Recollections of the Civil War / With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties

by Charles A. Dana

As we came back we passed through the division of colored troops which had so greatly distinguished itself under Smith on the 15th. They were drawn up in double lines on each side of the road, and they welcomed the President with hearty shouts. It was a memorable thing to behold him whose fortune it was to represent the principle of emancipation passing bareheaded through the enthusiastic ranks of those negroes armed to defend the integrity of the nation.

I went back to Washington with the presidential party, but remained only a few days, as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton were anxious for my daily reports of the operations around Petersburg. On the return, I arrived at City Point on July 1st. The army occupied about the same positions as when I had left it a week before. Two corps were engaged in siege work, their effort being to get possession of a ridge before them, supposed to command Petersburg; if they succeeded in this, Grant thought that the enemy would have to abandon the south side of the Appomattox, and, of course, the town. On the left our line extended southward and westward across what was known as the Jerusalem road, but at so great a distance from the Confederate fortifications as to have no immediate effect upon them. Farther around to the west, toward the Appomattox above Petersburg, the enemy's works extended, and the idea of enveloping them for the whole distance had been given up. The efforts to break up the railroads leading from Petersburg had been very successful, Grant told me. There were plans for assault suggested, but Grant had not considered any of them seriously.

Before the army had recovered from its long march from Cold Harbor and the failure to capture the town, there was an unusual amount of controversy going on among the officers. Smith was berated generally for failing to complete his attack of June 15th. Butler and "Baldy" Smith were deep in a controversial correspondence; and Meade and Warren were so at loggerheads that Meade notified Warren that he must either ask to be relieved as corps commander or he (Meade) would prefer charges against him. It seemed as if Meade grew more unpopular every day. Finally the difficulties between him and his subordinates became so serious that a change in the commander of the Army of the Potomac seemed probable. Grant had great confidence in Meade, and was much attached to him personally; but the almost universal dislike of Meade which prevailed among officers of every rank who came in contact with him, and the difficulty of doing business with him, felt by every one except Grant himself, so greatly impaired his capacities for usefulness and rendered success under his command so doubtful that Grant seemed to be coming to the conviction that he must be relieved.

I had long known Meade to be a man of the worst possible temper, especially toward his subordinates. I think he had not a friend in the whole army. No man, no matter what his business or his service, approached him without being insulted in one way or another, and his own staff officers did not dare to speak to him unless first spoken to, for fear of either sneers or curses. The latter, however, I had never heard him indulge in very violently, but he was said to apply them often without occasion and without reason. At the same time, as far as I was able to ascertain, his generals had lost their confidence in him as a commander. His orders for the last series of assaults upon Petersburg, in which we lost ten thousand men without gaining any decisive advantage, were greatly criticised. They were, in effect, that he had found it impracticable to secure the co-operation of corps commanders, and that, therefore, each one was to attack on his own account and do the best he could by himself. The consequence was that each gained some advantage of position, but each exhausted his own strength in so doing; while, for the want of a general purpose and a general commander to direct and concentrate the whole, it all amounted to nothing but heavy loss to ourselves. General Wright remarked confidentially to a friend that all of Meade's attacks had been made without brains and without generalship.

The first week of July the subject came to pretty full discussion at Grant's headquarters on account of an extraordinary correspondence between Meade and Wilson. The Richmond Examiner had charged Wilson's command with stealing not only negroes and horses, but silver plate and clothing on a raid he had just made against the Danville and Southside Railroad, and Meade, taking up the statement of the Examiner for truth, read Wilson a lecture, and called on him for explanations. Wilson denied the charge of robbing women and churches, and said he hoped Meade would not be ready to condemn his command because its operations had excited the ire of the public enemy. Meade replied that Wilson's explanation was satisfactory; but this correspondence started a conversation in which Grant expressed himself quite frankly as to the general trouble with Meade, and his fear that it would become necessary to relieve him. In that event, he said, it would be necessary to put Hancock in command.

In the first days of July we began to get inquiries at City Point from Washington concerning the whereabouts of the Confederate generals Early and Ewell. It was reported in the capital, our dispatches said, that they were moving down the Shenandoah Valley. We seemed to have pretty good evidence that Early was with Lee, defending Petersburg, and so I wired the Secretary on July 3d. The next day we felt less positive. A deserter came in on the morning of the 4th, and said that it was reported in the enemy's camp that Ewell had gone into Maryland with his entire corps. Another twenty-four hours, and Meade told me that he was at last convinced that Early and his troops had gone down the valley. In fact, Early had been gone three weeks. He left Lee's army near Cold Harbor on the morning of the 13th of June, when we were on the march to the James. Hunter's defeat of Jones near Staunton had forced Lee to divide his army in order to stop Hunter's dangerous advance on Lynchburg.

On the 6th General Grant was convinced that Washington was the objective. The raid threatened was sufficiently serious to compel the sending of troops to the defense of the capital, and a body of men immediately embarked. Three days later I started myself to Washington, in order to keep Grant informed of what was going on. When I arrived, I found both Washington and Baltimore in a state of great excitement; both cities were filled with people who had fled from the enemy. The damage to private property done by the invaders was said to be almost beyond calculation. Mills, workshops, and factories of every sort were reported as destroyed, and from twenty-five to fifty miles of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad torn up.

During my first day in town, July 11th, all sorts of rumors came in. General Lew Wallace, then in command at Baltimore, sent word that a large force of the enemy had been seen that morning near that city. The Confederate generals were said to have dined together at Rockville a day or two before. The houses of Governor Bradford, Francis P. Blair, senior, and his son, Montgomery, the Postmaster General, were reported burned. We could see from Washington clouds of dust in several quarters around the city, which we believed to be raised by bodies of hostile cavalry. There was some sharp skirmishing that day, too, on the Tennallytown road, as well as later in front of Fort Stevens, and at night the telegraph operators at the latter place reported a considerable number of camp fires visible in front of them.

I found that the Washington authorities had utilized every man in town for defense. Some fifteen hundred employees of the quartermaster's department had been armed and sent out; the veteran reserves about Washington and Alexandria had likewise been sent to the front. General Augur, commanding the defenses of Washington, had also drawn from the fortifications on the south side of the town all the men that in his judgment could possibly be spared. To this improvised force were added that day some six boatloads of troops which General Grant had sent from the Army of the Potomac. These troops went at once to Fort Stevens.

With the troops coming from Grant, there was force enough to save the capital; but I soon saw that nothing could possibly be done toward pursuing or cutting off the enemy for want of a commander. General Hunter and his forces had not yet returned from their swing around the circle. General Augur commanded the defenses of Washington, with A. McD. McCook and a lot of brigadier generals under him, but he was not allowed to go outside. Wright commanded only his own corps. General Gilmore had been assigned to the temporary command of those troops of the Nineteenth Corps just arrived from New Orleans, and all other troops in the Middle Department, leaving Wallace to command Baltimore alone. But there was no head to the whole. General Halleck would not give orders, except as he received them from Grant; the President would give none; and, until Grant directed positively and explicitly what was to be done, everything was practically at a standstill. Things, I saw, would go on in the deplorable and fatal way in which they had been going for a week. Of course, this want of a head was causing a great deal of sharp comment on all sides. Postmaster-General Blair was particularly incensed, and, indeed, with real cause, for he had lost his house at Silver Springs. Some of his remarks reached General Halleck, who immediately wrote to Mr. Stanton the following letter: