WOUNDED.
Captain Charles D. Browne, Company C.
Sergeants George Townsend, Company F, and Henry Campbell, Company G.
Corporal Samuel C. Wright, Company E (very badly in the head, and reported as dead).
Privates Charles F. Bosworth, Company F; Lemuel Chapin, Company G; and Jacob H. Dow, Company H.
CAPTURED.
First Sergeant John Shannon, Company E.
Corporal Thomas W. D. Deane, Company G.
Privates George Thomas, Company A; Benjamin B. Brown, Company B; Daniel Whitmore, Company G; and John Moore, Jr., Company K.
Corporal Wright was promoted to Sergeant after this battle for his brave and meritorious conduct manifested during the engagement. Probably no event of the war excited so much discussion, and called forth so much bitterness of feeling among the officers of our army, as did this. The conduct of the First Division and its commander has been made the subject of the severest criticism. Henry Coppee, A. M., who wrote a book entitled “General Grant and his Campaigns,” in giving an account of this affair, uses this language: “But the attack must be instantaneous. What delays it? Ten minutes pass before Ledlie’s division, which had been selected by lot to lead the charge, has moved; when it does, led by the gallant General Bartlett, instead of complying with the order, it halts in the crater.” In another part of his book, he says: “The storming party was then thus organized. Ledlie’s division of white troops was to lead the assault, charge through the crater, and then seize the enemy’s works on Cemetery Hill.” As these and other statements, to which reference will be made, reflect great discredit upon the division, the author has deemed it important to quote from a carefully-written paper in his possession, prepared by one of the field-officers of the division, who took an active part in the battle.
“It will be seen that Coppee states that Ledlie’s division was ‘to charge through the crater and seize the rebel works on Cemetery Hill,’ but that, instead of complying with the order, the division ‘halts in the crater.’ Ledlie’s division had no such order. It was not a part of the plan of the battle for that division to advance after reaching the crater. The orders issued to the division were distinctly, ‘not to advance.’ General Bartlett’s First Brigade consisted of seven regiments. On the afternoon of the 29th of July, the seven regimental commanders assembled at brigade headquarters by direction of the General, and were then informed by him that the mine was to be fired the next morning; that Ledlie’s division had been selected by lot to lead the assault; that the division was to move forward immediately after the explosion and occupy the enemy’s front line of works; that the division would be promptly followed by another division of the corps, which would move beyond, ‘over the heads of Ledlie’s division, to be followed by the remaining divisions of the corps.’”
This statement comes, not only from a reliable source, but is very reasonable upon its face. In the nature of things, the leading division would necessarily be badly cut up in carrying out its part of the work; and after having secured the front line, it was reasonable to suppose—and, under the circumstances, its regimental officers were justified in supposing—that the other divisions in the corps would follow and finish the work. The other divisions, with the exception of the Fourth, followed, but they did not advance beyond the lines of the First Division. Remaining in the crater, they added to the confusion, and finally rendered any movement impossible.
Another historian, if such he may be called, has said that the assault upon the enemy’s lines “failed because it was led by the worst division in the army.” This writer could not have been familiar with the record of the brave men whose courage he thus flippantly assails. Among the troops of this division were the Twenty-first, Twenty-ninth, Thirty-fifth, Fifty-sixth, Fifty-seventh, and Fifty-ninth Massachusetts regiments, Third Maryland, an old and excellent regiment, and the One Hundredth Pennsylvania. The Twenty-first regiment entered the service as early as August, 1861. It fought with Burnside in North Carolina, was engaged in the second battle of Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, and afterwards in East Tennessee. Its record is a very bright one. The Twenty-ninth regiment had served in nearly every department, and contained the oldest three years’ troops from New England. The Thirty-fifth regiment had been in the service since August, 1862, and was engaged at South Mountain and Antietam before it had been a month in the service, in both of which actions it had behaved with signal bravery. The Fifty-sixth, Fifty-seventh, and Fifty-ninth regiments, though they had not been long in the service, were composed chiefly of veteran soldiers. The many silent mounds scattered all the way from the Wilderness to the James, beneath which repose their dead, tell more eloquently the story of their bravery and devotion, than can any words of praise. The One Hundredth Pennsylvania was a most superior regiment, and was the equal of any in the army. Many of the field-officers of the division were most gallant soldiers, while General Bartlett was without his superior in our army for courage and daring. To speak of such regiments and such officers as these as being the worst in our army, is wholly unjustifiable, and not susceptible of palliation or excuse.
The Committee of Congress, which made a patient examination into this unfortunate affair, closed their report with these words:—
“... Your Committee must say, that, in their opinion, the cause of the disastrous result of the assault of the 30th of July last, is mainly attributable to the fact, that the plans and suggestions of the general who had devoted his attention for so long a time to the subject, who had carried out to a successful completion the project of mining the enemy’s works, and who had carefully selected and drilled his troops for the purpose of securing whatever advantages might be attainable from the explosion of the mine, should have been so entirely disregarded by a general who had evinced no faith in the successful prosecution of the work, had aided it by no countenance or open approval, and had assumed the entire direction and control only when it was completed, and the time had come for reaping any advantages that might be derived from it.”[52]