Help Preserve Acreage on the May 1864 Todd's Tavern, June 1864 Jerusalem Plank Road and August 1864 Globe Tavern Battlefields.

You can help preserve the May 1864 Todd's Tavern battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust.  The trust's map is of the cavalry fighting on May 7, 1864, but infantry took up the fighting at Bradshaw's farm just west of Todd's Tavern on May 8.  On May 8, the Petersburg Riflemen, Company E of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment, and the sharpshooter battalion of Weisiger's Virginia Brigade, Mahone's division, Hill's Corps engaged Miles' brigade, Barlow's division, Hancock's corps.  The Federals captured one of Company E's leading writers, Sgt. Leroy Summerfield Edwards, and almost seized the Petersburg Regiment's first historian, Pvt. George S. Bernard, also of Company E.  Edwards and Bernard had belonged to the same Bible study ground the previous winter.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019) (winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History).

You can help preserve the June 1864 Jerusalem Plank Road battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust or the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.  Another prolific writer from the Petersburg Regiment, First Sgt. James Edward "Eddie" Whitehorne described how on June 22, 1864, Barlow's division of Hancock's corps "melted away like ice in the sun" under the onlslaught of the Alabama, Georgia and Virginia brigades of Mahone's division, who then rolled up Mott's division "like a sheet of paper." Mahone's men then routed much of Gibbon's division and seized the four guns of the 12th New York Battery.  Afterward, assisted by the Mississippi Brigade of Mahone's division, the Alabamians, Georgians and Virginians repulsed two counterattacks by Gibbon's troops. 

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment.... (Savas Beatie, 2019).

You can help preserve the August 1864 Globe Tavern battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust or the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.  On August 19 at Globe Tavern, troops of the Federal IX Corps almost surrounded the Petersburg Regiment and its brigade, Weisiger's.  A man next to Private Bernard too seriously wounded to beat the hasty retreat that became necessary and perished in a Union hospital.  It was "no time to swap jack-knives," wrote Pvt. Henry Van Leuvenigh Bird of the 12th Virginia's Company C, the Petersburg New Grays, one of only two members of the Petersburg Regiment's color guard to emerge from the battle unscathed.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment... (Savas Beatie, 2019).

On August 21 at Globe Tavern, while the Petersburg Regiment and its brigade occupied the Petersburg trenches, the rest of their reinforced division suffered a stiff repulse at the hands of the Federal V Corps (including the Iron Brigade) and IX Corps.  Hagood's South Carolina Brigade got surrounded as Weisiger's Virginia Brigade almost had two days earlier, and before the South Carolinians fought their way out of the trap they lost almost two thirds of their strength.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

The Petersburg Regiment and The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 from Savas Beatie would make good Christmas presents, too!

Petersburg at Gettysburg

Here's the link to the August 14, 2021 talk that my friend Charlie Knight and I gave about the night move of Mahone's brigade on July 2, 1863.

Map by Hal Jespersen for John Horn, "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863," Gettysburg Magazine No. 65, July 2021

Pleasant Reception at Petersburg Civil War Table December 2, 2021

Last night at the Petersburg Civil War Round Table I had a pleasant reception.  We discussed The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865, my latest book.  It received the 2019 Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical Foundation for Unit History.  The soldiers did most of the distinguished writing.

Before arriving at Pamplin Park, the site of the round table meeting, I drove around the June 1864 and August 1864 battlefields, revisiting among other places that of Hagood's South Carolina brigade, which lost about 2/3 of its strength on August 21, 2021.  (See The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.)

A Good Time at Pender Civil War Round Table at Rocky Mount, North Carolina

 We had a pleasant time at the Pender Civil War Round Table in Rocky Mount, North Carolina December 1, 2021.  I presented on and we discussed upon my most recent book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865.  The book won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.  The regiment's soldiers did most of the distinguished writing.

On the way down from Richmond I stopped at Petersburg National Battlefield Park to pick up postcards for my grandchildren.  

Update: My Appearance at the Petersburg Civil War Round Table Will Be at 7pm December 2, 2021

My appearance at the Petersburg Civil War Round Table will be at 7 p.m. on December 2, 2021, not 7:30 p.m. as I previously stated.  The talk will be about The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019), winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.

Most of the distinguished writing was done by the 12th's soldiers; more than 30 of them are quoted in the book.

Back to Back Talks about "The Petersburg Regiment" at Rocky Mount, NC and Petersburg, VA Dec. 1-2, 2021

God-willing, I'll be giving back to back talks about The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019) on December 1 and 2, 2021.  This book won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.

On December 1, I'll be addressing the Gen. Pender Civil War Round Table.  I expect to appear at 6 p.m. that evening at North Carolina Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount, NC.  

On December 2, I'll be at the Petersburg Civil War Round Table at 7 p.m.  Their meeting will be at Pamplin Historical Park. 

I encourage all students of the Civil War to write a unit history, particularly about a unit with a lot of diaries, letters and memoirs.  Things did not always happen the way they're described in the Official Reports.  

  

A Pleasant Time Talking about the 39th Illinois at Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table

We had a pleasant time discussing the 39th Illinois Veteran Volunteers ("Yates Phalanx") at the meeting of the Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table last night, November 3, 2021, in the Bradley, Illlinois Public Library.  Ted Linton, who is related to five members of the 39th, drove all the way from Minneapolis to hear my talk.  (Ted has helped me significantly with my current project, a history of Grant's second offensive at Petersburg, June 20-July 1, 1864.)

The 39th was a Fighting 300 Regiment, having lost more than 10 percent of its complement or 130 men to death in battle or from wounds.  It was called the "Yates Phalanx" because Governor Yates of Illinois pulled strings to get it into Federal service after Illinois' complement was filled.

My talk focused on the 39th at Fussell's Mill, about 12 miles southeast of Richmond on August 16, 1864.  A charge in which the regiment participated broke the Confederate line and briefly threatened Richmond before the Southerners sealed the breach.  The 39's color bearer, Pvt. Henry Hardenbergh of Company G, was wounded in the shoulder but picked himself up and advanced, capturing the colors of the 10th Alabama after killing its color sergeant.  He was awarded the Medal of Honor and a battlefield commission but they arrived posthumously because a Rebel sharpshooter picked him off on August 28 in the Bermuda Hundred Lines.  He lies in Poplar Grove National Cemetery, about six miles south by southwest from Petersburg. 

Fussell's Mill was part of Grant's fourth offensive at Petersburg, which I described in my book The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.  The dust jacket is based on a Keith Rocco painting of Hardenbergh in the 39th's charge at Fussell's Mill on August 1864.  The book is available from Savas Beatie. 

Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill as Corps Commander from Gettysburg through Petersburg

The late Edwin C. Bearss, kindly reading one of my manuscripts, once commented that Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill embodied the Peter Principle in the Army of Northern Virginia.

Hill, an outstanding division leader, was a poor corps commander from the start.  At Gettysburg, he probably bore most of the responsibility for the breakdown of Gen. Robert E. Lee's en echelon attack against the Federals on Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863.  See "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863," Gettysburg Magazine, July 2021.

Map by Hampton Newsome

On October 14, at Bristoe Station, he flung his troops into an ambush by United States troops concealed by a railroad cut and suffered a costly repulse.  Lee responded to Hill's excuses by saying, "Well, well general, bury these poor men and let us say no more about it."

Map by Hampton Newsome 

In the Wilderness on the morning of May 6, 1864, the two divisions of his corps present collapsed after he failed to straighten and improve his line the previous evening.  

At Jericho Mills on May 23, at the beginning of the battle of the North Anna River, Hill attacked piecemeal and suffered a repulse.  "General Hill, why did you let those people cross here?" asked Lee.  "Why didn't you throw your whole force on them and drive them back as Jackson would have done?"

A bright spot in Hill's career as a corps leader occurred on June 3 at Cold Harbor, when he counterattacked and drove back Federals who had pierced his line.

Hill's performance during the siege of Petersburg did not represent an improvement over his previous achievements in corps command.

On June 22, he misunderstood the plan proposed by Brig. Gen. William Mahone, a Petersburg and former railroad president particularly familiar with the ground around Petersburg.  Hill ordered Maj. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox, who was supposed to cooperate with Mahone, to proceed on a course that led to a mill pond and a morass that so slowed down Wilcox that he arrived too late to assist Mahone in routing the vaunted II Corps of the Army of the Potomac.  Wilcox's assistance would have resulted in a bigger haul of Federal prisoners.

On August 21, Hill and Mahone relied on a stale reconnaissance and against a subsequently altered Federal position launched an attack that resulted in heavy casualties at little cost to the foe.  See The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

Map by Hampton Newsome

A final low point for Hill occurred on February 8, 1865, during the Apple Jack Raid.  Mahone proposed to Hill that part of Hill's Corps march to Hicksford (now Emporia) ahead of a reinforced Federal corps heading southward along the Weldon Railroad, while the remainder of Hill's Corps occupied the route by which the Yanks would have to return to Grant's army group at Petersburg.  

“No,” said Hill.  “I have orders to go to Belfield.”

The Federals escaped.

“Had General Mahone’s suggestion been accepted by General Hill, the whole of the raiders would have been captured as easy as eating,” concluded one of Mahone's soldiers.  See The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019).

My Next Talk Will Be at the Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table on November 3, 2021, on the 39th Illinois

 At 6 p.m. on November 3 I'll be at the Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table Meeting at the Bradley Public Library in Bradley, Illinois discussing the 39th Illinois Veteran Volunteer Infantry's role in the battle of Fussell's Mill, about 10 miles southeast of Richmond, Virginia, on August 16, 1864.  The regiment's color bearer, a member of Company G, "the Preacher's Company," won a Medal of Honor that day.  Despite receiving a wound in the charge that broke the Confederate line, the color bearer picked himself up and continued onward, capturing the flag of an Alabama regiment and killing its bearer.  The incident appears in my book, The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2019) and indeed is depicted on the dust jacket, taken from a painting by Keith Rocco.

Birthday of Mr. Petersburg, George S. Bernard, 12th Virginia Infantry, Author of "War Talks of Confederate Veterans" and "Civil War Talks"

Today, August 27, is the birthday of Mr. Petersburg--George S. Bernard, Esq., author of War Talks of Confederate Veterans (1892) and Civil War Talks (2012).  

None of the soldiers of The Petersburg Regiment (12th Virginia Infantry), wrote more than George S. Bernard.  A graduate of the University of Virginia, he was a lawyer in Petersburg when he joined the Petersburg Riflemen as a private in 1859.  The Riflemen became Company E of the 12th.  He went off to Norfolk in April 1861 and was discharged in September 1861 after a bout of typhoid fever.  In February 1862, after recovering, he joined the Meherrin Grays as a sergeant, and the Grays were assigned to the 12th in Norfolk as the regiment's second Company I.  Wounded and captured at Crampton's Gap in September 1862, he was exchanged and put on recruiting duty at Cumberland Court House, about 60 miles southwest of Richmond.  After recovering from his wound, he transferred back to the 12th's Company E as a private.  Wounded at Hatcher's Run in February 1865, he was on furlough at the time of the Appomattox surrender and had tried unsuccessfully to rejoin his regiment.

After the war he returned to law practice and served in the state legislature.  He also wrote prolifically about the war.  He was the first historian of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment.

George S. Bernard

From War Talks of Confederate Veterans

In 1892, he compiled and edited War Talks of Confederate Veterans, which included some of his own articles.

He had a sequel ready for publication in 1896 when it disappeared.  The manuscript showed up again in 2004 at a flea market, where it was purchased for $50 and sold to the History Museum of Western Virginia for $15,000.  Hampton Newsome, John Selby and I were honored to edit the manuscript into Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard & His Fellow Veterans, which the University Press of Virginia published in 2012.

He also left letters and diaries at the University of Virginia, a notebook at Duke University, manuscript fragments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a letter collection in private hands.

I drew heavily on his writing in The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019), winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.  Soldiers such as Bernard did most of the Distinguished Writing.

  

Additions to My Schedule at Gettysburg National Battlefield Park on August 14, 2021

There are some additions to my schedule at Gettysburg National Battlefield Park on August 14, 2021.

I'm still due to give a talk with Charlie Knight at 9:30 a.m. at the marker for Ross's Battery on West Confederate Drive about the movement of Mahone's brigade on the evening of July 2, 1863.

Additionally, I'll be on the authors panel moderated by my publisher Ted Savas at 4 p.m. August 14, 2021 at the Gettysburg Heritage Center.

At 5 p.m. I'll be remaining at the Heritage Center to sign any copies purchased of the July 2021 edition of Gettysburg Magazine, which contains my article, "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863" as well as copies purchased of my latest book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019), winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation's Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.

William Evelyn Cameron, Adjutant of the 12th Virginia Infantry, Witness to the Movement of Mahone's Brigade on the Evening of July 2, 1863, Governor of Virginia 1882-1886

From George S. Bernard, ed., War Talks of Confederate Veterans (Petersburg: Fenn & Owen, 1892)

(Bernard was another member of the 12th Virginia in Mahone's brigade and another witness to its move on the evening of July 2, 1863) 

Charlie Knight and I Will Give a Talk at Gettysburg 9:30 a.m. August 14, 2021

There will be a gathering of Savas Beatie authors at Gettysburg August 13-15, 2021.  Author Charlie Knight (Robert E. Lee's Civil War Day by Day) and I (The Petersburg Regiment) will discuss the movement of Mahone's brigade on July 2, 1863 as set forth in my article in July's Gettysburg Magazine entitled "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863."  The talk will take place at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, August 14, 2021, and will last about an hour.  I'm hoping to meet up near the marker for Ross's Battery (Sumter Artillery) on West Confederate Drive.  I should be able to point out the route of Mahone's brigade from there.  Copies of Gettysburg Magazine should be available at the Visitor Center and I'll bring copies of The Petersburg Regiment and I'll sign either for anyone who wishes to buy one.

 

Map by Hampton Newsome, from The Petersburg Regiment

For my Gettysburg Magazine article, Hal Jespersen has drawn a splendid map based on Hampton's.

Major Moncena Dunn's Dream, June 22, 1864

One of my favorite anecdotes about the first Federal attempt to invest Petersburg from the Appomattox River below the city to the Appomattox above occurred on June 22, 1864, at the United State Army advanced toward the Dimmock Line south of the city.  (June 22 is the climax of my forthcoming book about Grant's second offensive at Petersburg.)

I was very pleased to find a picture of Major Moncena Dunn, who had a poignant dream early that disastrous afternoon.

Major Moncena Dunn

            As Brig. Gen. Francis Channing Barlow’s troops deployed in front of the Dimmock Line, the officers of the 19th Massachusetts of Pierce’s brigade in Gibbon’s division strolled to the rear to eat.  Their regiment held breastworks at the edge of an open field covered by a crossfire from Battery B, 11th New Jersey Light Artillery and the 12th New York Battery.  “Our regiment was so small that we were in single rank and the formation was two companies instead of ten,” recalled Capt. John Gregory Bishop Adams, who commanded the left company.  After enlisting as a private, Adams had won a Medal of Honor at Fredericksburg and a promotion to captain prior to suffering a Gettysburg wound.

The 19th’s commander shared an unsettling experience with his fellow officers. 

“I fell asleep a little while ago, and had a queer dream,” said Major Moncena Dunn, a Maine-born bookkeeper, cutler and hotel manager wounded at Fredericksburg.  “We were lying just as we are here, and the rebels came in our rear and captured the entire regiment.”[1]

Dunn’s fellow officers reacted with disbelief.

“We laughed at his story, said we guessed we should not go to Richmond that way, and returned to our places in line,” remembered Adams.  “The firing in our front increased, the batteries doing good service for the rebels.”[2]

Everything came to pass as Dunn had dreamed.  He, Adams and about 1,700 other Yanks wound up in Confederate custody before evening.  Dunn survived his captivity and often spoke of its hardships.

---

[1] John G. B. Adams, Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment (Boston, 1890), 102.

[2] Ibid., 102-103.

Map by Hampton Newsome

The Richmond and Atlanta Campaigns of 1864 Were Joined at the Hip

On June 18 I finally visited Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.  I was down in Atlanta for my grandson's second birthday.  I'm currently writing about Grant's second offensive at Petersburg.  The Atlanta Campaign battles of Kolb's Farm (June 22, 1864) and Kennesaw Mountain (June 27, 1864) took place within the span of the Federal general-in-chief's second offensive at Petersburg.  Grant loaned his horse Cincinnati to President Lincoln during his visit to the Union lines around there on June 21-22, 1864.  The Kennesaw Mountain park sells a little replica of Cincinnati and I bought one for my grandson, whom the toy horse pleased.

Chickamauga, fought on September 18-20, 1863 just south of Chattanooga, had a profound effect on the general-in-chief.  He realized that the Union armies must act as a team, applying continuous pressure on their respective fronts to prevent the Confederates from concentrating against any particular Federal army.  As late as his second offensive at Petersburg, he feared that if Sherman let up on Johnston in the Atlanta Campaign, the Secessionists might transfer troops from Georgia to Virginia. OR 40, 2:175. Afterward Grant feared that withdrawing his army group from James River would ensure Sherman's defeat by allowing the Southerners to shift forces from Virginia to Georgia for a reprise of Chickamauga.  OR 42, 2:193. The general-in-chief's fourth offensive in August ended any chance of that.  Confederate President Davis was not even thinking of such a move; in fact, he ordered an infantry brigade transferred from Atlanta to Mobile shortly before Atlanta's fall. 

Lee Besieged: Grant's Second Offensive at Petersburg, June 20-July 1, 1864

Right now I'm working on a history of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's second offensive at Petersburg, June 20-July 1, 1864.  I think I'll call it, Lee Besieged:  Grant's Second Offensive at Petersburg, June 20-July 1, 1864.  I started by looking at the late Edwin C. Bearss's original study of the fighting and, for unpublished material, Noah Andre Trudeau's The Last Citadel.  I recommend these works to anyone else writing about the fighting around Petersburg.  Other very helpful starting points include beyondthecrater.com and petersburgproject.org.  From there I went into more published and unpublished material.

I just finished my draft yesterday.  It will go out for examination by friends and acquaintances who themselves have published on the siege while I map and otherwise illustrate the book.  I estimate that mapping and otherwise illustrating will take a year or two.    

The second offensive occupied a critical period in the siege.  Underway was Grant's first attempt to invest Petersburg from the Appomattox River below the city to the Appomattox above, a very complicated maneuver.  This first attempt ended in disaster.  It might have succeeded against Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, who had commanded Fort Donelson, or Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, who had commanded at Vicksburg, but Grant was facing Gen. Robert E. Lee and did not reach the river above Petersburg until April 2, 1865 during the ninth of his offensives.

   

               Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd                                     Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton

Letters and Official Correspondence Versus Memoirs: The Effects of the Wilson-Kautz Raid, June 22-July 1, 1864

“Federal troops destructing the railroad track."— Frank Leslie, 1896

The results of the Wilson-Kautz Raid would disabuse Grant of the notion that cavalry could damage the railroads connecting Richmond with the Deep South to the point that Lee would have to abandon the Southern capitol for lack of supplies.  The Secessionists had to send away some of the surplus population, but full rations were issued throughout period the railroads remained inoperable except for half rations of corn for the cavalry provided by wagon trains from Stony Creek.[1]  The South Side Railroad may have been running from Burkeville to Petersburg as early as July 3.  Railroad trains could pass from Danville to Petersburg via Burkeville as early as July 5, a mere two weeks after the raid’s beginning.[2]  The Richmond & Danville Railroad had resumed operations through to Richmond by July 16, Confederate crews having replaced the slabtrack with heavy rail in fewer than four weeks—thus leaving the railroad in better condition than before the raid.[3]  When Grant set out to sever the Weldon Railroad in August, he employed not cavalry who merely wrecked rails and ties in passing but infantrymen who dug in across the roadbed.

Wilson and Kautz accomplished their basic mission, destroying the Burkeville junction.  The Union infantry failed to complete the investment of Petersburg from the river below to the river above on which the cavalry raid was premised.  This rendered largely ineffective the success of the bluecoat horsemen. 

That Wilson chose to retreat from Sappony Church by way of Reams Station rather than Jarratt’s Depot resulted from confusion caused by many hours without sleep.[4]  For the rest of his life, he felt defensive about the drubbing his troops received at First Reams Station, though much of the responsibility for the rout rested with Meade and Sheridan.[5] 

After the war, Brig. Gen. Isaac M. St. John of the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau may have been humoring Wilson by telling him that the raid inflicted, “the heaviest blow of the kind that ever befell the Confederacy till Appomattox wiped it out forever,” as Wilson recalled.  “[St. John] added that with all the resources at his command it was nine weeks, or sixty-three days, before a train from the south ran into Petersburg on either road.”^[6]  

In fact, trains were reaching the Cockade City from Danville via Burkeville by July 5, less than two weeks after the raid’s beginning, and the Confederates were rapidly repairing the Weldon Railroad.[7]  The Richmond & Danville Railroad reopened for business all the way to the Confederate capital on July 16.[8]  Perhaps St. John did not know how quickly the damage was repaired, or maybe he was referring to when the first Nitre and Mining Bureau train arrived in Petersburg.  Lead ore would at this point have been transported to Petersburg via the Richmond & Danville and the South Side railroads to be made into ingots and then shipped to Richmond on the Richmond & Petersburg.  In any event, Wilson had no need to exaggerate.  St. John may have been another victim of Lee’s campaign to deceive the enemy about the quick recovery of the South Side and Richmond & Danville railroads.

The Wilson-Kautz Raid may have cured Grant of his readiness to dispatch his cavalry on raids.  While the general-in-chief may have finally grasped that cavalry did not adequately destroy railroads, Sherman did not learn from Grant’s experience.  Uncle Billy initially employed cavalry against the Macon & Western Railroad in August without success before his final offensive of the Atlanta campaign finished the job with infantry. 

Despite the ephemeral damage inflicted by the Wilson-Kautz Raid, the Confederates remained sensitive to any threat to the Richmond & Danville.  Lee reacted violently to the presence of II Corps and a division of cavalry at Reams Station in August 1864.  He sent out eight brigades of infantry for the strike on the Federals at Reams because he feared that their presence at the station presaged another raid on the critical Richmond & Danville or that the occupation of Dinwiddie Court House would threaten the Army of Northern Virginia’s line of retreat southward from Petersburg and Richmond.[9]

---

[1] OR 40, 2:496. Lieutenant Hubard of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry remembered matters differently.  “Wilson’s raiders so damaged the Danville & Southside Railroads that lee’s army was for several weeks destitute of rations and our commands were subsisted on the coarsest corn-meal I ever saw,” he recalled.  {The rations were so short that when the meal was sifted it furnished only one repast for 24 hours.”  Nanzig, ed., The Civil War Memoirs of a Virginia Cavalryman, 184.  The letters of the 3rd’s Captain Watkins from July 1 through July 15, 1864 do not include the same complaints.  Toalson, ed., Send Me a Pair of Old Boots & Kiss My Little Girls, 298-305. 

Contemporaneous sources such as letters contradict the Hubard memoir. 

“We get plenty of cornbread, bacon and coffee and some sugar,” Sergeant Major Marion Hill Fitzgerald of the 45th Georgia in Thomas’ brigade on Bermuda Hundred wrote home on July 3.  “I am getting biscuit hungry.” Jeffrey C. Lowe and Sam Hodges, eds., Letters to Amanda, The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern Virginia (Macon, GA, 1998), 157.  On July 10, he wrote, “Our rations are a little light at times but we do very well on them.  This morning we got half in biscuits and half in cornbread and half in bacon and half beef, which suits might well.  We get plenty of coffee yet and some sugar.”  Ibid., 159.  On July 18, he wrote, “our rations are a little better now….”  Ibid., 160.  “We draw good rations and I catch a mess of fish nearly every day,” he wrote on August 5.  Ibid., 163.  On August 13, he wrote that, “our beef rations have stopped which hurts pretty bad.”  Ibid., 164.  “We draw two days rations at a time[,] half in bacon and cornbread and the other in biscuit and beef.”  Ibid., 163. 

On July 13, Private Spencer of the 3rd Georgia Infantry in the Dimmock Line wrote, “In the way of commissary stores we are getting along pretty well, except we do not get quite as much as we could eat.  We can make out, tho’.  Grant can’t starve us out certain.  There are now enough provisions in Richmond & Petersburg to last the army for 12 months or more.  There is now doubt of that.”  Wiggins, ed., My Dear Friend, 133.  On August 6 Private Spencer expressed his disgust with “cornbread and blockade bacon” because he had received a box of luxuries from Georgia and had “drawn a little, very little, beef captured by Early in Pennsylvania.”  Ibid., 140.  On August 28, he thought his rations skimpy but sufficient.  Ibid., 147.

Soldiers in the 16th Mississippi were receiving letters from home as soon as July 19.  Robert G. Evans, ed., The 16th Mississippi Infantry:  Civil War Letters and Reminiscences (Jackson, MS, 2002), 275.  Private Jefferson J. Wilson of Company C, the Crystal Springs Southern Rights, wrote home on July 24, “At this time, we are getting tolerable good rations of flour, bacon, tea, rice, sugar and coffee.”  Ibid., 278.  Private Jerome Bonaparte Yates of Company C wrote home on August 2, “Well, let me tell you what I had for my differ yesterday.  First, sweet cakes and apples.  Next, blackberry dumplings….We are living very well at present…on cornbread, bacon, coffee, sugar, peas, and some…rice….We drew lots of good food four days ago when seven trains of cars come into Petersburg loaded with blockade goods….”  Ibid., 281. 

[2] Eanes, Destroy the Junction, 166, 168 n. 22; OR 40, 3:38.  On July 13, Private Spencer of the 3rd Georgia Infantry in the Dimmock Line wrote that, “the railroad communication is now about established….”  Wiggins, ed., My Dear Friend, 132.  Soldiers in the 16th Mississippi in the Dimmock Line were receiving letters from home as soon as July 19.  Evans, ed., The 16th Mississippi Infantry, 275.  Private Yates of Company C wrote home on August 2, “We drew lots of good food four days ago when seven trains of cars come into Petersburg loaded with blockade goods….”  Ibid., 281.

[3] Eanes, Destroy the Junction, 165.  Cf. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 1:463, where Wilson mistakenly claims no Confederate train from the south ran into Petersburg for 63 days (about August 25).   

[4] Ibid., 479-480.

[5] Ibid., 484-522.

[6] Ibid., 462-463.  

[7] OR 40, 3:38.

[8] Eanes, Destroy the Junction, 165.

[9] Horn, The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864, 223-224, 285-268.  I mistakenly accepted Wilson’s account of the time the Richmond & Danville Railroad was inoperable.  Ibid., 309.

Galleys in for Gettysburg Magazine Article Due out in the July Issue: "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863"

Recently I submitted the galleys for "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863" to Gettysburg Magazine, where the article is due to appear in the July 2021 issue.  Virtually every extant history of the battle or campaign goes no further into this incident than Brig. Gen. William Mahone's initial refusal to move after receiving contradictory orders from his superior, Maj. Gen. Richard Heron Anderson.  The situation was more complicated than that, and quite a bit happened afterward as the article will make clear.

Brig. Gen. William Mahone

Credit: National Archives

For a preview of the article, see The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War:  A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019).  The 12th Virginia belonged to Mahone's brigade and its soldiers provided several accounts of the brigade's movements on the evening of July 2, 1863.  The article expands on the accounts in The Petersburg Regiment and includes accounts by soldiers in the 6th and 61st Virginia.

National Treasures: Beyond the Crater/Siege of Petersburg Online and The Petersburg Project

There are a couple of spectacular websites on the fighting around Petersburg in 1864-1865.  In my opinion, both qualify as national treasures.  Click on the following links to have a look at them.  They are Beyond the Crater/Siege of Petersburg Online and The Petersburg Project.  

Brett Schulte runs Beyond the Crater.  Dr. Phil Shiman, David Lowe (editor of Meade's Army:Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman) and Julia Steele operate The Petersburg Project.

To say that these websites contain maps, orders of battle, book reviews, photographs, drawings, articles, papers and presentations is to understate matters.  I'm using them consistently as I write about Grant's second offensive at Petersburg, June 20-July 1, 1864.  I used Meade's Army extensively as well.

Live Presentation on "The Petersburg Regiment" on Civil War Talks on March 17, 2021 at 8:30 p.m. EST

I'll be giving a live presentation on The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019) on Civil War Talks at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, March 17, 2021.  (That will be 7:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, 6:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time and 5:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.)  

You can register by clicking on the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsceispjkvHteda9z_v9-ib-5FuTcncjwk Hit on the link when it pops up until it takes you to the registration page.

The Petersburg Regiment won the Army Historical Foundation's Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History in 2019.  

My talk will focus on some of the regiment's distinguished writers.  I drew upon accounts by more than 30 of them in writing the book.

Thanks, South Suburban Civil War Round Table!

Thanks, South Suburban Civil War Round Table, for helping overcome a technical problem in my first Zoom presentation on the night of Thursday, February 25, 2021. The presentation was on some of the distinguished writers of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment. Covered were nine of the soldiers whose writings contributed to The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019), winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation's Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History. (The sketch below is from War Talks of Confederate Veterans (1892), compiled and edited by George S. Bernard of the 12th Virginia, and depicts him (wounded) and Lieutenant Joseph Richard Manson of the 12th (waving Bernard's handkerchief) surrendering at Crampton's Gap, Maryland, on September 14, 1862. Bernard and Manson, who both survived the war, were among the Petersburg Regiment's distinguished writers covered in my presentation. Bernard had a sequel ready for publication in 1896 but it disappeared, showed up at a flea market in 2004, was purchased for $50 and sold to the Museum of Western Virginia History for $15,000 and published as Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard & His Fellow Veterans in 2012.)

Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table, March 3, 2021, 6 p.m., Bradley (Illinois) Public Library

On Wednesday, March 3, 2021, at 6 p.m., I'll be talking in person to the Kankakee Valley Civil War Round Table in the Bradley Public Library in Bradley, Illinois.  The subject will be my most recent book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War:  A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (SavasBeatie, 2019), which won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.

The talk will focus on the Petersburg Regiment's distinguished writers--its soldiers.  The book draws on the writings of more than 30 of the soldiers.  My presentation cannot cover them all within the allotted time.  Therefore I will focus on the most prolific or vivid.  By company, they are (italics designate soldiers who joined the regiment more than once, and bold designates members of the color guard):

Cameron, William Evelyn: enl. 6/4/61 Petersburg pvt. Co. A, b. 1842, r. Missouri; elected 2 lt. Co. D 6/14/61; not reelected 5/1/62.                                                                                                                     Com. lst. lt. 5/18/62, appointed regimental adjutant; WIA 8/30/62 severe; capt. 11/2/63; Appomattox.

Capt. William Evelyn Cameron

Courtesy of Virginia Historical Society

Bird, Henry Van Leuvenigh: enl. 4/19/61 Petersburg pvt. Co. C; b. 1843, store clerk, r. Petersburg, clerk; WIA 7/1/62; POW 10/27/64.  Nicknamed “Birdie.”'

Pvt. Henry Van Leuvenigh "Birdie" Bird

Courtesy of Virginia Historical Society

Bernard, George Smith: enl. 4/19/61 Petersburg pvt. Co. E, b. 1837 Culpeper Cty., r. Petersburg, lawyer; med. dis. 10/30 61.                                                                                                                      Enl. 2/22/62 Hicksford sgt. 2nd Co. I; WIA & POW 9/14/62 right leg severe; trans. Co. E, voluntarily reduced to pvt.; WIA 2/6/65; furloughed 3/20/65.

3rd Sgt. George S. Bernard, wounded, beside 1st Lt. Joseph Richard Manson (holding flag) at Crampton's Gap, September 14, 1862

From Bernard, ed., War Talks of Confederate Veterans

Todd, Westwood A.: enl. 9/13/61 Norfolk pvt. Co. A, b. 1831, lawyer, r. Norfolk; trans. Co. E 4/2/62; WIA 8/30/62 hand; became brigade assistant ordnance officer, then ordnance officer; POW 4/6/65.

Map by Hampton Newsome

Whitehorne, James Edward: enl. 6/6/61 Hicksford cpl. Co. F, b. 1840, r. Greensville Cty.; 1 sgt. 8/20/61; WIA 7/2/63 shell, both legs; WIA 7/30/64 leg, slightly; Appomattox.

1st Sgt. James Edward "Eddie" Whitehorne

Courtesy of Fletcher L. Elmore, Louisville, Kentucky

Phillips, James Eldred: enl. 4/19/61 Richmond pvt. Co. G, master tinner, r. Richmond; cpl. 9/1/61; sgt. 5/1/62; POW 9/14/62; 2 lt. 3/9/63; 1 lt. 11/20/63; Appomattox.

1st Lt. James Eldred Phillips

Courtesy of Virginia Historical Society

Whitlock, Philip: enl. 4/19/61 Richmond pvt. Co. G, b. 1836 Poland, clerk, r. Richmond; detailed 9/23/62 Quartermaster Dept.

Pvt. Philip Whitlock (in kepi upper right) opposite John Wilkes Booth (in kepi upper left) at John Brown's hanging

Sale, John Francis: enl. 5/17/61 Norfolk pvt. Co. H, b. 1842, contractor, r. Norfolk; cpl. 5/1/62; sgt. 6/1/62; WIA 7/1/62; 1 sgt. 12/1/62; 2 lt. 11/22/64; MWIA 2/6/65, deceased 2/12/65.

Map by Hampton Newsome

Manson, Joseph Richard: enl. 2/22/62 Hicksford 1 lt. 2nd Co. I, b. 1831 Brunswick Cty., planter, commission merchant, r. Brunswick Cty., married; POW 9/14/62; capt. 7/64; Appomattox.

1st Lt. Joseph Richard Manson late in the war

Courtesy of Richard Cheatham, Richmond, Virginia