Volume II Part 52 (2/2)

For that purpose a subterranean gallery for a mine was run under one of our forts. General Burnside, who conducted the operation, thus describes the work:

”The main gallery of the mine is five hundred and twenty-two feet in length, the side-galleries about forty feet each. My suggestion is that eight magazines be placed in the lateral galleries, two at each end, say a few feet apart, at right angles to the side-gallery, and two more in each of the side-galleries, similarly placed by pairs, situated equidistant from each other, and the end of the galleries, thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mine Galleries]

”I proposed to put in each of the eight magazines from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds of powder, the magazines to be connected by a trough of powder instead of a fuse.”

It appears that it was decided that the charge should be eight thousand pounds instead of the larger amount proposed.[119] Between four and five o'clock on the morning of the 30th of July the mine was exploded, and simultaneously the enemy's batteries commenced firing, when, as previously arranged, the column of attack moved forward to the breach, with instructions to rush through it and seize the crest of a ridge in rear of our fort, so as to interpose a force between our troops and in rear of our batteries. A question had arisen as to whether the a.s.saulting column should consist of white or negro troops; of each, there were brigades in General Burnside's division, which occupied that part of the line nearest to the mine, and therefore seems to have been considered as the command from which the troops to const.i.tute the storming column must be selected. The explosion was destructive to our artillery and its small supporting force immediately above the mine.

An opening, one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty feet wide, and thirty feet deep, suddenly appeared in the place of the earthworks, and the division of the enemy selected for the charge rushed forward to pierce the opening. A Southern writer[120] thus describes what ensued:

”The white division charged, reached the crater, stumbled over the _debris_, were suddenly met by a merciless fire of artillery fusillading them right and left and of infantry fusillade them in front; faltered, hesitated, were badly led, lost heart, gave up the plan of seizing the crest in rear, huddled into the crater man on top of man, company mingled with company; and upon this disordered, unstrung, quivering ma.s.s of human beings, white and black--for the black troops had followed--was poured a hurricane of shot, sh.e.l.l, canister, musketry, which made the hideous crater a slaughter-pen, horrible and frightful, beyond the power of words. All order was lost; all idea of charging the crest abandoned. Lee's infantry was seen concentrating for the carnival of death; his artillery was ma.s.sing to destroy the remnants of the charging divisions; those who deserted the crater, to scramble over the debris and run back, were shot down; then all that was left to the shuddering ma.s.s of blacks and whites in the pit was to shrink lower, evade the horrible _mitraille_, and wait for a charge of their friends to rescue them or surrender.”

The forces of the enemy finally succeeded in making their way back, with a loss of about four thousand prisoners, and General Lee, whose casualties were small, reestablished his line without interruption.

This affair was subsequently investigated by a committee of the Congress of the United States, and their report declared that ”the first and great cause of the disaster was the employment of white instead of black troops to make the charge.”

Attacks continued to be made on our lines during the months of August and September, but, as in former instances, they were promptly repulsed. On August 18th the enemy seized on a portion of the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, and on the 25th this success was followed up by an attempt, under General Hanc.o.c.k, to take possession of Reams's Station on the same road, farther south. He was defeated by Heth's division and a portion of Wilc.o.x's, under the direction of General A. P. Hill, and, having lost heavily, was compelled to retreat. These events did not, however, materially affect the general result. The enemy's left gradually reached farther and farther westward, until it had pa.s.sed the Vaughan, Squirrel Level, and other roads running southwestward from Petersburg, and in October was established on the left bank of Hatcher's Run. The movement was designed to reach the Southside Railroad. A heavy column crossed Hatcher's Run, and made an obstinate attack on our lines, in order to break through to the railroad. This column was met in front and flank by Generals Hampton and W. H. F. Lee, with dismounted sharpshooters.

Infantry was hastened forward by General Lee, and the enemy was driven back. This closed for the winter active operations against our lines at Petersburg.

When the campaign opened on the Rapidan, General Lee's effective strength was in round numbers sixty thousand of all arms; that of General Grant at the same time one hundred and forty thousand. In the many battles fought before the close of the campaign. Grant's loss had been a multiple of that sustained by Lee; but the large reenforcements he had received, both before and after he crossed the James River, repaired his losses, and must have increased the numerical disparity between the two armies; yet, notwithstanding the great superiority in the number of his force, the long-projected movement for the reduction of Fort Fisher and the capture of Wilmington was delayed, because of Grant's unwillingness to detach any of his troops for that purpose until after active operations had been suspended before Petersburg.

It was proposed to make a combined land and naval attack-- Major-General B. F, Butler to command the land-forces, and Admiral D.

D. Porter the fleet. The enemy seems about this time to have conceived a new means of destroying forts; it was, to place a large amount of powder in a s.h.i.+p, and, having anch.o.r.ed off the fort, to explode the powder and so destroy the works and incapacitate the garrison as to enable a storming party to capture them. How near to Fort Fisher it was expected to anchor the s.h.i.+p I do not know, nor have I learned how far it was supposed the open atmosphere could be made to act as a projectile. General Whiting, the brave and highly accomplished soldier, who was in command of the defenses of Wilmington, stated that the powder-s.h.i.+p did not come nearer to Fort Fisher than twelve or fifteen hundred yards. He further stated that he heard the report of the explosion at Wilmington, and sent a telegram to Colonel Lamb, the commanding officer at the fort, to inquire what it meant, and was answered, ”Enemy's gunboat blown up.”

No effect, as might have been antic.i.p.ated, was produced on the fort.[121] From the same source it is learned that the combined force of this expedition was about six thousand five hundred land-troops and fifty vessels of war of various sizes and cla.s.ses, several ironclads, and the s.h.i.+p charged with two hundred and thirty-five tons of powder. Some of the troops landed, but after a reconnaissance of the fort, which then had a garrison of about six thousand five hundred men, the troops were reembarked, and thus the expedition ended.

On January 15, 1865, the attempt was renewed with a larger number of troops, amounting, after the arrival of General Schofield, to twenty-odd thousand. Porter's fleet also received additional vessels, making the whole number fifty-eight engaged in the attack. The garrison of Fort Fisher had been increased to about double the number of men there on the 24th of December. The iron-clad vessels of the enemy approached nearer the fort than on a former occasion, and the fire of the fleet was more concentrated and vastly more effective.

Many of the guns in the fort were dismounted, and the parapets seriously injured, by the fire. The garrison stood bravely to their guns, and, when the a.s.sault was made, fought with such determined courage as to repulse the first column, and obstinately contended with another approaching from the land-side, continuing the fight long after they had got into the fort. Finally, overwhelmed by numbers, and after the fort and its armament had been mainly destroyed by a bombardment--I believe greater than ever before concentrated upon a fort--the remnant of the garrison surrendered.

The heroic and highly gifted General Whiting was mortally, and the gallant commander of the fort, Colonel Lamb, was seriously, wounded.

They both fell into the hands of the enemy. General Hoke, distinguished by brilliant service on other fields, had been ordered down to support the garrison, and under the directions of General Bragg, commanding the department, had advanced to attack the investing force, but a reconnaissance convinced them both that his command was too weak to effect the object. The other forts, of necessity, fell with the main work, Fisher, and were abandoned. Hoke, with his small force retiring through Wilmington, after destroying the public vessels and property, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy, slowly fell back, fighting at several points, and seeking to find in the separation of the vastly superior army which was following him opportunity to attack a force the number of which should not greatly exceed his own, and finally made a junction with General Johnston, then opposing Sherman's advance through North Carolina.

The fixed purpose of General Grant's campaign of 1864 was the capture of Richmond, the Confederate capital. For this he had a.s.sembled the large army with which he crossed the Rapidan and fought the numerous battles between there and the James River. For this he had moved against Petersburg, the capture of which in itself was not an object so important as to have justified the effort made to that end. It was only valuable because it was on the line of communication with the more southern States, and offered another approach to Richmond. In his attack upon Petersburg it will be seen from the events already described that he adopted neither of the two plans which were open to him: the one, the concentration of all his efforts to break the line covering Petersburg; the other, to move his army round it and seize the Weldon and Southside Railroads, so as to cut off the supplies of Lee's army and compel the evacuation of both Petersburg and Richmond.

Had there been approximate equality between his army and that of Lee, he could not wisely have ventured upon the latter movement against a soldier so able as his antagonist; but the vast numerical superiority of Grant's army might well have induced him to invite Lee to meet him in the open field. He did, however, neither the one nor the other, but something of both.

In the opening of the campaign of 1865, he continued, as he had done in 1864, to extend his line to the left, seeking, after having gained the Weldon Railroad, to reach still farther to that connecting Petersburg with the Richmond and Danville Railroad. Lee, with a well-deserved confidence in his troops and his usual intrepidity, drew from his lines of defense men enough to enable him for a long time to defeat the enemy in these efforts, by extension to turn his right flank. After Grant's demonstration on the north side of the James by sending over Hanc.o.c.k's corps had been virtually abandoned by its withdrawal, Longstreet's corps, which had been sent to oppose it, remained for a long time on the north side of the James. Finally, General Ewell with a few troops, the Richmond reserves, and a division of the navy under Admiral Semmes, held the river and land defenses on the east side of Richmond.

General A. R. Lawton, who had become the quartermaster-general of the Confederate army, ably supported by Lewis E. Harvie, President of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, increased the carrying capacity of that line so as to compensate for our loss of the use of the Weldon Railroad. At the same time, General St. John, chief of the commissariat, by energetic efforts and the use of the Virginia Ca.n.a.l, kept up the supplies of General Lee's army, so as to secure from him the complimentary acknowledgment, made about a month before the evacuation of Petersburg, that the army there had not been so well supplied for many months.

During the months of February and March, Lee's army was materially reduced by the casualties of battle and the frequency of absence without leave. I will not call these absentees deserters, because they did not leave to join the enemy, and again, because in some instances where the facts were fully developed, they had gone to their necessitous families with intent to return and resume their places in the line of battle. His cavalry force had been also diminished by the absence of General Hampton's division, to which permission had been given to go to their home, South Carolina, to get fresh horses, and also to fill up their ranks. Long, arduous, and distant service had rendered both necessary.

In the early part of March, as well as my memory can fix the date, General Lee held with me a long and free conference. He stated that the circ.u.mstances had forced on him the conclusion that the evacuation of Petersburg was but a question of time. He had early and fully appreciated the embarra.s.sment which would result from losing the workshops and foundry at Richmond, which had been our main reliance for the manufacture and repair of arms as well as the preparation of ammunition. The importance of Richmond in this regard was, however, then less than it had been by the facilities which had been created for these purposes at Augusta, Selma, Fayetteville, and some smaller establishments; also by the progress which was being made for a large armory at Macon, Georgia. To my inquiry whether it would not be better to antic.i.p.ate the necessity by withdrawing at once, he said that his artillery and draught horses were too weak for the roads in their then condition, and that he would have to wait until they became firmer. There naturally followed the consideration of the line of retreat. A considerable time before this General Hood had sent me a paper, presenting his views and conclusion that, if it became necessary for the Army of Northern Virginia to retreat, it should move toward Middle Tennessee. The paper was forwarded to General Lee and returned by him with an unfavorable criticism, and the conclusion that, if we had to retreat, it should be in a southwardly direction toward the country from which we were drawing supplies, and from which a large portion of our forces had been derived. In this conversation the same general view was more specifically stated, and made to apply to the then condition of affairs. The programme was to retire to Danville, at which place supplies should be collected and a junction made with the troops under General J. E. Johnston, the combined force to be hurled upon Sherman in North Carolina, with the hope of defeating him before Grant could come to his relief. Then the more southern States, freed from pressure and encouraged by this success, it was expected, would send large reenforcements to the army, and Grant, drawn far from his base of supplies into the midst of a hostile population, it was hoped, might yet be defeated, and Virginia be delivered from the invader. Efforts were energetically continued, to collect supplies in depots where they would be available, and, in furtherance of the suggestion of General Lee as to the necessary improvement in the condition of his horses, the quartermaster-general was instructed to furnish larger rations of corn to the quartermaster at Petersburg.

Though of unusually calm and well-balanced judgment, General Lee was instinctively averse to retiring from his enemy, and had so often beaten superior numbers that his thoughts were no doubt directed to every possible expedient which might enable him to avoid retreat. It thus fell out that, in a week or two after the conference above noticed, he presented to me the idea of a sortie against the enemy near to the right of his line. This was rendered the more feasible, from the constant extension of Grant's line to the left, and the heavy bodies of troops he was employing to turn our right. The sortie, if entirely successful, so as to capture and hold the works on Grant's right, as well as three forts on the commanding ridge in his rear, would threaten his line of communication with his base, City Point, and might compel him to move his forces around ours to protect it; if only so far successful as to cause the transfer of his troops from his left to his right, it would relieve our right, and delay the impending disaster for the more convenient season for retreat.

Fort Steadman was the point against which the sortie was directed; its distance from our lines was less than two hundred yards, but an abatis covered its front. For this service, requiring equal daring and steadiness, General John B. Gordon, well proved on many battle-fields, was selected. His command was the remnant of Ewell's corps, troops often tried in the fiery ordeal of battle, and always found true as tempered steel. Before daylight, on the morning of the 25th of March, Gordon moved his command silently forward. His pioneers were sent in advance to make openings through the obstructions, and the troops rushed forward, surprised and captured the garrison, then turned the guns upon the adjacent works and soon drove the enemy from them. A detachment was now sent to seize the commanding ground and works in the rear, the batteries of which, firing into the gorges of the forts on the right and left, would soon make a wide opening in Grant's line. The guides to this detachment misled it in the darkness of a foggy dawn far from the point to which it was directed. In the mean time the enemy, recovering from his surprise and the confusion into which he had been extensively thrown, rallied and with overwhelming power concentrated both artillery and infantry upon Gordon's command. The supporting force which was to have followed him, notwithstanding the notice which was given by the victorious cheer of his men when they took Fort Steadman, failed to come forward, and Gordon's brilliant success, like the Dead Sea fruit, was turned to ashes at the moment of possession. It was hopeless, with his small force unsupported, to retain the position he had gained. It only remained as far as practicable to withdraw his command to our line, and this the valiant soldier promptly proceeded to do; some of his men were killed on the retreat, many became prisoners--I believe all, or nearly all, of those who had been detached to seize other works, and had not rejoined the main body.

The following letter from General Gordon furnishes some important details of the attack:

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