THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN '64.
Mr. Lincoln sends Mr. Dana again to the front—General Halleck's character—First visit to the Army of the Potomac—General Meade's good qualities and bad—Winfield Scott Hancock—Early acquaintance with Sedgwick—His death—Humphreys's accomplishments as a soldier and as a swearer—Grant's plan of campaign against Lee—Incidents at Spottsylvania—The "Bloody Angle."
I remained in Washington the entire winter of 1863-'64, occupied mainly with the routine business of the department. Meantime the Chattanooga victory had made Grant the great military figure of the country, and deservedly so. The grade of lieutenant general had been immediately revived by act of Congress, and the President had promptly promoted him to the new rank, and made him general in chief of all the armies of the United States. His military prestige was such that everything was put into his hands, everything yielded to his wishes. The coming of Grant was a great relief to the President and the Secretary. Halleck, the late general in chief, consented to serve as Grant's chief of staff in Washington, practically continuing his old service of chief military adviser to the President and the Secretary of War, while Grant took the field in active direction of operations against Richmond.
Halleck was not thought to be a great man in the field, but he was nevertheless a man of military ability, and by reason of his great accomplishments in the technics of armies and of war was almost invaluable as an adviser to the civilians Lincoln and Stanton. He was an honest man, perhaps somewhat lacking in moral courage, yet earnest and energetic in his efforts to sustain the national government. I have heard Halleck accused of being unjust to his inferiors in rank, especially to Grant. I believe this wrong. I never thought him unjust to anybody. He always had his own ideas, and insisted strenuously on following his own course, but I never detected a sign of injustice in his conduct toward others. I think this false impression came from the fact that he was a very critical man. The first impulse of his mind toward a new plan was not enthusiasm; it was analysis, criticism. His habit of picking men and manners to pieces to see what they were worth gave the idea that he was unjust and malicious toward certain of his subordinates.
It was March when Grant came to Washington to receive his new grade of lieutenant general. Soon afterward he joined the Army of the Potomac. On the 4th of May he had moved out from Culpeper, where the army had been in winter quarters since the previous December, and crossed the Rapidan with an effective force of one hundred and twenty thousand men. General Lee, his opponent, had about seventy thousand.
For two days after Grant moved we had no authentic reports from the army, although it was known that great events were occurring. Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln had begun to get uneasy. The evening of May 6th I was at a reception when a messenger came with summons to the War Department. I hurried over to the office in evening dress. The President was there, talking very soberly with Stanton.
"Dana," said Mr. Lincoln, "you know we have been in the dark for two days since Grant moved. We are very much troubled, and have concluded to send you down there. How soon can you start?"
"In half an hour," I replied.
In about that time I had an engine fired up at Alexandria, and a cavalry escort of a hundred men awaiting me there. I had got into my camp clothes, had borrowed a pistol, and with my own horse was aboard the train at Maryland Avenue that was to take me to Alexandria. My only baggage was a tooth-brush. I was just starting when an orderly galloped up with word that the President wished to see me. I rode back to the department in hot haste. Mr. Lincoln was sitting in the same place.
"Well, Dana," said he, looking up, "since you went away I've been thinking about it. I don't like to send you down there."
"But why not, Mr. President?" I asked, a little surprised.
"You can't tell," continued the President, "just where Lee is or what he is doing, and Jeb Stuart is rampaging around pretty lively in between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. It's a considerable risk, and I don't like to expose you to it."
"Mr. President," I said, "I have a cavalry guard ready and a good horse myself. If we are attacked, we probably will be strong enough to fight. If we are not strong enough to fight, and it comes to the worst, we are equipped to run. It's getting late, and I want to get down to the Rappahannock by daylight. I think I'll start."
"Well, now, Dana," said the President, with a little twinkle in his eyes, "if you feel that way, I rather wish you would. Good night, and God bless you."
By seven o'clock on the morning of May 7th I was at the Rappahannock, where I found a rear guard of the army. I stopped there for breakfast, and then hurried on to Grant's headquarters, which were at Piney Branch Meeting House. There I learned of the crossing of the Rapidan by our army, and of the desperate battle of the Wilderness on May 5th and 6th.
The Army of the Potomac was then composed of the Second, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Army Corps, and of one cavalry corps. In command of the army was Major-General George C. Meade. He was a tall, thin man, rather dyspeptic, I should suppose from the fits of nervous irritation to which he was subject. He was totally lacking in cordiality toward those with whom he had business, and in consequence was generally disliked by his subordinates. With General Grant Meade got along always perfectly, because he had the first virtue of a soldier—that is, obedience to orders. He was an intellectual man, and agreeable to talk with when his mind was free, but silent and indifferent to everybody when he was occupied with that which interested him.
As a commander, Meade seemed to me to lack the boldness that was necessary to bring the war to a close. He lacked self-confidence and tenacity of purpose, and he had not the moral authority that Grant had attained from his grand successes in other fields. As soon as Meade had a commander over him he was all right, but when he himself was the commander he began to hesitate. Meade had entirely separate headquarters and a separate staff, and Grant sent his orders to him.
In command of the Second Army Corps was Major-General W. S. Hancock. He was a splendid fellow, a brilliant man, as brave as Julius Cæsar, and always ready to obey orders, especially if they were fighting orders. He had more of the aggressive spirit than almost anybody else in that army. Major-General G. K. Warren, who commanded the Fifth Army Corps, was an accomplished engineer. Major-General John Sedgwick commanded the Sixth Army Corps. I had known him for over twenty years. Sedgwick graduated at West Point in 1837, and was appointed a second lieutenant in the Second Artillery. At the time of the McKenzie rebellion in Canada Sedgwick's company was stationed at Buffalo during a considerable time. I was living in Buffalo then, and in this rebellion the young men of the town organized a regiment of city guards, and I was a sergeant in one of those companies, so that I became quite familiar with all the military movements then going on. Then it was that I got acquainted with Sedgwick. He was a very solid man; no flummery about him. You could always tell where Sedgwick was to be found, and in a battle he was apt to be found where the hardest fighting was. He was not an ardent, impetuous soldier like Hancock, but was steady and sure.
Two days after I reached the army, on May 9th, not far from Spottsylvania Courthouse, my old friend Sedgwick was killed. He had gone out in the morning to inspect his lines, and, getting beyond the point of safety, was struck in the forehead by a sharpshooter and instantly killed. The command of the Sixth Army Corps was given to General H. G. Wright. Wright was another engineer officer, well educated, of good, solid intellect, with capacity for command, but no special predilection for fighting. From the moment Meade assumed command of the army, two days before Gettysburg, the engineers rapidly came to the front, for Meade had the pride of corps strongly implanted in his heart.
Major-General Burnside, whom I had last seen at Knoxville in December, was in command of the Ninth Army Corps. Immediately after the siege of Knoxville, at his own request, Burnside had been relieved of the command in East Tennessee by Major-General John G. Foster. The President somehow always showed for Burnside great respect and good will. After Grant's plans for the spring campaign were made known, the Ninth Corps was moved by rail to Annapolis, where it was recruited up to about twenty-five thousand men. As the time for action neared it was set in motion, and by easy marches reached and re-enforced the Army of the Potomac on the morning of the 6th of May, in the midst of the battle of the Wilderness. It was not formally incorporated with that army until later, but, by a sort of fiction, it was held to be a distinct army, Burnside acting in concert with Meade, and receiving his orders directly from Grant, as did Meade. These two armies were the excuse for Grant's personal presence, without actually superseding Meade.
In my opinion, the great soldier of the Army of the Potomac at this time was General Humphreys. He was the chief of staff to General Meade, and was a strategist, a tactician, and an engineer. Humphreys was a fighter, too, and in this an exception to most engineers. He was a very interesting figure. He used to ride about in a black felt hat, the brim of which was turned down all around, making him look like a Quaker. He was very pleasant to deal with, unless you were fighting against him, and then he was not so pleasant. He was one of the loudest swearers that I ever knew. The men of distinguished and brilliant profanity in the war were General Sherman and General Humphreys—I could not mention any others that could be classed with them. General Logan also was a strong swearer, but he was not a West Pointer: he was a civilian. Sherman and Humphreys would swear to make everything blue when some dispatch had not been delivered correctly or they were provoked. Humphreys was a very charming man, quite destitute of vanity. I think he had consented to go and serve with Meade as chief of staff out of pure patriotism. He preferred an active command, and eventually, on the eve of the end, succeeded to the command of the Second Corps, and bore a conspicuous part in the Appomattox campaign.
Meade was in command of the Army of the Potomac, but it was Grant, the lieutenant general of the armies of the United States, who was really directing the movements. The central idea of the campaign had not developed to the army when I reached headquarters, but it was soon clear to everybody. Grant's great operation was the endeavor to interpose the Federal army between Lee's army and Richmond, so as to cut Lee off from his base of supplies. He meant to get considerably in advance of Lee—between him and Richmond—thus compelling Lee to leave his intrenchments and hasten southward. If in the collision thus forced Grant found that he could not smash Lee, he meant to make another move to get behind his army. That was to be the strategy of the campaign of 1864. That was what Lee thwarted, though he had a narrow escape more than once.
The first encounter with Lee had taken place in the Wilderness on May 5th and 6th. The Confederates and many Northern writers love to call the Wilderness a drawn battle. It was not so; in every essential light it was a Union victory. Grant had not intended to fight a battle in those dense, brushy jungles, but Lee precipitated it just as he had precipitated the battle of Chancellorsville one year before, and not six miles to the eastward of this very ground. In doing so he hoped to neutralize the superior numbers of Grant as he had Hooker's, and so to mystify and handle the Union leader as to compel a retreat across the Rapidan. But he failed. Some of the fighting in the brush was a draw, but the Union army did not yield a rood of ground; it held the roads southward, inflicted great losses on its enemy, and then, instead of recrossing the river, resumed its march toward Richmond as soon as Lee's attacks had ceased. Lee had palpably failed in his objects. His old-time tactics had made no impression on Grant. He never offered general battle in the open afterward.
The previous history of the Army of the Potomac had been to advance and fight a battle, then either to retreat or to lie still, and finally to go into winter quarters. Grant did not intend to proceed in that way. As soon as he had fought a battle and had not routed Lee, he meant to move nearer to Richmond and fight another battle. But the men in the army had become so accustomed to the old methods of campaigning that few, if any, of them believed that the new commander in chief would be able to do differently from his predecessors. I remember distinctly the sensation in the ranks when the rumor first went around that our position was south of Lee's. It was the morning of May 8th. The night before the army had made a forced march on Spottsylvania Courthouse. There was no indication the next morning that Lee had moved in any direction. As the army began to realize that we were really moving south, and at that moment were probably much nearer Richmond than was our enemy, the spirits of men and officers rose to the highest pitch of animation. On every hand I heard the cry, "On to Richmond!"
But there were to be a great many more obstacles to our reaching Richmond than General Grant himself, I presume, realized on May 8, 1864. We met one that very morning; for when our advance reached Spottsylvania Courthouse it found Lee's troops there, ready to dispute the right of way with us, and two days later Grant was obliged to fight the battle of Spottsylvania before we could make another move south.
It is no part of my present plan to go into detailed description of all the battles of this campaign, but rather to dwell on the incidents and deeds which impressed me most deeply at the moment. In the battle of Spottsylvania, a terrific struggle, with many dramatic features, there is nothing I remember more distinctly than a little scene in General Grant's tent between him and a captured Confederate officer, General Edward Johnson. The battle had begun on the morning of May 10th, and had continued all day. On the 11th the armies had rested, but at half past four on the morning of the 12th fighting had been begun by an attack by Hancock on a rebel salient. Hancock attacked with his accustomed impetuosity, storming and capturing the enemy's fortified line, with some four thousand prisoners and twenty cannon. The captures included nearly all of Major-General Edward Johnson's division, together with Johnson himself and General George H. Steuart.
I was at Grant's headquarters when General Johnson was brought in a prisoner. He was a West Pointer, and had been a captain in the old army before secession, and was an important officer in the Confederate service, having distinguished himself in the Valley in 1863, and at Gettysburg. Grant had not seen him since they had been in Mexico together. The two men shook hands cordially, and at once began a brisk conversation, which was very interesting to me, because nothing was said in it on the subject in which they were both most interested just then—that is, the fight that was going on, and the surprise that Hancock had effected. It was the past alone of which they talked.
It was quite early in the morning when Hancock's prisoners were brought in. The battle raged without cessation throughout the day, Wright and Hancock bearing the brunt of it. Burnside made several attacks, in which his troops generally bore themselves like good soldiers. The results of the battle of Spottsylvania were that we had crowded the enemy out of some of his most important positions, had weakened him by losses of between nine thousand and ten thousand men killed, wounded, and captured, besides many battle flags and much artillery, and that our troops rested victorious upon the ground they had fought for.
After the battle was over and firing had nearly ceased, Rawlins and I went out to ride over the field. We went first to the salient which Hancock had attacked in the morning. The two armies had struggled for hours for this point, and the loss had been so terrific that the place has always been known since as the "Bloody Angle." The ground around the salient had been trampled and cut in the struggle until it was almost impassable for one on horseback, so Rawlins and I dismounted and climbed up the bank over the outer line of the rude breastworks. Within we saw a fence over which earth evidently had been banked, but which now was bare and half down. It was here the fighting had been fiercest. We picked our way to this fence, and stopped to look over the scene. The night was coming on, and, after the horrible din of the day, the silence was intense; nothing broke it but distant and occasional firing or the low groans of the wounded. I remember that as I stood there I was almost startled to hear a bird twittering in a tree. All around us the underbrush and trees, which were just beginning to be green, had been riddled and burnt. The ground was thick with dead and wounded men, among whom the relief corps was at work. The earth, which was soft from the heavy rains we had been having before and during the battle, had been trampled by the fighting of the thousands of men until it was soft, like thin hasty pudding. Over the fence against which we leaned lay a great pool of this mud, its surface as smooth as that of a pond.
As we stood there, looking silently down at it, of a sudden the leg of a man was lifted up from the pool and the mud dripped off his boot. It was so unexpected, so horrible, that for a moment we were stunned. Then we pulled ourselves together and called to some soldiers near by to rescue the owner of the leg. They pulled him out with but little trouble, and discovered that he was not dead, only wounded. He was taken to the hospital, where he got well, I believe.
The first news which passed through the ranks the morning after the battle of Spottsylvania was that Lee had abandoned his position during the night. Though our army was greatly fatigued from the enormous efforts of the day before, the news of Lee's departure inspired the men with fresh energy, and everybody was eager to be in pursuit. Our skirmishers soon found the enemy along the whole line, however, and the conclusion was that their retrograde movement had been made to correct their position after the loss of the key points taken from them the day before, and that they were still with us in a new line as strong as the old one. Of course, we could not determine this point without a battle, and nothing was done that day to provoke one. It was necessary to rest the men.
In changing his lines Lee had left more uncovered the roads leading southward along his right wing, and Grant ordered Meade to throw the corps of Warren, which held the right, and the corps of Wright, which held the center of Meade's army, to the left of Burnside, leaving Hancock upon our right. If not interrupted, Grant thought by this maneuvre to turn Lee's flank and compel him to move southward.
The movement of the two corps to our left was executed during the night of May 13th and 14th, but for three days it had rained steadily, and the roads were so bad that Wright and Warren did not get up to surprise the enemy at daylight as ordered. The only engagement brought on by this move was an active little fight over a conspicuous hill, with a house and plantation buildings upon it. The hill, which was on our left and the enemy's right, was valuable as a lookout rather than for offensive operations. Upton took it in the morning, and later the enemy retook it. General Meade, who was there at that moment, narrowly escaped capture. Our men very handsomely carried the hill again that evening.
The two armies were then lying in a semicircle, the Federal left well around toward the south. We were concentrated to the last degree, and, so far as we could tell, Lee's forces were equally compact. On the 15th, 16th, and 17th, we lay in about the same position. This inactivity was caused by the weather. A pouring rain had begun on the 11th, and it continued until the morning of the 16th; the mud was so deep that any offensive operation, however successful, could not be followed up. There was nothing to do but lie still and wait for better weather and drier roads.
While waiting for the rain to stop, we had time to consider the field returns of losses as they were handed in. The army had left winter quarters at Culpeper Courthouse on May 4th, and on May 16th the total of killed, wounded, and missing in both the Army of the Potomac and the Ninth Corps amounted to a little over thirty-three thousand men. The missing alone amounted to forty-nine hundred, but some of these were, in fact, killed or wounded. When Grant looked over the returns, he expressed great regret at the loss of so many men. Meade, who was with him, remarked, as I remember, "Well, General, we can't do these little tricks without losses."