A Gunner in Lee's Army: The Civil War Letters of Thomas Henry Carter

CHAPTER SEVEN: From the Wilderness to the Valley 17 March–31 December 1864

233 CHAPTER SEVEN • FromtheWildernesstotheValley 17 March–31 December 1864 As the year 1864 began, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Carter set himself to work on the business of running a camp in winter quarters. To those men who lived within a reasonable distance of the Frederick’s Hall camp in Louisa County, he granted two-week furloughs on a rotating basis throughout January and February. As for himself, he had official paperwork to finish. On 28 January Carter wrote a report of his battalion’s activities during the Bristoe and Mine Run Campaigns. In it, he also took the opportunity to point out deficiencies in Confederate ordnance supplied to his batteries. Carter then submitted the report to his superior, Brigadier General Armistead L. Long. On a personal note, he received news from Richmond that the Carter family holdings in Madison Parish, Louisiana , had been “stripped” by Union troops and that the “negroes all went to the Yankees.” Carter, however, did have the chance to recover two of the slaves who had left the plantation. Sixteen-year-old Maria and twelveyear -old Nancy had been recaptured and could belong to Carter again for the price of $500 each. Whether or not he went ahead with the transaction is unknown, but it likely reminded him of the personal cost of the war and increased his anxiety over the safety of his family in King William County.1 In March, Brigadier General William N. Pendleton traveled to Dalton , Georgia, to meet with General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of Tennessee, to help him reorganize and find a new chief for his artillery. Johnston initially wanted Edward Porter Alexander, chief of the 1st Corps artillery, but R. E. Lee was unwilling to part with that brilliant officer. On the eleventh, Pendleton formally requested that Tom Carter be promoted to brigadier general and appointed to the position. 1. Macaluso, Morris, Orange, and King William Artillery, 56; A. R. Hynes to THC, 14 Jan. 1864, Private Collection. 234 • From the Wilderness to the Valley A week later, Richmond authorities responded by sending Brigadier General Francis A. Shoup to Johnston as his new chief of artillery. Pendleton expressed his disappointment over the decision. “I am sorry they did not promote Tom Carter and send him, as he has been so thoroughly tried and found so efficient.” If Carter was disappointed over the affair, he was most likely comforted by the fact that he did not have to leave Virginia and by the news that his promotion to colonel, which Pendleton had recommended the previous November, came through on 14 March. His new rank brought with it slightly more responsibility. In early April, General Long reorganized the 2nd Corps artillery into two divisions and placed Carter in command of the second one, consisting of Major Wilfred Cutshaw ’s and Major Richard C. M. Page’s battalions.2 2. Joseph E. Johnston to Braxton Bragg, 11 Mar. 1864, in Carter’s CSR-Officers; Lee, Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton, 315, 317 (quotation); OR 29[2]:841, 33:1267. The fact that General Shoup was a West Point graduate, something the War Department in Richmond tended to favor, may have played a role in the decision (Wise, Long Arm of Lee, 734). Carter’s new commission bore a date of rank of 27 February 1864 (James A. Seddon to Jefferson Davis, 4 May 1864, Letters Received by the Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office, NARA). Postwar portrait of Tom Carter in Confederate uniform (Courtesy of James F. Turrell) From the Wilderness to the Valley • 235 The campaigning season of 1864 opened on the morning of 4 May when the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George G. Meade but under the general direction of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, crossed the Rapidan River between General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, located in Orange County, and the town of Fredericksburg. Early that same morning, Colonel Tom Carter and Page’s artillery battalion , then on duty at Raccoon Ford on the Rapidan, received orders to rejoin Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell’s 2nd Corps at Locust Grove. Carter and his division of two battalions arrived there early on 5 May and immediately marched east on the Orange Turnpike toward the heavily forested region known as “the Wilderness.” That morning, Ewell’s men clashed with soldiers from the V Corps on the turnpike not far from...