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MAY 24: GRANT CROSSES THE NORTH ANNA RIVER
May 24 opened precisely as Lee had anticipated. Concerned that the
Confederates might concentrate against Warren's isolated corps, Grant
crossed Wright at Jericho Milks. The Union Fifth and Sixth Corps now
faced the western leg of Lee's formation. At 8:00 A.M., Hancock forced a
crossing at Chesterfield Bridge. Birney's 20th Indiana and 2nd United
States Sharpshooters dashed across the narrow span and brushed aside a
thin cloud of gray-clad skirmishers. Half a mile downstream, rebels had
burned the railway trestle, but soldiers from the 8th Ohio felled a tree
across the river and walked over single file. Meade's engineers
constructed a pontoon bridge, and soon Major General John Gibbon's
division was forming along the rail line. Hancock occupied the river's
southern bank from Telegraph Road to the railway.
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ON THE MORNING OF MAY 24,
HANCOCK PUSHED HIS MEN ACROSS THE CHESTERFIELD BRIDGE
AND ONTO THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE RIVER. SEPARATED FROM
WARREN AND WRIGHT AT JERICHO MILLS, GRANT HAD NOW SPLIT
HIS ARMY, INVITING DISASTER. (NPS)
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AT QUARLES' MILL, BRIGADIER GENERAL THOMAS L. CRITTENDEN'S DIVISION OF
THE NINTH CORPS WADED THE NORTH ANNA IN PREPARATION, FOR AN ASSAULT ON
LEE'S CENTER NEAR OXFORD. (LC)
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Grant was encouraged by the ease with which he had pierced Lee's
North Anna defenses. Lee, he concluded, must be retreating. It was
critical, he decided, to catch the Confederates before they could take
up another fortified line. "The enemy have fallen back from North Anna,"
a jubilant Grant wired Washington. "We are in pursuit." From his
headquarters at Hanover Junction, Lee monitored reports from the front
with satisfaction. Grant was doing exactly as he had hoped. The time was
approaching to spring the trap.
By 11:00 A.M. Hancock's entire corps was below the river, and Warren
and Wright had advanced to the Virginia Central Railroad. Neither had
encountered significant resistance, which reinforced Grant's impression
that Lee was dropping back. The only opposition, which Grant took to be
from a rear guard, appeared on the heights above Ox Ford. Grant directed
Burnside, who had remained on the northern bank, to eliminate this
annoyance.
In preparation for Burnside's assault, Crawford marched downriver to
the ford at Quarles' Mill, about a mile above Ox Ford. With the ford
secure, Burnside directed Major General Thomas L. Crittenden to cross
his division at Quarles' Mill, follow the river's southern bank to Ox
Ford, and attack the Confederates from the west. Brigadier General James
H. Ledlie's brigade was the first of Crittenden's units across. Ledlie
owed his rank to political connections, and he drank excessively. Tipsy
and anxious to further his advancement, he decided to attack the rebels
at Ox Ford with his brigade alone.
After traversing dense woods along the river's southern bank, Ledlie
emerged onto a field fronting the left wing of Lee's inverted V.
Brigadier General William Mahone's division occupied the well-sited
rebel earthworks. Ledlie sent the 35th Massachusetts forward to probe
Mahone's position, but the regiment came tumbling back under a hail of
lead. The inebriated general decided he needed reinforcements and sent
an officer back to Crittenden with a request for three more regiments.
Crittenden was flabbergasted. "The division is not across the river
yet," he advised the officer. "Tell [Ledlie] my orders are not to
charge." As the man turned to go, Crittenden admonished: "Tell General
Ledlie not to charge unless he sees a sure thing where he can capture a
battery not well supported; to use the utmost caution." In the time it
took the officer to return, Ledlie had become thoroughly drunk. The
officer informed Ledlie of Crittenden's directive and pointed out
several batteries plainly visible on the ramparts. Ledlie was
unimpressed and ordered his brigade to charge.
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AMID A VIOLENT THUNDERSTORM, LIEUTENANT COLONEL CHARLES L. CHANDLER LED
THE 57TH MASSACHUSETTS IN AN ILL-FATED ATTACK AGAINST THE CONFEDERATE
LINES. IN CARRYING OUT THE ORDERS OF HIS DRUNKEN COMMANDER, CHANDLER
FELL MORTALLY WOUNDED AND HIS REGIMENT LOST 46 MEN. (EVEN TO HELL
ITSELF BY DONNA NEARY, COURTESY OF HERITAGE STUDIO, FREDERICKSBURG,
VIRGINIA)
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Rain began falling as the Federals stepped from the woods. The
blue-clad line immediately became jumbled. "It was just a wild
tumultuous rush where the most reckless were far to the front and the
cautious ones scattered along back, but still coming," a participant
related. Mahone's soldiers marveled at their good fortune. Waiting until
Ledlie's Federals came within range, they raked them with musketry and
canister. Ledlie's foremost elements sought cover in a ditch and lay
pinned under sheets of lead flying overhead. Then a violent thunderstorm
lashed the combatants. Colonel Stephen M. Weld of the 56th Massachusetts
and Lieutenant Colonel Charles L. Chandler of the 57th Massachusetts
managed to rally their troops, but Mississippians sortied from the works
and shot them down. Weld was slightly wounded and Chandler mortally so.
Facing extermination, Ledlie's survivors broke and scrambled back to
Quarles' Mill. "General Ledlie made a botch of it," Colonel Weld wrote
in his diary. "Had too much [alcohol] on board, I think." Ledlie was to
bedevil his men until the end of July, when he was cashiered for
drunkenness during the Battle of the Crater.
At the same time that Ledlie crossed at Quarles' Mill, Hancock pushed
south from Chesterfield Bridge. Meeting escalating resistance from
rebel skirmishers, Hancock directed Gibbon to advance along the
Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. A short march brought
Gibbon's lead brigade—that of Colonel Thomas A. Smyth—into a
nest of skirmishers from Brigadier General E. McIvor Law's veteran
Alabama brigade. Clawing forward, Smyth slammed into entrenchments held
by Law's men and North Carolinians under Colonel William R. Cox. Smyth
attacked, the Confederates counterattacked, and soon Gibbon had fed most
of his division into the fray. Battle lines seesawed along the rail line
and around the nearby Doswell house in combat that raged fiercely but
inconclusively. The combatants paused to protect their powder when the
thunderstorm struck, then resumed firing when the rain let up. Some of
Birney's men pitched in as well but could not pierce the Confederate
line.
(click on image for a PDF version)
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THE INVERTED V: MAY 24, 6-7 P.M.
Having thrown both his flanks back from the river, Lee sets a trap
that forces Grant to split his army and position himself with his back
to the North Anna. In the late afternoon, Crittenden's division of
Burnside's Ninth Corps crosses at Quarles' Mill and a drunken General
Ledlie makes an ill-fated and costly attack on Mahone's trenches. At the
same time, Hancock crosses the river and probes Lee's right flank.
Incapacitated by poor health, Lee fails to spring the trap, and while
Grant fortifies his position on the south bank, the Confederate
opportunity passes.
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The futile assaults at Ox Ford and the Doswell house did nothing to
improve tempers at Mt. Carmel Church, where Grant and Meade had their
headquarters. Meade lost his composure over a dispatch from Major
General William T. Sherman, commanding the Union armies in the West,
which assured Grant that he would win the war if he could only get the
Army of the Potomac to fight. "Sir!" Meade barked at Assistant Secretary
of War Charles A. Dana, who read the communication to him. "I consider
that dispatch an insult to the army I command, and to me personally.
The Army of the Potomac does not require General Grant's inspiration or
anybody else's inspiration to make it fight!" Meade fumed all day and
mumbled at dinner about the "armed rabble" in the West. Grant took an
important step that must have partially mollified his distraught
subordinate. Henceforth, he directed, Burnside was to report directly to
Meade, and the Ninth Corps was to be incorporated into the Army of the
Potomac.
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FIRING FROM THE NORTH SIDE OF THE RIVER, UNION ARTILLERY ATTEMPTED TO
LEND ASSISTANCE TO LEDLIE'S ATTACK, BUT LITTLE COULD BE DONE TO WEAKEN
LEE'S STRONGLY FORTIFIED POSITIONS. (NPS)
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Lee's trap had worked precisely as the rebel commander had hoped.
Fate, however, snatched his prize from him. Succumbing to the strain of
campaigning, Lee contracted a debilitating intestinal ailment. As the
Confederacy's best opportunity of the campaign passed, Lee lay
confined to his cot, helpless to direct the offensive and lacking a
suitable subordinate to take his place. Hill had failed at Jericho
Mills, Ewell was sick, and Anderson was inexperienced. "We must strike
them a blow—we must never let them pass again—we must strike
them a blow" Lee repeated as he lay in his tent. But he lacked the means
for executing his design.
By late afternoon, the Union commanders began grasping the nature of
their predicament. At 6:30 P.M., Hancock warned Meade that "the enemy
had a similar line to that [at Spotsylvania Court House], with the
salient resting opposite to Burnside, and their right, so far as we are
concerned, thrown back toward Hanover Junction." Grant at last
recognized that Lee had assumed a formation that divided the Union army.
He immediately ordered his generals to stop advancing and start
entrenching, and his engineers began erecting pontoon bridges to
facilitate communication between the army's widely separated wings.
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