The Black Phalanx Part 41

Butler and his Phalanx troops, as we have seen, was within six miles of Petersburg, and on the 7th, Generals Smith and Gillmore reached the railroad near Port Walthall Junction, and commenced destroying it; the confederates attacked them, but were repulsed. Col. West, on the north side of the James River, forded the Chickahominy with the Phalanx cavalry, and arrived opposite City Point, having destroyed the railroad for some distance on that side.

Leaving General Hinks with his Phalanx division to hold City Point, on the 9th Butler again moved forward to break up the railroad which the forces under Smith and Gillmore succeeded in doing, thus separating Beaureguard's force from Lee's. He announced the result of his operation's in the following message to Was.h.i.+ngton:

"May 9th, 1864.

"Our operations may be summed up in a few words. With one thousand and seven hundred cavalry we have advanced up the Peninsula, forced the Chickahominy and have safely brought them to our present position. These were _colored cavalry_, and are now holding our advanced pickets toward Richmond.

General Kautz, with three thousand cavalry from Suffolk, on the same day with our movement up James river, forced the Blackwater, burned the railroad bridge at Stony Creek, below Petersburg, cutting in two Beauregard's force at that point.

We have landed here, intrenched ourselves, destroyed many miles of railroad, and got possession, which, with proper supplies, we can hold out against the whole of Lee's army. I have ordered up the supplies. Beauregard, with a large portion of his force, was left south, by the cutting of the railroad by Kautz. That portion which reached Petersburg under Hill, I have whipped to-day, killing and wounding many, and taking many prisoners, after a well contested fight. General Grant will not be troubled with any further re-inforcements to Lee from Beaureguard's force.

"BENJ. F. BUTLER, _Major-General._"

But for having been misinformed as to Lee's retreating on Richmond,--which led him to draw his forces back into his intrenchments,--Butler would have undoubtedly marched triumphantly into Petersburg. The mistake gave the enemy holding the approaches to that city time to be re-enforced, and Petersburg soon became well fortified and garrisoned. Beaureguard succeeded in a few days time in concentrating in front of Butler 25,000 troops, thus checking the latter's advance toward Richmond and Petersburg, on the south side of the James, though skirmis.h.i.+ng went on at various points.

General Grant intended to have Butler advance and capture Petersburg, while General Meade, with the Army of the Potomac, advanced upon Richmond from the north bank of the James river. Gen. Butler failed to accomplish more than his dispatches related, though his forces entered the city of Petersburg, captured Chester Station, and destroyed the railroad connection between Petersburg and Richmond. Failure to support his troops and to intrench lost him all he had gained, and he returned to his intrenchments at Bermuda Hundreds.

The Phalanx (Hinks division) held City Point and other stations on the river, occasionally skirmis.h.i.+ng with the enemy, who, ever mindful of the fact that City Point was the base of supplies for the Army of the James, sought every opportunity to raid it, but they always found the Phalanx ready and on the alert.

After the battle of Drewry's Bluff, May 16th, Butler thought to remain quiet in his intrenchments, but Grant, on the 22nd, ordered him to send all his troops, save enough to hold City Point, to join the Army of the Potomac; whereupon General W. F. Smith, with 16,000 men, embarked for the White House, on the Pamunky river, Butler retaining the Phalanx division and the Cavalry. Thus ended the operations of the Army of the James, until Grant crossed the river with the army of the Potomac.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE IN THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.

Negro baggage train drivers watering their mules.]

On the 13th of May, Grant determined upon a flank movement toward Bowling Green, with a view of making Port Royal, instead of Fredericksburg, his depot for supplies. Sending his reserve artillery to Belle Plain, he prepared to advance. It was in this manoeuvre that Lee, for the last time, attacked the Federal forces, outside of cover, in any important movement. The attempt to change the base of supply was indeed a hazardous move for Grant; it necessitated the moving of his immense train, numbering four thousand wagons, used in carrying rations, ammunition and supplies for his army, and transportation of the badly wounded to the rear, where they could be cared for.

Up to this time the Wilderness campaign had been a continuous fight and march. The anxiety which Grant felt for his train, is perhaps best told by himself:

"My movements are terribly embarra.s.sed by our immense wagon train. It could not be avoided, however."

It was the only means by which the army could obtain needful supplies, and was consequently indispensable. It was the near approach to the train that made the confederates often fight so desperately, for they knew if they could succeed in capturing a wagon they would probably get something to eat. Soon after the advance began, it was reported to Grant, that the confederate cavalry was in the rear, in search of the trains. On the 14th he ordered General Ferrero to "keep a sharp lookout for this cavalry, and if you can attack it with your (Phalanx) infantry and (white) cavalry, do so." On the 19th Ferrero, with his Phalanx division, (4th division, 9th Corps) was on the road to Fredericksburg, in rear of and to the right of General Tyler's forces, in the confederates' front. The road formed Grant's direct communication with his base, and here the confederates, under Ewell attacked the Federal troops. Grant sent this dispatch to Ferrero:

"The enemy have crossed the Ny on the right of our lines, in considerable force, and may possibly detach a force to move on Fredericksburg. Keep your cavalry pickets well out on the plank road, and all other roads leading west and south of you. If you find the enemy moving infantry and artillery to you, report it promptly. In that case take up strong positions and detain him all you can, turning all your trains back to Fredericksburg, and whatever falling back you may be forced to do, do it in that direction."

The confederates made a dash for the train and captured twenty-seven wagons, but before they had time to feast off of their booty the Phalanx was upon them. The enemy fought with uncommon spirit; it was the first time "F. F. V's," the chivalry of the South,--composing the Army of Northern Virginia,--had met the negro soldiers, and true to their instinctive hatred of their black brothers, they gave them the best they had; lead poured like rain for a while, and then came a lull. Ferrero knew what it meant, and prepared for their coming. A moment more and the accustomed yell rang out above the roar of the artillery. The confederates charged down upon the Phalanx, but to no purpose, save to make the black line more stable. They retaliated, and the confederates were driven as the gale drives chaff, the Phalanx recapturing the wagons and saving Grant's line of communication. General Badeau, speaking of their action, in his military history of Grant, says:

"It was the first time at the East when colored troops had been engaged in any important battle, and the display of soldierly qualities won a frank acknowledgment from both troops and commanders, not all of whom had before been willing to look upon negroes as comrades. But after that time, white soldiers in the army of the Potomac were not displeased to receive the support of black ones; they had found the support worth having."

Ferrero had the confidence of his men, who were ever ready to follow where Grant ordered them to be led.

But this was not the last important battle the Phalanx took part in.

Butler, after sending the larger portion of his forces to join the Army of the Potomac, was not permitted to remain quiet in his intrenchments.

The confederates felt divined to destroy, if not capture, his base, and therefore were continually striving to break through the lines. On the 24th of May, General Fitzhugh Lee made a dash with his cavalry upon Wilson's Wharf, Butler's most northern outpost, held by two Phalanx Regiments of General Wilde's brigade. Lee's men had been led to believe that it was only necessary to yell at the "n.i.g.g.e.rs" in order to make them leave the Post, but in this affair they found a foe worthy of their steel. They fought for several hours, when finally the confederate troops beat a retreat. An eye witness of the fight says:

"The chivalry of Fitzhugh Lee and his cavalry division was badly worsted in the contest last Tuesday with negro troops, composing the garrison at Wilson's Landing; the chivalry made a gallant fight, however. The battle began at half-past twelve P. M., and ended at six o'clock, when the chivalry retired, disgusted and defeated. Lee's men dismounted far in the rear, and fought as infantry; they drove in the pickets and skirmishers to the intrenchments, and made several valiant charges upon our works. To make an a.s.sault, it was necessary to come across an opening in front of our position, up to the very edge of a deep and impa.s.sable ravine. The rebels, with deafening yells, made furious onsets, but the negroes did not flinch, and the mad a.s.sailants, discomforted, returned to cover with shrunken ranks. The rebels' fighting was very wicked; it showed that Lee's heart was bent on taking the negroes at any cost.

a.s.saults on the center having failed, the rebels tried first the left, and then the right flank, with no greater success.

When the battle was over, our loss footed up, one man killed outright, twenty wounded, and two missing. Nineteen rebels were prisoners in our hands. Lee's losses must have been very heavy; the proof thereof was left on the ground.

Twenty-five rebel bodies lay in the woods unburied, and pools of blood unmistakably told of other victims taken away. The estimate, from all the evidence carefully considered, puts the enemy's casualties at two hundred.

Among the corpses Lee left on the field, was that of Major Breckenridge, of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry. There is no hesitation here in acknowledging the soldierly qualities which the colored men engaged in the fight have exhibited.

Even the officers who have hitherto felt no confidence in them are compelled to express themselves mistaken. General Wilde, commanding the Post, says that the troops stood up to their work like veterans."

Newspaper correspondents were not apt to overstate the facts, nor to give too much favorable coloring to the Phalanx in those days. Very much of the sentiment in the army--East and West--was manufactured by them.

The Democratic partizan press at the North, especially in New York and Ohio, still engaged in throwing paper bullets at the negro soldiers, who were shooting lead bullets at the country's foes.

The gallantry and heroic courage of the Phalanx in the Departments of the Gulf and South, and their b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, had not been sufficient to stop the violent clamor and a.s.sertions of those journals, that the "n.i.g.g.e.rs won't fight!"

Many papers favorable to the Emanc.i.p.ation; opposed putting negro troops in battle in Virginia. But to all these bomb-proof opinions Grant turned a deaf ear, and when and where necessity required it, he hurled his Phalanx brigades against the enemy as readily as he did the white troops. The conduct of the former was, nevertheless, watched eagerly by the correspondents of the press who were with the army, and when they began to chronicle the achievements of the Phalanx, the prejudice began to give way, and praises were subst.i.tuted in the place of their well-worn denunciations. A correspondent of the New York _Herald_ thus wrote in May:

"The conduct of the colored troops, by the way, in the actions of the last few days, is described as superb. An Ohio soldier said to me to-day, 'I never saw men fight with such desperate gallantry as those negroes did. They advanced as grim and stern as death, and when within reach of the enemy struck about them with a pitiless vigor, that was almost fearful.' Another soldier said to me, 'These negroes never shrink, nor hold back, no matter what the order.

Through scorching heat and pelting storms, if the order comes, they march with prompt, ready feet.' Such praise is great praise, and it is deserved. The negroes here who have been slaves, are loyal, to a man, and on our occupation of Fredericksburg, pointed out the prominent secessionists, who were at once seized by our cavalry and put in safe quarters.

In a talk with a group of faithful fellows, I discovered in them all a perfect understanding of the issues of the conflict, and a grand determination to prove themselves worthy of the place and privileges to which they are to be exalted."

The ice was thus broken, and then each war correspondent found it his duty to write in deservedly glowing terms of the Phalanx.

The newspaper reports of the engagements stirred the blood of the Englishman, and he eschewed his professed love for the freedom of mankind, and particularly that of the American negro. The London _Times_, in the following article, lashed the North for arming the negroes to shoot the confederates, forgetting, perhaps, that England employed negroes against the colonist in 1775, and at New Orleans, in 1814, had her black regiments to shoot down the fathers of the men whom it now sought to uphold, in rebellion against the government of the United States:

"THE NEGRO UNION SOLDIERS.

"Six months have now pa.s.sed from the time Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation abolis.h.i.+ng slavery in the States of the Southern Confederacy. To many it may seem that this measure has failed of the intended effect and this is doubtless in some respects the case. It was intended to frighten the Southern whites into submission, and it has only made them more fierce and resolute than ever. It was intended to raise a servile war, or produce such signs of it as should compel the Confederates to lay down their arms through fear for their wives and families; and it has only caused desertion from some of the border plantations and some disorders along the coast. But in other respects the consequences of this measure are becoming important enough. The negro race has been too much attached to the whites, or too ignorant or too sluggish to show any signs of revolt in places remote from the presence of the federal armies: but on some points where the federals have been able to maintain themselves in force in the midst of a large negro population, the process of enrolling and arming black regiments has been carried on in a manner which must give a new character to the war. It is in the State of Louisiana, and under the command of General Banks, that this use of negro soldiers has been most extensive. The great city of New Orleans having fallen into the possession of the federals more than a year ago, and the neighboring country being to a certain degree abandoned by the white population, a vast number of negroes have been thrown on the hands of the General in command to support and, if he can, make use of. The arming of these was begun by General Butler, and it has been continued by his successor. Though the number actually under arms is no doubt exaggerated by Northern writers, yet enough have been brought into service to produce a powerful effect on the imaginations of the combatants, and, as we can now clearly see, to add almost grievously to the fury of the struggle.

"Of all wars, those between races which had been accustomed to stand to each other in the relation of master and slave have been so much the most horrible that by general consent the exciting of a servile insurrection has been considered as beyond the pale of legitimate warfare. This had been held even in the case of European serfdom, although there the rulers and the ruled are of the same blood, religion and language. But the conflict between the white men and the negro, _and particularly the American white man and the American negro, is likely to be more ruthless than any which the ancient world, fruitful in such histories, or the modern records of Algeria can furnish_. There was reason to hope that the deeds of 1857 in India would not be paralleled in our time or in any after age. The Asiatic savagery rose upon a dominant race scattered throughout the land, and wreaked its vengeance upon it by atrocities which it would be a relief to forget. But it has been reserved for the New World to present the spectacle of civil war, calling servile war to its aid, and of men of English race and language so envenomed against each other that one party places arms in the hands of the half savage negro, and the other acts as if resolved to give no quarter to the insurgent race or the white man who commands them or fights by their side. In the valley of the Mississippi, where these negro soldiers are in actual service, it seems likely that a story as revolting as that of St. Domingo is being prepared for the world. No one who reads the description of the fighting at Port Hudson, and the accounts given by the papers of scenes at other places, can help fearing that the worst part of this war has yet to come, and that a people who lately boasted that they took the lead in education and material civilization are now carrying on a contest without regard to any law of conventional warfare,--one side training negroes to fight against its own white flesh and blood, the other slaughtering them without mercy whenever they find them in the field.

" * * * It is pitiable to find these unhappy Africans, whose clumsy frames are no match for the sinewy and agile white American, thus led on to be destroyed by a merciless enemy.

Should the war proceed in this manner, it is possible that the ma.s.sacre of Africans may not be confined to actual conflict in the field. Hitherto the whites have been sufficiently confident in the negroes to leave them unmolested, even when the enemy was near; but with two or three black regiments in each federal corps, and such events as the Port Hudson ma.s.sacre occuring to infuriate the minds on either side, who can foresee what three months more of war may bring forth?

"All that we can say with certainty is that the unhappy negro will be the chief sufferer in this unequal conflict.

An even greater calamity, however, is the brutalization of two antagonistic peoples by the introduction into the war of these servile allies of the federals. Already there are military murders and executions on both sides. The horrors which Europe has foreseen for a year past are now upon us.

Reprisal will provoke reprisal, until all men's natures are hardened, and the land flows with blood."

The article is truly instructive to the present generation; its malignity and misrepresentation of the Administration's intentions in regard to the arming of negroes, serves to ill.u.s.trate the deep-seated animosity which then existed in England toward the union of the States.

Nor will the American negro ever forget England's advice to the confederates, whose ma.s.sacre of negro soldiers fighting for freedom she endorsed and applauded. The descendants of those black soldiers, who were engaged in the prolonged struggle for freedom, can rejoice in the fact that no single act of those patriots is in keeping with the Englishman's prediction; no taint of brutality is even charged against them by those whom they took prisoners in battle. The confederates themselves testify to the humane treatment they unexpectedly received at the hands of their negro captors. Mr. Pollard, the historian, says:

"No servile insurrections had taken place in the South."

But it is gratifying to know that all Englishmen did not agree with the writer of the _Times_. A London letter in the New York Evening _Post_, said:

"Mr. Spurgeon makes most effective and touching prayers, remembering, at least once on a Sunday, the United States.

'Grant, O G.o.d,' he said recently, 'that the right may conquer, and that if the fearful canker of slavery must be cut out by the sword, it be wholly eradicated from the body politic of which it is the curse.' He is seldom, however, as pointed as this; and, like other clergymen of England, prays for the return of peace. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that if the English press and government have done what they could to continue this war, the dissenting clergy of England have n.o.bly shown their good will and hearty sympathy with the Americans, and their sincere desire for the settlement of our difficulties. 'If praying would do you Americans any good,' said an irreverent acquaintance last Sunday, 'you will be gratified to learn that a force of a thousand-clergymen-power is constantly at work for you over here.'"

After the heroic and b.l.o.o.d.y effort at Cold Harbor to reach Richmond, or to cross the James above the confederate capitol, and thus cut off the enemy's supplies,--after Grant had flanked, until to flank again would be to leave Richmond in his rear,--when Lee had withdrawn to his fortifications, refusing to accept Grant's challenge to come out and fight a decisive battle,--when all hope of accomplis.h.i.+ng either of these objects had vanished, Grant determined to return to his original plan of attack from the coast, and turned his face toward the James river. On the 12th of June the Army of the Potomac began to move, and by the 16th it was, with all its trains across, and on the south side of the James.

Petersburg Grant regarded as the citadel of Richmond, and to capture it was the first thing on his list to be accomplished. General Butler was made acquainted with this, and as soon as General Smith, who, with a portion of Butler's forces had been temporarily dispatched to join the army of the Potomac at Cold Harbor, returned to Bermuda Hundreds with his force, he was ordered forward to capture the c.o.c.kade City. It was midnight on the 14th, when Smith's troops arrived. Butler ordered him immediately forward against Petersburg, and he moved accordingly. His force was in three divisions of Infantry, and one of Cavalry, under General Kautz, who was to threaten the line of works on the Norfolk road. General Hinks, with his division of the Phalanx, was to take position across the Jordon's Point road on the right of Kautz; Brooks'

division of white troops was to follow, Hinks coming in at the center of the line, while General Martindale with the other division was to move along the Appomattox and strike the City Point road. Smith's movement was directed against the northeast side of Petersburg, extending from the City Point to the Norfolk railroad. About daylight on the 15th, as the columns advanced on the City Point road at Bailey's farm, six miles from Petersburg, a confederate battery opened fire. Kautz reconnoitered and found a line of rifle trench, extending along the front, on rapidly rising ground, with a thicket covering. The work was held by a regiment of cavalry and a light battery. At once there was use for the Phalanx; the works must be captured with the battery before the troops could proceed. The cavalry was re-called, and Hinks began the formation of an attacking party from his division. The confederates were in an open field, their battery upon a knoll in the same field, commanding a sweeping position to its approaches. The advancing troops must come out from the woods, rush up the slope and carry it at the point of the bayonet, exposed to the tempest of musketry and cannister of the battery. Hinks formed his line for the a.s.sault, and the word of command was given,--"forward." The line emerged from the woods, the enemy opened with cannister upon the steadily advancing column, which, without stopping, replied with a volley of Minie bullets.

"The long, dusky line, arm to arm, knee to knee."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PHALANX SOLDIERS AT WORK ON RIVER OBSTRUCTIONS.]

Then sh.e.l.ls came cras.h.i.+ng through the line, dealing death and shattering the ranks; but on they went, with a wild cheer, running up the slope; again a storm of cannister met them; a shower of musketry came down upon the advancing column, whose bristling bayonets were to make the way clear for their white comrades awaiting on the roadside. A hundred black men went down under the fire; the ranks were quickly closed however, and with another wild cheer the living hundreds went over the works with the impetuosity of a cyclone; they seized the cannon and turned them upon the fleeing foe, who, in consternation, stampeded toward Petersburg, to their main line of intrenchments on the east. Thus the work of the 5th and 22nd Phalanx regiments was completed and the road made clear for the 18th Corps.