by Bruce Catton
30. Reminiscences of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment, p. 105.
I KNOW STAR-RISE
1. Burnside’s testimony at the Court of Inquiry on the Petersburg Mine, Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 60; the three white divisions in the IX Corps lost 1,150 men between June 20 and July 20, and on the latter date mustered 9,023 enlisted men for duty. See also Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, by Augustus Woodbury, pp. 420–21.
2. Manuscript letters of Henry Clay Heisler.
3. The Story of the 48th, p. 160; The Tragedy of the Crater, by Henry Pleasants, Jr., p. 35.
4. The Tragedy of the Crater, p. 32; The 48th in the War, by Oliver Christian Bosbyshell, pp. 163–65.
5. The Tragedy of the Crater, pp. 34–37.
6. Report of Major Nathaniel Michler, Corps of Engineers, Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 291.
7. The Tragedy of the Crater, p. 41; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 545; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 45; Part 2, p. 619.
8. Manuscript letters of Henry Clay Heisler; The 48th in the War, pp. 167–68; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 556–58; Part 2, pp. 396–97, 417; The Tragedy of the Crater, p. 38.
9. The Tragedy of the Crater, pp. 44–45; Colonel Pleasants’ report, Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 558.
10. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 557–58. Cross sections, diagrams, and general plans of the mine shaft, magazines, and ventilating shaft can be found in that volume, pp. 559–63, and in Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 548.
11. History of the 36th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, p. 228; Grant’s Personal Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 314; The Long Arm of Lee, Vol. II, p. 846.
12. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 557.
13. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, p. 430; Meade’s Headquarters, p. 201.
14. Official Records, Series III, Vol. V, p. 669.
15. Personal Experience of a Staff Officer at Mine Run and Albemarle County Raid, by Brigadier General H. Seymour Hall; Paper of the Kansas Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, p. 11.
16. This point is made in A History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, by George W. Williams, p. 170.
17. Ibid., pp. 235–36.
18. Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 36—one of the most fascinating books, incidentally, in Civil War literature.
19. Ibid., p. 74; The Negro in the Late War, by Captain George E. Sutherland; War Papers, Wisconsin Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Vol. I, p. 183.
20. Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 274.
21. Three Years in the Sixth Corps, pp. 275–76.
22. Shot and Shell: the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery Regiment in the Rebellion, by the Rev. Frederic Denison, pp. 214, 229; manuscript letters of Henry Clay Heisler; Service with the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers, p. 296; Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 31.
23. Manuscript letters of Lewis Bissell; A Woman’s War Record, p. 56.
24. Ten Years in the U.S. Army, p. 327.
25. Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 231; Musket and Sword, p. 315; Official Records, Vol. XXXIII, p. 898.
26. Army Life in a Black Regiment, pp. 39, 71–72, 350.
27. Ibid., pp. 14–15, 80; The Fourteenth Regiment Rhode Island Heavy Artillery in the War to Preserve the Union, by William H. Chenery, p. 18.
28. Official Records, Vol. XXXIII, p. 1020; Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, pp. 71–72; A History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, p. 238.
29. Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 335.
30. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, pp. 420–21; M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, p. 216.
31. Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 563; Personal Experience of a Staff Officer, p. 16.
32. Army Life in a Black Regiment, p. 286.
LIKE THE NOISE OF GREAT THUNDERS
1. Humphreys, pp. 247–48; Grant’s Personal Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 310; History of the Second Army Corps, p. 559.
2. Letters of a War Correspondent, p. 190.
3. The Long Arm of Lee, Vol. II, p. 846.
4. R. E. Lee, Vol. III, p. 466; History of the Second Army Corps, pp. 565–66.
5. Meade’s orders are in the Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 43–44. His testimony at the court of inquiry, pp. 44–58, tells how he overruled Burnside on the use of the colored troops and how Grant upheld him. The plan of attack, as finally approved, is well outlined in M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, p. 229.
6. Burnside’s testimony at the court of inquiry tells about the drawing of lots; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 61. There is a full account of his meeting with the division commanders in Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, pp. 432–34.
7. Meade’s Headquarters, pp. 168, 199. It is interesting to note that during the fighting around Spotsylvania Court House, two and one-half months earlier, a IX Corps private was writing in his diary that “the regiment on our left, the 14th N.Y. Heavy Art., ran for life at the first fire, leaving our left flank entirely exposed.” (Manuscript diary of Corporal S. O. Bryant, 20th Michigan Infantry.) This heavy artillery regiment was in the first assault wave at the Petersburg crater.
8. Brigadier General Stephen M. Weld, M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, p. 218: “He was a drunkard and an arrant coward. In every fight we had been in under Ledlie he had been under the influence of liquor.” See also the testimony of Surgeon H. E. Smith, 27th Michigan, at the court of inquiry; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 119. In his Personal Memoirs, (Vol. II, p. 313), Grant remarked: “Ledlie, besides being otherwise inefficient, proved also to possess disqualification less common among soldiers.”
9. History of the 51st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, p. 573; History of the 36th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, p. 233; Personal Experiences of a Staff Officer, pp. 16–17.
10. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 600, 609.
11. Ibid., p. 47.
12. Ibid., p. 557; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 551n.
13. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, p. 437; History of the 36th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, pp. 234–35; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 564; The Story of the 48th, p. 230; History of the 29th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, pp. 312–13; Reminiscences of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–65, p. 246; M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, p. 246; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 323.
14. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 324; Letters of a War Correspondent, p. 195; The Diary of a Line Officer, p. 102.
15. Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 561; The Story of the 48th, p. 230; M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, p. 208; Musket and Sword, p. 293.
16. Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 562; Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, p. 438; M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, p. 209; The Story of the 48th, p. 231.
17. Humphreys, p. 255. (General Humphreys declares flatly: “Had the division advanced in column of attack, led by a resolute, intelligent commander, it would have gained the crest in 15 minutes after the explosion, and before any serious opposition could have been made to it.”)
18. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 78, 84, 92, 121–22, 701.
19. Humphreys, pp. 256–57; Major General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Ninth Army Corps, pp. 439–40; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 280–81, 567, 574. There is a good account of the work done by the Confederate artillery in The Long Arm of Lee, Vol. II, pp. 865–75.
20. For testimony on this point, see Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 122.
21. M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. V, pp. 214–15.
22. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 48, 55, 80–81, 142–43.
23. Ibid., p. 119.
24. Personal Experiences of a Staff Officer, pp. 18–19, 31; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 564; Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 104.
25. Ibid., p. 105; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 565.
26. M.H.S.M.
Papers, Vol. V, pp. 210–11.
27. Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 49, 57, 144; The Story of the 48th, p. 239.
28. Report of Captain Theodore Gregg, 45th Pennsylvania, an unusually vivid picture of the situation in the crater, Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, pp. 554–56. See also History of the 36th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, p. 238; Reminiscences of the War of the Rebellion, p. 249.
29. Manuscript letters of Henry Clay Heisler.
30. Grant to Halleck, Official Records, Vol. XL, Part 1, p. 17; History of the 36th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, p. 240; manuscript letters of Henry Clay Heisler. Accurately enough, this young private remarked that the trouble was due to “a mismanage by some of the Brigadier Generals in our corps.”
31. The Iron-Hearted Regiment, p. 154; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 564.
Chapter Five: Away, You Rolling River
SPECIAL TRAIN FOR MONOCACY JUNCTION
1. Details as to Private Spink and his crew, the befuddled guard at Aqueduct Bridge, and the heavy growth of brush on the approaches to the defenses, are in the Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 2, pp. 61, 83. For Lincoln’s remark about Halleck, see Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Maj. Gen. Ethan Allen Hitchcock, edited by W. A. Croffut, pp. 463–64.
2. Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 2, pp. 339–41, 365–67; R. E. Lee, Vol. IV, pp. 240–41.
3. Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, pp. 555–56, 607; I Rode with Stonewall, by Henry Kyd Douglas, pp. 288, 290.
4. Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. II, pp. 70–71, 73.
5. Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, p. 259; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. II, p. 84.
6. Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, pp. 231, 254–55.
7. Ibid., pp. 346–47. Need it be remarked that any reader who has not yet allowed Douglas Southall Freeman to introduce him to Jubal Early, through the three volumes of Lee’s Lieutenants, should get on with the ceremony at once?
8. Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, pp. 280–81. There is an artless story of the adventures of one of the 100-day militia outfits in Record of Service of Company K, 150th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, by James C. Cannon.
9. Following the Greek Cross, p. 222; History of the 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, p. 83; Three Years in the Sixth Corps, pp. 375–76.
10. Following the Greek Cross, pp. 222–23.
11. McCook’s report, Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, p. 231; The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, by Aldace F. Walker, p. 29.
12. Meigs’ report, Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, p. 259; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. II, p. 75.
13. Letter of General Wright, printed in Three Years in the Sixth Corps, p. 382.
14. I Rode with Stonewall, pp. 295–96. It should be noted that when Early made his remark about scaring Abe Lincoln he did not know that Lincoln had been present at Fort Stevens during the fighting.
15. Following the Greek Cross, p. 224; The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, p. 30; Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 1, pp. 232–33, 247, 259–60, 276–77.
16. The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, p. 37; History of the 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, pp. 86–88.
17. Three Years in the Sixth Corps, pp. 383–87; The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, pp. 38–48; Following the Greek Cross, p. 228.
18. History of the 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, p. 90.
19. History of the 19th Army Corps, by Richard B. Irwin, p. 367.
20. Grant’s Personal Memoirs, Vol. II, pp. 315, 317.
21. Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 2, pp. 374, 408.
22. Ibid., p. 558.
23. Ibid., p. 582.
24. For Grant’s move to Washington, his talk with Hunter, and his order moving the troops to Halltown, see his Personal Memoirs, Vol. II, pp. 318–20.
TO PEEL THIS LAND
1. The Shenandoah Valley and Virginia, 1861 to 1865: a War Study, by Sanford C. Kellogg, pp. 214–15; History of the Shenandoah Valley, by William Couper, Vol. I, pp. 140–47, 217–26; M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. VI, pp. 62, 156.
2. Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 2, pp. 301, 329.
3. Annals of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, p. 286.
4. War Diary of Luman Harris Tenney, 1861–1865, p. 136.
5. Official Records, Series 2, Vol. VII, pp. 1014–15.
6. Ibid., pp. 976, 1012–13.
7. Ibid., pp. 1092–93.
8. Ibid., pp. 892–94, 997. As late as the winter of 1865, Senator Ben Wade was urging Congress to adopt a joint resolution prescribing retaliatory treatment on Confederate soldiers in Northern prisons. After much debate, the measure was watered down so that it simply condemned alleged mistreatment of captured Federals and enjoined humane measures on the men in charge of Northern prisons. (Recollections of War Times, by Albert Gallatin Riddle, p. 326.)
9. This particular estimate is from The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, p. 51. It can hardly be repeated too often that the numbers reported “present for duty” by Federal commanders seldom bore very much relationship to the number that would actually be put into action. Two examples may be cited. The morning report of one regiment in this summer of 1864 showed 708 enlisted men present for duty; but the regimental historian explains that only 472 would go into action. The other 236 would be accounted for by the infinity of details, and by the “present, sick.” A less extreme case is shown by a Pennsylvania regiment which reported 343 “present for duty” at Gettysburg but which put only 300 into the fight there. (History of the 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, p. 118; History of the 106th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, p. 169.)
10. A Volunteer’s Adventures, by John W. De Forest, p. 163.
11. Ibid., p. 165; The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, p. 23.
12. The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, p. 50; Following the Greek Cross, p. 228.
13. For the reaction to Sheridan, see Three Years in the Sixth Corps, p. 391; The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, pp. 54–55; History of the 19th Army Corps, p. 367.
14. History of the 17th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, pp. 219–22; Army Life; a Private’s Reminiscences, pp. 249–50.
15. History of the 17th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, p. 188.
16. Rosser to Lee, Official Records, Vol. XXXIII, p. 1081.
17. Ibid., pp. 1082, 1120–21.
18. Telegram from General E. B. Tyler to Lew Wallace, Official Records, Vol. XXXVII, Part 2, p. 55.
19. Memoirs of a Volunteer, pp. 108–9.
20. Sabres and Spurs: the First Regiment Rhode Island Cavalry in the Civil War, by the Rev. Frederic Denison, p. 381.
21. Ibid., p. 381.
22. History of the 17th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, pp. 211–12.
23. Ibid., p. 212.
24. Annals of the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, pp. 286–87.
25. Personal and Historical Sketches … of the 7th Regiment Michigan Volunteer Cavalry, p. 263.
26. History of the 17th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, p. 228.
ON THE UPGRADE
1. Lincoln’s War Cabinet, by Burton J. Hendrick, pp. 453–59; Abraham Lincoln, by Benjamin P. Thomas, pp. 441–42.
2. Abraham Lincoln: the War Years, Vol. III, p. 218.
3. There is a good account of this Confederate program in the North, and of Captain Hines’s activities, in Confederate Operations in Canada and New York, by John W. Headley, pp. 214–20. See also The Rebel Raider, pp. 123–26, 132, 157–58, 167–73. The projected raid on the Johnson’s Island prison camp is voluminously covered in the Official Records, Series 2, Vol. VII, pp. 842, 850, 864, 910–6.
4. Headley, op. cit., p. 222.
5. Ibid., pp. 223–28.
6. Ibid., pp. 229–30. Swiggett (The Rebel Raider, p. 132) remarks that Hines was “by all odds one of the two or three most dangerous and competent men in the Confederacy.”
; 7. A Volunteer’s Adventures, p. 172.
8. Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, pp. 506–7; History of the 8th Regiment Vermont Volunteers, by George N. Carpenter, p. 177.
9. A Volunteer’s Adventures, p. 173; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, p. 507.
10. Under the Old Flag, Vol. I, p. 554; Three Years in the Sixth Corps, pp. 401–3; Official Records, Vol. XLIII, Part 1, pp. 173–74, 197, 222.
11. A Volunteer’s Adventures, p. 186. This engaging book contains a first-rate account of the battle of Winchester by a Federal participant.
12. History of the 8th Regiment Vermont Volunteers, pp. 181, 255–56.
13. Three Years in the Sixth Corps, p. 404.
14. History of the 8th Regiment Vermont Volunteers, p. 183; A Volunteer’s Adventures, pp. 187–90; Battles and Leaders, Vol. IV, pp. 509–10.
15. A Volunteer’s Adventures, p. 189; Official Records, Vol. XLIII, Part 1, p. 189.
16. There is an odd similarity between Sheridan’s handling of the battle of Winchester and Stonewall Jackson’s conduct of the battle of Cedar Mountain. In each case a general of high reputation, enjoying a great numerical advantage over his opponent, put his troops in maladroitly, was rocked hard by an unexpected enemy attack, and for a time was in danger of outright defeat—winning out, finally, because his own driving energy at last made his numerical advantage effective. For a good critique of Sheridan’s campaign in the Valley, see “The Valley Campaign of 1864: a Military Study,” by Lieutenant L. W. V. Kennon, in the M.H.S.M. Papers, Vol. VI, pp. 39 ff.
17. The Story of the First Massachusetts Light Battery, p. 179; The Vermont Brigade in the Shenandoah Valley, p. 105.
18. Under the Old Flag, Vol. I, pp. 558–59.
NO MORE DOUBT
1. Thomas’s Abraham Lincoln, p. 449; Lincoln’s War Cabinet, by Burton J. Hendrick, pp. 45–47; Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. II, p. 158; Abraham Lincoln: the War Years, Vol. III, pp. 237, 244, 246.
2. Three Years in the Sixth Corps, p. 413; History of the 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, p. 108.
