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.
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
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