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  I started by looking at the late Edwin C. Bearss's original study of the fighting and, for unpublished material, Noah Andre Trudeau's The Last Citadel.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  From there I went into more published and unpublished material.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]

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[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