The Civil War Through the Camera

by Henry W. Elson

The last of Grant’s forces were across the James by midnight of June 16th, while Lee took a more westerly and shorter route to Petersburg. The fighting there was continued as the two armies came up, but each Union attack was successfully repulsed. At the close of day on the 18th both opponents were in full strength and the greatest struggle of modern times was begun. Impregnable bastioned works began to show themselves around Petersburg. More than thirty miles of frowning redoubts connected extensive breastworks and were strengthened by mortar batteries and field-works which lined the fields near the Appomattox River. It was a vast net of fortifications, but there was no formal siege of Lee’s position, which was a new entrenched line selected by Beauregard some distance behind the rifle-pits where he had held out at such great odds against Hancock and Smith.

Grant, as soon as the army was safely protected, started to extend his lines on the west and south, in order to envelop the Confederate right flank. He also bent his energies to destroying the railroads upon which Lee depended for supplies. Attempts to do this were made without delay. On June 22d two corps of the Union army set out for the Weldon Railroad, but they became separated and were put to flight by A. P. Hill. The Federal cavalry also joined in the work, but the vigilant Confederate horsemen under W. H. F. Lee prevented any serious damage to the iron way, and by July 2d the last of the raiders were back in the Federal lines, much the worse for the rough treatment they had received.

Now ensued some weeks of quiet during which both armies were strengthening their fortifications. On June 25th Sheridan returned from his cavalry raid on the Virginia Central Railroad running north from Richmond. He had encountered Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee at Trevilian Station on June 11th, and turned back after doing great damage to the railway. Ammunition was running short and he did not dare risk another engagement. Sheridan was destined not to remain long with the army in front of Petersburg. Lee had detached a corps from his forces and, under Early, it had been doing great damage in Maryland and Pennsylvania. So Grant’s cavalry leader was put at the head of an army and sent to the Shenandoah valley to drive Early’s troops from the base of their operations.

Meanwhile the Federals were covertly engaged in an undertaking which was fated to result in conspicuous failure. Some skilled miners from the upper Schuylkill coal regions in the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania attached to the Ninth Corps were boring a tunnel from the rear of the Union works underneath the Confederate fortifications. Eight thousand pounds of gunpowder were placed in lateral galleries at the end of the tunnel. At twenty minutes to five on the morning of July 30th, the mine was exploded. A solid mass of earth and all manner of material shot two hundred feet into the air. Three hundred human beings were buried in the débris as it fell back into the gaping crater. The smoke had barely cleared away when General Ledlie led his waiting troops into the vast opening. The horror of the sight sickened the assailants, and in crowding into the pit they became completely demoralized. In the confusion officers lost power to reorganize, much less to control, their troops.

The stunned and paralyzed Confederates were not long in recovering their wits. Batteries opened upon the approach to the crater, and presently a stream of fire was poured into the pit itself. General Mahone hastened up with his Georgia and Virginia troops, and there were several desperate charges before the Federals withdrew at Burnside’s order. Grant had had great expectations that the mine would result in his capturing Petersburg and he was much disappointed. In order to get a part of Lee’s army away from the scene of what he hoped would be the final struggle, Hancock’s troops and a large force of cavalry had been sent north of the James, as if a move on Richmond had been planned. In the mine fiasco on that fatal July 30th, thirty-nine hundred men (nearly all from Burnside’s corps) were lost to the Union side. The Confederate loss was about one thousand.

In the torrid days of mid-August Grant renewed his attacks upon the Weldon Railroad, and General Warren was sent to capture it. He reached Globe Tavern, about four miles from Petersburg, when he encountered General Heth, who drove him back. Warren did not return to the Federal lines but entrenched along the iron way. The next day he was fiercely attacked by the Confederate force now strongly reënforced by Mahone. The assault was most sudden. Mahone forced his way through the skirmish line and then turned and fought his opponents from their rear. Another of his divisions struck the Union right wing. In this extremity two thousand of Warren’s troops were captured and all would have been lost but for the timely arrival of Burnside’s men.

Two days later the Southerners renewed the battle and now thirty cannon poured volley after volley upon the Fifth and Ninth corps. The dashing Mahone again came forward with his usual impetuousness, but the blue line finally drove Lee’s men back. And so the Weldon Railroad fell into the hands of General Grant. Hancock, with the Second Corps, returned from the north bank of the James and set to work to assist in destroying the railway, whose loss was a hard blow to General Lee. It was not to be expected that the latter would permit this work to continue unmolested and on the 25th of August, A. P. Hill suddenly confronted Hancock, who entrenched himself in haste at Ream’s Station. This did not save the Second Corps, which for the first time in its glorious career was put to rout. Their very guns were captured and turned upon them.

In the following weeks there were no actions of importance except that in the last days of September Generals Ord and Birney, with the Army of the James, captured Fort Harrison, on the north bank of that river, from Generals Ewell and Anderson. The Federals were anxious to have it, since it was an excellent vantage point from which to threaten Richmond. Meanwhile Grant was constantly extending his line to the west and by the end of October it was very close to the South Side Railroad. On the 27th there was a hard fight at Hatcher’s Run, but the Confederates saved the railway and the Federals returned to their entrenchments in front of Petersburg.

The active struggle now ceased, but Lee found himself each day in more desperate straits. Sheridan had played sad havoc with such sources of supply as existed in the rich country to the northwest. The Weldon Railroad was gone and the South Side line was in imminent danger. The Southerners were losing heart. Many went home for the winter on a promise to return when the spring planting was done. Lee was loath to let them go, but he could ill afford to maintain them, and the very life of their families depended upon it. Those who remained at Petersburg suffered cruelly from hunger and cold. They looked forward to the spring, although it meant renewal of the mighty struggle. The Confederate line had been stretched to oppose Grant’s westward progress until it had become the thinnest of screens. A man lost to Lee was almost impossible to replace, while the bounties offered in the North kept Grant’s ranks full.