After the disastrous clash of the two armies at Cold Harbor, Grant
remained a few days in his entrenchments trying in vain to find a weak
place in Lee's lines. The combatants were now due east of Richmond, and
the Federal general realized that it would be impossible at this time to
attain the object for which he had struggled ever since he crossed the
Rapidan on the 4th of May--to turn Lee's right flank and interpose his
forces between the Army of Northern Virginia and the capital of the
Confederacy. His opponent, one of the very greatest military leaders the
Anglo-Saxon race has produced, with an army of but little more than half
the number of the Federal host, had successfully blocked the attempts to
carry out this plan in three great battles and by a remarkable maneuver on
the southern bank of the North Anna, which had forced Grant to recross the
river and which will always remain a subject of curious interest to
students of the art of war.
In one month the Union army had lost fifty-five thousand men, while the
Confederate losses had been comparatively small. The cost to the North had
been too great; Lee could not be cut off from his capital, and the most
feasible project was now to join in the move which heretofore had been the
special object of General Butler and the Army of the James, and attack
Richmond itself. South of the city, at a distance of twenty-one miles, was
the town of Petersburg. Its defenses were not strong, although General
Gillmore of Butler's army had failed in an attempt to seize them on the
10th of June. Three railroads converged here and these were main arteries
of Lee's supply. Grant resolved to capture this important point. He sent
General W. F. Smith, who had come to his aid at Cold Harbor with the
flower of the Army of the James, back to Bermuda Hundred by water, as he
had come, with instructions to hasten to Petersburg before Lee could get
there. Smith arrived on the 15th and was joined by Hancock with the first
troops of the Army of the Potomac to appear, but the attack was not
pressed and Beauregard who, with only two thousand men, was in desperate
straits until Lee should reach him, managed to hold the inner line of
trenches.
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.
[Illustration: MAHONE, "THE HERO OF THE CRATER"