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)