his attacks upon the Weldon Railroad, and General Warren was sent to capture it. He reached Globe Tavern, about four miles from Petersburg, when he encountered General Heth, who drove him back. Warren did not return to the Federal lines but entrenched along the iron way. The next day he was fiercely attacked by the Confederate force now strongly reËnforced by Mahone. The assault was most sudden. Mahone forced his way through the skirmish line and then turned and fought his opponents from their rear. Another of his divisions struck the Union right wing. In this extremity two thousand of Warren’s troops were captured and all would have been lost but for the timely arrival of Burnside’s men.

Two days later the Southerners renewed the battle and now thirty cannon poured volley after volley upon the Fifth and Ninth corps. The dashing Mahone again came forward with his usual impetuousness, but the blue line finally drove Lee’s men back. And so the Weldon Railroad fell into the hands of General Grant. Hancock, with the Second Corps, returned from the north bank of the James and set to work to assist in destroying the railway, whose loss was a hard blow to General Lee. It was not to be expected that the latter would permit this work to continue unmolested and on the 25th of August, A. P. Hill suddenly confronted Hancock, who entrenched himself in haste at Ream’s Station. This did not save the Second Corps, which for the first time in its glorious career was put to rout. Their very guns were captured and turned upon them.

In the following weeks there were no actions of importance except that in the last days of September Generals Ord and Birney, with the Army of the James, captured Fort Harrison, on the north bank of that river, from Generals Ewell and Anderson. The Federals were anxious to have it, since it was an excellent vantage point from which to threaten Richmond. Meanwhile Grant was constantly extending his line to the west and by the end of October it was very close to the South Side Railroad. On the 27th there was a hard fight at Hatcher’s Run, but the Confederates saved the railway and the Federals returned to their entrenchments in front of Petersburg.

The active struggle now ceased, but Lee found himself each day in more desperate straits. Sheridan had played sad havoc with such sources of supply as existed in the rich country to the northwest. The Weldon Railroad was gone and the South Side line was in imminent danger. The Southerners were losing heart. Many went home for the winter on a promise to return when the spring planting was done. Lee was loath to let them go, but he could ill afford to maintain them, and the very life of their families depended upon it. Those who remained at Petersburg suffered cruelly from hunger and cold. They looked forward to the spring, although it meant renewal of the mighty struggle. The Confederate line had been stretched to oppose Grant’s westward progress until it had become the thinnest of screens. A man lost to Lee was almost impossible to replace, while the bounties offered in the North kept Grant’s ranks full.

MAHONE, “THE HERO OF THE CRATER”

General William Mahone, C. S. A. It was through the promptness and valor of General Mahone that the Southerners, on July 30, 1864, were enabled to turn back upon the Federals the disaster threatened by the hidden mine. On the morning of the explosion there were but eighteen thousand Confederates left to hold the ten miles of lines about Petersburg. Everything seemed to favor Grant’s plans for the crushing of this force. Immediately after the mine was sprung, a terrific cannonade was opened from one hundred and fifty guns and mortars to drive back the Confederates from the breach, while fifty thousand Federals stood ready to charge upon the panic-stricken foe. But the foe was not panic-stricken long. Colonel McMaster, of the Seventeenth South Carolina, gathered the remnants of General Elliott’s brigade and held back the Federals massing at the Crater until General Mahone arrived at the head of three brigades. At once he prepared to attack the Federals, who at that moment were advancing to the left of the Crater. Mahone ordered a counter-charge. In his inspiring presence it swept with such vigor that the Federals were driven back and dared not risk another assault. At the Crater, Lee had what Grant lacked—a man able to direct the entire engagement.

WHAT EIGHT THOUSAND POUNDS OF POWDER DID

The Crater, torn by the mine within Elliott’s Salient. At dawn of July 30, 1864, the fifty thousand Federal troops waiting to make a charge saw a great mass of earth hurled skyward like a water-spout. As it spread out into an immense cloud, scattering guns, carriages, timbers, and what were once human beings, the front ranks broke in panic; it looked as if the mass were descending upon their own heads. The men were quickly rallied; across the narrow plain they charged, through the awful breach, and up the heights beyond to gain Cemetery Ridge. But there were brave fighters on the other side still left, and delay among the Federals enabled the Confederates to rally and re-form in time to drive the Federals back down the steep sides of the Crater. There, as they struggled amidst the horrible dÉbris, one disaster after another fell upon them. Huddled together, the mass of men was cut to pieces by the canister poured upon them from well-planted Confederate batteries. At last, as a forlorn hope, the colored troops were sent forward; and they, too, were hurled back into the Crater and piled upon their white comrades.

FORT MAHONE—“FORT DAMNATION”

RIVES’ SALIENT

TRAVERSES AGAINST CROSS-FIRE

GRACIE’S SALIENT, AND OTHER FORTS ALONG THE TEN MILES OF DEFENSES

Dotted with formidable fortifications such as these, Confederate works stretched for ten miles around Petersburg. Fort Mahone was situated opposite the Federal Fort Sedgwick at the point where the hostile lines converged most closely after the battle of the Crater. Owing to the constant cannonade which it kept up, the Federals named it Fort Damnation, while Fort Sedgwick, which was no less active in reply, was known to the Confederates as Fort Hell. Gracie’s salient, further north on the Confederate line, is notable as the point in front of which General John B. Gordon’s gallant troops moved to the attack on Fort Stedman, the last desperate effort of the Confederates to break through the Federal cordon. The views of Gracie’s salient show the French form of chevaux-de-frise, a favorite protection against attack much employed by the Confederates.

AN AFTERNOON CONCERT AT THE OFFICERS’ QUARTERS, HAREWOOD HOSPITAL, NEAR WASHINGTON

Hospital life for those well enough to enjoy it was far from dull. Witness the white-clad nurse with her prim apron and hoopskirt on the right of the photograph, and the band on the left. Most hospitals had excellent libraries and a full supply of current newspapers and periodicals, usually presented gratuitously. Many of the larger ones organized and maintained bands for the amusement of the patients; they also provided lectures, concerts, and theatrical and other entertainments. A hospital near the front receiving cases of the most severe character might have a death-rate as high as twelve per cent., while those farther in the rear might have a very much lower death-rate of but six, four, or even two per cent. The portrait accompanying shows Louisa M. Alcott, the author of “Little Men,” “Little Women,” “An Old Fashioned Girl,” and the other books that have endeared her to millions of readers. Her diary of 1862 contains this characteristic note: “November. Thirty years old. Decided to go to Washington as a nurse if I could find a place. Help needed, and I love nursing and must let out my pent-up energy in some new way.” She had not yet attained fame as a writer, but it was during this time that she wrote for a newspaper the letters afterwards collected as “Hospital Sketches.” It is due to the courtesy of Messrs. Little, Brown & Company of Boston that the war-time portrait is here reproduced.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT, THE AUTHOR OF “LITTLE WOMEN,” AS A NURSE IN 1862

SINKING OF THE ALABAMA BY THE KEARSARGE.
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