Defeating Lee: A History of the Second Corps, Army of the Potomac

7 Victory The Petersburg and Appomattox Campaigns

192 7 Victory T h e Pet er sbu rg a n d A ppom attox Ca m pa igns The march toward the James River on the night of June 12 quickly turnedmoregruelingthansoldiersoftheSecondCorpshadanticipated. This was no march of a few miles to clear the Confederate right flank, as the Union army had attempted at Cold Harbor. Rather, Grant hoped to cross the James River and capture Petersburg, Virginia, before Lee had time to counter. Petersburg was a major Confederate transportation center, connecting Richmond, twenty miles to the north, to the southern heartland. Grant correctly believed that capture of this key point would force Lee either to abandon Richmond or to submit to a debilitating siege. Both Confederate choices favored Union numbers andlogistics,andwouldhastenthewar’send.Forthemoment,however, the grand strategy was lost on soldiers of the Second Corps. Trudging behindGeneral Baldy Smith’sEighteenthCorpsinthe leadofthe army, Hancock’s men marched through heat and dust before reaching the James River on the evening of June 13. The next day and the following morning were spent aboard transports to Windmill Point on the river’s south bank. The marching and sailing was nearly too much for one Pennsylvania sergeant. Not only did the fast pace from Cold Harbor make his feet “very sore,” but the choppy voyage across the James River gave him “a headache also.”1 Victory 193 Seasons of Disappointment Grant had stolen a march, and by the predawn hours of June 15, Smith’s Eighteenth Corps pressed toward Petersburg and its ragtag defenders. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana was at army headquarters to report to Stanton on the progress of the Union offensive. “All goes on like a miracle,” Dana breathlessly described at 8:00 am; “. . . Hancock moves out instantly for Petersburg to support Smith’s attack on that place, which was to have been made at daylight.” Few reports have held forth so much promise. Few, also, have ultimately brought so much heartbreak. Grant, inexplicably, had failed to inform anyone but Smith that he hoped to capture Petersburg that day. Smith was not a man to show much initiative, and he let the hours go by as he reconnoitered the ground.2 Hancock’s men, meanwhile, unaware of the looming Federal assault on Petersburg, sat at Windmill Point and waited for three days’ rations. The foodstuffs, through a series of clerical mishaps, never arrived. Less-than-urgent-sounding orders from Meade did, with the Second Corps to take up positions around Petersburg, about fifteen miles distant. Men sweated and cursed as they plodded along through the already intense heat, their feet churning up clouds of dust. The trampingtooksoldiersnowhereinparticularbecausethemapsprovided were, a disgusted Hancock noted, “utterly worthless.” After spending considerable time and energy searching for misplaced and nonexistent landmarks, Hancock turned to local blacks to head him in the right direction.3 Hancock showed little fire when he belatedly received orders from Grant to support Smith’s assault on Petersburg, a slump that largely doomed the Union effort. Smith hoped that the Second Corps would reachhislines,afewmileseastofPetersburg,“intimetomakeanassault tonight after dark.”4 Hancock had all of his men up between 9:00 and 10:00 pm but for Barlow’s troops, who took a wrong turn in a wood and became hopelessly lost. Hancock was in charge of the field because of his seniority in rank, a situation that suited his tendency to issue orders anyway. The battlefield situation was promising, with soldiers from the Eighteenth Corps earlier having captured over one mile of lightly held Confederate entrenchments. Yet here, with Petersburg all but for the 194 defeating lee taking, Hancock allowed Smith to maintain command. The reasons were many, ranging from the lateness of the hour to Smith’s familiarity with the ground. Hancock also missed Charles Morgan, his chief of staff, who was busy hurrying troops to the front. Morgan had the better capacity to grasp the depth of a battlefield, an intuition that might now have served the Union cause well. With Hancock taking a pass, Smith, despitehisearlierbravado,orderedBirney’sandGibbon’smentoreplace his own on the front lines. Once completed, the Union offensive halted for the remainder of the night.5 Hancock received much criticism in the following days for his timid behavior before Petersburg, and the attacks bothered him greatly. Theodore Lyman, a colonel on Meade’s staff, granted that Smith’s and Hancock’s men had marched far and eaten little on June 15...