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It was well before dawn, October 27, when the Union forces went into
motion. The Ninth Corps developed the enemy line but was unable to find
a weak point. This left the prime responsibility on the shoulders of
Hancock and the Second Corps, which had a hard march along a single road
that was barely passable in places. Despite stubborn delaying actions by
Rebel outposts at several stream crossings, Hancock's men reached the
Boydton Plank Road shortly after 10:30 A.M. They cut it near its
intersection with the White Oak Road, a short distance below Burgess'
Mill and its associated mill pond.
Up to this point Hancock's only opposition had come from Wade
Hampton's cavalry, but confronting him at Burgess' Mill was a line of
infantry and artillery posted across Hatcher's Run and covering the
Boydton Plank Road bridge. Every passing second meant more defenders
were on their way from Petersburg. According to the original plan,
Warren was supposed to support Hancock, but his route led him into a
nearly impenetrable underbrush. In a very short time his units became
lost, confused, and unavailable to Hancock.
At about 1:30 P.M., while Hancock was preparing for the next
phase of his advance, Grant, Meade, and their staffs arrived. Grant
undertook a personal reconnaissance of the enemy's line behind
Hatcher's Run and concluded that a break through would not be possible.
Still hoping to punish the Rebels, Grant issued instructions for
Hancock to hold his position until noon the next day "in hope of
inviting an attack." Grant and Meade left Hancock about 4:00 P.M.
Thirty minutes later the Confederates did attack from three
directions. Some of Hampton's cavalry pushed east along the White Oak
Road while another portion of it came up the Boydton Plank Road from
the south, pressing Hancock's rear guard. A force of Confederate
infantry led by General Mahone swept down across Hatcher's Run and
flanked one Union brigade. This time Hancock's men stood their ground
and beat off each attack, though they paid a heavy price for doing so.
When night fell, Hancock decided to withdraw along the miserable road
his men had used coming out, but a lack of ambulances meant that many of
the most seriously injured would be left behind. The morning of October
28 found the Confederates in possession of a battlefield littered with
military debris and Yankee wounded. Private Bernard, whose regiment
fought here, concluded that the "enemy must have suffered heavily, as
they withdrew their troops from the Plank Road."
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CLOSING THE CIRCLE
In an attempt to encircle Petersburg from the south, Grant orders
three corps to cut the Boydton Plank Road and the South Side Railroad by
pressing and outflanking Lee's extreme right. Efforts by the IX and V
Corps fail. Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock's II Corps reaches the plank
road but is caught in converging attacks by Confederate cavalry and
infantry (shown here). Following an afternoon of fierce fighting,
Hancock retreated after dark, leaving many of his wounded in Confederate
hands.
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This time there was no extension of the Union trenches to mitigate
the loss of nearly 1,800 men. The Confederates could claim a victory,
though their cost was also
high, about 1,300 men. Among them were two of Wade Hampton's sons,
one killed, the other seriously wounded. Never again would this grieving
father allow any of his children to serve with him. This combat
operation was also the last for Winfield S. Hancock in the Army of the
Potomac. The much respected officer would step down on Thanksgiving Day
to accept a reassignment.
Hardly had the soldiers returned to their camps when they
all—Yank and Reb—became caught up in one of the most important
events of the war, the 1864 presidential election. George B. McClellan,
who once commanded the Army of the Potomac, headed the peace-oriented
Democratic ticket that hoped to oust the Lincoln administration. For
Southerners the outcome was seen as a barometer of their hopes for
independence. "A great revolution of feeble sentiment is in rapid
development in the North," George Bernard
wrote in his diary, "looking to a suspension of hostilities. God
grant the movement may result in peace." In a letter written on November
7, a soldier in a Pennsylvania regiment summarized the attitudes
expressed by Confederate deserters. They say if Abe is re-elected they
will soon give up, but if McClellan is elected they have the hopes of
getting a convention of the states then they will get it fixed up some
way that it will be honorable to them.
For the first time, troops in the field would be voting and almost
everyone had an opinion. "McClellan was our first commander, and, as
such, he was worshipped by his soldiers," declared a Maine private.
Countered a New Yorker, "As for McClellan I don't think I shall let my
love for the soldier do injury to my principles as a man." The troopers in one
cavalry regiment told of an incident at this time: "Two of our pickets
were captured . . . and on being asked who they would vote for, replying
that they were McClellan men, they were promptly released by the rebel
scoundrels, and allowed to poll their votes at liberty."
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UNION TROOPS BEING ISSUED RATIONS OF WHISKY AND QUININE. SKETCH BY A. W.
WARREN FROM HARPER'S WEEKLY.
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At Grant's headquarters, staff officers and aides fidgeted
uncomfortably on election night as Grant read the returns aloud as fast
as they were telegraphed to him. Each time he solemnly announced that
McClellan was leading. Only after midnight did he confess to his little
joke; he had been reversing the count. The soldier vote was 4 to 1 for
"Old Abe" and contributed to his popular plurality of 2,203,831 to
McClellan's 1,797,019. Summing up the results to a friend, Grant said,
"It will be worth more than a victory in the field both in its effect on
the Rebels and in its influence abroad."
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GRANT, WIFE JULIA, AND SON JESSE PHOTOGRAPHED AT CITY POINT. (LC)
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As the weather turned colder and the prospects of further
campaigning began to diminish for the year, life on the Petersburg front
took on a different rhythm. "Dull, duller, dullest; nothing can exceed
the monotony of camp-life," complained a New York soldier. "We read, we
look after the duties of our office; we walk, we ride, we gaze at the sky, the
stars, the sun, the moon; yet we are compelled to return to the same
surroundings, camps, arms, intrenchments, and lines of defense." As the
season changed from fall to winter, sniping along the front seemed to
die down. A Rhode Island man observed that it was not unusual for the
pickets on both sides to amuse themselves "conversing across the lines,
singing songs of the war, . . . and doing a little trading when unobserved
by their superior officers."
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AFRICAN-AMERICANS AT PETERSBURG
At the beginning of the Civil War, Virginia had a
slave population of about 491,000 and a free black population of
almost 58,000. About half of Petersburg's 18,266 residents were black,
of which 3,164 were free. Petersburg was considered to have the largest
number of free blacks of any Southern city at that time. Many of the
freedmen prospered here as barbers, blacksmiths, boatmen, draymen,
livery stable keepers, and caterers. There were also those who owned
considerable property, particularly in the communities of Blandford and
Pocahontas.
Serving the Confederacy
When Petersburg became a major supply center for the newly formed
Confederacy and its nearby capital in Richmond, both freedmen and slaves
were employed in various war functions. More than 850 slaves and free
blacks worked for the numerous railroad companies that operated in and
out of the city. In the latter part of 1862, when a ten-mile-long
defense line was begun around Petersburg, Captain Charles H. Dimmock
used both freedmen
and slave labor to construct the trenches and batteries. In the
many hospitals that sprang up in the city, blacks served as nurses and
servants.
Once the siege began in June 1864, African-Americans continued
working for the Confederacy. In September 1864, General Lee asked for
an additional 2,000 blacks to be added to his labor force. In March
1865, with the serious loss of white manpower in the army, the Southern
army called for 40,000 slaves to become an armed force in the
Confederacy. A notice in the April 1, 1865, Petersburg Daily
Express called for black recruits with the statement, "To the slaves
is offered freedom and undisturbed residence at their old homes in the
Confederacy after the war. Not the freedom of sufferance, but honorable
and selfwon by the gallantry and devotion which grateful countrymen will
never cease to remember and reward." It is not known how many responded
to this challenge. The war ended before any major contribution could
be made.
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BLACK TROOPS OF THE FOURTH DIVISION WITHIN UNION LINES AT
PETERSBURG AFTER THE CRATER. (LC)
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Serving the Union: U.S. Colored Troops in the Siege of Petersburg
During the war, a total of 186,097 blacks served in the Union army,
with the first regiments activated after September 1862. In front of
Petersburg, two black divisions numbering about 7,800 men (nineteen
regiments) saw action.
In the initial assault upon the city on June 15, 1864, a division of
General Edward Hincks attacked the Confederate Dimmock Line. Comprising
3,500 men from the Eighteenth Corps of the Army of the James, which was
commanded by General Benjamin F. Butler, Hincks's troops helped capture
and secure a section of the Southern defenses from Batteries 7 through
11. In the initial stage of this action, located at Baylor's Farm on
the City Point Road, the black troops also captured a gun from Captain
Edward Graham's Petersburg Artillery. On the fifteenth, Hincks's
Division lost 378 killed and wounded. They acted in a supporting role on
the June 18 assault, suffering a loss of 36 men.
The other division of United States Colored Troops to serve at
Petersburg was the Fourth Division, Ninth Corps, under General Ambrose
E. Burnside and the Army of the Potomac. Four thousand, three hundred
strong, these men were involved in one of the most well-known events of
the Siege, the Battle of the Crater, fought on July 30, 1864.
For three weeks as a Pennsylvania Regiment dug a tunnel under a
Confederate fort to blow it up, the black troops were being trained to
lead the assault once the battle commenced. The black troops were
chosen because they were numerically superior, and having been mainly
wagon guards up to this point, they had seen little action. With the
white troops showing exhaustion after the severe fighting of the campaign
from the Wilderness to Petersburg, it was believed the blacks would have
a better chance at being successful.
Unfortunately for the black soldiers, the commander of the Army of
the Potomac, General George G. Meade, would change Burnside's plan
twenty-four hours before the battle. Instead of leading the assault,
their division, led by General Edward Ferrero, would now be the last to
go in.
Once the explosion took place on the morning of July 30, the three
white divisions tried to reach their objective, Cemetery Hill. Stiff
Confederate resistance along with a lack of leadership on the Union
side, bogged down the Union assault in the area of the Crater. When
Ferrero's troops attempted their attack, they ran into a Confederate
counterattack led by General William Mahone. As the blacks were forced
back into the Crater with Burnside's other troops, stiff hand-to-hand
combat now began and the face of battle changed. Some claimed the black
troops went into the battle yelling "Remember Fort Pillow," the site of
an earlier massacre of black prisoners in Tennessee, while others said
"no quarter" was shouted by the blacks. Many of the Confederates were
enraged that black troops were being deployed against them, and the
fighting became vicious. As a result, many blacks who surrendered were
not taken prisoner; the division suffered 209 killed, 697 wounded, and
421 missing or captured, a total of 1,327 or 38 percent of the Ninth
Corps loss.
Following the battle, Sergeant Decatur Dorsey of the 39th U.S.C.T.
received the Medal of Honor for "rushing forward in advance of his regiment
and placing his colors on the Confederate trenches." Three white
officers who commanded black troops at the Crater also received
medals.
The division captured approximately 300 prisoners and one battle
flag during the engagement. In December 1864, all the United States Colored Troops
around Petersburg were incorporated into three divisions and became the
Twenty-Fifth Corps of the Army of the James. Commanded by General
Godfrey Weitzel, it was the largest black force assembled during the war
and varied in numbers from 9,000 to 16,000 men.
When Petersburg fell to the Union army on April 3, 1865, some of the
Twenty-Fifth Corps marched through the city on their way to Appomattox.
A newspaper reporter wrote "A negro regiment passing seems to take
special pride and pleasure in maintaining the dignity
becoming soldiers, and are neither boisterous nor noisy." These men
continued to march with Grant's army and were present at Lee's surrender
on April 9, 1865.
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THE CAPTURE OF CONFEDERATE CANNON BY AFRICAN-AMERICANS. (LC)
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African-Americans at City Point
With General Grant's logistical supply base located at City Point
(now Hopewell) on the James River, African-Americans served in
varying capacities for the Union army. The soldiers acted as sentries,
guarding the numerous ships that were docked at the wharves. Some
employees of the U.S. Military Railroad Construction Corps were Northern
blacks and worked as laborers in building the needed facilities. An
observer wrote "legions of negroes were discharging the ships, wheeling
dirt, sawing the timber, and driving piles." Many also worked at the
Depot Field Hospital, with the women serving as laundresses and in the
diet kitchen, the men as cooks. About 160 blacks assisted there.
—Chris Calkins
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"The winter of 1864-65 was one of unusual severity, making the picket
duty in front of the intrenchments very severe," a Federal officer
recollected. A soldier in a North Carolina regiment later summed up his
unit's term at Petersburg this way: "It lived in the ground, walked in
wet ditches, ate its cold rations in ditches, slept in dirt-covered
pits."
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VIEW FROM FT. RICE LOOKING TOWARD FT. MEIKEIL. (LC)
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Helping alleviate conditions on the Union side was the U.S. Military
Railroad that ran from City Point behind the trench lines just past
Globe Tavern. Knowing that this railroad would not have to last a long
time, Federal engineers simply laid the tracks on the ground with
minimal grading. Watching one supply train undulate its way across the
landscape, a staff officer likened it to a "fly crawling on a corrugated
washboard."
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A TRESTLE ON THE U.S. MILITARY RAILROAD. (LC)
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MAJOR GENERAL GOUVERNEUR K. WARREN (LC)
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The wheels of military justice took no respite, however, and there
was no slacking in the punishment of those found guilty of
desertion, rape, or murder. A veteran Confederate officer
remembered during this winter that the "scarcity of supplies in the army
and still more the suffering of the men's families at home produced a
great deal of desertion. . . . Executions were frequent." "It has a
gruesome sound," avowed a Union soldier, "but the chief diversion of the
latter part of 1864 was the attending of hangings in the vicinity." An
area near Fort Stevenson even became known as "Hangman's Ground"
because, recalled one onlooker, "there deserters were hanged or shot,
usually on Fridays." Recalled another Federal, "We lose all human
feelings toward such dastards and traitors."
While the enlisted men on both sides were prepared to call it quits
for the year, Grant was not. The failure of his August operation against
the Weldon Railroad meant that Lee continued to use it. The portion of
the line coming up from North Carolina was intact as far as Stony Creek
Depot, about 16 miles below Petersburg. This made it possible for Lee to
ship supplies to that point by rail, then transfer them to wagons for
transport via the Boydton Plank Road into Petersburg. It was a slow,
cumbersome route, but it worked, and Grant was determined to disrupt
it. On December 5 he instructed Meade to organize a large-scale
expedition to rip up the tracks between the depot and Weldon, North
Carolina.
The force Meade put together and placed under the command of General
Warren consisted of three divisions from the Fifth Corps, one from the
Second, and the Army of the Potomac's sole cavalry division. In all
about 22,000 infantry with 4,200 cavalry would take part.
With the mounted units leading, the long column began its march
southeast early on the morning of December 7. Warren chose not to follow the
rail line but moved along the Jerusalem Plank Road, which diverged
slightly to the east. Once his men reached Hawkinsville, Warren turned
south, crossed the Nottoway River, and passed through Sussex Court
House. From there he could strike west to the railroad and spread along
it to the north and south to carry out his mission objective.
Warren's cavalry reached the tracks around 9:00 A.M. on December
8. The first units on the scene veered north, quickly reaching and destroying the Nottoway
River Bridge. By noon Federal infantry had come up to the railroad line
and the pace of destruction accelerated. A Pennsylvania soldier who was
there recalled, "As far as the eye could reach were seen innumerable
glowing fires, and thousands of busy blue-coats tearing up the rails and
piling the ties. It was at once a wild, animated scene."
Back in Petersburg, Robert E. Lee could not let this threat to his
supply line go unchallenged. Wade Hampton, whose cavalry had been
skirmishing with Warren's column since it set out, was busy organizing
his troopers and local defense forces to protect Weldon. To assist
Hampton, Lee ordered A. P. Hill to take a hastily organized force down
to confront the Yankees.
Hampton's command took up a blocking position along the south bank
of the Meherrin River at Hicksford (modern Emporia), Virginia. The
Yankee cavalry that was still screening Warren's advance tested
Hampton's line on December 9. The vigorous response that met these
probes, and the threat of an impending winter storm, convinced Warren
not to attack. That night, a deluge of sleet and
rain spread over the men of both sides, leaving the landscape coated
with a glaze of ice and making road movement difficult. Warren withdrew
his long column the way it had come in, while squadrons of Hampton's men
pressed the rear guard hoping to delay the Yankees long enough for
Hill's men to arrive.
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LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WADE HAMPTON (BL)
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The Federal withdrawal now became ugly. At some places, the Union
soldiers discovered caches of a local brew of apple jack, and drunken
men threatened military discipline. Elsewhere, stragglers from the Union
column were waylaid and brutally murdered. Angry Yankee boys turned on
the local populace, setting fire to houses, barns, and even slave
quarters. "Is this what you call subjugating the South?" one anguished
woman screamed at her tormentors.
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A CONFEDERATE 8" COLUMBIAD USED AT PETERSBURG. (NA)
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By December 11 Warren's men had safely retired. Despite forcing the
pace of his march in the teeth of the bone-chilling storm, A. P. Hill
was unable to close the distance in time to intercept. In his report,
General Warren boasted "the complete destruction of sixteen miles of the
railroad" at a cost of about 314 casualties. Yet, while the six-day
operation severely shook Lee's fragile supply line, it did not break
it.
"Peace on earth," a North Carolina soldier wrote in his diary on
Christmas Day, adding the pointed question, "good will to men?" Another
diarist, this one a Virginian, wrote, "Christmas once again; but oh! how
changed from that of former times, when our beloved land was not draped
in mourning." A Tarheel officer who was able to ride into Petersburg to
attend Christmas services at St. Paul's Church remembered the scene:
"Five festoons of cedar hung from the five ornaments in the center of
the church to the bannisters of the gallery on each side. . . . The
church was crowded and many were outside and could not get seats at
all."
Out along the trench lines, both sides enjoyed an impromptu and
unauthorized truce. According to a Georgian, "The men had suspended
their work without being so ordered and in a few minutes they were
passing in full sight of each other, shouting the compliments of the
season, giving invitations to cross over and take a drink, to come to
dinner, to come back into the Union, . . . and other amenities, which
were a singular contrast to the asperities of war."
Many of the Union troops enjoyed what a New Hampshire soldier noted
in his diary as a "fine Christmas dinner for all." On the Confederate
side there was a concerted effort to see that the men at the front got
something special this day. "The newspapers urged the movement forward,
committees were appointed to collect and forward the good things to the
soldiers," wrote a Virginian in gray. The effort paid off for some.
"We had . . . a big Christmas dinner and . . . our Christmas passed off
very pleasantly," reported a North Carolina infantryman. In another
company the men eagerly waited for the Christmas bounty to arrive. When
it did finally show up (two weeks late) it consisted of "one drumstick
of a turkey, one rib of mutton, one slice of roast beef, two biscuits,
and a slice of lightbread." It was the thought that counted for most,
and, recalled a young Rebel, "we thanked our benefactors and took
courage."
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A PICKET WAITS IN A RIFLE PIT IN FRONT OF FT. MAHONE. A. R. WAUD
ILLUSTRATION. (LC)
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THE 121ST PENNSYLVANIA INFANTRY PHOTOGRAPHED AT WINTER QUARTERS IN
PETERSBURG. (COURTESY OF JAMES R. WARNER)
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Yet even amid these holiday reflections, signs of the end were
apparent. A New York boy, writing home December 25, observed, "We have
cheering news every day—it is evident the confederacy is rapidly
falling to pieces."
Surprisingly, even at this point in the war, with his reelection
secure and the end of the fighting in sight, Abraham Lincoln was still
prepared to negotiate an end to the conflict. While it would have been
political suicide for him actively to
promote such talks, it was not impossible for him to use
intermediaries to accomplish the same goal. So when a veteran
Washington politician named Francis P. Blair, Sr., came to him with a
fantastic scheme to unite North and South in a common war against
Mexico, Lincoln gave him a pass to travel to Richmond to present his
plan to Jefferson Davis in the hope it would lead to broader talks.
Through Blair the groundwork was laid for such a discussion, though
it was Davis who sought to use the occasion to political advantage. If he
could force Lincoln to declare a posture of unconditional surrender
toward the Confederacy, it might stiffen sagging Southern morale enough
to extend the fighting through the summer when, perhaps, the Northern
electorate would finally grow weary of the bloodshed. To this end Davis appointed three
men who favored a negotiated settlement to a peace commission, but he
fatally limited their authority by refusing to let them even discuss
the issue of Confederate independence. Lincoln arrived at the conference—which
took place on February 3 on board the steamer River Queen
anchored off Fortress Monroe, Virginia—equally determined to
reunite the fractured United States. He was prepared to offer Southern
slaveholders financial recompense for the "property" they would lose
because of the abolition of slavery, but the discussions never got that
far.
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UNION SOLDIERS KILL TIME INSIDE THEIR WINTER QUARTERS AT PETERSBURG.
(COURTESY OF JAMES R. WARNER)
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JEFFERSON DAVIS (LC)
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The three commissioners returned to Richmond, where two of them
appeared at a mass meeting to denounce Lincoln's demand for
"unconditional surrender." A Union soldier before Petersburg, after
reading accounts in Northern and Southern newspapers, reflected, "Poor
deluded wretches these Confederates, they will never unite with us again
until every hope of success is lost!"
Grant, who had personally intervened to facilitate the talks, moved
with equal purpose to show that there was no lack of will to win. On
February 4 he ordered an expedition to the Boydton Plank Road with
instructions to interdict the enemy's wagons that were still bringing
supplies up from Stony Creek Depot. General Meade futilely protested the
operation, certain that there would be no dramatic victory to satisfy
the press, which would then lambast him for ordering such a purposeless
undertaking.
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