"Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least," said the Roman poet Horace before the birth of Christ. The English poet Alexander Pope seconded that advice in his eighteenth century "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot." For Horace and Pope, aging seems to have worked magic for literary compositions similar to aging for wine.
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Time has improved my analysis of Barlow's Skedaddle at Petersburg on June 22, 1864. The historian of Barlow's corps referred to this matter as "The Petersburg Affair." Three brigades of Mahone's division routed seven brigades of II Corps, inflicting about 2,300 casualties (including around 1,700 prisoners) and capturing four guns. I first wrote about it in The Petersburg Campaign: June 1864-April 1865 (1993). I revised my account several times over the ensuing years while writing 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 first draft of a map for The Petersburg Regiment... soon after 1990 had Wilcox's division on the Bailey/Johnson/Johnston farm in the earthworks actually dug and occupied by most of Bushrod Johnson's division a short time after Brig. Gen. William Mahone routed the front line of II Corps. My final draft of a map of Jerusalem Plank Road around a quarter of a century later, spruced up by Hampton Newsome, is basically accurate; its achievement is the representation of the two Federal lines as non-parallel.
Map by Hampton Newsome
Time has also improved my understanding of the deployment of the three divisions of II Corps on the line Mahone rolled up on June 22. Gibbon's division arrived mid-afternoon on June 21 and began digging in along the road it followed from the Williams and Browder farms past the Strong farm and into Jerusalem Plank Road at an acute angle just south of a branch of Blackwater Swamp. Mott's division followed Gibbon's division up the same road that evening and deployed along the road on the left of Gibbon's division. That night Barlow's division marched up the same road and took post along it west of the Strong house and on Mott's left.
At 3 a.m. June 22, Gibbon's division advanced a few hundred yards to earthworks prepared by its pioneers from the plank road north of the branch of Blackwater Swamp southwestward into the woods. At about 4:50 a.m., Chaplin's and McAllister's brigades of Mott's division began moving up regiment by regiment to a line west of Gibbon's division and on a roughly east-west axis. The other two brigades of Mott's division shifted to the right in the rear line of Federal works.
Barlow's division did not begin advancing to a position on the left of Mott's division in the front line until around noon. First Fraser's brigade came up on roads cut through the woods by the division pioneers and deployed on the left of Mott's division along the same east-west axis. Then about 1 p.m. Brig. Gen. Francis Channing Barlow brought up Moroney's brigade (The Irish Brigade) and posted it as a return at nearly right angles to Fraser's brigade. Barlow advanced MacDougall's brigade at approximately 2 p.m. to extend the return. Barlow ordered up Miles' brigade about 3 p.m. Miles' brigade had just left the rear II Corps line when Mahone struck, outflanking Barlow's return and precipitating Barlow's Skedaddle.
If Miles' brigade had been up and extending Barlow's return, Mahone's attack would probably have come to nothing. Moroney's and MacDougall's brigades initially repulsed Sanders' and Wright's brigades. Mahone then committed Weisiger's brigade, Mahone's old brigade, and outflanked MacDougall's brigade.
Initially, my attention focused on Barlow for the reason why it took so long to bring up all the brigades of his division. Time and repetitive examination of the records cured me of that error. I finally grasped that the deployment of the two brigades of Mott's division consumed most of the time between 4:50 a.m. and 3 p.m. It did so because the two brigades of Mott's division deployed regiment by regiment (David H. King, A. Judson Gibbs and Jay A. Northrup, History of the Ninety-Third Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, 1861-1865 (Milwaukee, 1895), 99), and those two brigades had many regiments. Barlow deployed his division by brigades, which consumed about half the time.
So while I at first suspected that Barlow's delay deploying contributed to the disaster, I ultimately saw that he posted his division far more speedily than his neighbor, Mott. Because Mott did not place his troops adjacent to Gibbon's division as Barlow posted his troops adjacent to Mott (this will appear in the map for my next book), one cannot blame Mott for the time involved in a regiment by regiment deployment.
