Chapter XXXI: The Overland Campaign (2)

The distance from Spottsylvania Court House to Richmond is a little more than fifty miles. About midway between them is Hanover Junction, where the railroad from Richmond to Fredericksburg is crossed by the Virginia Central road. Grant did not wish to conceal his movement altogether. He was anxious to induce the enemy to fight without the enormous advantage of intrenchments. So he planned to send one corps toward Richmond, hoping that Lee would be tempted to attack it with all his army, whereupon the other corps might follow up sharply and attack the Confederates before they had time to intrench. When the movement was begun, Lee, instead of moving at once in the same direction, sent Ewell's corps to attack the National right. It happened that six thousand raw recruits, under Gen. R. O. Tyler, were on their way to reinforce the Army of the Potomac, and had not quite reached their place in line when they were struck by Ewell's flank movement. Grant says they maintained their position in a manner worthy of veterans, till they were reinforced by the divisions of Birney and Crawford, which promptly moved up to the right and left, and Ewell was then quickly driven back with heavy loss. This was on the 19th of May.

The corps thrown forward as a bait was Hancock's, and it marched on the night of the 20th, going easterly to Guinea Station, and then southerly to Milford. Warren's corps followed twelve hours later, and twelve hours later still the corps of Burnside and Wright. Some trifling resistance was met by the advance; but the Confederates had no notion of taking any risk. They made a reconnoissance to their left, to be sure that Grant had not kept a corps at Spottsylvania to fall upon their rear, and then set out by a shorter line than his to interpose themselves once more between him and their capital.

The new position that was taken up after some tentative movements was one of the strongest that could have been devised. The Confederate left stretched in a straight line, a mile and a half long, from Little River to the North Anna at Oxford. Here, bending at a right angle, the line followed the North Anna down stream for three quarters of a mile, thence {363} continuing in a straight line southeastward, to and around Hanover Junction. The North Anna here makes a bend to the south, and on the most southerly point of the bend the Confederate line touched and held it. If we imagine a ring cut in halves, and the halves placed back to back, in contact, and call one the line of Confederate intrenchments and the other the river, we shall have a fair representation of the essential features of the situation. It is evident that any enemy approaching from the north, and attempting to envelop this position, would have his own line twice divided by the river, so that his army would be in three parts. Any reinforcements passing from one wing to the other would have to cross the stream twice, and, long before they could reach their destination, the army holding the intrenchments could strengthen its threatened wing. The obvious point to assail in such a position would be the apex of the salient line where it touched the river; and Burnside was ordered to force a passage at that point. But the banks were high and steep, and the passage was covered by artillery. Moreover, an enfilading fire from the north bank was thwarted by traverses--intrenchments at right angles to the main line. Wright's corps crossed the river above the Confederate position, and destroyed some miles of the Virginia Central Railroad; while Hancock's crossed below, and destroyed a large section of the road to Fredericksburg. By this time they had learned the effective method of not only tearing up the track, but piling up the ties and setting them on fire, heating the rails, and bending and twisting them so that they could not be used again. These operations were not carried on without frequent sharp fighting, which cost each side about two thousand men; but there was no general battle on the North Anna.

Before the next flank movement was made by the Army of the Potomac, Gen. James H. Wilson's cavalry division was sent to make a demonstration on the right, to give the enemy the impression that this time the turning movement would be in that direction. In the night of May 26, which was very dark, the army withdrew to the north bank of the North Anna, took up its pontoon bridges, destroyed all the others, and was put in motion again by the left flank. Sheridan's cavalry led the way and guarded the crossings of the Pamunkey, which is formed by the junction of the North and South Anna Rivers. The Sixth Corps was the advance of the infantry, followed by the Second, while the Fifth and Ninth moved by roads farther north. The direction was southeast, and the distance about thirty miles to a point at which the army would cross the Pamunkey and move southwest toward Richmond, the crossing being about twenty miles from that city. But between lie the swamps of the Chickahominy. In the morning of the 28th the cavalry moved out on the most direct road to Richmond, and at a cross-roads known as Hawes's Shop encountered a strong force of Confederate cavalry, which was dismounted and intrenched. After a bloody fight of some hours' duration, the divisions commanded by Gens. David M. Gregg and George A. Custer broke over the intrenchments and forced back the enemy; the other divisions came up promptly, and the position was held.

A member of the First New Jersey cavalry, which participated in this action, writes: "One company being sent on each flank, mounted, Captain Robbins with four companies, dismounted, moved forward and occupied a position on the right of the road, opening a rapid fire from their carbines on the line of the enemy, which was forming for attack. The remainder of the regiment was moved to the left of the road, and having been dismounted, was ordered to the support of the First Pennsylvania, which was hotly engaged. Robbins, as usual, moved with a rush to the assault, and soon cleared his immediate front of the rebels, chasing them across the open ground beyond the wood in which they had taken cover. In this field there was a double ditch, lined by fencing, with another of the same character facing it, only forty or fifty paces distant. As Captain Beekman, heading his men, sprang across the first fence at charging speed, they were met by a desperate volley from the second line of the rebels lying in the other cover. Instinctively, as they saw the flash, the men threw themselves upon the ground, and now Beekman, rolling into the ditch, called his troops there beside him. From the two covers there was kept up a tremendous fire--our men sometimes charging toward the hostile ditch, but in each case falling back, and the fight going on, both parties holding their own, but neither gaining ground upon the other. Meanwhile Captain Robbins, on the right of the {364} road, was being sorely pressed. Major Janeway was sent with two squadrons to his relief, and the fight redoubled in intensity. The ammunition of the men giving out, a supply was brought from the rear and distributed along the line itself by the officers, several of whom fell while engaged in the service. Captain Beekman was shot through both hands as he stretched them forth full of ammunition. Lieutenant Bellis was almost at the same moment mortally wounded, as was also Lieutenant Stewart. Captain Robbins was wounded severely in the shoulder, Lieutenant Shaw severely in the head, Lieutenant Wynkoop fearfully in the foot. Lieutenant Bowne was the only officer of the first battalion on the field who was untouched, and he had several narrow escapes. Major Janeway also had a narrow escape, a ball passing so close to his forehead as to redden the skin. As Lieutenant Brooks was manoeuvring the fifth squadron under fire, a ball fired close at hand struck him near his belt-clasp, slightly penetrating the skin in two places, and, doubling him up, sent him rolling headlong for thirty feet across the road. As he recovered steadiness, he saw his whole squadron hurrying to pick him up, and, in the excitement, losing all sensation of pain, he ordered them again forward, and walked after them half-way to the front. There he was obliged to drop upon the ground, and was carried from the field. Lieutenant Craig also, of the same squadron, was badly bruised by some missile that struck him in the breast, but, though suffering severely from the blow, he did not leave the field. Still the men bravely held their own. And now Custer, coming up with his Michigan brigade, charged down the road, the whole body of the First Jersey skirmishers simultaneously springing from their cover and dashing upon the enemy, sweeping him from the field, and pursuing him until the whole mass had melted into disordered rout. Meanwhile the fighting on the left of the road had been of the severest character. Malsbury received a mortal wound; Dye was killed instantly; Cox was hit in the back, but remained the only officer with the squadron till, toward the close of the action, he received a wound which disabled him. The total loss of the nine companies of the First New Jersey engaged, in killed and wounded, was sixty-four, eleven being officers."

Soon after noon of that day three-fourths of the army had crossed the Pamunkey, and the remaining corps crossed that night. Here were several roads leading to the Confederate capital; but the Confederate army, as soon as it found the enemy gone from its front, had moved in the same direction, by a somewhat shorter route, and had quickly taken up a strong position across all these roads, with flanks on Beaver Dam and Totopotomoy creeks. Moreover, at this time it was heavily {365} reinforced by troops that were drawn from the defences east of Richmond.

The next day the opposing forces were in close proximity, each trying to find out what the other was about, and all day the crack of the skirmisher's rifle was heard. Near Bethesda church there was a small but bloody engagement, where a portion of Early's corps made an attack on the National left and gained a brief advantage, but was soon driven back, with a brigade commander and two regimental commanders among its killed. At dusk, one brigade of Barlow's division made a sudden rush and carried a line of Confederate rifle-pits. But it was ascertained that the position offered no chance of success in a serious assault. Furthermore, Grant was expecting reinforcements from Butler's Army of the James, to come by way of White House, at the head of navigation on York River, and he feared that Lee would move out with a large part of his army to interpose between him and his reinforcements and overwhelm them. So he extended his left toward Cold Harbor, sending Sheridan with cavalry and artillery to secure that place. Sheridan was heavily attacked there on the morning of June 1st, but held his ground, and twice drove back the assailants. In the course of the day he was relieved by the Sixth corps, to which the ten thousand reinforcements under Gen. William F. Smith were added. At the same time the Confederate line had been extended in the same direction, so as still to cover all roads leading to Richmond. The Army of the Potomac, in its movement down the streams, was now at the highest point that it had reached in its movement up the peninsula, when led by McClellan two years before.

At six o'clock in the evening, Smith's and Wright's corps attacked the Confederate intrenchments. Along most of the front they were obliged to cross open ground that was swept by artillery and musketry; but they moved forward steadily, in spite of their rapid losses, and everywhere carried the first line of works, taking some hundreds of prisoners, but were stopped by the second. They intrenched and held their advanced position; but it had been dearly bought, since more than two thousand of their men were killed or wounded, including many officers.

When the other corps had followed the Sixth, and the entire army was in its new position at Cold Harbor, eight or ten miles from Richmond, with its enemy but a little distance in front of it, an attack was planned for the morning of the 3d. The Confederate position was very strong. The line was from three to six miles from the outer defences of Richmond, the right resting on the Chickahominy, and the left protected by the woods and swamps about the head-waters of several small streams. The Chickahominy was between it and Richmond, but the water was low and everywhere fordable. The only chance for attack was in front, and it remained to be demonstrated by experiment whether anything could be done there. If Lee's line could be disrupted at the centre, and a strong force thrust through, it would for the time being disorganize his army, though a large part of it would undoubtedly escape across the river and rally in the intrenchments nearer the city.

At half-past four o'clock on the morning of the 3d, the Second, Sixth, and Eighteenth (Smith's) corps began the attack as planned. They moved forward as rapidly and regularly as the nature of the ground would admit, under a destructive fire of artillery and musketry, till they carried the first line of intrenchments. Barlow's division of Hancock's corps struck a salient, and, after a desperate hand-to-hand contest, captured it, taking nearly three hundred prisoners and three guns, which were at once turned upon the enemy. But every assaulting column, on reaching the enemy's first line, found itself subjected to cross-fires from the enemy's skilfully placed artillery, and not one of them could go any farther. Most of them fell back speedily, leaving large numbers prisoners or bleeding on the ground, and took up positions midway between the lines, where they rapidly dug trenches and protected themselves. General Grant had given orders to General Meade to suspend the attack the moment it should appear hopeless, and the heavy fighting did not last more than an hour, though firing was kept up all day. A counter-attack by Early's corps was as unsuccessful as those of the National troops had been; and one or two lighter attacks by the Confederates, later in the day, were also repelled.

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The Ninety-eighth New York regiment was among the troops that were brought up from the Army of the James and joined the Army of the Potomac two or three days before the battle of Cold Harbor. Its colonel, William Kreutzer, writes a graphic account of the regiment's experience during those first three days of June:

"After ten o'clock, Devens, putting the Ninety-eighth in charge of one of his staff, sent it, marching by the right flank, through the wood to support one of his regiments. Soon the rattling of the men among the brush and trees attracted some one's attention in front, and he poured a volley down along our line lengthwise. We stop; the ground rises before us, and the aim of the firing is too high. Staff-officer says: 'These are our men, there is some mistake; wait awhile, and the firing will stop.' Firing does not stop, and the aim is better. Staff-officer goes to report, hastens for orders and instructions, and never comes back. Our position is terribly embarrassing, frightfully uncomfortable. Our ignorance of the place, the darkness, the wood, the uncertainty whether the firing is from friend or foe, increase the horrors of that night's battle. The writer walked from the centre to the head of the regiment and asked Colonel Wead what the firing meant. Wead replied: 'We are the victims of some one's blunder.' We suggested: 'Let us withdraw the regiment, or fire at the enemy in front. We can't stay here and make no reply. Our men are being killed or wounded fast.' Wead remarked: 'I have no orders to do either; they may be our men in front. I am here by direction of General Devens, and one of his staff has gone to report the facts to him. He will return in a short time. If we are all killed, I don't see that I can prevent it, or am to blame for it.'

"We asked Colonel Wead to have the men lie down. The order, 'Lie down,' was passed along the line, and we returned to our position by the colors. Subsequently, Colonel Wead joined us there. The firing continued; the range became lower; the men lying down were wounded fast. We all lay down. Colonel Wead was struck a glancing blow on the shoulder-strap by a rifle-ball, and, after lying senseless for a moment, said to the writer, 'I am wounded; take the command.' We arose immediately, walked along the line, and quietly withdrew the men to the lower edge of the wood where we had entered. In that night's blunder the regiment lost forty-two men, killed and wounded. During the night and early morning, Colonel Wead and the wounded crawled back to the regiment. The more severely wounded were carried back half a mile farther to an old barn, where their wounds were dressed and whence they were taken in ambulances to White House. Nothing could equal the horrors of that night's battle; the blundering march into the enemy's intrenchments, his merciless fire, the cries of our {367} wounded and dying, the irresolute stupidity and want of sagacity of the conducting officer, deepen the plot and color the picture.

"At 4 A.M. of the 3d, the Eighteenth Corps was formed for the charge in three lines; first, a heavy skirmish line; second, a line consisting of regiments deployed; third, a line formed of regiments in solid column doubled on the centre. The Ninety-eighth was in the third line. The whole army advanced together at sunrise. Within twenty minutes after the order to advance had been given, one of the most sanguinary battles of the war, quick, sharp, and decisive, had taken place. By this battle the Army of the Potomac gained nothing, but the Eighteenth Corps captured and held a projecting portion of the enemy's breastwork in front. The Ninety-eighth knew well the ground that it helped to capture, for there lay its dead left on the night of the 1st.

"The men at once began the construction of a breastwork, using their hands, tin cups, and bayonets. Later they procured picks and shovels. They laid the dead in line and covered them over, and to build the breastwork used rails, logs, limbs, leaves, and dirt. The enemy's shells, solid shot and rifle-balls all the while showered upon them, and hit every limb and twig about or above them. Nothing saved us but a slight elevation of the ground in front. A limb cut by a solid shot felled General Marston to the ground. Three boyish soldiers, thinking to do the State service, picked him up, and were hurrying him to the rear, when he recovered his consciousness and compelled them to drop himself. In a short time he walked slowly back to the front. In this advance and during the day our regimental flag received fifty-two bullet-holes, and the regiment lost, killed and wounded, sixty-one. Colonel Wead rose to his feet an instant on the captured line, when a rifle-ball pierced his neck and cut the subclavian vein. He was carried back to the barn beside the road, where he died the same day....

"On the night of the 4th the Ninety-eighth moved from the second line through the approach to the front line, and relieved the One Hundred and Eighteenth New York and the Tenth New Hampshire. It had barely time to take its position when the Confederates made a night attack along our whole front. For twenty minutes before, the rain of shells and balls was terrific; the missiles tore and screamed and sang and howled along the air. Every branch and leaf was struck; every inch of the trees and breastworks was pierced. Then the firing ceased along his line for a few minutes, while the enemy crossed his breastworks and formed for the charge, when,

'At once there rose so wild a yell,
As all the fiends from heaven that fell
Had pealed the banner cry of hell.'

But no living thing could face that 'rattling shower' of ball and shell which poured from our lines upon them. They fell to the ground, they crept away, they hushed the yell of battle. The horrors of that night assault baffle description."

The entire loss of the National Army at Cold Harbor in the first twelve days of June--including the battles just described and the almost constant skirmishing and minor engagements--was ten thousand and eighty-eight; and among the dead and wounded were many valuable officers. General Tyler and Colonel Brooke were wounded, and Colonels Porter, Morris, Meade, and Byrnes were killed.[1]

[Footnote 1: The lines of the two armies were so close to each other that it was impossible to care for the wounded that lay between them, except by a cessation of hostilities. As the National forces had been the assailants, most of the wounded were theirs. General Grant made an immediate effort to obtain a cessation for this humane purpose, but General Lee delayed it with various trivial excuses for forty-eight hours, and at the end of that time all but two of the wounded were dead. See a part of the correspondence in Grant's "Memoirs," Vol. II., pp. 273 _et seq._ As to the losses here and at Spottsylvania, authorities differ. The figures given above are from a statement compiled in the Adjutant-General's office.]

{368} The Confederate loss--which included Brigadier-General Doles among the killed, and Brigadier-Generals Kirkland, Lane, Law, and Finnegan among the wounded--is unknown; but it was much smaller than the National. The attack of June 3d is recognized as the most serious error in Grant's military career. He himself says, in his "Memoirs," that he always regretted it was ever made. It was as useless, and almost as costly, as Lee's assault upon Meade's centre at Gettysburg. But we do not read that any of Grant's lieutenants protested against it, as Longstreet protested against the attack on Cemetery Ridge.

For some days Grant held his army as close to the enemy as possible, to prevent the Confederates from detaching a force to operate against Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley.

General Halleck now proposed that the Army of the Potomac should invest Richmond on the north. This might have prevented any possibility of Lee's launching out toward Washington, but it could hardly have effected anything else. The Confederate lines of supply would have been left untouched, while the National troops would have perished between impregnable intrenchments on the one side and malarious swamps on the other. Grant determined to move once more by the left flank, swing his army across the James, and invest the city from the south. A direct investment of the Confederate capital on that side was out of the question, because the south bank of the James is lower than the city; and the movement would, therefore, resolve itself into a struggle for Petersburg, thirty miles south of Richmond, which was its railroad centre.

To withdraw an army from so close contact with the enemy, march it fifty miles, cross two rivers, and bring it into a new position, was a very delicate and hazardous task, and Grant performed it with consummate skill. He sent a part of his cavalry to make a demonstration on the James above Richmond and destroy portions of Lee's line of supplies from the Shenandoah; he had a line of intrenchments constructed along the north bank of the Chickahominy, from his position at Cold Harbor down to the point where he expected to cross; and directed General Butler to send two vessels loaded with stone to be sunk in the channel of the James as far up-stream as possible, so that the Confederate gunboats could not come down and attack the army while it was crossing. A large number of vessels had been collected at Fort Monroe, to be used as ferry-boats when the army should reach the James. The so-called "bridges" on the Chickahominy were now only names of geographical points, for all the bridges had been destroyed; but each column was to carry its pontoon train.

The march began in the evening of June 12th, and at midday of the 13th a pontoon was thrown across at Long Bridge, fifteen miles below the Cold Harbor position, and Wilson's cavalry crossed and immediately moved out a short distance on the roads toward Richmond, to watch the movements of the enemy and prevent a surprise. The Fifth corps followed quickly, and took a position covering these roads till the remainder of the army could cross. The Second, Sixth, and Ninth corps crossed the Chickahominy a few miles farther down; while the Eighteenth had embarked at White House, to be sent around by water. In the evening of the 13th, the Fifth reached Wilcox's Landing on the James, ten miles below Haxall's, where McClellan had reached the river at the close of his peninsula campaign. The other corps reached the landing on the 14th. The river there is more than two thousand feet wide; but between four o'clock, P.M., and midnight a pontoon was laid, and the crossing began. The artillery and trains were sent over first, and the infantry followed in a long procession that occupied forty-eight hours, the rear guard of the Sixth corps passing over at midnight of the 16th. Thus an army of more than one hundred thousand men was taken from a line of trenches within a few yards of the enemy, marched fifty miles, and, with all its paraphernalia, carried across two rivers and placed in a position threatening that enemy's capital, without a serious collision or disaster. General Ewell said that when the National army got across the James River he knew that the Confederate cause was lost, and it was the duty of their authorities to make {369} the best terms they could while they still had a right to claim concessions.

Most critics of this campaign have persistently proceeded on the assumption that Grant's objective was the city of Richmond, and have accordingly condemned his plan of marching overland, and with apparent conclusiveness have pointed to his heavy losses and to the fact that Richmond was still uncaptured, and then asked the question, which has been wearisomely repeated, why he might not as well have carried his army by water in the first place to a position before Richmond, without loss, as McClellan had done two years before, instead of getting there along a bloody overland trail at such heavy cost. These critics should know, even if Grant himself had not distinctly declared it at the outset, that his objective was not the city of Richmond; that it was Lee's army, which it was his business to follow and fight until he destroyed it. The same critics appear to think also that he ought to have found a way to accomplish his purpose without bloodshed, and that because he did not he was no general, but a mere "butcher," as some of them boldly call him. If they were asked to name a general who had won great victories without himself losing men by the thousand, they would find it difficult to do so, for no such general figures in the pages of history. If there ever was a chance to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia and destroy the Confederacy by anything but hard fighting, it was when McClellan planted his army on the peninsula; but McClellan's timidity was not the quality necessary for a bold and brilliant stroke. Nearly the whole State of Virginia is admirably adapted for defence against an invading army; and by the time that Grant set out on his overland campaign every position where Lee's army could make a stand was thoroughly known, and most of them were fortified; furthermore, the men of his army were now veterans and understood how to use every one of their advantages, while Lee as a general had only to move his army over ground that it had already traversed several times, and manoeuvre for a constant defence. Under these circumstances, nothing but hard and continuous fighting could have conquered such an army. The same criticism that finds fault with General Grant for not transporting his army by water to the front of Richmond instead of fighting his way thither overland, must also condemn General Lee for not surrendering in the Wilderness instead of fighting all the way to Appomattox and then surrendering at last.

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