THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC IN '64.
Mr. Lincoln sends Mr. Dana again to the front--General Halleck's
character--First visit to the Army of the Potomac--General Meade's
good qualities and bad--Winfield Scott Hancock--Early acquaintance
with Sedgwick--His death--Humphreys's accomplishments as a soldier
and as a swearer--Grant's plan of campaign against Lee--Incidents at
Spottsylvania--The "Bloody Angle."
I remained in Washington the entire winter of 1863-'64, occupied mainly
with the routine business of the department. Meantime the Chattanooga
victory had made Grant the great military figure of the country, and
deservedly so. The grade of lieutenant general had been immediately
revived by act of Congress, and the President had promptly promoted him
to the new rank, and made him general in chief of all the armies of the
United States. His military prestige was such that everything was put
into his hands, everything yielded to his wishes. The coming of Grant
was a great relief to the President and the Secretary. Halleck, the late
general in chief, consented to serve as Grant's chief of staff in
Washington, practically continuing his old service of chief military
adviser to the President and the Secretary of War, while Grant took the
field in active direction of operations against Richmond.
Halleck was not thought to be a great man in the field, but he was
nevertheless a man of military ability, and by reason of his great
accomplishments in the technics of armies and of war was almost
invaluable as an adviser to the civilians Lincoln and Stanton. He was an
honest man, perhaps somewhat lacking in moral courage, yet earnest and
energetic in his efforts to sustain the national government. I have
heard Halleck accused of being unjust to his inferiors in rank,
especially to Grant. I believe this wrong. I never thought him unjust to
anybody. He always had his own ideas, and insisted strenuously on
following his own course, but I never detected a sign of injustice in
his conduct toward others. I think this false impression came from the
fact that he was a very critical man. The first impulse of his mind
toward a new plan was not enthusiasm; it was analysis, criticism. His
habit of picking men and manners to pieces to see what they were worth
gave the idea that he was unjust and malicious toward certain of his
subordinates.
It was March when Grant came to Washington to receive his new grade of
lieutenant general. Soon afterward he joined the Army of the Potomac. On
the 4th of May he had moved out from Culpeper, where the army had been
in winter quarters since the previous December, and crossed the Rapidan
with an effective force of one hundred and twenty thousand men. General
Lee, his opponent, had about seventy thousand.
For two days after Grant moved we had no authentic reports from the
army, although it was known that great events were occurring. Mr.
Stanton and Mr. Lincoln had begun to get uneasy. The evening of May 6th
I was at a reception when a messenger came with summons to the War
Department. I hurried over to the office in evening dress. The President
was there, talking very soberly with Stanton.
"Dana," said Mr. Lincoln, "you know we have been in the dark for two
days since Grant moved. We are very much troubled, and have concluded to
send you down there. How soon can you start?"
"In half an hour," I replied.
In about that time I had an engine fired up at Alexandria, and a cavalry
escort of a hundred men awaiting me there. I had got into my camp
clothes, had borrowed a pistol, and with my own horse was aboard the
train at Maryland Avenue that was to take me to Alexandria. My only
baggage was a tooth-brush. I was just starting when an orderly galloped
up with word that the President wished to see me. I rode back to the
department in hot haste. Mr. Lincoln was sitting in the same place.
"Well, Dana," said he, looking up, "since you went away I've been
thinking about it. I don't like to send you down there."
"But why not, Mr. President?" I asked, a little surprised.
"You can't tell," continued the President, "just where Lee is or what he
is doing, and Jeb Stuart is rampaging around pretty lively in between
the Rappahannock and the Rapidan. It's a considerable risk, and I don't
like to expose you to it."
"Mr. President," I said, "I have a cavalry guard ready and a good horse
myself. If we are attacked, we probably will be strong enough to fight.
If we are not strong enough to fight, and it comes to the worst, we are
equipped to run. It's getting late, and I want to get down to the
Rappahannock by daylight. I think I'll start."
"Well, now, Dana," said the President, with a little twinkle in his
eyes, "if you feel that way, I rather wish you would. Good night, and
God bless you."
By seven o'clock on the morning of May 7th I was at the Rappahannock,
where I found a rear guard of the army. I stopped there for breakfast,
and then hurried on to Grant's headquarters, which were at Piney Branch
Meeting House. There I learned of the crossing of the Rapidan by our
army, and of the desperate battle of the Wilderness on May 5th and 6th.
The Army of the Potomac was then composed of the Second, Fifth, Sixth,
and Ninth Army Corps, and of one cavalry corps. In command of the army
was Major-General George C. Meade. He was a tall, thin man, rather
dyspeptic, I should suppose from the fits of nervous irritation to which
he was subject. He was totally lacking in cordiality toward those with
whom he had business, and in consequence was generally disliked by his
subordinates. With General Grant Meade got along always perfectly,
because he had the first virtue of a soldier--that is, obedience to
orders. He was an intellectual man, and agreeable to talk with when his
mind was free, but silent and indifferent to everybody when he was
occupied with that which interested him.
As a commander, Meade seemed to me to lack the boldness that was
necessary to bring the war to a close. He lacked self-confidence and
tenacity of purpose, and he had not the moral authority that Grant had
attained from his grand successes in other fields. As soon as Meade had
a commander over him he was all right, but when he himself was the
commander he began to hesitate. Meade had entirely separate headquarters
and a separate staff, and Grant sent his orders to him.
In command of the Second Army Corps was Major-General W. S. Hancock. He
was a splendid fellow, a brilliant man, as brave as Julius Cæsar, and
always ready to obey orders, especially if they were fighting orders. He
had more of the aggressive spirit than almost anybody else in that army.
Major-General G. K. Warren, who commanded the Fifth Army Corps, was an
accomplished engineer. Major-General John Sedgwick commanded the Sixth
Army Corps. I had known him for over twenty years. Sedgwick graduated at
West Point in 1837, and was appointed a second lieutenant in the Second
Artillery. At the time of the McKenzie rebellion in Canada Sedgwick's
company was stationed at Buffalo during a considerable time. I was
living in Buffalo then, and in this rebellion the young men of the town
organized a regiment of city guards, and I was a sergeant in one of
those companies, so that I became quite familiar with all the military
movements then going on. Then it was that I got acquainted with
Sedgwick. He was a very solid man; no flummery about him. You could
always tell where Sedgwick was to be found, and in a battle he was apt
to be found where the hardest fighting was. He was not an ardent,
impetuous soldier like Hancock, but was steady and sure.
Two days after I reached the army, on May 9th, not far from
Spottsylvania Courthouse, my old friend Sedgwick was killed. He had gone
out in the morning to inspect his lines, and, getting beyond the point
of safety, was struck in the forehead by a sharpshooter and instantly
killed. The command of the Sixth Army Corps was given to General H. G.
Wright. Wright was another engineer officer, well educated, of good,
solid intellect, with capacity for command, but no special predilection
for fighting. From the moment Meade assumed command of the army, two
days before Gettysburg, the engineers rapidly came to the front, for
Meade had the pride of corps strongly implanted in his heart.
Major-General Burnside, whom I had last seen at Knoxville in December,
was in command of the Ninth Army Corps. Immediately after the siege of
Knoxville, at his own request, Burnside had been relieved of the command
in East Tennessee by Major-General John G. Foster. The President somehow
always showed for Burnside great respect and good will. After Grant's
plans for the spring campaign were made known, the Ninth Corps was moved
by rail to Annapolis, where it was recruited up to about twenty-five
thousand men. As the time for action neared it was set in motion, and by
easy marches reached and re-enforced the Army of the Potomac on the
morning of the 6th of May, in the midst of the battle of the Wilderness.
It was not formally incorporated with that army until later, but, by a
sort of fiction, it was held to be a distinct army, Burnside acting in
concert with Meade, and receiving his orders directly from Grant, as did
Meade. These two armies were the excuse for Grant's personal presence,
without actually superseding Meade.
In my opinion, the great soldier of the Army of the Potomac at this time
was General Humphreys. He was the chief of staff to General Meade, and
was a strategist, a tactician, and an engineer. Humphreys was a fighter,
too, and in this an exception to most engineers. He was a very
interesting figure. He used to ride about in a black felt hat, the brim
of which was turned down all around, making him look like a Quaker. He
was very pleasant to deal with, unless you were fighting against him,
and then he was not so pleasant. He was one of the loudest swearers that
I ever knew. The men of distinguished and brilliant profanity in the war
were General Sherman and General Humphreys--I could not mention any
others that could be classed with them. General Logan also was a strong
swearer, but he was not a West Pointer: he was a civilian. Sherman and
Humphreys would swear to make everything blue when some dispatch had not
been delivered correctly or they were provoked. Humphreys was a very
charming man, quite destitute of vanity. I think he had consented to go
and serve with Meade as chief of staff out of pure patriotism. He
preferred an active command, and eventually, on the eve of the end,
succeeded to the command of the Second Corps, and bore a conspicuous
part in the Appomattox campaign.
Meade was in command of the Army of the Potomac, but it was Grant, the
lieutenant general of the armies of the United States, who was really
directing the movements. The central idea of the campaign had not
developed to the army when I reached headquarters, but it was soon clear
to everybody. Grant's great operation was the endeavor to interpose the
Federal army between Lee's army and Richmond, so as to cut Lee off from
his base of supplies. He meant to get considerably in advance of
Lee--between him and Richmond--thus compelling Lee to leave his
intrenchments and hasten southward. If in the collision thus forced
Grant found that he could not smash Lee, he meant to make another move
to get behind his army. That was to be the strategy of the campaign of
1864. That was what Lee thwarted, though he had a narrow escape more
than once.
The first encounter with Lee had taken place in the Wilderness on May
5th and 6th. The Confederates and many Northern writers love to call the
Wilderness a drawn battle. It was not so; in every essential light it
was a Union victory. Grant had not intended to fight a battle in those
dense, brushy jungles, but Lee precipitated it just as he had
precipitated the battle of Chancellorsville one year before, and not six
miles to the eastward of this very ground. In doing so he hoped to
neutralize the superior numbers of Grant as he had Hooker's, and so to
mystify and handle the Union leader as to compel a retreat across the
Rapidan. But he failed. Some of the fighting in the brush was a draw,
but the Union army did not yield a rood of ground; it held the roads
southward, inflicted great losses on its enemy, and then, instead of
recrossing the river, resumed its march toward Richmond as soon as
Lee's attacks had ceased. Lee had palpably failed in his objects. His
old-time tactics had made no impression on Grant. He never offered
general battle in the open afterward.
The previous history of the Army of the Potomac had been to advance and
fight a battle, then either to retreat or to lie still, and finally to
go into winter quarters. Grant did not intend to proceed in that way. As
soon as he had fought a battle and had not routed Lee, he meant to move
nearer to Richmond and fight another battle. But the men in the army had
become so accustomed to the old methods of campaigning that few, if any,
of them believed that the new commander in chief would be able to do
differently from his predecessors. I remember distinctly the sensation
in the ranks when the rumor first went around that our position was
south of Lee's. It was the morning of May 8th. The night before the army
had made a forced march on Spottsylvania Courthouse. There was no
indication the next morning that Lee had moved in any direction. As the
army began to realize that we were really moving south, and at that
moment were probably much nearer Richmond than was our enemy, the
spirits of men and officers rose to the highest pitch of animation. On
every hand I heard the cry, "On to Richmond!"
But there were to be a great many more obstacles to our reaching
Richmond than General Grant himself, I presume, realized on May 8, 1864.
We met one that very morning; for when our advance reached
Spottsylvania Courthouse it found Lee's troops there, ready to dispute
the right of way with us, and two days later Grant was obliged to fight
the battle of Spottsylvania before we could make another move south.
It is no part of my present plan to go into detailed description of all
the battles of this campaign, but rather to dwell on the incidents and
deeds which impressed me most deeply at the moment. In the battle of
Spottsylvania, a terrific struggle, with many dramatic features, there
is nothing I remember more distinctly than a little scene in General
Grant's tent between him and a captured Confederate officer, General
Edward Johnson. The battle had begun on the morning of May 10th, and had
continued all day. On the 11th the armies had rested, but at half past
four on the morning of the 12th fighting had been begun by an attack by
Hancock on a rebel salient. Hancock attacked with his accustomed
impetuosity, storming and capturing the enemy's fortified line, with
some four thousand prisoners and twenty cannon. The captures included
nearly all of Major-General Edward Johnson's division, together with
Johnson himself and General George H. Steuart.
I was at Grant's headquarters when General Johnson was brought in a
prisoner. He was a West Pointer, and had been a captain in the old army
before secession, and was an important officer in the Confederate
service, having distinguished himself in the Valley in 1863, and at
Gettysburg. Grant had not seen him since they had been in Mexico
together. The two men shook hands cordially, and at once began a brisk
conversation, which was very interesting to me, because nothing was
said in it on the subject in which they were both most interested just
then--that is, the fight that was going on, and the surprise that
Hancock had effected. It was the past alone of which they talked.
It was quite early in the morning when Hancock's prisoners were brought
in. The battle raged without cessation throughout the day, Wright and
Hancock bearing the brunt of it. Burnside made several attacks, in which
his troops generally bore themselves like good soldiers. The results of
the battle of Spottsylvania were that we had crowded the enemy out of
some of his most important positions, had weakened him by losses of
between nine thousand and ten thousand men killed, wounded, and
captured, besides many battle flags and much artillery, and that our
troops rested victorious upon the ground they had fought for.
After the battle was over and firing had nearly ceased, Rawlins and I
went out to ride over the field. We went first to the salient which
Hancock had attacked in the morning. The two armies had struggled for
hours for this point, and the loss had been so terrific that the place
has always been known since as the "Bloody Angle." The ground around the
salient had been trampled and cut in the struggle until it was almost
impassable for one on horseback, so Rawlins and I dismounted and climbed
up the bank over the outer line of the rude breastworks. Within we saw a
fence over which earth evidently had been banked, but which now was bare
and half down. It was here the fighting had been fiercest. We picked our
way to this fence, and stopped to look over the scene. The night was
coming on, and, after the horrible din of the day, the silence was
intense; nothing broke it but distant and occasional firing or the low
groans of the wounded. I remember that as I stood there I was almost
startled to hear a bird twittering in a tree. All around us the
underbrush and trees, which were just beginning to be green, had been
riddled and burnt. The ground was thick with dead and wounded men, among
whom the relief corps was at work. The earth, which was soft from the
heavy rains we had been having before and during the battle, had been
trampled by the fighting of the thousands of men until it was soft, like
thin hasty pudding. Over the fence against which we leaned lay a great
pool of this mud, its surface as smooth as that of a pond.
As we stood there, looking silently down at it, of a sudden the leg of a
man was lifted up from the pool and the mud dripped off his boot. It was
so unexpected, so horrible, that for a moment we were stunned. Then we
pulled ourselves together and called to some soldiers near by to rescue
the owner of the leg. They pulled him out with but little trouble, and
discovered that he was not dead, only wounded. He was taken to the
hospital, where he got well, I believe.
The first news which passed through the ranks the morning after the
battle of Spottsylvania was that Lee had abandoned his position during
the night. Though our army was greatly fatigued from the enormous
efforts of the day before, the news of Lee's departure inspired the men
with fresh energy, and everybody was eager to be in pursuit. Our
skirmishers soon found the enemy along the whole line, however, and the
conclusion was that their retrograde movement had been made to correct
their position after the loss of the key points taken from them the day
before, and that they were still with us in a new line as strong as the
old one. Of course, we could not determine this point without a battle,
and nothing was done that day to provoke one. It was necessary to rest
the men.
In changing his lines Lee had left more uncovered the roads leading
southward along his right wing, and Grant ordered Meade to throw the
corps of Warren, which held the right, and the corps of Wright, which
held the center of Meade's army, to the left of Burnside, leaving
Hancock upon our right. If not interrupted, Grant thought by this
maneuvre to turn Lee's flank and compel him to move southward.
The movement of the two corps to our left was executed during the night
of May 13th and 14th, but for three days it had rained steadily, and the
roads were so bad that Wright and Warren did not get up to surprise the
enemy at daylight as ordered. The only engagement brought on by this
move was an active little fight over a conspicuous hill, with a house
and plantation buildings upon it. The hill, which was on our left and
the enemy's right, was valuable as a lookout rather than for offensive
operations. Upton took it in the morning, and later the enemy retook it.
General Meade, who was there at that moment, narrowly escaped capture.
Our men very handsomely carried the hill again that evening.
The two armies were then lying in a semicircle, the Federal left well
around toward the south. We were concentrated to the last degree, and,
so far as we could tell, Lee's forces were equally compact. On the 15th,
16th, and 17th, we lay in about the same position. This inactivity was
caused by the weather. A pouring rain had begun on the 11th, and it
continued until the morning of the 16th; the mud was so deep that any
offensive operation, however successful, could not be followed up. There
was nothing to do but lie still and wait for better weather and drier
roads.
While waiting for the rain to stop, we had time to consider the field
returns of losses as they were handed in. The army had left winter
quarters at Culpeper Courthouse on May 4th, and on May 16th the total of
killed, wounded, and missing in both the Army of the Potomac and the
Ninth Corps amounted to a little over thirty-three thousand men. The
missing alone amounted to forty-nine hundred, but some of these were, in
fact, killed or wounded. When Grant looked over the returns, he
expressed great regret at the loss of so many men. Meade, who was with
him, remarked, as I remember, "Well, General, we can't do these little
tricks without losses."