History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

by Richard B. Irwin

In the early days of April the tedium of winter quarters was relieved by the good news of Grant's successes before Petersburg. It was evident that Lee's army was breaking up, and to guard against the possible escape of any fragment of it by the valley highway, on the 4th of April Hancock sent Dwight's division back to Camp Russell, but on the 7th the troops were drawn in to Winchester and encamped on the bank of Abraham's Creek. Here, at midnight on the 9th of April, the whole command turned out to hear the official announcement of Lee's surrender. The next morning, in a drenching rain, Dwight marched eighteen miles to Summit Point. On the 20th of April the division moved by railway to Washington, where it arrived on the morning of the 21st, and with colors shrouded in black for the memory of Lincoln, marched past the President's house and encamped at Tennallytown on the same ground the detachments of the corps had occupied on the night of the 13th of July the year before. Here the duty devolved upon the division of guarding all the ways out of Washington toward the northwest, from Rock Creek to the Potomac, in order to prevent the escape of such of the assassins of the President as might still be lurking within the city. This was but a part of the heavy and continuous line of sentries that stretched for thirty-five miles around the capital. A week later Dwight moved to the neighborhood of Bladensburg and encamped on the line the division had been ordered to defend on the afternoon of its arrival from New Orleans. In the first week of May heavy details were furnished to guard the prison on the grounds of the arsenal where the assassins were confined.

The armies of Meade and Sherman were now concentrating on the hills about Washington, preparatory to passing in review before President Johnson; and Dwight being ordered to report to Willcox, then commanding the Ninth Army Corps, and to follow that corps on the occasion of the review. Willcox inspected the division on the 12th of May on the parade ground of Fort Bunker Hill.

Sheridan, although he had brought up his cavalry for the great review, had been ordered to take command in the Southwest, and as Grant deemed the matter urgent, because of French and Mexican complications, Sheridan was destined to have no part in the approaching ceremonies, yet he could not resist the chance of once more looking at what was left of the infantry that had followed him in triumph through the Shenandoah. When the men saw him riding at the side of Willcox, mounted once more upon "Rienzi" and wearing the same animated smile that had cheered and encouraged them in the evil hour at Winchester, before the cliffs of Fisher's Hill, and in the gloom of Cedar Creek, they were not to be restrained from violating all the solemn proprieties of the occasion, but broke out into a tumult of cheers.

On the 22d of May, Dwight broke camp near Bladensburg, and, marching to the plain east of the Capitol, near the Congressional Cemetery, went into bivouac with the Ninth Corps. Here the men, after their long and hard field service, gave way to open disgust at hearing the order read on parade requiring them to appear in white gloves at the great review. On Tuesday, the 23d of May, the review took place. The men were up at three, and were inspected at half-past seven, but it was half-past ten before Dwight took up the line of march in the rear of the Ninth Corps, followed by the Fifth.

On the 1st of June, 1865, the breaking up began. The 114th and 116th New York were taken from Beal's brigade, and the 133d from Fessenden's, and ordered to be mustered out of the service of the United States. The 8th Vermont had already gone to the Sixth Corps to join the old Vermont brigade. The rest of Dwight's division embarked on transport steamers, under orders for Savannah, where they landed on the 4th of June. There they found many of their comrades of Grover's division.

To return to Grover. Embarking at Baltimore about the 11th of January, after some detention, the advance of his division landed at Savannah on the 19th of January. The rest of the division gradually followed, and at Savannah the troops remained doing garrison and police duty until about the 4th of March, when Grover was ordered to take transports and join Schofield in North Carolina, in order to open communication with Sherman's army, then advancing once more toward the sea-coast. Wilmington had fallen on the 22d of February. Then Schofield sent a force, under Cox, to open the railway from Newbern to Goldsboro, on the south bank of the Neuse. D. H. Hill met and fought him on the 8th, 9th, and 10th, on the south side of the river; but, the Confederates retreating to Goldsboro to oppose Sherman's march, Schofield occupied Kinston on the 14th and Goldsboro on the 21st. In these movements the 3d brigade, formerly Sharpe's, now commanded by Day, took part, while Birge's brigade was posted at Morehead City, and Molineux's at Wilmington.

On the 1st of April, Schofield's force, composed of the Tenth Corps, under Terry, and the Twenty-third Corps, under Cox, was reconstructed by Sherman as the centre of his armies, and designated as the Army of the Ohio. The next day the troops of Grover's division, then in North Carolina, were attached to the Tenth Corps, reorganized into three brigades, and designated as the First division; the command being given to Birge, and the brigades being commanded by the three senior colonels, Washburn, Graham, and Day. Some time before this, Shunk's 4th brigade of Grover's division had been broken up and its regiments distributed; the 8th and 18th Indiana to Washburn, the 28th Iowa to Graham, and the 24th Iowa to Day. The 22d Indiana battery formed the artillery of the division. All active operations coming to an end with the final surrender of Johnston on the 26th of April, about the 4th of May the division went back to Savannah. On the 11th of May it marched to Augusta, leaving Day with all his regiments except the 24th Iowa and the 128th New York to take care of Savannah.

Meanwhile, orders being issued by the government for disbanding the regiments whose time was to expire before the 1st of November, and the re-enlisted veterans of Dwight's division beginning to arrive in Savannah on the 5th of June, Birge's brigade came down from Augusta on the 7th and Day marched on the 9th to replace it.

From this time the work of disintegration went on rapidly, yet all too slowly for the impatience of the soldiers, now thinking only of home, and soon sickened by the weary routine of provost duty in the first dull days of peace. What was left of the divisions of Dwight and Grover continued to occupy Charleston, Savannah, and Augusta, and the chief towns of Georgia and South Carolina.

When at last the final separation came, and little by little the old corps fell apart, every man, as with inexpressible yearning he turned his face homeward, bore with him, as the richest heritage of his children and his children's children, the proud consciousness of duty done.