[Doug64]

September 29, Thursday

In Virginia north of Deep Bottom, the firing begins at 5 am as Birney’s skirmishers push back the Confederate pickets and approach the defensive line on New Market Heights. The difficulty in maneuvering through the tangled, swampy countryside so confuses the Federal advance that only a single division, under Paine, reaches the works; the remainder of the Federal force is blocked on the roads to the rear. And only Colonel Samuel Duncan’s brigade, 1,100 men, strikes the Confederate earthworks.

At first a dense fog obscures much of the field. The Confederates, four brigades of Brigadier General John Gregg’s division, become aware of the attack only when they hear a roar that sounds “like the bellowing of ten thousand wild bulls.” Before they can see the approaching Federals, a few excited defenders are jumping on top of the parapets and “shooting at shadows.” Birney finds the enemy resistance stiffer than he expected. Most of the Confederates hold their fire until the Federals have splashed across a creek and are struggling through the abatis. The first volley staggers the attackers. Birney orders a second assault, sending Colonel Alonzo Draper’s brigade against the earthworks. Draper’s men bravely withstand the fire of Colonel Frederick Bass’s Texas Brigade for a full thirty minutes. When the shooting slackens, the Federal troops rush over the parapets. The Confederates are gone. The 1,800 defenders had realized that they would be overrun if they were to remain. Moreover, they received word that they are needed to repel a strong Federal attack on Fort Harrison. With the morning still young, they have abandoned New Market Heights to the Federals.

Ord, meanwhile, has pushed his large force briskly up the Varina road just after daylight, driving in the Confederate pickets and pressing to within a mile of Fort Harrison. There the Federals form a line of battle—and face a dismaying prospect. They will have to advance across a mile of cleared, rising ground swept by the enemy’s guns and muskets. Then they must assault a solid hilltop fort anchored in the entrenchments enclosing Chaffin’s Bluff. Inside these impressive works, however, is a less than impressive garrison: roughly 800 inexperienced, unreliable, and badly posted men of the heavy artillery. When they catch sight of the thousands of Federals filing into line of battle, the defenders spring to their cannon, discovering too late that only four of the seven large-caliber pieces are in working order. General Ord—who in his long Regular Army career has never before led a major operation—hesitates. The Commander of his 1st Division, Brigadier General George S. Stannard, pleads with Ord to allow him to send his men against the fort, even though the 2nd Division isn’t yet in supporting position. Confederate reinforces will be on the way, Stannard argues, and the attack has to be made immediately.

Ord finally assents, and Stannard’s three brigades move forward. The fort’s few working guns and the batteries nearby on the Confederate line bang away, firing high and drawing derisive jeers from the advancing Federals. Stannard’s men tramp steadily as if on parade, his brigade commanders holding down the pace—even after the enemy guns get the range and begin exacting heavy casualties—to avoid exhausting the men with a mile-long dash. As the Federals draw closer, the Confederates discover a serious flaw in the defensive works. They can’t depress their guns enough to cover the base of the hill that Fort Harrison crowns. The entire Federal division finds a refuge there to pause and brace itself for the final assault up the steep slope to the enemy fortifications. While their troops prepare for the last advance, Ord and Stannard can see General Gregg’s Confederate troops rushing westward along the New Market road toward the fort. In one disorganized mass, the Federal division surges up the hill and into the enemy works. As the howling bluecoats clamber up the earthen ramparts—some on ladders they have improvised by jamming bayonets into the embankment and stepping on the rifle barrels—the poorly disciplined defending force begins to fall apart. The reserve units fire their volleys too early, then panic and run, leaving the few veteran companies hopelessly outnumbered. These troops have no choice but to withdraw as well.

Thus by 7 am the New Market road line has been rolled up, and the Federals are in possession of Fort Harrison. Like Burnside at Petersburg two months ago, Butler has a priceless opportunity: a shattered enemy line, a vital objective close at hand, and an overwhelming superiority of numbers. But as Burnside had demonstrated, all these advantages mean nothing if Butler can’t retain tight control over his forces, concentrate them, and keep them moving. This isn’t going to be easy. Stannard’s 1st Division has paid a heavy price for its success at Fort Harrison: Every one of its brigade commanders, four of its regimental commanders, and 18 percent of its men are casualties. Discipline, too, had become a casualty, even before the final charge. And once the Federals are inside the walls, the exhilaration of victory delays the restoration of order. An hour passes before any move is made farther into the entrenched Confederate positions. When it comes, that movement is slow and tentative.

General Ord desperately needs the fresh units of his 2nd Division to bolster the 1st and to take up the drive inside the Confederate fortifications. But the 2nd Division, uncertainly led by Brigadier General Charles A. Heckman, has meandered far to the right. It has become tangled in some swampy woods and is heading up the Varina road for a frontal attack on the Confederate exterior line northeast of Fort Harrison, too far away to be a support to or be supported by Stannard’s 1st Division. Frantic to sustain his momentum and facing growing resistance to his right, Order decides to thrust toward the river, along the trenches to his left. This line, with its two salients, is defended by fewer than 200 Confederates; but Ord is able to pull together only a small attacking force, composed of officers and a few men from Colonel Michael T. Donohue’s battalion of skirmishers. Hoping to inspire them, Ord leads the attack personally.

To the south of Fort Harrison, the Confederate gunners have kept up a steady fire on the Federals occupying the works. Now, flanked by Ord’s attackers, these Virginia artillerymen abandon their battery and withdraw down the line of earthworks toward the river. As they retreat other units join them, and when they reach a strong point called Fort Hoke their commander, Cornelius T. Allen, makes his stand. Grabbing smoothbore muskets stored in the fort, the artillerymen and reserves manage to stop Ord’s attack party cold. Ord himself suffers a painful leg wound that disables him. Allen’s beleaguered gunners receive help from an unexpected source. The Fredericksburg and the Richmond, two powerful Confederate ironclads, have steamed up the James with an escort of several smaller gunboats and have opened fire on the Federals. The naval gunfire is inaccurate and sporadic, but Ord’s Federals are badly shaken by the huge shells crashing near them.

Thus, at a time when everything depends on movement, the Federals are stalled; just when they most need strong leadership, they have lost their corps commander. Ord reluctantly goes to the rear in an ambulance, turning command over to his senior subordinate—who, as fate would have it, is the undistinguished General Heckman. Largely by default, Heckman’s division has managed to take a section of the Confederate exterior line northeast of Fort Harrison. But he fails to recognize the possibility of assaulting the enemy lines from the flank and rear. Instead of bringing the 2nd Division into the entrenched camp and attacking the Confederates from behind, Heckman repeatedly orders his men to make frontal attacks on the strongly held intermediate line. These thrusts, just outside the northeast corner of the entrenched camp, are made by individual brigades advancing unsupported into brutal enfilading fire. For two hours Heckman’s exhausted men and their confused officers stumble forward time and again and are shot down in droves. By 10 am the survivors are fought out, the assaults have stopped, and a lull is spreading over the field. About this time General Grant arrives in the area, not to exercise any control over the fighting—as usual, he is leaving that to his subordinates—but simply to assess the situation for himself. When Grant appears at New Market Heights to talk with Butler and Birney, the troops of X Corps cheer him, as one New Yorker will remember it, “till they fairly raised the old fellow, cigar and all, from his saddle.” Grant then rides over to Fort Harrison.

Although Grant can’t perceive it, Richmond, eight miles to the north, is in an unprecedented state of alarm. It isn’t the fall of Fort Harrison that has frightened the citizens, for they haven’t learned about it yet; they are transfixed by the roar of artillery a mere two miles east of the city: General Kautz and his 2,200 Federal cavalrymen are almost at the gates of Richmond, attacking a section of the intermediate line held by a small but stubborn force of Confederate artillery. As ordered, Kautz had headed north as soon as Birney’s corps had taken New Market Heights. In a short time his troopers reach the Darbytown road, and at 10 am they move forward to make the attack. But the little band of defenders, 100 Virginians from a Heavy Artillery Battalion, open fire with their half-dozen or so cannon and quickly discourage Kautz. He leads his men back into the safety of the woods and stays there, apparently losing all sense of urgency. It takes him three hours to move his command a mile north, to the Charles City road, and attack again. This time a somewhat stronger enemy force is ready to meet him. Upon hearing the sounds of Kautz’s attack and the thunderous defense so close at hand, officials in Richmond dragooned convicts and convalescents, and Major General James L. Kemper called out the 4,500 men and boys of his Local Defense Force. Many of these last-ditch reinforcements have reached the Charles City road by the time Kautz gets there at 1:30 pm, and the faint-hearted Union commander again retreats at the first sign of opposition. Then for four hours he stays put, unable to decide what to do, until slowly and gingerly he begins to move northward—away from Richmond.

General Grant, visiting Fort Harrison shortly after Kautz’s initial attack, apparently takes at face value the achievement of the operation’s first objectives and doesn’t detect any signs of impending disaster. He simply scrawls a message to Birney saying that XVIII Corp is ready to advance on Richmond and that Birney’s X Corps should do likewise. Then the general in chief returns to Deep Bottom to await developments.

On the Confederate side of the lines, these developments are now coming fast. The ailing Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell, whom Lee has gently removed from corps command and put in charge of the defenses of Richmond, rises to the occasion with all of his former ferocity. Taking personal charge of the threatened encampment at Chaffin’s Bluff, the one-legged Ewell has thrown a line diagonally across its wooded interior, from the embattled redans on the river northeastward to Fort Johnson on the opposite corner. The line is little more than a façade, manned by badly shaken heavy artillerymen now forced to fight as infantry and by Major Alexander W. Starke’s battalion of light artillery. Ewell, however, is a gambler; he rides up and down the line, facing the Federals. “I remember very distinctly how he looked,” one of his soldiers will recall, “mounted on an old gray horse, as mad as he could be, shouting to the men and seeming to be everywhere at once.” The ruse works. No Federals advance from Fort Harrison.

As serious as the situation is at Chaffin’s Bluff, General Lee also has to worry about what the Federals are doing south of the river. Yesterday they showed signs of concentrating on the left of their lines below Petersburg—a deliberate deception—and since dawn today there have been further ominous indications of movement there. Throughout the morning Lee has waited, until he can be certain about his enemy’s intentions. Finally, at midday, he decides the thrust north of the river is the real peril, and he moves decisively. He orders substantial reinforcements to march north toward the embattled Confederate position, and in early afternoon he, too, heads for Chaffin’s Bluff.

By this time General Birney and the Federal X Corps are struggling northeast along the New Market road, supposedly to join XVIII Corps in the drive toward Richmond. Birney’s 2nd Division, under Brigadier General Robert S. Foster, takes the lead. Exhausted by their long night march and forced to fight every step this morning against persistent rearguard actions, Foster’s men are literally dropping out by the hundreds. When the rapidly weakening force approaches the intersection of the New Market and Varina roads, Foster finds, instead of an inviting gap in the Confederate defenses, the bristling works of the intermediate line. Just to the southwest of the intersection looms the squat expanse of Fort Gilmer, a salient only slightly less imposing than Fort Harrison. It, too, is poorly designed and undermanned, and again the Federals throw against it a vastly superior force.

But Birney’s attack has none of the punch that had been delivered against Fort Harrison. After a considerable delay, Birney wheels his 2nd Division to attack southward, but the inexperienced General Foster deploys his men in a thin line of battle with no reserves. Meanwhile, Brigadier General William Birney, older brother of the X Corps commander, prepares his brigade of Black troops for a simultaneous attack westward, against the salient’s other wall. Foster’s men struggle forward through three brush-tangled ravines, under intensifying artillery fire. Confederate reinforcements—including Colonel Bass with some of the Texans who lost their race to Fort Harrison—are streaming into the works. They bring their rifles to bear as the Federals emerge from the last ravine and charge across a cornfield. The attackers can manage only a few steps into the furious hail of bullets and canister. Leaving scores of dead and wounded comrades behind, they flee back into the deadly ravine. General Paine’s entire division is in reserve behind Foster’s men, but despite the gravity of the moment, David Birney sends only one of Paine’s regiments—a Black unit—to reinforce Foster so he can regroup and attack again. The assault force makes it to within forty paces of the works, when “a whirlwind” seems to rush across their front. The line disappears “as though an earthquake had swallowed it.” It is impossible to go forward, unthinkable to remain; Foster orders retreat, leaving 400 of his men and 100 men of the Black regiment dead or wounded on the field. In all, the 2nd Division has lost 35 percent of its men as casualties, and for the time being, it is finished as a fighting force.

About 2:30 pm, the first of the Confederate reinforcements from Petersburg—a brigade from General Charles Field’s division led by Colonel Pinkney D. Bowles—arrives at Fort Gilmer. With these troops comes their corps commander, Lieutenant General Richard Anderson, and General Lee.

Only now does William Birney get his Federal troops in position to begin the attack on the western wall that should have coincided with Foster’s. The Confederates, heartened by their repulse of the 2nd Division and by the arrival of fresh troops, turn all their firepower on Birney’s advancing brigade. This attack is even more piecemeal than Foster’s had been. The men are sent forward a regiment at a time into a storm of bullets and artillery fire that consumes them at a ghastly rate. Black soldiers under Captain Edward Babcock get halfway to the fort before being driven back into the woods to their rear. Bur four companies of Colonel James Shaw’s Black troops—men recruited in Maryland—deploy as skirmishers and rush the fort alone. The 189 men advance under galling fire and pile through the abatis and into the ditch at the base of the fort. Though half of them are already casualties, the rest try valiantly to scale the walls. The defenders shoot every man who raises his head over the parapet and drop short-fused howitzer shells into the ditch. A mere handful of survivors are taken prisoner; only one man returns to the Federal lines.

The Federal drive has been stopped, and the troops can’t stay where they are. Confederate reinforcements now pouring over the Chaffin’s Bluff bridge pose a serious threat to the Federal left and rear. The Federals see this danger early in the afternoon, and General Stannard orders a defensive line prepared. In late afternoon David Birney draws X Corps back along the New Market road to make a junction with the XVIII Corps right, and Heckman refuses his left by forming a new line from Fort Harrison back to the river. The Federals begin to fortify their positions as best they can, throwing up a wall across the open end of Fort Harrison, reversing some old Confederate works, digging new trenches where they have to, and preparing for the counterattack they know will come in the morning.

The Federal high command is worried about what has become of Kautz. During the afternoon and evening, his cavalry grope their way northward almost to the Chickahominy River. There, at midnight, Kauts attempts a feeble attack on the Confederate intermediate line where it bends to the west, and after a confusing and ineffective round of firing at one another as much as at the enemy, the Federals mount up and ride back to the south. Kautz’s riders will rejoin X Corps on the Federal right at 7:30 tomorrow morning.


In the Valley, the path of destruction of the Virginia Central Railroad by Sheridan’s cavalry extends all the way to Waynesboro. They are planning to destroy the iron railroad bridge and the tunnel through the Blue Ridge there. As they begin work, however, Early’s entire force arrives from Brown’s Gap and drives the Federal troopers back. Sheridan orders the cavalry to burn all the “forage, mills, and such other property as might be serviceable to the Rebel army” between Staunton and Harrisonburg. Military necessity or not, it is a distasteful business for many of the Federals who have to carry it out. After troopers from Custer’s brigade set fire to a mill in Port Republic, they end up turning back to help the village’s residents save their homes from the flames. When the destruction has been accomplished as far north as Harrisonburg, Sheridan halts for a few days while he continues his correspondence with Grant about what the Army of the Shenandoah should do next.


This day sees action on all fronts. Price’s raiders clash with Federals at Leasburg or Harrison, and at Cuba, Missouri. Forrest is carrying out his raid, with action near Lynchburg, Tennessee. Hood leads his troops across the Chattahoochee River, headed north to disrupt Sherman’s supply line. In addition, skirmishes occur at Centreville and Moore’s Bluff, Tennessee. An expedition by Federals moves from Vicksburg to beyond Port Gibson, Mississippi. Operations also take place in northwestern Tennessee around Jonesborough and the Watuga River; at Scuppernong River, North Carolina; and Plum Creek, Nebraska Territory.

[Doug64]

September 30, Friday

All night long, while the Federal infantry have been digging, Confederate reinforcements have been tramping across the bridge to Chaffin’s Bluff, Virginia. They are veterans, the infantry divisions of Field and Hoke, supported by E. Porter Alexander’s battalion of seven field batteries numbering thirty guns. By this morning nearly 12,000 men have joined the battered 4,000 who held the remnant of the entrenched camp and the intermediate line. For all the desperate fighting yesterday, Confederate casualties had been light, around 400 men; Butler’s Army of the James lost 3,000. The 21,000 Federals who remain, with their poor leadership and uncertain fighting qualities, have little advantage over the 16,000 Confederates who are on the field this morning. The Federals are utterly worn out after 36 hours of marching, fighting, and digging. For that reason, and also because Grant is preparing another blow south of the James today, Butler goes on the defensive. He places his chief engineer, Major General Godfrey Weitzel, in command of Ord’s XVIII Corps and concentrates his forces in the middle of the Federal line, between Fort Harrison on the south and the New Market road to the north.

The attack doesn’t come in the morning—Lee isn’t ready until midafternoon—but when it comes, it looks awesome. Lee has given the task of leading the assault to General Richard Anderson, who devises a sledgehammer blow against Fort Harrison. Anderson masses Hoke’s five brigades in the interior of the entrenched camp, concealed in a ravine, and aims them straight east at Fort Harrison. But before they advance, Field’s group of three brigades is to swing down from the north, along the camp wall. They are to go as far as a depression immediately in front of the earthworks just erected by the Federals in the fort’s open rear and wait there until Hoke’s brigades come up. Then all 9,000 Confederates will charge the makeshift defensive position, which is held by about 2,000 Federals. It is a bold plan, just the kind Lee’s army has executed flawlessly in many battles. But this isn’t the old Army of Northern Virginia, as soon becomes apparent.

Field’s lead brigade, advancing to the southeast along the camp wall, is commanded by Brigadier General George T. (Tige) Anderson. To Anderson’s horror, once he gets his Georgians moving, he can’t get them to stop at the appointed place; they run on heedlessly, attacking the fortifications without support and without hope of success. While Lee and Richard Anderson look on in frustration, Tige Anderson’s brigade is shattered by the Federals. The initial loss of control throws the entire attack into disorder. Brigadier General John Bratton’s South Carolina brigade struggles through Anderson’s fleeing Georgians to attack, only to meet a similar fate. Not until Colonel Bowles’s Alabamians, the last of Field’s three brigades, have been repulsed do the first two of Hoke’s brigades come into action; when they do, they are mowed “down like grass.” Lee watches in anguish as more than 1,200 troops are needlessly shot down. He takes a hand in re-forming the shaken survivors of the attack, one witness reporting later that the commanding general’s face is “as long as a gun barrel.” Federal possession of Fort Harrison, threatening as it is to Chaffin’s Bluff and the intermediate line, is intolerable to Lee. But for the moment, the task of recapturing the fort is “too much for human valor.” Besides, there is fresh trouble simmering, south of the James.

This morning, four Federal divisions of infantry and one of cavalry had begun to move around the overextended Confederate line below Petersburg, headed for the Southside Railroad, one of the rail lines still serving the city. Grant, though intrigued by the possibility of a windfall victory north of the James River, regards Butler’s operations there as secondary to the main business of severing railroads. The moment Lee weakens his Petersburg forces to deal with Butler, Grant unleashes General Warren to the south. With two divisions of V Corps, Warren is to strike westward from the Federal left at Globe Tavern. He is to turn the Confederate right—a redoubt about a mile away, near Poplar Springs Church—then drive north to the Boydton Plank Road, a major artery leading into Petersburg from the southwest. From there the Southside Railroad would be within easy reach. Following Warren to his left are General Parke with two IX Corps divisions and General David Gregg with his cavalry.

Warren’s leading division comes upon the Confederate redoubt and unfinished works, defended by Colonel Joel Griffin’s independent brigade of cavalry and Captain Edward Graham’s Petersburg Battery. They are located a few hundred yards beyond Poplar Springs Church on a farm owned by a man named Peeble. The Federals take their time, driving in Colonel Griffin’s skirmishers and working their way up a wooded ravine toward the fort. Despite the fire of Graham’s guns, Warren is able to concentrate Brigadier General Charles Griffin’s division a mere 100 yards from the redoubt under cover of the woods. Some of the Federals, chafing under the sporadic cannon fire, attack before the order is given. At this, the entire line rushes forward in broken formation and sweep cheering into the fort. The Confederates take to their heels, barely managing to save two of their three guns.

By now, General Parke’s IX Corps has passed Warren on the left, heading northwest toward the Boydton Plank Road. But Parke’s command is moving lethargically, and on reaching a wooded area a short distance away, it halts. Parke seems unable to determine what to do. The Confederate defense of Petersburg at this hour is the responsibility of Lieutenant General A.P. Hill—General Beauregard has been assigned to new duties farther south. Hill wastes no time in sending out the divisions of Major Generals Heth and Wilcox to meet the new threat on their right. They are there when Warren impatiently rides out to join the indecisive Parke. The Federal commanders are confronted by a line of earthworks to the north, and while they deliberate, Confederate soldiers are digging frantically to extend that line. A mile to the west can be seen “a line of red dirt thrown up, and men still working.” These defenses aren’t yet fulling manned, but for all his urging, Warren can’t get Parke moving.

Not until late afternoon does Parke order a division forward to the attack. Before the Federals reach the enemy trenches, however, they meet an advancing skirmish line; the Confederates are attacking them. The Federal division commander, Brigadier General Robert B. Potter, continues his assault. Potter thinks he is going to be supported on the right by one of Warren’s divisions. But no such arrangement has been made, and Potter is soon outflanked by a sweeping attack by two of Wilcox’s brigades and driven back. At the sight of this repulse, the hapless IX Corps comes apart again, stampeding for the rear; it loses 480 men killed and wounded, and a staggering 1,300 are taken prisoner. Parke manages to stop the disgraceful rout with his reserve division, which is anchored on Warren’s firm position at the Peeble farm. The Confederates try hard to break through. Two South Carolina regiments press close to the Federal line but can’t stand in the face of fire from Warren’s 34 guns. When Major General James J. Archer’s brigade sweeps down the Church road to attack the Federal right, General Griffin orders Captain Charles E. Minks to place his New York battery in front of the infantry “My God, General,” cries the astonished Captain, “do you mean for me to put my guns out on the skirmish line?” Griffin replies, “Yes, rush them in there; artillery is not better than infantry, put them in line and let them fight together.” The guns stop the Confederate drive.


While most of the fighting is in Virginia, skirmishing does break out at Waynesville, Missouri; Camp Creek, Georgia; and Carter’s Station, Tennessee.

[Doug64]

October 1864

The significance of the capture of Atlanta is obvious to both North and South. To the North it is helpful to President Lincoln’s campaign for reelection, offsetting the stalemate at Petersburg and the continued threat of Early in the Shenandoah. To the South it is an intolerable incursion that must be eradicated, if possible. By the end of September Hood, after conferring with President Davis, moves out to try to sever Sherman’s lengthy supply line from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Hood hopes to force Sherman to pull his army back to Tennessee. Meanwhile, Forrest, operating in north Alabama and Tennessee against railroads, also attempts to force the withdrawal of some of Sherman’s troops. In Missouri Price begins seriously to alarm unionists in and around St. Louis. At Petersburg Grant has extended lines but failed to break through anywhere. Sheridan believes the Valley Campaign over and Early beaten, but the small and gallant Confederate force in the Shenandoah is reorganizing, receiving some reinforcements, and looking for a new advance. In short, the uncertainty on both sides indicates that the fall will see new military moves. In the South new doubts and additional disaffections result from the unnerving loss of Confederate territory.

October 1, Saturday

Rather than remaining at Waynesboro, Jubal Early’s army marches back into the Valley. It takes a position on the Valley pike halfway between Harrisonburg and Staunton, and makes ready to attack Sheridan again. One of Early’s soldiers writes that the march through a cold rain back to the Valley pike is “cruel and injudicious,” since badly needed shoes and blankets are on their way to Waynesboro; on this and other grounds, Virginia Governor William Smith asks that Early be relieved and that his command be given to General Breckinridge. Lee refuses, but he mildly rebukes Early, observing: “You have operated more with divisions than with your concentrated strength. Circumstances may have rendered it necessary, but such a course is to be avoided if possible.” Unabashed, Early waits for a new cavalry commander—Brigadier General Thomas L. Rosser, who has been sent from Petersburg with his Laurel Brigade to take over for the wounded Fitzhugh Lee.


At Peeble’s farm in Virginia, reinforced by another division, IX Corps advances again. The Federals’ intent isn’t to renew their attack on the Confederate defenses but to establish a forward line of their own.


In Georgia, Hood has been headed north in a steady march, covering twelve to eighteen miles a day. Today his cavalry hit the Western & Atlantic Railroad—the stretch of Sherman’s lifeline between Chattanooga and Atlanta—and tears up some track. This is merely a pinprick.


Forrest’s Confederates, fully active now, skirmish with Union garrisons at Athens and Huntsville, Alabama, and capture blockhouses at Carter’s Creek Station, Tennessee. In Missouri the other major Southern raiders under Price also skirmish with Union forces at Union, Franklin, and Lake Springs. In southwest Virginia and Tennessee Federal raiders skirmish at Clinch Mountain and Laurel Creek Gap, Tennessee. The Shenandoah is quiet as Sheridan prepares to pull back north toward Cedar Creek from Harrisonburg. At Petersburg the siege grinds on, punctuated by fighting in the rain around Peeble’s Farm. A lengthy expedition by Federals goes out from Fort Craig, New Mexico Territory, to Fort Goodwin, Arizona Territory.

The British blockade runner Condor, being pursued by USS Niphon, goes aground off New Inlet, near Fort Fisher, North Carolina. The famed Confederate spy Mrs. Rose O’Neal Greenhow, fearing capture because of dispatches and $2,000 (today $35,815) in gold she is carrying, leaves Condor in a small boat. The surf overturns the boat, the gold weighs her down, and she drowns.

[Doug64]

October 2, Sunday

Troops of the Army of Tennessee reach Sherman’s supply line. Skirmishing ensues at Big Shanty and Kennesaw Water Tank, Georgia, where Hood’s men break the Western & Atlantic Railroad and interrupt the Federal link between Atlanta and Chattanooga. Other action in the area occurs near Fairburn and Sand Mountain, and at the Sweet Water and Noyes’ creeks near Powder Springs, Georgia.

By now, Sherman has concluded that Hood and his entire army are on the move and headed back up the Union’s supply line. Sherman has been forewarned that this might be the case by Federal spies and by newspaper accounts of an imprudent speech delivered by Jefferson Davis in which the Confederate President all but outlined Hood’s projected campaign. Sherman has already sent General Thomas steaming northward by train all the way to Nashville, followed by two divisions that have been ordered to protect Chattanooga. Part of Thomas’s mission is to subdue the Confederate cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose troopers have been on a lengthy and destructive raid through middle Tennessee. But clearly Thomas hasn’t had the time—nor as yet does he have the men—to mount a defense against both Forrest’s raiders and Hood’s approaching infantrymen. Sherman himself will have to move back toward Chattanooga to try to prevent Hood from tearing up the Federal lifeline and advancing into Tennessee. Shelving his march to Savannah, Sherman moves fast. He dispatches a division to defend the town of Rome, fifty miles northwest of Atlanta, should the Confederates veer in that direction.


Four days of action around Peebles’ Farm, southwest of Petersburg, end when advancing Federals encounter only limited opposition. The main Confederate force of infantry and cavalry have withdrawn to their entrenched lines. The Federals immediately begin to fortify this new position with trenches and redoubts, connecting it with Globe Tavern, a mile to the east. Meade’s men have managed from September 30th to now to advance the left flank of the Union siege lines about three miles west. The cost for the 30th alone is put at 187 killed, 900 wounded, and 1,802 missing or captured for 2,889. Southern figures are uncertain. This is an additional stretch that Lee has to defend, and his costs are approaching the unbearable. He informs the Confederate Secretary of War, James A. Seddon, that things can’t long continue in this way. While Grant extends his lines and increases his numbers, Lee writes, the Army of Northern Virginia can “only meet his corps, increased by recent recruits, with a division, reduced by long and arduous service.” Deeply depressed, Lee begins to speak openly for the first time of the possibility of losing Richmond. He needs time to find more men, more food, more ammunition, and more horses. His hope now is to hang on until cold, wet weather puts a temporary end to Grant’s incessant attacks. “We may be able, with the blessing of God, to keep the enemy in check until the beginning of winter,” he writes. “If we fail to do this the result may be calamitous.”


A Federal expedition aimed at the salt-mining operations in southwest Virginia is repulsed at Saltville, Virginia. In the Shenandoah skirmishing erupts at Mount Crawford and Bridgewater, Virginia. Farther west, Forrest’s raiders fight Federals near Columbia, Tennessee. Price’s Confederate expedition occupies Washington, on the Missouri River, some fifty miles west of St. Louis. Other minor actions occur at Marianna, Florida; and there are ten days of Federal movements in southwest Mississippi and east Louisiana, along with expeditions to the Amite River, New River, and Bayou Manche, Louisiana.

At Augusta, Georgia, President Davis tells Beauregard to assume command of the two western departments now under Generals Hood and Richard Taylor. Beauregard will have the top command, but he is not to interfere with field operations except when personally present. Davis thereby hopes to coordinate the deteriorating defenses of the Confederacy in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and to resume the offensive.

[Doug64]

October 3, Monday

Hood’s Army of Tennessee is squarely on the Chattanooga-Atlanta railroad in Sherman’s rear. This is definitely more than a pinprick, when one of the Confederate infantry corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Alexander P. Stewart, appears in force before the outposts guarding the railroad at Acworth, Big Shanty, Kennesaw Water Tank, and the nearby area. Stewart’s men capture most of the Federal troops of the two garrisons and rip up fifteen miles of track. Sherman, leaving General Henry Slocum and the 12,000 men of XX Corps to guard Atlanta, starts the bulk of his army, five corps totaling about 55,000 troops, for Marietta, fifteen miles to the north. Sherman is in a foul humor. He is being forced to draw back over the same ground, just as Hood has planned. Riding near the front of his long column as usual, nervously snapping the ash from his cigars, Sherman crosses the Chattahoochee River and heads his force into the Georgia hills. George H. Thomas arrives in Nashville, sent by Sherman to command defensive forces against any possible invasion by Hood.


In the Shenandoah fighting breaks out at Mount Jackson and North River, Virginia, as Confederates harass Sheridan’s troops in the Harrisonburg area, and things get even uglier. This evening, Sheridan’s topographical engineer, 22-year-old Lieutenant John R. Meigs, son of the quartermaster general of the Union army, is riding with two orderlies from Harrisonburg to Custer’s headquarters, four miles to the southwest near Dayton. In a pelting thunderstorm, the three Federals overtake a small cavalry detachment trotting in the same direction. All the riders are swathed in rubber ponchos and apparently are paying no attention to one another. But just as Meigs’s party passes, the strangers whirl and fire, killing Meigs and one of the orderlies. The other is wounded, but he escapes to tell the tale. General Early will later claim it was a fair fight by Confederate cavalry scouts in uniform, who first demanded Meigs’s surrender. but the Federals are outraged.


Confederate troops under Price still operate to the west of St. Louis along the Missouri River at Hermann and Miller’s Station, Missouri. There is Union action from Morganza to Bayou Sara, Louisiana, and a skirmish near Mount Elba, Arkansas.

En route to Richmond, President Davis arrives at Columbia, capital of South Carolina, to an enthusiastic welcome. He offers encouragement to the people and says of Hood, “His eye is now fixed upon a point for beyond that where he was assailed by the enemy.... And if but a half, nay, one-fourth, of the men to whom the service has a right, will give him their strength, I see no chance for Sherman to escape from a defeat or a disgraceful retreat.”

[Doug64]

October 4, Tuesday

As Sherman’s Federal advance units near Kennesaw Mountain, he learns that part of Hood’s force—about 2,000 men under Major General Samuel French—is marching up the railroad for Allatoona Pass, where a small Federal garrison stands guard over some of Sherman’s largest supply warehouses. At Allatoona Pass last spring, General Joseph Johnston, Hood’s predecessor, had skillfully delayed Sherman’s original advance. Now it is the Federals’ turn to defend the pass. Since French’s Confederate force is more than large enough to smash the garrison holding the pass, Sherman sends a message to Corse at Rome, ordering him to reinforce Allatoona with all possible haste.

Corse, a flamboyant 29-year-old of striking courage, spent two years at West Point before quitting the military academy to study law in Iowa and then joined the Federal army when the war began. Sherman admires Corse despite the young Iowan’s penchant for boisterous profanity and his pronounced although perhaps unconscious knack for self-dramatization. On receiving Sherman’s signaled order, Corse manages to get 1,054 of his men aboard twenty commandeered railroad cars. He then hurries south on the Western & Atlantic to Allatoona, arriving at about one in the morning. Corse immediately sends the train back to Rome to pick up the remaining troops under his command, but the locomotive derails, cutting off further Federal reinforcements.

At Allatoona, Corse joins Lieutenant Colonel John Tourtellotte and his 890-man garrison. The two officers swiftly deploy their troops to meet the attack. At the south end of the pass, the troops man a complex of rifle pits and trenches dug atop a crooked ridge that is bisected by a 60-foot-deep cut, through which runs the railroad. Most elaborate of the works are two redoubts, about 76 feet in diameter, which are on opposite sides of the railroad cut. Corse, in overall command, takes up his position in the redoubt to the west while Colonel Tourtellotte takes charge of the fort to the east of the tracks.

Hood’s troops skirmish at Acworth, Moon’s Station, and near Lost Mountain.


In a fury at the killing yesterday evening of his topographical engineer and an orderly, Sheridan orders every house within five miles of Dayton burned to the ground. Artist James Taylor is at Sheridan’s headquarters when the general gives the order to Custer. “Never shall I forget the dramatic episode,” he will recall. “Custer vaulting into the saddle, and exclaiming as he dashed away, ‘Look out for smoke!’” Soon, Taylor will note, “the ugly columns of smoke that rose in succession from the Valley like a funeral pall, told too well that he had fulfilled his orders to the letter.”


Out in Missouri a skirmish takes place near Richwoods as Price begins to shy away from St. Louis, unable to actually threaten the city. Other skirmishes occur near Memphis, Tennessee, and near Bayou Sara, Louisiana.

In Washington the newly appointed Postmaster General William Dennison joins the Cabinet.

[Doug64]

October 5, Wednesday

By sunrise, Corse and Tourtellotte have their Federal troops in position at Allatoona—and none too soon. At 7:30, Major John D. Myrick, who is commanding the Confederate artillery, orders his twelve guns to open fire on the Federal forts. As a hail of shell and solid shot begins raining on the redoubts, Confederate skirmishers start to close in on the Federal outposts. Soon a steady crackly of rifle fire is echoing through the ravines and hills that surround the Federal position. While the skirmishers press forward, General French dispatches one of his brigades, Mississippians under Brigadier General Claudius W. Sears, on a sweep to the northeast to get behind the redoubts. With little opposition, Sears’s troops cut the railroad and telegraph lines north of Allatoona Pass, leaving Corse without communications. By 8:30 am French has placed his other two brigades, Brigadier General William H. Young’s Texas brigade and Brigadier General Francis M. Cockrell’s Missourians, in position to the west of the pass. With the Federals effectively surrounded, French sends Corse a peremptory ultimatum under a flag of truce. To avoid a “needless effusion of blood,” French’s message reads, Corse is to surrender unconditionally—and he is to do so in five minutes. Corse instantly dashes off a polite refusal. “Your communication demanding surrender of my command I acknowledge receipt of, and respectfully reply that we are prepared for the ‘needless effusion of blood’ whenever it is agreeable to you. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant.”

Corse now hurries about his embattled works, readying his troops for the impending attack. He has hardly issued the incipient orders when the storm breaks in all its fury. West of the railroad, the men of two regiments from Iowa and Illinois, defending rifle pits and trenches, are the first to feel the weight of the Confederate attack. General Young’s Texas brigade strikes first and is held off by the Illinois troops, who use their Henry repeating rifles to deadly effect. But then Sears’s Mississippians hit “like a wintry blast from the north,” forcing the Federals to fall back on the west redoubt. Colonel Richard Rowett, commander of the Illinois regiment, is wounded, and Colonel James Redfield, commanding the Iowans, already hit three times, is killed by a bullet through the heart. Another Illinois regiment falls back rapidly, losing its colors but managing to beat the Confederates in a race for the redoubt’s protecting ditch.

As the fight at Allatoona Pass is heating up, General Sherman rides onto Kennesaw Mountain, across a broad valley to the south fourteen miles away. He can “plainly see the smoke of battle at Allatoona, and hear the faint reverberation of the cannon.” The signal officer on Kennesaw has been trying vainly since daylight to obtain an answer to his wigwagged messages, but then while Sherman is with him he catches a faint glimpse of the tell-tale flag through an embrasure, and makes out these letters—‘C’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘E’, ‘H’, ‘E’, ‘R’. Sherman ponders the message a moment and then shouts, “I understand it! Corse is there, all right. He’ll hold out. I know the man!”

Sherman’s conviction that Corse will be able to hold Allatoona seems for a time to be wishful thinking. All along the western segment of the Federal line the Confederates are pressing in for the kill, despite heavy fire from the embattled strongpoint. Colonel William H. Clark, commander of a Mississippi regiment, actually reaches the ditch that runs outside the Federal redoubt, waving the regimental flag and urging his men on in their attack until he is shot down. Core quickly decides he needs reinforcements. Soon the men of two Illinois regiments are dashing across the fire-swept railroad cut from Tourellotte’s redoubt, which is under less vigorous attack. The two regiments crowd into the west redoubt’s ditch with the Federal troops already fighting there. They arrive just in time to beat off an attack by a Texas infantry regiment that was formerly cavalry, whose men are at a disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat because being horsemen originally, they have never been issued bayonets. The Texans fall back, taking refuge in some buildings only forty yards from the redoubt. From windows in the upper stories, they pour rifle fire directly into the fort, picking off many defenders, until they are blasted out by point-blank artillery fire. French’s troops continue to mount sporadic assaults, working their way closer and closer to the western redoubt. They are able to take “advantage of the rough ground surrounding the fort, filling every hole and trench, seeking shelter behind every stump and log” that lies within musket range.

A Confederate bullet finally finds Corse. The ball grazes the side of the Federal commander’s face, severing a vein, nicking an ear and knocking him out cold. Ammunition is running low, and Corse’s second-in-command orders the men to conserve what remains. The cries of “Cease firing!” running down the line penetrates Corse’s stupor and he bounds up, cursing angrily. “No surrender, hold Allatoona!” shouts the still-befuddled commander, reopening his wound in the process so that blood rushes down his face. Corse then turns to his artillerymen. They report that their supplies of canister are nearly exhausted. An officer immediately volunteers to cross the railroad cut and secure a fresh supply from Tourtellotte’s redoubt. Noticing a narrow footbridge, he dashes across, reaches the second fort, and gathers up as many canister rounds as he can carry. He then staggers back across the bridge, shells and bullets whistling past his ears. Artillerymen of a Wisconsin battery swiftly put the ammunition to use. One of their three guns, stationed outside the redoubt, had been overrun by the Confederates, but now the cannon is back in Federal hands. It was recovered by an already-wounded artillery sergeant who, calling for volunteers to help, rushed outside the fort and secured the prize, sustaining several more wounds. “A bloodier man was never seen,” a Federal engineer will recall, “but he kept at his work until a musket ball passed through his neck and he dropped dead.”

By 4 pm, General French is in trouble. His regiments have become so disorganized that he can no longer hope to storm the Federal redoubts. In addition, he has received information—incorrect as it will turn out—that General Jacob D. Cox with a large Federal force is threatening to cut him off from the main Confederate army about twenty miles to the southwest around Dallas. French has little choice as he sees it but to withdraw. He soon pulls out to the southwest to rejoin Hood. He leaves behind 122 killed, 443 wounded, and 234 missing for a total of 799 casualties. The Federals have lost 142 killed, 352 wounded, and 313 missing for a total of 706—but kept the Confederates away from a million rations of hardtack that they had hoped to scoop up from Allatoona’s warehouses.


In the Shenandoah Valley, immediately after Sheridan receives Grant’s approval to move north to Strasburg, a 20-mile line of blueclad riders spreads out across the Valley, from North Mountain in the west to the Blue Ridge in the east. They put to the torch every conceivable source of food and comfort to the enemy—barns, granaries, haystacks, and mills. Their progress is marked by pillars of black smoke that darken the sky.

The destruction enrages Jubal Early’s army, which isn’t where the Federals think it is—on the Valley pike between Harrisonburg and Staunton, rather than at Waynesboro beyond the Blue Ridge to the east. Today the cavalry that Early has been waiting for arrives, and the furious Early prepares to attack.


There is considerable secondary action in Louisiana, with skirmishing at Thompson’s Creek near Jackson, Alexander’s Creek near St. Francisville, Atchafalaya, and Saint Charles. In addition, Federal expeditions of several days each operate from Tunica Landing to Fort Adams, and from Natchez to Homochitto River, Mississippi; from Baton Rouge to Clinton and Camp Moore, Louisiana. To the north Price’s Confederate Missouri expedition skirmishes with Federals along the Osage River.

President Lincoln confers with navy officials in regard to naval prisoners. His secretary, John Nicolay, goes west to plumb the sympathies of pro-Union men in Missouri in regard to the election.

Surrounded by Beauregard, Hardee, and other generals, President Davis tells a cheering crowd at Augusta, Georgia, “Never before was I so confident that energy, harmony and determination would rid the country of its enemy and give to the women of the land that peace their good deeds have so well deserved.” He proclaims that the Confederacy is a “free and independent people.” Georgia has been invaded but “We must beat Sherman, we must march into Tennessee ... we must push the enemy back to the banks of the Ohio.”

In Indiana, military authorities arrest Copperhead Lambden P. Milligan by order of General Alvin P. Hovey. Since August, Milligan had been bedridden, with his left leg becoming useless due to erysipelas. No warrant or affidavit is given to show Milligan’s arrest is authorized, and the arresting officers have been told to shoot Milligan should any unwarranted noise be made when they drag him from his home at four o’clock in the morning. Milligan is told that he must prove his innocence.

[Doug64]

October 6, Thursday

General Lee may be deeply depressed after the fighting around Peeble’s Farm and speaking openly for the first time of the possibility of losing Richmond, but he is never content simply to defend, and even in the crisis of his ever-lengthening lines of defense he is looking for an opportunity to attack. he is also determined to repair the damage done to the defenses of Richmond. Now he has ordered an assault down the New Market and Darbytown roads, where General August Kautz’s Federal cavalry, now reduced to 1,700 men, hold the former exterior line of entrenchments. Lee hopes to drive Kautz from his position, thus turning the Federal right, and then envelop the enemy line as far toward the James as he can. Today he moves General’ Charles Field’s and Robert Hoke’s divisions into position to challenge Kautz.


In the Valley Early’s army is ready to attack, but now it’s the Federals that aren’t where they are expected to be. With the Federals on the move again, for the time being the Confederate infantry can only follow, angrily watching the Valley’s abundance go up in smoke. Spurred on by their aggressive new commander, Rosser’s cavalry snap at the heels of George A. Custer’s barn-burners, attacking two regiments of Custer’s cavalry at Brock’s Gap, Virginia, near Fisher’s Hill in the Shenandoah Valley. Custer repulses the attack, but it shows that the Southerners are still active in the Valley.


There is fighting near Florence, Alabama between Federals and Forrest’s cavalry, as Forrest ends his two-week raid where he started. In those two weeks spent south of Nashville, within the great bend of the Tennessee River, Forrest has captured 2,360 of the enemy and killed or wounded an estimated thousand more, at a cost to himself of 340 casualties, only 47 of whom were killed. He has destroyed eleven blockhouses, together with the extensive trestles and bridges they were meant to guard, and has taken seven US guns, 800 horses, and more than 2,000 rifles, all of which he has brought out with him, in addition to fifty captured wagons loaded with spoils too valuable for burning. Best of all for the Confederates, he has wrecked the Tennessee & Alabama so thoroughly that even the skilled blue work crews will need six full weeks to put it back in operation. Indeed, Taylor is so encouraged by this middle Tennessee expedition that he promptly authorizes another, to be aimed this time at Johnsonville, terminus of the newly extended Nashville & Northeastern Railroad, by which supplies, unloaded from steamboats and barges on the Tennessee, are sent to Sherman by way of Nashville, 75 miles due east. A blow at this riverport depot, whose yards and warehouses are crowded with stores awaiting transfer, will go far toward increasing the Union supply problem down in Georgia.

Much is expected of this follow-up strike, even though the first—successful as it was, within its geographic limitations—failed to achieve its purpose, which was to make Sherman turn loose of Atlanta for lack of subsistence for his army of occupation. Not only did the red-haired Ohioan by then have ample stockpiles of supplies, he also had the scarcely-interrupted use of the Nashville & Chattanooga line, having repaired within twelve hours the limited damage the off-shoot of Forrest’s raid inflicted. If the raid had been a month or six weeks earlier, when the Federals were fighting outside Atlanta, opposed by an aggressive enemy and with both overworked railroads barely able to meet their daily subsistence needs, the result might well have been different.


With the fighting over at Allatoona, Georgia, Samuel French and his men rejoin the main Confederate army. Federal raiders in the southwest Virginia area skirmish just over the line at Kingsport, Tennessee. Other action occurs in Cole County, Missouri.

The Richmond Enquirer prints an article favoring enlistment of Black soldiers in the Confederacy, a view that is receiving increasing support.

[Doug64]

October 7, Friday

At first light around Richmond, two of General Hoke’s Confederate brigades quietly work their way through their old fortifications north of the Darbytown road and hit General Kautz’s cavalry on the right flank. At the same time, two of General Field’s brigades attack Kautz’s front. When Brigadier General Martin W. Gary’s Confederate cavalry brigade attacks their rear, the Federal horsemen fall back in confusion, losing all eight of their guns. They retreat to the south, reforming behind the trenches held by Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry’s more stalwart X Corps division. Pressing his advantage, Lee orders an assault on Terry’s position by Field’s and Hoke’s full divisions. But at 10 am, when Lee asks one of his aides if the two divisions are ready to charge, the answer is: “None but the Texas Brigade, General.” Sadly, but with pride, Lee replies, “The Texas Brigade is always ready.”

Field’s division soon goes forward—the Texans leading the way—only to run up against a jumble of trees felled on the path. As the men struggle to pass through this barrier, the line of assault disintegrates into scattered groups, losing coordination and coming under heavy fire from the enemy. Worse, for reasons that will never be adequately explained, Hoke doesn’t join in the attack. Field’s men are alone in the face of a roused foe. They fight on for a time, but to no avail. During the struggle, the division’s commander, General John Gregg, falls dead with a bullet through his neck. Having lost 1,300 men, Lee gives up hope of restoring the exterior line. Realistically, he turns his attention instead to building new fortifications closer to Richmond.

Federal casualties were minimal in this latest fighting, and the Confederates haven’t been able to drive the Union troops from the positions they have gained north of the James. But the Federals seem unable to get any closer to Richmond. Elsewhere in Virginia, fighting erupts on Back Road near Strasburg, and near Columbia Furnace.


In March three years ago, the ship that became CSS Florida left Liverpool and began her spasmodic career as a Confederate raider, taking 37 prizes. Two days ago she arrived at Bahia, Brazil, where she found USS Wachusett. Commodore Napoleon Collins of the Federal sloop determines that Florida should not leave. Wachusett rams Florida but fails to disable her. After a few shots Florida surrenders; her commander and many of her crew are ashore at the moment. The Brazilians protest and even fire at Wachusett, but to no avail. Wachusett steams out northward with her prize. Although the citizenry approves Wachusett’s action, Secretary of State Seward condemns it as unauthorized and unlawful.


Hood is still near Dallas, Georgia, but he is ready to move again and now does so, marching swiftly to the northwest toward Alabama, aiming to outpace Sherman. His strategy is to cross the Coosa River west of Rome; then he will either draw Sherman into battle somewhere near the Alabama line or head for the Western & Atlantic tracks at Resaca about forty miles south of Chattanooga, hoping for a decisive fight there.


Reaching the hills around Jefferson City, the Missouri state capital, Price’s Confederates skirmish, and fighting also takes place at Moreau Creek and at Tyler’s Mills on Big River. Along the march to reach here, Price’s men have indulged in unrestrained pillaging—filling the wagons with loot and adding to their ranks a “rabble of deadheads, stragglers, and stolen negroes.” Now Price wisely concludes again that the Federals are too strong and leads his army on toward Boonville. Soon afterward, Major General Alfred Pleasonton, the experienced former chief of cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, enters the Missouri capital and sends 4,000 horsemen under Brigadier General John Sanborn to follow Price. Farther east, more reinforcements are on the way.


Farther west, Federals and Amerinds skirmish on Elk Creek in Nebraska Territory. There also is a skirmish at Kingston, Tennessee.

[Doug64]

October 8, Saturday

The last major Confederate cruiser, Sea King or Shenandoah, leaves London.


In the Shenandoah Valley, cavalry fight in the Luray Valley and at Tom’s Brook. Sheridan, professing himself “tired of these annoyances,” summons General Torbert to his headquarters and tells his cavalry commander to start out at daylight and “whip the Rebel cavalry or get whipped.” At one time, it might have been foolhardy for Federal cavalry to attempt such a mission, so completely had Confederate horsemen dominated any field on which they rode. There was the Laurel Brigade, which under the legendary Turner Ashby had consistently outfought the Federals; there were men who under Jeb Stuart had ridden around the entire Army of the Potomac. But all that is in the past. Ashby and Stuart are dead, as are most of the Confederate cavalry’s blooded horses and many of the young men. Torbert orders Custer and Merritt to seek out the Confederate cavalry at dawn.


In Georgia, Hood moves so quickly that Sherman’s patrols lose contact with the Confederates, who seem to have suddenly vanished. Briefly Sherman fears his adversary is circling back for a strike against Atlanta, and he wires General Slocum to be alert. Then word comes that the Confederate column is again moving northward, still farther into the Georgia hills. Sherman fought through this inhospitable country last summer, and doesn’t relish doing so again. He grumbles bitterly in a letter to Corse that Hood is too unpredictable: “I cannot guess his movements as I could those of Johnston, who was a sensible man and only did sensible things.” Still, he feels constrained for the moment to continue to move farther north himself, staying on the defensive, reacting instead of acting, trailing behind his adversary like a child in tow.

While Sherman complains, Hood decides on his next move. “The effect of our operations so far surpassed my expectations,” he will write later, that rather than trying to draw Sherman into Alabama, he will take the bolder route, advancing directly toward Resaca and Chattanooga, destroying the rails as he goes. Sherman, Hood reckons, will continue to follow, dropping off troops to repair and protect the railroad as he goes and thus weakening his army. Then, somewhere in the broken country near the Tennessee border, Hood’s men will be waiting.


Near Petersburg, Virginia, a Federal reconnaissance probes on the Vaughan and Squirrel Level roads. In the scattered fighting in the mountains of Tennessee and Virginia there is a skirmish at Rogersville, Tennessee. Price’s Confederate forces battle Federals again near Jefferson City, Missouri, and fighting also breaks out in Barry County.

[Doug64]

October 9, Sunday

Union and Confederate cavalry come face to face near Toms Brook along a five-mile line that stretches across the Shenandoah Valley from the Massanutten to North Mountain. While the horse artillery of both sides blaze away, a line of dismounted Federal skirmishers advance, followed by what a member of the Laurel Brigade calls “moving masses of bluecoats, covering the hill slopes and blocking the roads with apparently countless squadrons.” As Custer prepares to launch his attack, he spots Rosser commanding the opposing Confederates. Rosser is an old friend and West Point classmate, and Custer spurs his black horse ahead of the battle line and doffs his hat in salute.

For two hours the lines charge and countercharge, the skirmishers dashing from position to position, the riders attacking batteries and firing their pistols and slashing at one another with their sabers. “In the center the Confederates maintained their position with much stubbornness,” Sheridan will recall, “and for a time seemed to have recovered their former spirit.” But the Southerners have been worn out by their journey from Richmond and the constant fighting, and their infantry support is more than twenty miles away. At length Custer’s troopers manage to turn Rosser’s left flank. At the same time, Merritt launches two of his regiments in a thundering charge on the Confederate center, where Rosser’s line connects with the division commanded by Major General Lunsford Lomax. The result is “a general smash-up of the entire Confederate line,” the retreat quickly degenerating into a rout like Sheridan has never seen before. The Federals chase their beaten opponents for 26 miles, stopping only when they come up against Early’s infantry at Rude’s Hill just north of New Market. What will be recorded officially as the Battle of Toms Brook will become mockingly known, on both sides, as the Woodstock Races. But it is left to Jubal Early to make the unkindest cut of all: When he hears that Rosser’s Laurel Brigade has let him down, he snarls, “The laurel is a running vine.”


General Hood may be confident of success, but General Beauregard, the newly appointed commander of the Western Theater, is not. He catches up with Hood today at Cave Spring, a north Georgia spa in happier times, to discuss what Hood has in mind. As Beauregard listens, his heart sinks. Hood is about to undertake a complex and risky movement without sufficient planning, Beauregard concludes, and with many things “left to further determination and even luck.” Nevertheless, Beauregard decides not to interfere. He has not formally assumed his new command, and an argument with Hood so early seems undesirable. He therefore acquiesces to Hood’s plan and goes off to Jacksonville, Alabama, to set up his new headquarters. Undeterred by Beauregard’s doubts, Hood moves northeast with a force that overwhelms the small Federal garrisons along the railroad.


Price’s Confederates in Missouri move past Jefferson City and fight skirmishes at Boonville, Russellville, and California. Other action is recorded near Piedmont, Fauquier County, Virginia; Bayou Sara, Louisiana; Can Wert, Georgia; and a Federal scout in St. Francois County, Missouri.

Reviewing the damage inflicted by Forrest on his last raid, Grant concludes that it would be “a physical impossibility to protect the roads [in Georgia and Tennessee], now that Hood, Forrest, Wheeler, and the whole batch of devils are turned loose without home or habitation.”

[Doug64]

October 10, Monday

Having routed the Confederates in the Shenandoah Valley three times in three weeks, the Federals complete the destruction as far north as they have been authorized to go. Today, they camp again along Cedar Creek, just north of Strasburg. Few of them suspect that the dogged Early is still on their heels, looking for a chance to even the score. When he learns from his spotters on Shenandoah Peak that VI Corps has left Sheridan’s army to rejoin the Army of the Potomac, Early knows his chance has come; he marches northward on the Valley pike.


Fighting is limited to skirmishes near Rectortown, Virginia; Thorn Hill near Bean’s Station, east Tennessee; South Tunnel, near Gallatin, Tennessee; in Colorado Territory near Valley Station; and in Pemiscot County, Missouri. Hood’s men skirmish with Sherman’s supply line guards near Rome, Georgia. Federal troops, carried upstream by boats, attempt to attack Forrest at Eastport, Mississippi, on the Tennessee River. Confederate gunfire damages the gunboat Undine and disable two transports. The transports pull away, leaving most of the troops, who later escape.

President Lincoln writes Maryland political leader Henry W. Hoffman that he favors the new state constitution which calls for an end to slavery: “I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring. I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.”

[Doug64]

October 11, Tuesday

Sheridan’s harsh retaliation a week ago for the killing of Lieutenant John R. Meigs doesn’t prevent Confederate bushwhackers from striking again. Today Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius W. Tolles, Sheridan’s chief quartermaster, and Dr. Emil Ohlensschlager, his medical inspector, are ambushed and mortally wounded. The killing of Sheridan’s aides is part of the ugly turn the war in the Valley has taken since the Confederate defeats at Winchester and Fisher’s Hill. The partisan rangers of John Mosby, Harry Gilmor, and Hanse McNeill have bedeviled the Federals since the beginning of Sheridan’s campaign, preying on supply lines and rear areas. The farther Sheridan has intruded into the Valley, the more numerous and savage the attacks have become. “No party of less than 50 men was safe a mile from camp,” Captain Sanford will assert. “The loss in men, animals and supplies was enormous.”


Price’s Confederate invaders along the Missouri River fight skirmishes near Boonville and at Brunswick. On the White River near Clarendon, Arkansas, bushwhackers attack the steamer Resolute. In the east, action occurs near White Plains and there is a Federal scout around Stony Creek Station, Virginia, and at Petersburg, West Virginia. A three-day Federal scout probes from Camp Palmer to Gum Swamp, North Carolina. Federal troops move out for five days from Atlanta to Flat Creek, Georgia, fighting several skirmishes. Confederate cavalry attack a Federal Black recruiting detachment near Fort Donelson, Tennessee, but are driven off. Sherman’s forces begin to concentrate at Rome, Georgia, upon hearing that Hood is just below the city.


Elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana show the Republicans and Lincoln supporters stronger than has been supposed. Oliver P. Morton is reelected governor of Indiana and the Republicans make sizable gains in congressional contests. An anxious Lincoln stays at the War Department telegraph office until after midnight to get the election returns.

[Doug64]

October 12, Wednesday

While most of the Federal outposts General Hood encounters in his march northeast from the Atlanta area surrender readily, today at Resaca he comes up against another Federal officer who, like John Corse at Allatoona, refuses to be intimidated. This is Colonel Clark E. Wever, commander of an Iowa regiment who is acting as commanding officer of a brigade from XV Corps garrisoned at Resaca. Wever, hearing that a strong enemy force is approaching, draws in detachments that are scattered along the rail line nearby, deepens old rifle pits, digs new ones, and sets up palisades around his works. Satisfied that his defenses are formidable, he awaits Hood’s assault.

Hood has his skirmish line attack briefly, then draws his troops close to the Federal breastworks and sends in a menacing note, calling on Wever and his small garrison to throw down their arms: “I demand immediate and unconditional surrender of the post and garrison under your command. If the place is carried by assault, no prisoners will be taken.” Wever answers that he is surprised by Hood’s raw threat. Then he boldly challenges Hood to attack. “In my opinion I can hold this post. If you want it, come and take it.”


Elements of Hood’s and Sherman’s forces skirmish at La Fayette, and on the Coosaville Road near Rome, Georgia. Fighting also occurs at Greeneville, Tennessee, and a small cavalry action occurs at Strasburg, Virginia, in the Shenandoah.

Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter assumes command of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, with the idea of Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina. He relieves Acting Rear Admiral S.P. Lee. Farragut was to have had the post, but his health doesn’t permit.

Chief Justice of the United States Roger Brooke Taney dies in Washington. Although criticized for many of his decisions, and particularly in the Dred Scott case, Taney nevertheless will remain one of the major figures in American jurisprudence.

[Doug64]

October 13, Thursday

Sheridan’s Federal army is stationed across the mouth of the main Valley—the one to the west of Massanutten Mountain. The XIX Corps is massed near Belle Grove plantation, north of the Valley pike and a mile southwest of Middletown; General Crook’s VIII Corps is camped east of the pike on a hill overlooking Cedar Creek. To the west, gently rolling farm country stretches to North Mountain, four miles away; a little more than two miles to the east, bordered by rugged, wooded hills, the broad Shenandoah flows around the north end of Massanutten Mountain.

Early hopes to attack the Federal right, where he has plenty of room for maneuver and a chance to turn the enemy flank. But today, before all of Early’s troops are in place, Gordon’s and Kershaw’s divisions stumble into battle with Crook’s outposts on the Federal left. When Confederate artillery begins shelling Crook’s camp from atop Hupp’s Hill, just northeast of Strasburg, Crook sends two brigades forward to develop the enemy position. Colonel George D. Wells’s 1st Brigade becomes separated by a belt of woods and is counterattacked by seven regiments of South Carolinians under Brigadier General James Conner. The Federals are routed, losing 214 men to the Confederates 182, and Wells himself falls mortally wounded. Despite this success, Early knows the Federals are now aware of his presence; he decides to withdraw to Fisher’s Hill before attempting another advance.

Sheridan immediately recalls VI Corps, not only because of Early’s startling aggressiveness but because the Federal high command is once more embroiled in a disagreement over strategy. Grant has again expressed the wish that Sheridan cut the Virginia Central Railroad at Gordonsville and Charlottesville. But chief of staff Halleck converts Grant’s suggestion into an order, telling Sheridan to establish his army near Manassas Gap in the Blue Ridge and operate against the railroad there. Now Secretary of War Stanton gets involved, and Halleck, having muddied the waters, calls for a conference in Washington.


As General Hood considers Colonel Wever’s intransigence at Resaca, he has second thoughts about attacking. It might take some time to overcome the defiant colonel and his garrison. Sherman is past Rome by now and no doubt closing rapidly. Hood concludes that taking Resaca isn’t worth the effort. Leaving part of his force confronting Resaca, he continues north, marching fifteen miles to Dalton, where the garrison capitulates after a brief fight, and to Tunnel Hill, where the Federal defenders surrender on demand. There is considerable isolated skirmishing involved.


In the West, action near Mullahla’s Station, Nebraska; on Elm Creek, Texas; and a week of scouting in the Sacramento Mountains, New Mexico Territory, pits Federals against Amerinds. Federal troops operate until the 18th from Pine Bluff to Arkansas Post, Arkansas.

Ranger Mosby and his men take up a section of the Baltimore & Ohio tracks near Kearneysville, west of Harpers Ferry. They wreck a passenger train, seize $173,000 (2020 $3,126,297), largely from two army paymasters, and then burn the train.

Maryland voters adopt a new state constitution which includes abolition of slavery. The vote is very close: 30,174 for and 29,799 opposed, a majority of only 375.

President Lincoln, still worried about the election despite the recent victories, makes an estimate of the electoral vote, giving the “Supposed Copperhead vote” 114 electoral votes, the “Union Vote” 120.

[Doug64]

October 14, Friday

Action increases in the Shenandoah, where two armies face each other a few miles apart. Skirmishing takes place at Strasburg near Hupp’s Hill, Virginia, and at Duffield’s Station, West Virginia. Price continues to move through Missouri with a skirmish near Glasgow. Price makes a public plea for the people to join with him to “redeem” Missouri. Confederates attack Danville, Missouri. Other skirmishing is near Fort Smith, Arkansas; Boca Chica Pass, Texas; and Adamstown, Maryland.

[Doug64]

October 15, Saturday

Sheridan reluctantly complies with Halleck’s call for a conference at Washington, setting out for the capital today, accompanied by his entire Cavalry Corps. The cavalry is to go with him as far as Front Royal, then head south to raid near Charlottesville. But when Sheridan reaches Front Royal he is shown an intercepted Confederate signal that gives him pause. The message, evidently from Richmond, is signed by the formidable General Longstreet. “Be ready to move as soon as my forces join you,” it reads, “and we will crush Sheridan.” Sheridan suspects that the message is a ruse, as in fact it is—Jubal Early wrote and sent it to himself. He hopes that it will frighten Sheridan into retreating, this giving the Confederates access to the food and forage that is still plentiful in the lower Valley. Instead, Sheridan calls off the Charlottesville raid. Posting Powell’s cavalry at Front Royal to guard against any approach by Longstreet from the Luray Valley, he sends the divisions of Merritt and Custer back to Cedar Creek. They carry a message for General Wright, who is commanding the army while Sheridan is gone. “Make your position stronger,” Sheridan tells him. “Close in Colonel Powell. Look well to your ground, and be well prepared.”


Despite the failure of the plan to free the POWs at Camp Douglas last month, the Confederates in Canada haven’t given up. Some of them decide to attack St, Albans, Vermont, a small town located only twenty miles south of the Canadian border. The plan is to seize and burn St. Albans and, if time allows, rob its banks. Today Lieutenant Bennett Young and 25 raiders casually drift into St. Albans wearing civilian clothes, find lodging, and begin to scout the town. Young, by all accounts a charming and witty man, even squires a local young woman around town to evaluate the village green without arousing suspicion.


The usual fighting includes action at Hernando, Mississippi; Snake Creek Gap, Georgia; Mossy Creek, east Tennessee; Bayou Liddell, Louisiana; and a three-day Federal expedition from Bernard’s Mills to Murfree’s Station, Virginia. Jo Shelby’s men of Price’s command attack Sedalia, Missouri, where citizens and home guards stampede and the Federal troops put up a losing fight before surrendering. There is also action in Missouri at Glasgow, and Confederates occupy Paris.

In Washington funeral services are held for Chief Justice Taney with the President in attendance. Back in Richmond after his long trip south, President Davis detaches General Bragg from service at the capital and sends him to take immediate command of Wilmington and its approaches.

[Doug64]

October 16, Sunday

Minor fighting in north Georgia between Hood and Sherman continues, this time at Ship’s Gap. The secondary war in the mountains see a skirmish near Bull’s Gap, east Tennessee. Federal troops from City Point, Virginia, move out for a few days’ reconnaissance into Surrey County. Price’s expedition in Missouri seizes Ridgely, while Federal troops operate from Devall’s Bluff toward Clarendon, Arkansas. Skirmishing erupts near Morganza, Louisiana.

[Doug64]

October 17, Monday

In the Valley, General Early, unaware of Sheridan’s absence, is almost ready to strike the Federal right. But today, Gordon—“not entirely satisfied with the general plan of attack”—climbs the rugged Shenandoah Peak to survey the situation. He takes with him three other officers, including Early’s topographical engineer, Jed Hotchkiss. Through the crisp fall air, they can see not only “every road and habitation and hill and stream” for miles in every direction, but Sheridan’s entire army as well—“every piece of artillery, every wagon and tent and supporting line of troops.”

The three Federal corps are arrayed along the eastern flank of Cedar Creek, which for the final five miles of its course flows southeastward to its confluence with the North Fork of the Shenandoah. The Valley pike, running southeastward for the five miles from Middletown to Strasburg, crosses Cedar Creek at the midway point, the two features describing a gigantic X across the terrain. Crook’s VIII Corps is closest to the Confederates, with one division—Colonel Joseph Thoburn’s—entrenched 1,000 yards north of the creek. The other two infantry corps are echeloned back to Crook’s right, with William Emory’s XIX Corps camped across the pike to the northwest and Wright’s VI Corps next in line. Beyond VI Corps’ right, west of Middletown, are Merritt’s and Custer’s cavalry divisions. The Federals feel completely secure, and for good reason. With their 31,000 men, they hold a comfortable edge over the 21,000 Confederates opposing them. The possibility of a sudden attack does occur to a few Federal officers, including Captain Henry DuPont, whose guns are posted near Thoburn’s division. DuPont wants to know who is watching the wooded hills to the east. He is assured that Powell’s cavalry division is on duty there, but when DuPont rides out to check, he finds no one. In fact, only a single brigade of Powell’s is in the area, and it is two miles downriver from the mouth of Cedar Creek. Apparently, Sheridan’s instruction to “close in Powell” has been ignored.

From his mountain vantage point, General Gordon sees an enormous opportunity. If the Confederates can get through the thick woods, along the steep ridges, and across the river, they can surprise and roll up the Federal left. And Gordon can see a road leading around the enemy flank—from a ford over the Shenandoah a half mile downstream from the mouth of Cedar Creek—that is guarded by a handful of cavalry pickets. Greatly excited, Gordon scrambles down to the Valley floor convinced he has found a way to destroy Sheridan’s army. Jubal Early is interested, but he thinks the plan lacks an essential element—a way to get to the ford.


In Missouri, General Price isn’t concerned about the Union reinforcements arriving in the state with forces both before and behind him. He moves leisurely toward Lexington, on the Missouri River in the northwest part of the state. He is again in pro-Southern country, and several thousand more volunteers join his column. In addition, almost all the guerrilla bands that have been plaguing Federal commanders emerge from their hiding places to attach themselves to Price’s force. One day, the notorious Bloody Bill Anderson and his followers ride in—with human scalps decorating their horses’ bridles. Price makes them get rid of the scalps, then accepts a brace of silver-mounted pistols from Anderson and welcomes him into his army. Quantrill’s raiders, who had split with their leader and are now commanded by George Todd, join Shelby’s division as scouts.


General Hood’s two-week campaign has been so far a considerable achievement. Tunnel Hill is where Sherman began his triumphant march to Atlanta early last May. Now Hood has forced him and much of his army to retrace their steps through the fogs and rains of autumn. And the Federals have nothing to show for all their footsore reverse marching because they haven’t managed to corner the Confederates and force a fight. Hood’s successes, nevertheless, ring a bit hollow. General Slocum still holds Atlanta unthreatened, the broken railroad line can be repaired, and both Slocum and Sherman have ample supplies to last until the railroad is fully operational again. To consolidate his gains, Hood knows he will have to tempt Sherman into a pitched battle and then defeat him. A Confederate victory would break Sherman’s grip on Atlanta and northern Georgia, restore confidence throughout the Confederacy—and open the way for further advances into Tennessee and even beyond.

It soon appears that the two commanders are going to get the fight they both want. Hood consolidates his forces near Resaca and then withdraws northeastward about fifteen miles through Snake Creek Gap, blocking the gap behind him with felled timber. Major General Oliver Howard’s Army of the Tennessee is in hot pursuit, pushing through the obstructions and camping close up to Hood’s rearguard. When Sherman comes to Howard’s position today, he is delighted to find that Hood’s main force is near a town named La Fayette, a place Sherman hopes to catch him and force him to battle. Hood, full of enthusiasm, calls his officers together for a council of war—and finds them unanimously opposed to giving battle. Hood is astonished. He argues that the troops, after a “forward movement of 100 miles,” are full of “confidence, enthusiasm, and hope of victory.” His officers admit that the condition of the men is much improved, but not so much that they can take on Sherman’s numbers with any hope of success. Hood chooses not to fly in the face of unanimous opinion. He knows that he has no hope for success in a battle that his officers expect to lose. So he breaks camp and moves southwestward, his army retreating down the rough Chattanooga River Valley and across the Alabama line toward Gaylesville and Gadsden. Hood is disappointed—and confirmed in his opinion that many of his officers have lost their nerve.


There is an affair at Cedar Run Church, Virginia; and a skirmish at Eddyville, Kentucky. Carrollton, Missouri, surrenders, and Smithville is burned.

General P.G.T. Beauregard assumes command of the Confederate Military Division of the West, comprising all the operations east of the Mississippi in the Western region. Confederate Lieutenant General James Longstreet receives orders to resume command of his corps, having recovered from wounds received at the Wilderness.

[Doug64]

October 18, Tuesday

In Washington, General Sheridan has at last convinced Halleck and Stanton that instead of trying to operate against Charlottesville, he should retire to a defensible line in the lower Valley and send VI and XIX Corps back to Grant at Petersburg. Anxious to get back to his command, he takes a special train to Martinsburg, then rides to Winchester with a 300-man cavalry escort. There, fifteen miles from his Belle Grove headquarters, he spends the night.

In the Valley, General Gordon and Jed Hotchkiss prowl the ravines and ridges at the foot of Massanutten Mountain until they find a trail leading through the woods around the Federal left. This afternoon, Early issues orders setting the bold plan in motion. Gordon is to attack the Federal left with three divisions while Early directs a two-division assault, supported by forty guns, along the Valley pike against the center. The cavalry divisions are to attack the flanks, Rosser to the west and Lomax circling to the east by way of Front Royal. As night falls, Gordon’s men begin the flanking movement. Stripped of anything that might rattle or clink, all night long the Confederates creep silently along in single file. For a time, Gordon and Ramseur sit on a bluff and watch the men pass, Ramseur talking excitedly of the recent birth of his daughter. Married for almost a year, he is hoping for a victory so he can take leave and visit his wife and baby. When it is time to return to his duties, Ramseur stands up and says, “Well, General, I shall get my furlough today.”


Otherwise, fighting involves a skirmish near Milton, Florida; Confederate raids on the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad; skirmishes near Summerville, Georgia; Huntsville, Alabama; Clinch Mountain, east Tennessee; and in Barry County, Missouri.

Pro-Southern ladies of Britain hold a benefit for Confederate soldiers at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool.