FIVE FORKS.
I commence my account on the battle-field, but must soon make the long
and lonely ride to Humphrey's Station, where I shall continue it.
I am sitting by Sheridan's camp-fire, on the spot he has just signalized
by the most individual and complete victory of the war. All his veterans
are around him, stooping by knots over the bright fagots, to talk
together, or stretched upon the leaves of the forest, asleep, with the
stains of powder yet upon their faces. There are dark masses of horses
blackened into the gray background, and ambulances are creaking to and
fro. I hear the sobs and howls of the weary, and note, afar off, among
the pines, moving lights of burying parties, which are tumbling the
slain into the trenches. A cowed and shivering silence has succeeded the
late burst of drums, trumpets, and cannon; the dead are at rest; the
captives are quiet; the good cause has won again, and I shall try to
tell you how.
Many months ago the Army of the Potomac stopped before Petersburg,
driven out of its direct course to Richmond. It tried the Dutch Gap and
the powder-ship, and shelled and shovelled till Sherman had cut five
States in half, and only timid financiers, sutlers, and congressional
excursionists paid the least attention to the armies on the James. We
had fights without much purpose at our breastworks, and at Hatcher's
Run, but the dashing achievements of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley
overtopped all our dull infantry endeavors, and he shared with Sherman
the entire applause of the country. No one knows but that behind these
actors stood the invisible prompter, Grant; yet prompters, however
assiduous, never divide applauses with the _dramatis personae_; and
therefore, when Sheridan, the other day, by one of those slashing
adventures which hold us breathless, appeared on the Pamunkey and
crossed the peninsula to City Point, even the armies of the Potomac and
James were agitated. The _personnel_ of the man, not less than his
renown, affected people. A very Punch of soldiers, a sort of Rip Van
Winkle in regimentals, it astonished folks, that with so jolly and
grotesque a guise, he held within him energies like lightning, the bolts
of which had splintered the fairest parts of the border. But nobody
credited General Sheridan with higher genius than activity; we expected
to hear of him scouring the Carolina boundary, with the usual
destruction of railways and mills, and therefore said at once that
Sheridan would cut the great Southside road. But in this last chapter
Sheridan must take rank as one of the finest military men of our
century. The battle of "Five Forks" was, perhaps, the most ingeniously
conceived and skilfully executed that we have ever had on this
continent. It matches in secretiveness and shrewdness the cleverest
efforts of Napoleon, and shows also much of that soldier's broadness of
intellect and capacity for great occasions.
Sheridan had scarcely time to change his horses' shoes before he was
off, and after him much of our infantry also moved to the left. We
passed our ancient breastworks at Hatcher's Run, and extended our lines
southwestward till they touched Dinwiddie Court House, thirty miles from
City Point. The Rebels fell back with but little skirmishing, until we
faced northward and reached out toward their idolized Southside Railway;
then they grew uneasy, and, as a hint of their opposition, fought us the
sharp battle of Quaker Road on Thursday. Still, we reached farther and
farther, marvelling to find that, with his depleted army, Lee always
overmatched us at every point of attack; but on Friday we quitted our
intrenchments on the Boydtown plank-road, and made a bold push for the
White Oak road. This is one of the series of parallel public ways
running east and west, south of the Southside, the Vaughan road being
the first, the Boydtown plank-road the second, and the old Court-House
road the third. It became evident to the Rebels that we had two direct
objects in view: the severing of their railway, and the occupation of
the "Five Forks." The latter is a magnificent strategic point. Five good
roads meet in the edge of a dry, high, well-watered forest, three of
them radiating to the railway, and their tributaries unlocking all the
country. Farther south, their defences had been paltry, but they
fortified this empty solitude as if it had been their capital. Upon its
principal road, the "White Oak," aforenamed, they had a ditched
breastwork with embrasures of logs and earth, reaching east and west
three miles, and this was covered eastward and southeastward by
rifle-pits, masked works, and felled timber; the bridges approaching it
were broken; all the roads picketed, and a desperate resolve to hold to
it averred. This point of "Five Forks" may be as much as eight miles
from Dinwiddie Court House, four from the Southside road, and eighteen
from Humphrey's, the nearest of our military railway stations. A crooked
stream called Gravelly Run, which, with Hatcher's, forms Rowanty Creek,
and goes off to feed the Chowan in North Carolina, rises near "Five
Forks," and gives the name of Gravelly Run Church to a little Methodist
meeting-house, built in the forest a mile distant. That meeting-house is
a hospital to-night, running blood, and at "Five Forks" a victor's
battle-flags are flying.
The Fifth Army Corps of General Warren, has had all of the flank
fighting of the week to do. It lost five or six hundred men in its
victory of Thursday, and on Friday rested along the Boydtown plank-road,
at the house of one Butler, chiefly, which is about seven miles from
Five Forks. On Friday morning, General Ayres took the advance with one
of its three divisions, and marched three-quarters of a mile beyond the
plank-road, through a woody country, following the road, but crossing
the ubiquitous Gravelly Run, till he struck the enemy in strong force a
mile and a half below White Oak road. They lay in the edge of a wood,
with a thick curtain of timber in their front, a battery of field-pieces
to the right, mounted in a bastioned earthwork, and on the left the
woods drew near, encircling a little farm-land and negro-buildings.
General Ayres's skirmish-line being fired upon, did not stand, but fell
back upon his main column, which advanced at the order. Straightway the
enemy charged headlong, while their battery opened a cross fire, and
their skirmishers on our left, creeping down through the woods, picked
us off in flank. They charged with a whole division, making their
memorable yell, and soon doubled up Ayres's line of battle, so that it
was forced in tolerable disorder back upon General Crawford, who
commanded the next division. Crawford's men do not seem to have
retrieved the character of their predecessors, but made a feint to go
in, and, falling by dozens beneath the murderous fire, gave up the
ground. Griffin's division, past which the fugitives ran, halted awhile
before taking the doubtful way; the whole corps was now back to the
Boydtown plank-road, and nothing had been done to anybody's credit
particularly.
General Griffin rode up to General Chamberlain in this extremity.
Chamberlain is a young and anxious officer, who resigned the
professorship of modern languages in Bowdoin College to embrace a
soldier's career. He had been wounded the day before, but was zealous to
try death again.
"Chamberlain," said Griffin, "can't you save the honor of the Fifth
corps?"
The young General formed his men at once,--they had tasted powder
before,--the One Hundred and eighty-fifth New York and the One Hundred
and ninety-eighth Pennsylvania. Down they went into the creek waist
deep, up the slope and into the clearing, muskets to the left of them,
muskets in front of them, cannon to the right of them; but their pace
was swift, like their resolve; many of them were cut down, yet they kept
ahead, and the Rebels, who seemed astonished at their own previous
success, drew off and gave up the field. Almost two hours had elapsed
between the loss and the recovery of the ground. The battle might be
called Dabney's Farm, or more generally the fight of Gravelly Run. The
brigades of Generals Bartlett and Gregory rendered material assistance
in the pleasanter finale of the day. An order was soon after issued to
hasten the burial of the dead and quit the spot, but Chamberlain
petitioned for leave to charge the Rebel earthwork in the rear, and the
enthusiasm of his brigade bore down General Warren's more prudent doubt.
In brief, Griffin's division charged the fort, drove the Rebels out of
it, and took position on the White Oak road, far east of Five Forks.
While Griffin's division must be credited with this result, it may be
said that their luck was due as much to the time as the manner of their
appearance; the Rebel divisions of Pickett and Bushrod Johnston were, in
the main, by the time Griffin came up, on their way westward to attack
Sheridan's cavalry. Ayres and Crawford had charged as one to four, but
the forces were quite equalized when Chamberlain pushed on. The corps
probably lost twelve hundred men. In this action, the Rebels, for the
first time for many weeks, exhibited all their traditional
irresistibility and confidence. The merit of the affair, I am inclined
to think, should be awarded to them; but a terrible retribution remained
for them in the succeeding day's decrees.
The ill success of the earlier efforts of Sheridan, show conclusively
the insufficiency of ever so good cavalry to resist well organized and
resolute infantry. Concentrating at Dinwiddie Court House, he proceeded
to scour so much of the country that he almost baffled conjecture as to
where his quarters really were. As many thousand cavalry as constitute
his powerful force seem magnified, thus mounted and ever moving here and
there, to an incredible number. The Court House, where he remained
fittingly for a couple of days, is a cross-road's patch, numbering about
twelve scattered buildings, with a delightful prospect on every side of
sterile and monotonous pines. This is, I believe, the largest village in
the district, though Dinwiddie stands fourth in population among
Virginia counties. At present there is almost as great a population
underground as the ancient county carried on its census. Indeed, one is
perplexed at every point to know whence the South draws its prodigious
armies. Some English officers have been visiting Dinwiddie during the
week, and one of them said, curtly: "Blast the country! it isn't worth
such a row, you know. A very good place to be exiled, to be sure, but
what can you ever make of it!"
This soulless Briton had never read any of the poems about the
"boundless continent," and had no distinct conception of "size."
From Dinwiddie fields, Sheridan's men went galloping, by the aid of maps
and cross-examination, into every by-road; but it was soon apparent that
the Rebel infantry meant to give them a push. This came about on Friday,
with a foretaste on Thursday.
Little Five Forks, is a cross-road not far from Dinwiddie Court House,
in the direction of Petersburg. Big Five Forks, which, it must be borne
in mind, gives name to the great battle of Saturday, is farther out by
many miles, and does not lie within our lines. But, if the left of the
army be at Dinwiddie, and the right at Petersburg, Little Five Forks
will be first on the front line, though when Sheridan fought there, it
was neutral ground, picketed but not possessed. Very early in the week,
when the Rebels became aware of the extension of our lines, they added
to the regular force which encamped upon our flank line at least a
division of troops. These were directed to avoid an infantry fight, but
to seek out the cavalry, and, by getting it at disadvantage, rid the
region both of the harmfulness of Sheridan, and that prestige of his
name, so terrifying to the Virginia house-wife. So long as Sheridan
remained upon the far left, the Southside road was unsafe, and the
rapidity with which his command could be transferred from point to point
rendered it a formidable balance of power. The Rebels knew the country
well, and the peculiar course of the highways gave them every advantage.
The cavalry of Sheridan's army proper, is divided into two corps,
commanded by Generals Devin and Custer; the cavalry of the Potomac is
commanded by General Crook; Mackenzie has control of the cavalry of the
James. On Friday, these were under separate orders, and the result was
confusion. The infantry was beaten at Gravelly Run, and the cavalry met
in flank and front by overwhelming numbers, executed some movements not
laid down in the manual. The centre of the battle was Little Five Forks,
though the Rebels struck us closer to Dinwiddie Court House, and drove
us pell mell up the road into the woods, and out the old Court House
road to Gravelly Run. We rallied several times, and charged them into
the woods, but they lay concealed in copses, and could go where sabres
were useless. The plan of this battle-field will show a series of
irregular advances to puzzle anybody but a cavalry-man. The full
division of Bushrod Johnston and General Pickett, were developed against
us, with spare brigades from other corps. Our cavalry loss during the
day was eight hundred in killed and wounded; but we pushed the Rebels so
hard that they gave us the field, falling back toward Big Five Forks,
and we intrenched immediately. Two thousand men comprise our losses of
Friday in Warren's corps and Sheridan's command, including many valuable
officers. We shall see how, under a single guidance, splendid results
were next day obtained with half the sacrifice.
On Friday night General Grant, dissatisfied, like most observers, with
the day's business, placed General Sheridan in the supreme command of
the whole of Warren's corps and all the cavalry. General Warren reported
to him at nightfall, and the little army was thus composed:--
_General Sheridan's Forces, Saturday April 1, 1865._
Three divisions of infantry, under Generals Griffin, Ayres, and
Crawford.
Two divisions of cavalry, formerly constituting the Army of the
Shenandoah, now commanded by General Merritt, under Generals Devin and
Custer.
One division cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, under General Crook.
Brigade or more cavalry Army of the James, under General Mackenzie.
In this composition the infantry was to the cavalry in the proportion of
about two to one, and the entire force a considerable army, far up in
the teens. Sheridan was absolute, and his oddly-shaped body began to bob
up and down straightway; he visited every part of his line, though it
stretched from Dinwiddie Court House to the Quaker road, along the
Boydtown Plank and its adjuncts. At daybreak on Saturday he fired four
signal-guns, to admonish Warren he was off; and his cavalry, by
diverging roads, struck their camps. Just south of Culpepper is a
certain Stony creek, the tributaries to which wind northward and control
the roads. Over Stony creek went Crook, making the longest detour.
Custer took a bottom called Chamberlain's bed; and Devin advanced from
Little Five Forks, the whole driving the Rebels toward the left of their
works on White Oak road.
We must start with the supposition that our own men far outnumbered the
Rebels. The latter were widely separated from their comrades before
Petersburg, and the adjustment of our infantry as well as the great
movable force at Sheridan's disposal, renders it doubtful that they
could have returned. At any rate they did not do so, whether from choice
or necessity, and it was a part of our scheme to push them back into
their entrenchments. This work was delegated to the cavalry entirely,
but, as I have said before, mounted carbineers, are no match for
stubborn, bayoneted infantry. So when the horsemen were close up to the
Rebels, they were dismounted, and acted as infantry to all intents. A
portion of them, under Gregg and Mackenzie, still adhered to the saddle,
that they might be put in rapid motion for flanking and charging
purposes; but fully five thousand indurated men, who had seen service in
the Shenandoah and elsewhere, were formed in line of battle on foot, and
by charge and deploy essayed the difficult work of pressing back the
entire Rebel column. This they were to do so evenly and ingeniously,
that the Rebels should go no farther than their works, either to escape
eastward or to discover the whereabouts of Warren's forces, which were
already forming. Had they espied the latter they might have become so
discouraged as to break and take to the woods; and Sheridan's object was
to capture them as well as to rout them. So, all the afternoon, the
cavalry pushed them hard, and the strife went on uninterruptedly and
terrifically. I have no space in this hurried despatch to advert either
to individual losses or to the many thrilling episodes of the fight. It
was fought at so close quarters that our carbines were never out of
range; for had this been otherwise, the long rifles of the enemy would
have given them every advantage. With their horses within call, the
cavalry-men, in line of battle, stood together like walls of stone,
swelling onward like those gradually elevating ridges of which Lyell
speaks. Now and then a detachment of Rebels would charge down upon us,
swaying the lines and threatening to annihilate us; for at no part of
the action, till its crisis, did the Southern men exhibit either doubt
or dismay, but fought up to the standard of the most valiant treason the
world has ever had, and here and there showing some of those wonderful
feats of individual courage which are the miracles of the time.
A colonel with a shattered regiment came down upon us in a charge. The
bayonets were fixed; the men came on with a yell; their gray uniforms
seemed black amidst the smoke; their preserved colors, torn by grape and
ball, waved yet defiantly; twice they halted, and poured in volleys, but
came on again like the surge from the fog, depleted, but determined;
yet, in the hot faces of the carbineers, they read a purpose as
resolute, but more calm, and, while they pressed along, swept all the
while by scathing volleys, a group of horsemen took them in flank. It
was an awful instant; the horses recoiled; the charging column trembled
like a single thing, but at once the Rebels, with rare organization,
fell into a hollow square, and with solid sheets of steel defied our
centaurs. The horsemen rode around them in vain; no charge could break
the shining squares, until our dismounted carbineers poured in their
volleys afresh, making gaps in the spent ranks, and then in their
wavering time the cavalry thundered down. The Rebels could stand no
more; they reeled and swayed, and fell back broken and beaten. And on
the ground their colonel lay, sealing his devotion with his life.
Through wood and brake and swamp, across field and trench, we pushed the
fighting defenders steadily. For a part of the time, Sheridan himself
was there, short and broad, and active, waving his hat, giving orders,
seldom out of fire, but never stationary, and close by fell the long
yellow locks of Custer, sabre extended, fighting like a Viking, though
he was worn and haggard with much work. At four o'clock the Rebels were
behind their wooden walls at Five Forks, and still the cavalry pressed
them hard, in feint rather than solemn effort, while a battalion
dismounted, charged squarely upon the face of their breastworks which
lay in the main on the north side of the White Oak road. Then, while the
cavalry worked round toward the rear, the infantry of Warren, though
commanded by Sheridan, prepared to take part in the battle.
The genius of Sheridan's movement lay in his disposition of the
infantry. The skill with which he arranged it, and the difficult
manoeuvres he projected and so well executed, should place him as high
in infantry tactics as he has heretofore shown himself superior in
cavalry. The infantry which had marched at 21/2 P. M. from the house of
Boisseau, on the Boydtown plank-road, was drawn up in four battle lines,
a mile or more in length, and in the beginning facing the White Oak road
obliquely; the left or pivot was the division of General Ayres, Crawford
had the center and Griffin the right. These advanced from the Boydtown
plank-road, at ten o'clock, while Sheridan was thundering away with the
cavalry, mounted and dismounted, and deluding the Rebels with the idea
that he was the sole attacking party; they lay concealed in the woods
behind the Gravelly Run meeting-house, but their left was not a
half-mile distant from the Rebel works, though their right reached so
far off that a novice would have criticized the position sharply. Little
by little, Sheridan, extending his lines, drove the whole Rebel force
into their breastworks; then he dismounted the mass of his cavalry and
charged the works straight in the front, still thundering on their
flank. At last, every Rebel was safe behind his intrenchments. Then the
signal was given, and the concealed infantry, many thousand strong,
sprang up and advanced by echelon to the right. Imagine a great barndoor
shutting to, and you have the movement, if you can also imagine the door
itself, hinge and all, moving forward also. This was the door:--
AYRES--CRAWFORD--GRIFFIN.
Stick a pin through Ayres and turn Griffin and Crawford forward as you
would a spoke in a wheel, but move your pin up also a very little. In
this way Ayres will advance, say half a mile, and Griffin, to describe a
quarter revolution, will move through a radius of four miles. But to
complicate this movement by echelon, we must imagine the right when half
way advanced cutting across the centre and reforming, while Crawford
became the right and Griffin the middle of the line of battle. Warren
was with Crawford on this march. Gregory commanded the skirmishers.
Ayres was so close to the Rebel left that he might be said to hinge upon
it; and at 6 o'clock the whole corps column came crash upon the full
flank of the astonished Rebels. Now came the pitch of the battle.
We were already on the Rebel right in force, and thinly in their rear.
Our carbineers were making feint to charge in direct front, and our
infantry, four deep, hemmed in their entire left. All this they did not
for an instant note, so thorough was their confusion; but seeing it
directly, they, so far from giving up, concentrated all their energy and
fought like fiends. They had a battery in position, which belched
incessantly, and over the breastworks their musketry made one unbroken
roll, while against Sheridan's prowlers on their left, by skirmish and
sortie, they stuck to their sinking fortunes, so as to win unwilling
applause from mouths of wisest censure.
It was just at the coming up of the infantry that Sheridan's little band
was pushed the hardest. At one time, indeed, they seemed about to
undergo extermination; not that they wavered, but that they were so
vastly overpowered. It will remain to the latest time a matter of marvel
that so paltry a cavalry force could press back sixteen thousand
infantry; but when the infantry blew like a great barndoor--the simile
best applicable--upon the enemy's left, the victory that was to come had
passed the region of strategy and resolved to an affair of personal
courage. We had met the enemy; were they to be ours? To expedite this
consummation every officer fought as if he were the forlorn hope.
Mounted on his black pony, the same which he rode at Winchester,
Sheridan galloped everywhere, his flushed face all the redder, and his
plethoric, but nervous figure all the more ubiquitous. He galloped once
straight down the Rebel front, with but a handful of his staff. A dozen
bullets whistled for him together; one grazed his arm, at which a
faithful orderly rode; the black pony leaped high, in fright, and
Sheridan was untouched, but the orderly lay dead in the field, and the
saddle dashed afar empty. General Warren rode with Crawford most of the
afternoon, mounted likewise, and making two or three narrow escapes. He
was dark, dashing, and individual as ever, but for some reason or other
was relieved of his command after the battle, and Griffin was instated
in his place. General Sheridan ordered Warren to report to General
Grant's head-quarters, sending the order by an aid. Warren, on his own
hook, did not meet on Friday with his general success, and on Saturday
Sheridan was the master-spirit; but Warren is a General as well as a
gentleman, and is only overshadowed by a greater genius,--not
obliterated. Ayres, accounted the best soldier in the Fifth corps, but
too quietly modest for his own favor, fought like a lion in this pitch
of battle, making all the faint-hearted around him ashamed to do ill
with such an example contiguous. General Bartlett, keen-faced and active
like a fiery scimitar, was leading his division as if he were an
immortal! He was closest at hand in the most gallant episodes, and held
at nightfall a bundle of captured battle-flags. But Griffin, tall and
slight, was the master-genius of the Fifth corps, to which by right he
has temporarily succeeded. He led the charge on the flank, and was the
first to mount the parapet with his horse, riding over the gunners as
May did at Cerro Gordo, and cutting them down. Bartlett's brigade,
behind him, finished the business, and the last cannon was fired for the
day against the conquering Federals. General Crawford fulfilled his
full share of duties throughout the day, amply sustained by such
splendid brigade commanders as Baxter, Coulter, and Kellogg, while Gwin
and Boweryman were at hand in the division of General Ayres; not to omit
the fallen Winthrop, who died to save a friend and win a new laurel.
What shall I say for Chamberlain, who, beyond all question, is the first
of our brigade commanders, having been the hero of both Quaker Road and
Gravelly Run, and in this action of Five Forks making the air ring with
the applauding huzzas of his soldiers, who love him? His is one of the
names that will survive the common wreck of shoulder-straps after the
war.
But I am individualizing; the fight, as we closed upon the Rebels, was
singularly free from great losses on our side, though desperate as any
contest ever fought on the continent. One prolonged roar of rifle shook
the afternoon; we carried no artillery, and the Rebel battery, until its
capture, raked us like an irrepressible demon, and at every foot of the
intrenchments a true man fought both in front and behind. The birds of
the forest fled afar; the smoke ascended to heaven; locked in so mad
frenzy, none saw the sequel of the closing day. Now Richmond rocked in
her high towers to watch the impending issue, but soon the day began to
look gray, and a pale moon came tremulously out to watch the meeting
squadrons. Imagine along a line of a full mile, thirty thousand men
struggling for life and prestige; the woods gathering about them--but
yesterday the home of hermit hawks and chipmonks--now ablaze with
bursting shells, and showing in the dusk the curl of flames in the
tangled grass, and, rising up the boles of the pine trees, the scaling,
scorching tongues. Seven hours this terrible spectacle had been enacted,
but the finale of it had almost come.
It was by all accounts in this hour of victory when the modest and brave
General Winthrop of the first brigade, Ayres division, was mortally
wounded. He was riding along the breastworks, and in the act as I am
assured, of saving a friend's life, was shot through to the left lung.
He fell at once, and his men, who loved him, gathered around and took
him tenderly to the rear, where he died before the stretcher on which he
lay could be deposited beside the meeting-house door. On the way from
the field to the hospital he wandered in mind at times, crying out,
"Captain Weaver how is that line? Has the attack succeeded?" etc. When
he had been resuscitated for a pause he said: "Doctor, I am done for."
His last words were: "Straighten the line!" And he died peacefully. He
was a cousin of Major Winthrop, the author of "Cecil Dreeme." He was
twenty-seven years of age. I had talked with him before going into
action, as he sat at the side of General Ayres, and was permitted by the
guard of honor to uncover his face and look upon it. He was pale and
beautiful, marble rather than corpse, and the uniform cut away from his
bosom showed how white and fresh was the body, so pulseless now.
General Griffin said to me: "This victory is not worth Winthrop's life."
Winthrop went into the service as a simple color-bearer. He died a
brevet brigadier.
At seven o'clock the Rebels came to the conclusion that they were
outflanked and whipped. They had been so busily engaged that they were a
long time finding out how desperate were their circumstances; but now,
wearied with persistent assaults in front, they fell back to the left,
only to see four close lines of battle waiting to drive them across the
field, decimated. At the right the horsemen charged them in their vain
attempt to fight "out," and in the rear straggling foot and cavalry
began also to assemble; slant fire, cross fire, and direct fire, by file
and volley rolled in perpetually, cutting down their bravest officers
and strewing the fields with bleeding men; groans resounded in the
intervals of exploding powder, and to add to their terror and despair,
their own artillery, captured from them, threw into their own ranks,
from its old position, ungrateful grape and canister, enfilading their
breastworks, whizzing and plunging by air line and ricochet, and at last
bodies of cavalry fairly mounted their intrenchments, and charged down
the parapet, slashing and trampling them, and producing inexplicable
confusion. They had no commanders, at least no orders, and looked in
vain for some guiding hand to lead them out of a toil into which they
had fallen so bravely and so blindly. A few more volleys, a new and
irresistible charge, a shrill and warning command to die or surrender,
and, with a sullen and tearful impulse, five thousand muskets are flung
upon the ground, and five thousand hot, exhausted, and impotent men are
Sheridan's prisoners of war.
Acting with his usual decision, Sheridan placed his captives in care of
a provost-guard, and sent them at once to the rear. Those which escaped,
he ordered the fiery Custer to pursue with brand and vengeance; and they
were pressed far into the desolate forest, spent and hungry, many
falling by the way of wounds or exhaustion, many pressed down by hoof or
sabre-stroke, and many picked up in mercy and sent back to rejoin their
brethren in bonds. We captured in all fully six thousand prisoners.
General Sheridan estimated them modestly at five thousand, but the
provost-marshal assured me that he had a line four abreast a full mile
long. I entirely bear him out, having ridden for forty minutes in a
direction opposite to that they were taking, and growing weary at last
of counting or of seeing them. They were fine, hearty fellows, almost
all Virginians, and seemed to take their capture not unkindly. They wore
the gray and not very attractive uniform of the Confederacy, but looked
to be warm and fat, and passing along in the night, under the fir-trees,
conveyed at most a romantic idea of grief and tribulation. They were put
in a huge pen, midway between Big and Little Five Forks, for the night,
the officers sharing the same fare with the soldiers, from whom,
indeed, they were undistinguishable.
Thus ended the splendid victory of Five Forks, the least bloody to us,
but the most successful, proportionate to numbers engaged, that has been
fought during the war. One man out of every three engaged took a
prisoner. We captured four cannon, an ambulance train and baggage-teams,
eight thousand muskets, and twenty-eight battle-flags. General
Longstreet, it is thought, commanded. Neither he nor Pickett nor Bushrod
Johnston, division commanders, were taken; they were wise enough to see
that the day was lost, and imitated Bonaparte after Waterloo.
I attribute this victory almost entirely to Sheridan; it was won by
strategy and persistence, and in great part by men who would not stand
fire the day before. The happy distribution of duties between cavalry
and infantry excited a fine rivalry, and the consciousness of Sheridan's
guidance inspired confidence. Has any battle so successful ever been
fought in Virginia? or, indeed, in the East? I think not. It has opened
to us the enemy's flank, so that we can sweep down upon the Appomattox
and inside of his breastworks, enabling us to shorten our lines of
intrenchments one half, if no more, and putting out of Lee's service
fifteen thousand of his choicest troops. And all this, General Sheridan
tells me, has cost him personally no more than eight hundred men, and
the service no more than fifteen hundred. Compare this with
Chancellorsville, Williamsburg, the Wilderness, Bull Run, and what shall
we say? The enemy must have lost in this fight three thousand in killed
and wounded.
The scene at Gravelly Run meeting-house at 8 and at 10 o'clock on
Saturday night, is one of the solemn contrasts of the war, and, I hope,
the last of them. A little frame church, planted among the pines, and
painted white, with cool, green window-shutters, holds at its foot a
gallery for the negroes, and at the head a varnished pulpit. I found
its pews moved to the green plain over the threshold, and on its bare
floors the screaming wounded. Blood ran in little rills across the
planks, and, human feet treading in them, had made indelible prints in
every direction; the pulpit-lamps were doing duty, not to shed holy
light upon holy pages, but to show the pale and dusty faces of the
beseeching; and as they moved in and out, the groans and curses of the
suffering replace the gush of peaceful hymns and the deep responses to
the preacher's prayers. Federal and Confederate lay together, the
bitterness of noon assuaged in the common tribulation of the night, and
all the while came in the dripping stretchers, to place in this golgotha
new recruits for death and sorrow. I asked the name of the church, but
no one knew any more than if it had been the site of some obsolete
heathen worship. At last, a grinning sergeant smacked his thumbs as if
the first idea of his life had occurred to him, and led me to the
pulpit. Beneath some torn blankets and rent officers' garments, rested
the hymn book and Bible, which he produced. Last Sunday these doled out
the praises of God, and the frightened congregation worshipped at their
dictation. Now they only served by their fly leaves to give me my
whereabouts, and said:--
_Presented to Gravelly Run Meeting House by the Ladies._
Over the portal, the scenes within were reiterated, except that the
greatness of a starry night replaced the close and terrible arena of the
church. Beneath the trees, where the Methodist circuit-rider had tied
his horse, and the urchins, daring class-meeting, had wandered away to
cast stones at the squirrels, and measure strength at vaulting and
running, the gashed and fevered lay irregularly, some soul going out at
each whiff of the breeze in the fir-tops; and the teams and surgeons,
and straggling soldiers, and galloping orderlies passed all the night
beneath the old and gibbous moon and the hushed stars, and by the
trickle of Gravelly Run stealing off, afeared. But the wounded had no
thought that night; the victory absorbed all hearts; we had no losses to
notice where so much was won.
A mile past the church, going away from head-quarters all the time, lies
Five Forks, the object and name of the battle. A large open field of
perhaps thirty acres, interposes between the church and the commencement
of the Rebel works. Their left is only some rails and logs to mask
marksmen, but the work proper is a very long stretch of all obstructions
of a man's height in relief.
The White Oak road runs directly in front of these intrenchments, and
was, at the time I passed, the general highway for infantry returning
from the field and cavalry-men concentrating at General Sheridan's
bivouac. Riding a mile I came upon the Five Forks proper, and just to
the left, at the foot of some pines, the victor and his assistants were
congregated. Sheridan sat by some fagots, examining a topographical map
of the country he had so well traversed; possibly with a view to design
further aggressive movements in the morning. He is opposite me now as I
pen these paragraphs by the imperfect blaze of his bivouac fire. He is
good humored and talkative, like all men conscious of having achieved a
great work, and has been good enough to sketch for me the plan of the
day's operations, from which I have compiled much of the statement
above. Close by lies Custer, trying to sleep, his long yellow hair
covering his face; and General Griffin, now commanding the Fifth corps,
goes here and there issuing orders, while aides and orderlies rode in
and out, bearing further fresh messages of deeds consummated or
proposed. We shall have a hot night no doubt, for away off to the right,
continue volleys of musketry and discharges of artillery, intermixed
with what seem to be thunderbolts of our men-of-war at anchor in the
Appomatox and James,--if such can be heard at this great
distance,--which tell us that the lines are in motion.