Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Why the Weldon Railroad Raid Was Grant's Seventh Offensive of the Petersburg Siege

Where does December 1864's Weldon Railroad Raid/Applejack Raid/Hicksford Raid/Belfield Raid/Stony Creek Raid/Nottaway River Raid fit within the siege of Petersburg?

Some consider this raid the siege's seventh offensive, with the eighth involving the battle of Hatcher's Run in February 1865 and the ninth comprising the fighting in late March and early April 1865.

Others pronounce the raid a mere raid and liken it to Trevilian Raid, the Wilson-Kautz Raid, or the Beefsteak Raid.  For them, the seventh offensive took place in February, and the eighth and ninth in late March and early April.

For the following reasons, I say the Weldon Railroad Raid constitutes the seventh offensive of the Petersburg siege.

Grant conceived of the Weldon Railroad Raid as in part a gambit to lure enough Confederates away from Petersburg in pursuit of the raiders to allow him to advance to the South Side Rail Road in their absence.  OR 42, 3:865 (On December 8, he wrote to Meade:  If the enemy send off two divisions after Warren, what is there to prevent completing the investment of Petersburg with your reserve?).

,  He hoped that VI Corps infantry would get back to Petersburg faster than the infantry of Early's Corps so as to facilitate such a move.

OR 42, 1:448

Warren's reinforced corps (broken blue line) was to lure Confederates (broken red line) away from Petersburg.  Humphreys, with elements of his own corps and two others, was to slip behind the pursuing Confederates and finally reach the South Side Rail Road and the Appomattox River above Petersburg.  Its failure to provide the hoped for opportunity has obscured that it was a highly indirect approach to the South Side Rail Road.

VI Corps infantry did not reach Petersburg significantly faster than the infantry of Early's Corps and not enough Confederates appeared to pursue Warren.  Grant and Meade therefor did not take the risk of attempting to reach the South Side Railroad.



Thursday, August 17, 2023

J. H. P., "Vermont Cavalry," Windsor (VT) Park, July 16, 1864

 As I get older, I pray more and more often to find things.  “Oh, Lord, please help me find my keys!”  “Oh, Lord, please help me find my glasses.”

Until yesterday I was praying to find something a little different.

While preparing the manuscript of my latest book for publication, one of my newspaper citations troubled me:  “J. H. P., ‘Vermont Cavalry,’ Windsor (VT) Park, July 16, 1864.”  I didn’t recognize the item to which I was citing.  Ordinarily, the citation would begin with the website from which I obtained it, such as beyondthecrater.com, citing…. or csa-railroads.com, citing… or the citation would end with the page and column number if the item came from newspapers.com or chroniclingamerica.com.

In the absence of a website of origin, I looked at newspapers.com and chroniclingamerica.com.  Neither had a newspaper named the Windsor (VT) Park.  Nor did such a newspaper appear on any other website, such as that of the Vermont Historical Society.

I searched the desktop of my current laptop (the one on which I’m writing this) and found nothing corresponding to the article. 

Finally, I searched the desktop of my previous laptop.  The summary of what I quoted from the article  appeared.  That led me to the folder (“1st Vermont Cavalry”) in which I had in May 2019 downloaded individual images of each page of the article before I created my summary of the article.  I searched my emails and downloads for that period and found nothing corresponding.  I think I know who sent me the images of the article, but I haven’t received confirmation.  Therefore I intend to publish the images here in my blog so that somebody looking for my citation can verify it.

















The moral of the story is immediately to include any document’s origin whenever it is footnoted.  This article will be cited as posted in johnhorncivilwarauthor.blogspot.com, August 17, 2023.  It has long been in the public domain.

Friday, July 21, 2023

The Battle of Decatur, Georgia, July 22, 1864: A Potentially Decisive Battle?

Late last year I blogged about the Confederacy's lack of enough talented generals to go around during the Campaign of 1864.  I pointed out that even if President Jefferson Davis had heeded the advice of Gen. Robert E. Lee to put Gen. G. T. Beauregard in command of the Army of Tennessee, and even if Beauregard were able to defend Atlanta successfully, the Confederacy would probably have lost Richmond in May or June of 1864.  If Beauregard had taken command of the Army of Tennessee, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston (whom Davis entrusted with the Army of Tennessee) would have had to fill Beauregard's shoes on the east coast.  It is highly unlikely that Johnston would have successfully defended Richmond against both Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler and Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.  To be more specific, it is unthinkable that Johnston would have acted as boldly as Beauregard on the evening of June 15, when to reinforce his troops defending Petersburg he abandoned the Howlett Line keeping Butler from advancing westward from Bermuda Hundred.  No matter how Davis shuffled his generals, he could not deploy them in a way that might win the war.

Was there any other way that the Confederacy might have prevailed?  Yes, but a special case or a miracle would have been required.

I came across evidence suggesting the possibility as I wrote a thumbnail biography of John W. Sprague for a collection of postwar reports to be published in the near future by Savas Beatue.  Sprague had led the 63rd Ohio as its colonel at the battle of Corinth, October 3-4, 1862.  Afterward, he and his mauled regiment performed mostly garrison duty until the beginning of the Campaign of 1864.  Still a colonel, he led a brigade in XVI Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, part of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's army group facing the Confederate Army of Tennessee.

Portrait of Brig. Gen. John W. Sprague, office of the Federal Army (LOC)

On July 22, 1864, the same day as the battle of Atlanta, Sprague's brigade was assigned to guard the trains of the Army of the Tennessee at Decatur, Georgia.  I assumed that those trains comprised about a third of the wagons in Sherman's entire army group because the Army of the Tennessee was smaller than than Army of the Cumberland yet larger than the Army of the Ohio, the army group's other two components.  Confederate cavalry outnumbering Sprague's brigade attacked the trains at Decatur.  Sprague, successfully defended the trains.  He was almost immediatly promoted to brigadier general.  The loss of those trains would have crippled the Army of the Tennessee.  Replacing the wagons, hornses and other equipment via the Western & Atlantic Railroad, Sherman's sole supply line, would have posed a difficult problem.  I reasoned that it might have hindered Sherman's final maneuvers against Atlanta.

The Battles of Atlanta and Decatur, July 22, 1864

mapdatabaseinfo.blogspot.com

A little more research indicated that if Sprague had failed at Decatur on July 22, the results could have been even worse.  The trains of the Army of the Ohio were headed for Decatur as well.  This meant Sherman's army group would have lost not about a third but about half of its trains, as many as 1,600 ordnance and supply wagons and teams.  This almost certainly would have hindered the Army of the Tennessee's move to the west of Atlanta that resulted in the battle of Ezra Church on July 28.  It very likely would have delayed if not prevented the capture of Atlanta prior to the November election.  [David Allison, with chapters contributed by Lisa Rickey and Blaise J. Arena, Attacked on All Sides: The Civil War Battle of Decatur, Georgia, the Untold Story of the Battle of Atlanta (North Charleston, SC:  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), 122-124]  If it prevented the capture of Atlanta, it might have prevented the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln.

Nonetheless, it would have been a very special case.  

Monday, June 26, 2023

The Twelfth Virginia in the Gettysburg Campaign," Gettysburg Magazine, July 2023, Issue 69

An article of mine, The Twelfth Virginia in the Gettysburg Campaign, appears in the current issue of Gettysburg Magazine, July 2023, Issue 69.  The article covers in detail the 12th Virginia, the Petersburg Regiment of Mahone's brigade, Anderson's division, Hill's Corps, from June 14, 1863, when the regiment departed Fredericksburg, through uly 25, 1863, when the 12th pitched camp at Culpeper Court House, Virginia.

The article draws on two of my writings.


First, the article draws on my book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019).  The book won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.  (The distinguished writing was principally by the  soldiers; writings from at least 30 of them are quoted in the book.)


The article also draws on an article of mine, The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863, Gettysburg Magazine, July 2021, Issue 65.


Map by Hal Jespersen

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Please Be on the Lookout for Letters from Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey or his Brothers

If anyone knows where letters of Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey or his brothers Isadore and Camille are located, please let me know.

Currently I'm at work on an article that will contain the little we know about one of the War of the Rebellion's most remarkable officers, Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey.  His brief career provides the only instance in the Confederate States Army of a promotion from captain to brigadier general.  His death at the age of 27 before the Confederate Senate could confirm that promotion deprived the Army of Northern Virginia of his sorely needed leadership.  His outstanding achievements have attracted relatively little attention.  Though he had ties with Georgia, he joined what became an entirely Georgia brigade from a Louisiana unit and served in the Georgia brigade as a staff officer rather than a line officer except for less than two weeks before his death.  Line officers misallocated or disputed credit for some of his most remarkable exploits.  Evidence exists that Girardey, and not the brave but ailing Brig. Gen. Ambrose Ransom "Rans" Wright, led Wright's brigade to the top of Cemetery Ridge on July 2, 1863.


Victor Jean-Baptiste Girardey

Credit:  Francis Trevelyan Miller and Robert S. Lanier, The Photographic History of the Civil War (10 vols.) (New York, 1910), 10:157.

Girardey left letters.  At least one of them was auctioned off by Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas, Texas, February 20-21, 2006, with The Henry E. Luhrs Collection of Important Manuscripts & Historical Autographs, Manuscripts, and Rare Books.  The letter concerns the battle of the Crater, where Girardey earned his unique promotion by his timing of the Confederate counterattack.  A catalogue of the auction is listed as available on Amazon but the listing is in error and the catalogue is unavailable, as I learned when I tried to purchase a copy.


Map by Hampton Newsome

Gierardey has figured in all my books.  His activity at the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21-23, 1864) figures in my work-in-progress, Grant Lays Siege to Lee:  Petersburg, June 18-July 1, 1864.  His leadership at the battle of the Crater (July 30, 1864) plays a role 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.  His death  in The Siege of Petersburg:  The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

The current draft of my article on Girardey runs to about 4,000 words, including notes.  If anyone knows of where more of his or his brothers' letters are located, please let me know.  Isadore lived in Augusta, Georgia, and Camille in New Orleans, Louisiana.


Tuesday, April 18, 2023

The Limits of Grant's Nerve, Upon Mature Reflection

I want to thank all my readers (particularly those on facebook) for their criticism and encouragement about my blog post, "The Limits of Grant's Nerve."  They led me to change my views a little.  There follows what I intend to write about the attitude adjustments Grant and Lee underwent toward one another during 1864 from the Wilderness (May 5-6) through Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21-23):

Grant and Lee underwent attitude adjustments during the 1864 campaign.  They behaved more cautiously than before they had joined battle.  Each had entered the campaign considering the other overrated.  By deceiving Lee at the Mule Shoe and during the James crossing, Grant had convinced the Southern chieftain that he finally faced a foe whose movements he could not predict.  Lee entered Petersburg on June 18 in such a state that he uncharacteristically declined to counterattack the Union left on the spot as Beauregard suggested, but the Virginian’s aggressiveness soon returned. 

By contesting almost every inch of ground from the Rapidan to the Weldon Railroad, he disabused the Federal general-in-chief of the idea that he might maneuver with impunity.  After Grant's defeat in the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, he declined to cut loose from the City Point bridgehead with the Army of the Potomac to sever Lee’s communications.  Warren had suggested and Grant had considered such a move.[1]  The general-in-chief claimed to want to fight Lee’s army outside its entrenchments, which cutting loose would compel.[2]  Meade and Barnard persuaded Grant that such an operation would be too hazardous.[3] 


The Moment of Truth at the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, 3:15 p.m., June 21, 1864

Map by Hal Jespersen

Sherman has been criticized for lack of a killer instinct, but he cut loose in late August 1864 from his bridgehead over the Chattahoochee River and forced the Confederates to abandon Atlanta.[4]  Sherman did not face Robert E. Lee and did not have a corps of enemy infantry unaccounted for and possibly poised to pounce on his flank or rear.[5]  Early’s actual location proved even more problematical.  The unknown location of Early’s corps justified the-general-in-chief’s prudence.  Grant chose the right course in not cutting loose. 

Early’s approach to Washington closed the window for cutting loose by drawing off troops necessary for the operation.[6]  The window did not reopen until the troops sent in response to Early’s threat to the capital returned to Petersburg, but that was after Lincoln’s reelection when it was unnecessary to take the risks attendant on cutting loose.[7]



[1]OR 40, 1:26, 2:333-334, 477-478.

[2]Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 155.

[3]OR 40, 2:333, 478-479.

[4]Albert E. Castel, Decision in the West:  The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence, KS, 1991), 485-486, 563-565; Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864:  Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln, NE, 2001), 169-171, 182-183.

[5]Castel wrote, “Had Sherman been the one to have gone against Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864 (Meade, when Grant visited him in March of that year, assumed that Sherman would be given command of the Army of the Potomac), in all likelihood he would have cracked beneath their terrible hammer blows.”  Castel, Decision in the West, 564.  McMurry wrote, “Neither of [Sherman’s] opponents was an especially able general nor received the wholehearted support of his subordinates.”  McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 182.  Fuller, no partisan of Lee, wrote that Grant was “faced not by a Pemberton or a Bragg, but by Lee, the most renowned general of the day, and to be confronted by a task which had broken McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, and which had halted Meade.”  Fuller, The Generalship of U. S. Grant, 281 (emphases in original).  Fuller further wrote, “As a general, Lee must stand or fall by his last campaign; for[...], though he won no battle, it was the most skilful, masterful and heroic he was ever engaged in.”  Ibid., 381 (emphasis in original).  This is praise indeed coming from a Britisher so biased against the Virginian as to ignore Lee’s victories at Jerusalem Plank Road and First Reams Station, among others.  Ibid., 445, 448.

[6]OR 40, 3:35-36. 

[7]Ibid., 42, 3:865-867, 891-892.  Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, the apostle of the indirect approach, who championed Sherman over Grant, would probably in principle have approved of cutting loose at some point.  B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York, 1991), 330-333.



Wednesday, March 15, 2023

The Limits of Grant's Nerve

The Limits of Grant's Nerve,

as Demonstrated in the Period About Which I Am Writing in My Current Book,

Grant Begins His Siege of Lee: Petersburg, June 18-July 1, 1864

Grant was one of our greatest generals, but so was Lee.  Grant was a bold general, but his nerve had its limits, and he displayed them during the siege of Petersburg.  At the beginning of the siege, when he outnumbered Lee two to one, Grant declined to cut loose from his base at Bermuda Hundred as Warren suggested on June 23 to cut Lee's communications, in a move similar to the one Sherman made at Atlanta to cut Hood's last rail line and force the evacuation of that city.  

Two divisions of Confederates had just trounced the Army of the Potomac's II and VI orps on June 22, inflicting about 2,500 casualties at a cost of around 600 to the Rebels.  Warren suggested to Meade on the afternoon June 23 that the Army of the Potomac abandon its lines, send its wagons to the Army of the James in Bermuda Hundred, and set out for the Weldon Railroad with six days’ rations.  Meade passed this idea along to Grant after objecting because it would invite Lee to interpose between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James, cutting off the former from supplies.  Grant criticized Warren’s plan as insufficiently bold.  “I would not think of moving the whole of your command with less than ten days’ rations, and then it would be to turn the enemy’s right, cross the Appomattox, and force a connection with Butler between Richmond and Petersburg,” the general-in-chief wrote to Meade.  Later the same afternoon, instead of implementing his improvement on Warren's plan, Grant directed Butler to stretch to his left and by morning relieve the right division of IX Corps.  Meanwhile, Warren acknowledged to Meade the risks and objections involved, but observed that the Army of the Potomac could turn about and fight in case the Confederates interposed between it and the Army of the James.  Warren urged "some decisive movement, in which, throwing all our weight into the battle, we are willing to run the risk of losing all by a failure--fight the Wilderness battle again."

On June 28, while Federal troops at Petersburg rested, Grant still contemplated taking the Army of the Potomac with ten days rations to the Appomattox above Petersburg and from there either attacking the Cockade City from that side or crossing the Appomattox and striking the Howlett Line from behind.  Ultimately, the general-in-chief lacked the nerve for such a plan.  He did not dare make such a risky move against Lee, who had contested practically every foot of ground from the Rapidan to the James.  Even at the end of the Petersburg siege, again outnumbering Lee two to one, Grant still declined to cut loose from his base but stretched out to his left a corps at a time and finally overwhelmed Lee by direct assault.


Map by Hal Jespersen

Grant and Lee had undergone attitude adjustments during the Overland Campaign.  They behaved more cautiously during the siege than before they had joined battle.  Each entered the Overland Campaign considering the other overrated.  By deceiving Lee at the Mule Shoe and during the crossing of James River, Grant convinced the Southern chieftain that he finally faced a foe whose movements he could not predict.  Lee entered Petersburg on June 18 in such a state that he uncharacteristically declined to counterattack the Union left on the spot as Beauregard suggested.  On the other hand, the Virginia general by contesting almost every inch of ground from the Rapidan to the James, disabused the Federal general-in-chief of the idea that he might maneuver with impunity.  Grant never cut loose from the City Point bridgehead with the Army of the Potomac to sever Lee’s communications as Warren suggested and the general-in-chief contemplated.  Sherman did cut loose from his Chattahoochee bridgehead at Atlanta, but he did not face Robert E. Lee.