Chapter 20

In This Chapter

Grant takes charge

The climactic Union campaign in the east

I n March 1864, President Lincoln brought U.S. Grant to the Eastern Theater and promoted him to the rank of Lieutenant General. George Washington was the only other officer who had held this high rank. Grant was now in command of all the Union armies — about 550,000 men in all. He began formulating a comprehensive strategy to end the war and that would support Lincoln’s national political objectives. The focus of Grant’s efforts would be directed at two objectives: the Confederate armies in the field and the Confederacy’s ability to fight the war. Of course, this should always have been the military strategy, but no military leader up to this point had been given the authority to orchestrate and coordinate campaigns across several theaters to achieve a single strategic goal.

Grant gave both General Meade (Army of the Potomac commander) and General Sherman (Western armies commander) a simple mission: Take on the Confederate armies until they ceased to exist. This meant not letting them rest, refit, maneuver, or escape to fight another day. Wherever the Rebels turned, a Union army would be there to fight them. Another part of the strategy involved attacking from several directions at once, forcing the Confederates to weaken their main armies by dispatching forces to deal with simultaneous threats.

Grant’s opening campaign in the Eastern Theater involved three separate attacks from three separate armies intended to overwhelm Lee and his feared Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s army was not strong enough to defend all of Virginia at once, confronted with threats to the Shenandoah Valley (a critical food production region, also known as “the breadbasket of the Confederacy”), Richmond, and his own force. Faced with such a situation, Lee would have to give something up. Whatever he gave up would weaken the Confederacy’s ability to resist.

Generals Get Their Orders

The less-than-brilliant but politically well-connected German immigrant Franz Sigel was provided a small force of 6,000 men and ordered to clear the Shenandoah Valley of Confederate forces. Another less-than-brilliant but politically well-connected General, Benjamin F. Butler, was given the 35,000-man Army of the James and ordered to move up the Peninsula to threaten Richmond. George G. Meade’s army of 118,000 would cross the Rapidan River near Fredericksburg and move southward, seeking to defeat Lee’s army in battle. Grant decided to put Philip Sheridan in charge of the Union cavalry, now 12,000 strong, and also decided that as General in Chief, he would accompany the Army of the Potomac to provide General Meade with strategic direction. Grant applied the lesson he learned during the Vicksburg campaign and at Chattanooga concerning logistics: The Army would not be tied to a supply line of over 4,000 wagons. Instead, there would be a much smaller wagon train for resupply; the troops would march with what they initially needed and ships moving up Virginia’s rivers would resupply the army.

Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had a strength of 65,000 to 70,000 men at the beginning of spring 1864. General Beauregard, long relegated to obscure coastal defensive missions, returned to Virginia to command a ragtag force of about 25,000 men defending Richmond. Times were tough; the South had no more men and food was hard to come by. Yet nearly all of the men in Lee’s army had voluntarily reenlisted and done so before the Confederate government made their service mandatory. Despite losses and hardships, Lee’s tough veterans were just as dangerous as ever. They were ably led and devoted to their commander. They had every expectation of defeating the Union army once again, and were not impressed by the reputation Grant had built in the west. Lee had the army spread in a wide crescent along the Rapidan River trying to protect as wide an area as possible and allow the army easier access to food collected from the countryside. The Confederate supply system at this time was so poor that army rations were infrequent and very meager. Increasingly, Confederate armies had to scour the countryside, obtaining food from local farmers. He was in a position, as always, to defend or strike out on the offensive if an opportunity presented itself.

Ben “Beast” Butler

Benjamin Freeman Butler was the archetype for the political General. A lawyer-politician from Massachusetts, he was short and heavy with eyes slightly crossed — hardly the authoritative military leader figure. From the very beginning of the war, he developed a bad habit of taking the action most likely to embarrass or disturb the government. He compounded these errors by taking action without authorization. It was Butler who declared early in the war that escaped slaves were “contraband of war” and therefore could be confiscated, like other property. He started as a war Democrat and moved to become a radical Republican, which made him a very important figure for the Lincoln administration.

Butler was the commander of the occupation army in Louisiana and was so obnoxious that President Jefferson Davis declared him a criminal, with orders that he be executed immediately if captured. He became known throughout the South as “Beast” Butler. His political connections seemed to act as a magic charm that kept him in the field after many others of his type had given up. In 1864, Ben Butler’s name was synonymous with military disaster. Given one more opportunity for glory in 1865, he was dispatched to capture Fort Fisher defending the last open Confederate port of Wilmington, North Carolina. Having all the advantages, Butler squandered them and made an ineffective attack before hastily sailing away at the word that Confederate reinforcements were arriving. Grant had him relieved and sent back to his home state of Massachusetts to await further orders. Since Lincoln had been reelected and Butler’s clout in the Republican Party was no longer needed, Butler remained away from the war.

Day One in the Wilderness: “Bushwhacking on a Grand Scale”

Grant took a page from Union General Joseph Hooker’s book and crossed the Rapidan River in an attempt to flank Lee’s army, just as Hooker had planned to do at Chancellorsville in 1863. If Lee refused battle, Grant planned to place the army between Lee and Richmond. This certainly would force Lee to fight. His plan had the army crossing through the wilderness, the same place that had been the scene of Lee’s greatest triumph at Chancellorsville. The woods and thickets held a terrible meaning to the Army of the Potomac. They would again. Grant did not know how difficult it would be to move his army and supply wagons through the area; it took longer than he planned. He could not maneuver in the thick undergrowth and lost the advantage of numbers. Lee was acutely aware that Grant was vulnerable and moved forward to take advantage of the situation.

Lee struck quickly with the two corps he had and ordered Longstreet’s corps to join them. The initial encounter quickly turned into a large-scale brawl as thousands of men on each side found themselves disoriented, fighting in small groups in the woods filled with smoke from small fires caused by burning powder from the weapons. Some soldiers refused to call it a battle, instead describing it as “bushwhacking on a grand scale.” Officers had no control over the battle; orders were lost and units joined the battle wherever they could. Artillery was useless in the woods, so the battle was conducted with individual rifle fire alone. A forest fire, compounding the stress and fear of battle, blazed through the day and into the night. Tragically, many wounded soldiers were trapped in the flames and burned to death.

Day Two in the Wilderness: Grant Doesn’t Quit

The following day, both Lee and Grant planned to renew the brutal battle. Grant ordered an attack, with weight directed against the Confederate left. Meanwhile, Lee sought to hold the Yankees by creating a diversionary attack on the enemy’s right flank, while bringing up Longstreet’s corps to attack the Union left flank. Ewell’s Confederate troops launched their attack just before three Union corps began their attack. The battle on the Confederate right halted in stalemate along the entrenchments dug during the night. Meanwhile, General Hancock, one of the Union Gettysburg heroes, drove his corps hard against the Confederate defenders on the right led by A.P. Hill. The Union attack crushed the Confederate line, and it appeared that Lee’s army was beaten. Just as Hancock reported his success to General Meade, Longstreet’s corps arrived, driving the attackers back and enveloping the Union left. The momentum had shifted suddenly and dramatically.

Lee attempts a decisive counterstrike

The Confederate flank attack faltered in the undergrowth and like Jackson, Longstreet was wounded by friendly fire (shot by his own troops). Lee’s Old War Horse sustained a wound that should have been fatal. Despite the state of medical treatment at the time, he was out of action for fewer than six months and back in command by the end of the year. The battle ended that night with neither side having made no progress and both glad for nightfall. The battle was one of the fiercest ever fought between these two armies. In the end there were 18,000 casualties for the Union and 10,000 casualties for the Confederates. Lee had lost a corps commander and several high-ranking officers. The army was in good spirits, believing they had won a victory. The soldiers expected Grant, like every other Union commander, to drag his beaten troops back across the river and try again later. That didn’t happen.

Unlike previous commanders, Grant had no intention of concluding the campaign. He stuck to his plan, ordering the army to maneuver left to outflank Lee and bring him to battle. Spotsylvania Court House was at the next road junction that would allow Grant to do this. Lee sensed that Grant would not follow the standard Army of the Potomac script. Lee blocked every thrust Grant made, forcing him to expend men and supplies for each step of the way to Richmond. Anticipating Grant’s orders, Lee ordered his own army eastward to get to the key crossroads at Spotsylvania, Virginia.

Confederate troops built entrenchments as soon as they reached the crossroads. This was the new pattern of the war — no one fought out in the open any more if he could help it. Strong breastworks (low walls) backed by cannons gave the defender the advantage and allowed him to inflict heavy casualties on an attacking enemy. Because the Confederates were numerically inferior to the Union army, breastworks also helped negate any manpower advantage the Union had.

The trenches were well built and formed the shape of a rough V, with its bottom tip pointed like an arrowhead at the Yankees. At the point of the V was high ground a mile in length and about half a mile wide, which held 22 cannons. It was the key to the Confederate defensive position. The Confederates called it the “Mule Shoe” because of its shape.

“General Lee to the rear”

General Winfield Scott Hancock’s attack threatened the entire Confederate line. General Lee arrived to find troops running from the fight. As he unsuccessfully tried to rally the broken remnants, he saw the Texas brigades of Longstreet’s corps wheeling into the battle line. Seizing a battle flag, he ordered a charge that he would lead himself. The troops refused the order and thousands of voices began shouting “General Lee to the rear!” General Longstreet arrived, convinced Lee to remain back. Longstreet led the men into battle himself.

The battle for the Mule Shoe

From May 10 to 12, the Army of the Potomac attacked the Confederate trench lines. A late evening attack on the 11th temporarily captured the Mule Shoe, but a breakdown in the plan forced a retreat. The next day, Grant sent 20,000 men from three corps in massed columns to attack the Mule Shoe at dawn. It began to rain in the predawn darkness and continued all day. The Confederates had pulled back to the base of the Mule Shoe to shore up their lines, but with indications of an attack becoming apparent (20,000 men stomping around in the mud make a lot of noise), about 3,000 men and the 22 cannons were returning to the front lines when Union troops burst upon them.

The Union attackers easily captured the entire group with hardly a shot fired. The Confederate line had been broken, and for a second time just over a week, Lee’s army was in danger of destruction. Instead of continuing the attack to broaden the breach, the 20,000 Union troops stayed in the narrow confines of the Mule Shoe. Lee pushed forces forward into the Mule Shoe to seal off the penetration. Again Lee rallied his men and waving his sword, attempted to lead a charge into the Mule Shoe. Again his soldiers prevented him from doing so, grabbing the reins of his horse and yelling “General Lee to the rear!” Before morning was over, the Yankees had been pushed back to the original line, where they stayed all day. Each side battled continuously for 24 hours across a wall of logs and mud.

The Union attackers controlled the Mule Shoe’s outside; but the Confederates controlled the vital corner where the Mule Shoe connected to the main trench line. Here Union efforts focused in a secondary effort to break the Confederate line. This place became known as “Bloody Angle.” There are only a few instances in the history of modern warfare where soldiers have fought with almost superhuman strength — the French and Germans at Verdun in 1915 and American Marines at Bloody Nose Ridge in 1944 at Guadalcanal are examples. The Bloody Angle is another.

The fighting there was so intense that large trees were cut in half by musket fire alone. You can see one of these tree trunks in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Nothing like this had happened before. In all the brutal battles of the war, where hundreds of men fell in a matter of minutes, there was nothing equaling this. For nearly 20 hours, in pouring rain, thousands of men fought and died, standing a little less than an arm’s length from each other. But the Confederate line held. Over the next few days, both sides recovered from the awful carnage before Grant renewed his assault. It failed as Confederate artillery fire blasted the Union ranks. Lee also made an attack against the Union right that failed. See Figure 20-1.

By May 20, Grant had suffered 17,000 casualties at Spotsylvania. Lee’s losses are unknown, but estimated to be about 12,000. Thus, in over three weeks of fighting, the Union army had lost about 35,000 men to the Confederate army’s 22,000. Both commanders requested reinforcements that replaced about half of their losses.

Figure 20-1:Map of the Virginia Campaign of 1864.

Famous last words

John Sedgwick, one of the finest corps commanders in the Union army, was killed by a sniper’s bullet in front of the Confederate lines at Spotsylvania. Known as “Uncle John” to his men, Sedgwick rode forward to get a better look at the Confederate defenses. A soldier warned him of snipers. Sedgwick replied: “Nonsense, they couldn’t hit an elephant from here . . .” and he fell from his horse dead, struck by a Confederate sharpshooter’s bullet.

Bad news for Grant

While the battle at Spotsylvania raged beyond his control, Grant received two pieces of bad news that wrecked his strategy for the Eastern Theater.

Ben Butler’s Army of the James had been beaten in a fight near Drewry’s Bluff, on the James River south of Richmond. Butler would soon be maneuvered into a neck of land sticking out into the James River. Beauregard entrenched across the base of the neck, sealing Butler’s army and preventing it from doing any harm.

Sigel’s small army had been defeated at New Market, Virginia by John C. Breckinridge and a motley crew that included teenage boys from the school at which Stonewall Jackson taught. Breckinridge had held them in reserve, but was forced to commit the boys in an all-out attack on the Union line. The climactic charge (also in a rainstorm) won the day.

From a three-way coordinated strategic offensive, Grant now had nothing but the battered Army of the Potomac and the determination, as Grant put it in a message to Halleck, “. . . to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

Stuart’s death

On the heels of Longstreet’s battlefield wound came terrible news from a place called Yellow Tavern, just 6 miles from Richmond. Philip Sheridan’s 10,000 cavalrymen were given the green light to prove their worth to General Meade, who had little use for cavalry. Sheridan led a raid deep into Confederate territory to threaten the Confederate capital and link up with Butler’s forces approaching Richmond from the southeast.

Jeb Stuart, with about 4,500 men, sought to protect the capital and hit the enemy column at Yellow Tavern. In a pitched battle there, Stuart was wounded in the stomach by a bullet. Such wounds were beyond the capabilities of Civil War doctors; Stuart died the following day in Richmond. Lee was now without the man who had provided him with the information that had made his greatest victories possible. He also lost a dear friend.

Lee Loses the Initiative at North Anna

Failing to break Lee’s solid defenses, Grant sidestepped the army and headed south. Lee pulled back to the next defensible position, the North Anna River, about 25 miles north of Richmond to block the Union movement along the main roads that led to the capital. Lee then established a strong defensive position, guarding the main ford across the river. After examining the position for several days, Grant found that Lee’s army was in such a strong position that he could not attack with confidence of success. Grant decided to slip sideways again, trying to draw the Confederate army out in the open, but Lee had been forced to surrender the initiative to Grant. They suffered crippling losses in the army that included many of his best officers; Lee’s army was no longer strong enough or well led enough to take any bold offensive action. Lee could only respond to Grant’s decisions and keep his army between the Yankees and Richmond.

Grant’s Disaster at Cold Harbor

On May 26, Grant again moved to outflank Lee. By this time, the Union soldiers had an unmilitary name for such a military operational maneuver: the “jug-handle movement.” This time the destination of Grant’s army was Cold Harbor, an innocuous crossroads 10 miles northeast of Richmond. Again Grant was confronted by strongly entrenched Confederate troops backed by artillery. As his troops dug in, Grant looked for an opportunity to attack.

On June 3, Grant ordered an assault on the Confederate line. The Cold Harbor defenses were not only strong, but also well laid out. The trenches were angled in a zigzag fashion so that an attacking force was exposed not only to fire from the front, but also to fire from each side. Lee’s engineers had created a 5-mile killing zone. The Union veterans who understood what the attack meant wrote their names on small slips of paper and pinned them to their backs. This would allow comrades to identify them after they were killed.

The battle lasted about an hour, but it was all over in 30 minutes. In that time, 7,000 men were killed or wounded. Those not killed outright were caught in a murderous crossfire and couldn’t retreat. The men flopped on the ground and began to dig, using bayonets, canteen halves, penknives, and bare hands as they sought some protection from the bullets and shells. Grant regretted his order for the rest of his life. He had become impatient and neither his staff nor Meade’s had done any reconnaissance or preparation before the attack. Ironically, he had reached the same point Union General McClellan had in 1862, but was no closer to taking Richmond than McClellan had been. And unlike McClellan, he had suffered over 60,000 casualties to get where he was — equal to the number of men Lee had in his whole army when the campaign had begun. Could the North bear much more of this? The already low morale of the North turned lower. For Lincoln and the Republicans, the political costs were enormous. The Peace Democrats, gearing up for the 1864 presidential election, began to call Grant a “fumbling butcher” who sacrificed his troops needlessly.

The Jug-Handle Movement to Petersburg

The Cold Harbor attack nearly ruined the fighting abilities of Grant’s army, leaving him few options after. He could try another end round movement, but that only would put Lee in the trenches around Richmond, something Grant did not want. The direct attack had proven ruinous, so that option was out. Never for once thinking of calling off the campaign, Grant decided on a third option: Make Richmond undefendable and pull Lee’s army out into the open by taking an indirect approach. The indirect route was the city of Petersburg.

The strategic importance of Petersburg

Only 23 miles south of Richmond, Petersburg was the hub of five major railroad lines that connected from all over the lower South and southwestern Virginia. From Petersburg came the rail lifeline to the Confederate capital of Richmond. Supplies for the Army of Northern Virginia flowed through Petersburg to Richmond. If the Union army could seize Petersburg, Lee’s army would be forced to abandon Richmond and reestablish another supply line.

Thus, Petersburg became the Army of the Potomac’s new objective. They faced some serious geographical barriers to moving to the city. First, the army would have to cross the James River, a serious obstacle. The river was wide and swift and had no bridge. The other problem was the city’s defenses. Since 1862, a heavily fortified trench line with 55 artillery batteries guarded the city. If the enemy was alerted to the Union army’s movement, a formidable foe could occupy the trenches and make the city impregnable.

Grant’s plan

Grant needed to move the army secretly. He also needed to distract Lee from what was happening to his front. On June 6, Grant dispatched Sheridan and his cavalry to threaten the rail lines to Richmond with a diversionary attack near Charlottesville. To meet this threat, Lee was forced to dispatch his own cavalry force. Without his cavalry, Lee would not be able to scout the Union army’s activities. Grant made his move on June 12, pulling two corps out of the trenches at Cold Harbor during the night heading for the James River. See Figure 20-2.

Grant had made a poor selection of commanders to accomplish this movement. He gave the mission to Ben Butler. Butler had his own corps along with the highly capable II Corps from the Army of the Potomac. Grant had extricated most of the hapless Butler’s army out of his position on Bermuda Hundred, a peninsula that jutted into the James River by boat to reinforce the Army of the Potomac just before Cold Harbor. The two corps Grant selected were in very bad shape. Butler’s corps had participated in the attack on the Cold Harbor trenches and had lost heavily; the II Corps was worn out, having borne the brunt of most of the fighting since May. Grant’s orders were vague and left Butler with wide discretion. Grant actually told Butler not to take Petersburg “unless you feel a reasonable degree of confidence of success.” For a General like Butler, this was the golden loophole — ban excuse for failure. To top it off, General Winfield Scott Hancock, the commander of the II Corps was not told in his movement orders that he was to support an attack on Petersburg.

Fiasco at Petersburg

Butler’s corps, about 15,000 men in all (including a small division of Black troops), crossed the James River on a pontoon bridge 2,100 feet long and approached Petersburg from the northeast. The defense of Petersburg was the responsibility of General P.G.T. Beauregard, who had been invisible since Shiloh. He commanded an under-strength brigade of 2,200 men. Most of his command had been sent to reinforce the Army of Northern Virginia at Cold Harbor; the rest were keeping the remainder of Butler’s army trapped at Bermuda Hundred.

Figure 20-2:Map of Grant’s move to Petersburg.

When Butler’s corps approached, the commander took one look at the formidable earthworks with their heavy cannons and stopped dead in his tracks. This would make Cold Harbor look like a picnic. Butler waited until 7 p.m. to attack in small groups, rather than by a massed assault. This attack succeeded in capturing a large section of the trench line. Beauregard could not have prevented the Union forces from walking into Petersburg, yet the Yankees halted where they were for the night, even after advance units of II Corps arrived on the battlefield.

Lee at this time did not know what was happening at Petersburg; he hadn’t anticipated the enemy making such a great leap across the James. Grant’s pontoon bridge, the longest in modern history, was a notable achievement, one of the great engineering feats of the war. It provided the Union army with an operational flexibility that did not exist in the Confederate army and left Lee uncertain of his enemy’s exact whereabouts. He reacted quickly when the reports reached him, dispatching A.P. Hill’s corps to Petersburg. Despite the haste, Hill would not be able to help Beauregard for several days. Beauregard was on his own, facing the ever-growing Army of the Potomac.

Beauregard recalled the rest of his troops from Bermuda Hundred to Petersburg, leaving the Yankees unattended. Now reinforced to 10,000 men, he faced about 60,000. Still the Union army waited. Everyone, including Grant, was greatly impressed by the Petersburg defense line. Everyone was so impressed that no one thought to ask if the defenses were adequately defended. Butler’s corps and the II Corps attacked that evening but were driven back. The men had little heart in going against Confederate entrenchments. Beauregard was fighting with everything he had, including old men and boys from the city. Troops used bayonets, tin cans, knives — anything to establish a secondary defensive line.

That night, Hill’s men began to arrive, along with Lee himself. Confederate strength began to build and the trench lines were occupied with veterans. Once the Union troops realized this, all the steam went out of the attack ordered for the following day. No soldier in the Union army wanted to face Lee’s veterans sitting behind the Petersburg trenchlines. The attacks, such as they were, made no progress. Grant had lost his greatest opportunity of the war. Lee’s army protected the city’s rail lines. There was no other choice except siege.

The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery

Since December 1863 the 1st Maine had occupied Washington’s defenses. Because the threat of attack was nonexistent, it was easy duty. In 1864, Grant pulled this and other units out of the defenses and employed them as infantry. Their first engagement was at Spotsylvania, where they resisted Confederate General Ewell’s attack on the Union left flank. On June 18, as part of Grant’s order for a coordinated mass assault on the Petersburg defenses, the 1st Maine led the attack. As soon as the Confederate defenders started firing, all but the 1st Maine halted their attack. Of the 850 men who began that charge, 635 were killed or wounded as they crossed the open ground. The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery has the terrible distinction of suffering the greatest losses in one engagement of any Union regiment in the war.

The Second Valley Campaign

Now that his army was locked at Petersburg, Lee attempted to alter the strategic picture as he had in 1862. Back then, with McClellan threatening Richmond, he reinforced Jackson’s valley army and threatened Washington, causing Lincoln to withhold reinforcements to protect the capital. This allowed Lee to take the offensive that became the Seven Days battles. Lee, of course, had no Jackson to depend on, yet the same strategic possibilities beckoned. He could send a Confederate force to threaten Washington and simultaneously taking the pressure off the defenders of Richmond by diverting Union troops to protect the Union capital and chase the Confederates out of the Shenandoah Valley.

Old Jube in the valley

Jubal Early (see Figure 20-3), a West Point graduate, was a lawyer in Virginia before the war. He was a member of the Virginia convention that voted the state out of the Union. Though he’d cast his vote against secession, he joined the Confederate army to defend his state against invasion. Wounded at Williamsburg in 1862, he returned to the army and became an effective brigade commander. Promoted to Major General in 1863, he commanded a division at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. In May 1864, Lee promoted him to Lieutenant General and gave him command of the II Corps to replace Ewell, who was incapacitated by illness.

Early was tough, profane, unkempt, and usually irritable, but he knew how to fight, and his troops respected him. He certainly was not the master of operational maneuver like Jackson, but Lee had little recourse. His pool of talented leadership had diminished. Lee detached the Second Corps from the Army of Northern Virginia and gave it the title Army of the Valley. Early’s mission was to disrupt Union forces in the valley and threaten Washington. He was also to gather whatever supplies he could to send back to the army at Petersburg. Lee hoped that somehow Early’s actions would allow Lee to return and take the initiative away from Grant.

Figure 20-3:Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early.

” CORBIS

Early distracts everyone

Early set out for the valley with 8,000 men. He joined forces with John C. Breckinridge in Lynchburg. After the New Market victory, Breckinridge’s small army was being pushed hard by a Union force under General David Hunter, who took great pleasure in chasing the outnumbered rebels and wrecking parts of the valley as he went. Early’s arrival gave Hunter second thoughts. Believing he was outnumbered, Hunter retreated into the mountains, again leaving the valley open to the Confederates.

Adding Breckinridge to his force along with other scattered groups, Early soon had 14,000 men. Before long he was at Winchester; soon after he was in Maryland, where Lee had opened his first invasion of the North in 1862. There he wrecked the Chesapeake and Ohio canal and held a town ransom for $200,000 (U.S. money, of course). His troops ranged far and wide, looking primarily for shoes. His cavalry threatened Baltimore, putting that city and half of the North into a panic. He fought a small but significant battle at Monocacy as Union troops tried to delay Early’s advance to Washington until Grant could dispatch additional troops from the Petersburg front to protect the capital.

As Early pushed toward Washington, he found that manned units of the VI Corps of the Army of the Potomac, moved by ship to the capital manned the defenses. There was a small engagement on the outskirts of the capital at Fort Stevens, but neither side wanted to risk a major battle. Early pulled his army back to Winchester, and the VI pursued. Along the way, Early’s men laid waste to the area — an act of retaliation for Hunter’s acts of destruction. The VI Corps followed but soon gave up the chase and returned to Petersburg.

Early was a minor annoyance in the large scheme of things. Grant knew this, but the politicians in Washington didn’t. Pressure mounted to do something about Early, whose presence in the valley caused much agitation and swooning in the capital. Grant decided to get rid of the distraction once and for all. He sent General Phil Sheridan into the valley with 40,000 men and gave him the order to finish Early. Grant knew Sheridan would not have to be told twice or closely supervised — that was one reason he brought Sheridan with him from the Western Theater to begin with.

A tribute to Jackson

Along the way to Winchester, Early’s army passed through Lexington, the home and burial place of Stonewall Jackson. Early now commanded the same units that Jackson had led. With great emotion, the army paraded past Jackson’s grave in salute and viewed the ruins of the Virginia Military Institute, which Hunter had burned for the cadets’ participation in the battle of New Market. Many soldiers reported that their visit to Lexington inspired them to greater efforts.

Early meets Sheridan

Reinforced from Lee’s army, Early with 10,000 men occupied Winchester, the gateway to the valley of Virginia (Shenandoah Valley) and the starting point for any offensive action to strike Northern territory. Sheridan gathered his strength, watched Early closely, and then struck hard in September after Early had deployed his troops poorly. Sheridan and Early both lost about 5,000 men in the fight, but Sheridan could withstand such losses far better than the Confederates. It was the first time these Confederate troops had ever been forced to give up a battlefield to their enemy. They retreated with Sheridan in pursuit. He caught up with the Confederates at Fisher’s Hill (about 30 miles from Winchester) and drubbed the dispirited defenders again. Early again made the mistake of deploying his troops poorly. He lost half of his new force (most of them reported missing). He headed out of the valley. In four days, Sheridan did what no other Union commander had been able to do — defeat Stonewall Jackson’s men in the valley.

A visitor to Fort Stevens

While the Confederates exchanged artillery and rifle fire with the Union defenders, President Abraham Lincoln arrived, wearing his now famous stovepipe hat. To get a better look at the action, he climbed up on the wall. With his civilian clothes and tall hat, Lincoln was a conspicuous target. Just 3 feet from the president, a surgeon was killed by a sharpshooter’s bullet. At that moment, staff officer Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes yelled out to his commander-in-chief: “Get down from there! You’ll get your head shot off, you damned fool!” Lincoln immediately obeyed Holmes, who later became one of the greatest justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reversal at Cedar Creek

But neither Lee nor Early was finished with the valley. It was too valuable to leave to the enemy. A month later, Early returned to the valley reinforced with 18,000 men, looking for the Yankees. He found them 20 miles south of Winchester, camped at Cedar Creek. Sheridan was not with them. He was in Winchester, on his way back to the army after attending a strategy conference in Washington. Grant wanted Sheridan to destroy the railroads and canals that supplied Richmond from the valley. Sheridan thought that the destruction of the crops in the valley would achieve the same strategic purpose and allow the army to be used for other purposes. On October 19, during his return trip, Sheridan met hundreds of panicked soldiers fleeing up the valley turnpike, accompanied by wagons and walking wounded. They told a tale of disaster at Cedar Creek.

Sheridan’s 20-mile ride on his horse Rienzi has become the stuff of legend. Waving his hat, he moved among his men, urging them to rally and return with him to Cedar Creek. He reached the field and realized things were not as bad as he had been told (as you can imagine, soldiers running from a battle do tend to exaggerate the situation). Early had caught the Yankees unaware in a dawn attack, but the assault had given out about the time Sheridan arrived. Early did not give any subsequent orders, allowing the Union army to use its strength in numbers to good use by concentrating overwhelming force against the Confederates.

By 4 p.m., the counterattack had begun and the Confederate army fell apart. Early gave up what was left of the old Second Corps to Lee at Petersburg and kept a small contingent at Waynesboro as a token Confederate force in the valley. In reality, the valley belonged to Sheridan. He mercilessly destroyed all that supported or supplied the Confederate army. The valley was dotted with burning buildings and fields. In fact, residents of the valley in October 1864 called this “The Burning,” and many still speak of it today.

The Siege at Petersburg

Sieges, by and large, are boring for the military history writer, mostly because sieges are boring for soldiers as well. In a siege, nothing much happens. One side of a siege has locked the other side into a position, and neither can move without giving up something of strategic value. In this case, the Confederates could not afford to give up the strategic supply lines at Petersburg, especially since they lost the valley; the Union could not allow Lee’s army to escape and fight as it had done since 1862. The troops settled down to watching each other. See Figure 20-4.

Forts and strongholds ringed the city. Men lived in dugouts and occupied their time with guard duty in the trenches, always watching for an attack. Men were killed or wounded every day, but Grant could replace his losses; the Confederates could not. Grant now had the James River and the City Point railroad, where he established his headquarters and an enormous supply depot that efficiently fed and supplied over 100,000 men and 300,000 animals every day. The Confederates, relying on a broken supply system, often went without food and forage for days, and sometimes weeks, at a time.

Breaking the stalemate

Bored men can always occupy their time. And so it was with the 48th Pennsylvania, the coal miners who created a plan to end the siege. If the army couldn’t attack across open ground, and couldn’t get around the defenders, why not go underneath them? The coal miners proposed to dig a horizontal mine shaft 586 feet long, from their trench to a Confederate strongpoint. Underneath the strongpoint, the miners would plant explosives that would blow a hole in the enemy’s line wide enough for the entire Union army to pour through and capture Petersburg. The 48th Pennsylvania regiment belonged to the IX Corps commanded by Ambrose Burnside, the erstwhile commander of the Army of the Potomac. He had been rehabilitated, but he was hardly any more competent as a commander than he had been at Antietam or at Fredericksburg, or at Knoxville. Burnside liked the idea and Grant approved the plan. The miners began digging on June 25.

Burnside blunders

The miners performed an exceptional feat of engineering, overcoming many obstacles, not the least of which was lack of cooperation from higher headquarters, which provided almost no logistics support. Nevertheless, they completed the project in about a month and loaded four tons of black powder into the shaft beneath the Confederate position. Burnside, in charge of the operation, made his battle plan. Once the explosion was set off, a division of U.S. Colored Troops would move to hold the right and left flanks of the penetration while three additional divisions followed through the gap into Petersburg.

When presented the concept for the attack, Grant and Meade changed the plan completely, putting the Black troops last and the other divisions driving straight through the gap first, rather than covering the flanks. Two other corps would be lined up behind the Union defenses to exploit the breakthrough. Burnside’s plan, now completely changed, began to unravel. By drawing straws, Burnside selected the division that would make the first all-important assault through the gap. As luck would have it, the division chosen had a commander who had only been in place for six weeks.

The Battle of the Crater

The explosion occurred at almost 5 a.m. on July 30, and it was incredible. It blew a hole 30 feet deep, 80 feet wide, and 170 feet long. The 278 men and 2 cannons that had occupied that space were obliterated. The Union’s lead division marched forward, but instead of continuing through the gap as planned, stopped dead in the crater. Sliding down 30 feet of loose earth is one thing; climbing out of the bottom of a 30-foot hole whose sides are covered by loose earth is another. Brigade after brigade jumped in the hole — nobody could get out. As the men milled about, the Confederates reacted quickly as Lee shifted forces to plug the gap.

While artillery fired into the mass of Union troops, confederate infantry counterattacked to drive the enemy back. The men trapped in the crater had no chance. Those who could ran back to the protection of the Union lines, leaving behind 4,400 casualties. Lee had lost 1,500 men. The gap was promptly closed, and the siege continued.

In a court of inquiry held in the aftermath, it was discovered that the commander of the first division making the assault and the commander of the U.S. Colored Troops were both in a shelter behind the lines drinking rum when the attack began. Burnside was held responsible for not making any preparations for the attack, such as clearing obstacles from the front of his own trenches or flattening down trench walls. Burnside resigned in the aftermath, finally freeing Union soldiers from paying in blood for the consequences of his decisions.

Figure 20-4:Map of the siege of Petersburg.

The siege continues

After the debacle at the Crater Grant stopped trying to attack the Confederate defenses directly. Instead, he extended his trench lines a little northwestward, trying to completely surround the city and cut off all rail lines. The Confed-erates would have to extend their trench line to keep the enemy from flanking the defenses. Each one of these movements was accompanied by small-scale fighting, but unlike Grant, Lee did not have the manpower to occupy the ever-lengthening trenches and stop a direct assault. At some point, he would be stretched too thin, allowing Grant to attack anywhere along the line and break through. Grant also kept Lee off balance by attacking the Richmond defenses, which forced Lee to dispatch troops. Lee’s 50,000 men, facing starvation, hung on stubbornly through the last months of 1864.