542

BATTLE OF THE FIVE FORKS.

Merritt to make a strong demonstration, as if about to turn the right of the adversary. At the same time M'Kenzie was sent with a small body of cavalry to a position on the White Oak road, to cover the National right flank from any force moving from that direction. There he drove a body of Confederates toward Petersburg, and, returning, was in the neighborhood of the Five Forks before Warren was prepared to charge.

Pursuant to Sheridan's orders, Warren formed his whole corps in battle order before resuming his march. This consumed time, and he informed Sheridan that he could not be ready for an assault before four o'clock. He placed Ayres's division on the left, Crawford's on the right, and Griffin's behind, in reserve. At the hour named he was ready for the attack, and advanced in perfect order. Crawford's division, in crossing an open field, received a severe fire on its left, causing it to oblique a little, so as to gain the shelter of woods and a ridge. This produced a gap between it and Ayres's right, upon which the same fire was directed. Some of the troops of that flank wavered and recoiled in disorder, but the misfortune was soon remedied by Griffin, whose division was thrown into the gap, while Ayres's, in an impetuous charge upon the Confederate right, carried a portion of the line, and captured more than a thousand men and several battle-flags. Merritt, meanwhile, charged the front, and Griffin fell upon the left with such force that he carried the intrenchments, and seized fifteen hundred men. Crawford, meanwhile, had pressed rapidly forward to the Ford road, northward of the post, cut off their retreat in the direction of Lee's main force, and turning southward on that highway, struck them in the rear, and captured four guns. In this perilous position, with Warren upon their flank and rear, and the cavalry assailing them front and right, the Confederates fought on with the most determined gallantry and fortitude. At length the cavalry charged over the works simultaneously with the turning of their flanks by Ayres and Griffin, and, bearing down upon the Confederates with wild fury, caused a large portion to throw down their arms, while the remainder sought safety in a most disorderly flight westward, pursued many miles, long after dark, by the cavalry of Merritt and M'Kenzie.' So ended THE BATTLE OF FIVE FORKS, in complete victory for the Nationals, whose loss was about one thousand men. The loss to the Confederates was a large number of men killed and wounded, and over five thousand made prisoners. The trophies for the victors were several guns and colors.

1 Mr. Swinton, in his Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, page 600, says of Warren, who was in the van of the charging column, his horse was fatally shot within a few feet of the breastworks, and he, himself, was in imminent peril, when a gallant officer (Colonel Richardson of the Seventh Wisconsin) sprang betweenhim and the enemy, receiving a severe wound, but shielding from hurt the person of his loved commander." During this grandly fought battle, General Sheridan, who was watching and directing the movements, betame impatient at the seeming tardiness of Warren, and when he saw Crawford's division oblique, and Ayres's give way, he conceived the idea that the troops were not managed with proper skill and decision. He at once issued an order depriving Warren of his command, and giving it to Griffin. It did not reach Warren until after

May 16. 1865.

the action. In his report, made more than a month afterward," Sheridan spoke disparagingly of Warren's conduct on this occasion, but the General-in-chief seemed so well satisfied that Sheridan had acted upon erroneous impressions, that he showed his confidence in Warren in appointing him, immediately after the battle of The Five Forks, commander of the Department of the Mississippi then the theater of war. Warren afterward published a full vindication. The misunderstanding between such noble men and true soldiers, as Generals Sheridan and Warren, produced an unpleasant feeling in the public mind.

2 Of these, the infantry lost 634 killed and wounded. Among the former was General Winthrop, cousin of Major Winthrop (see page 301, volume I.), killed at Big Bethel, at the beginning of the war.

ASSAULT ON THE PETERSBURG LINES.

543

The shout of victory at the Five Forks had scarcely died away on the evening of the day of battle, when, by Grant's orders, the National guns in position before Petersburg were all opened on the Confederate lines, from right to left, from the Appomattox to Hatcher's Run. Sheridan, at the close of the battle, had ordered Griffin, then in command of the Fifth Corps, to impel two divisions in the direction of Petersburg, to reopen communication with the rest of the army, while Griffin's own division, now commanded by General Bartlett, was directed to push northward up the Ford road to Hatcher's Run, supported by McKenzie's cavalry. Wright, Parke, and Ord, holding the intrenchments in front of Petersburg, were ordered to follow up the bombardment by an assault the next morning. Apprehensive that Lee might withdraw his troops from the intrenchments during the night, and fall upon Sheridan in heavy force, in his isolated position, Grant ordered Miles's division of the Second Corps to his support.

• April 2, 1865.

The cannonade at Petersburg was kept up until four o'clock in the morning. The assault began at daybreak. Parke, with the Ninth Corps, carried the outer line of the Confederate works on his front, but was checked at an inner line. Wright, with the Sixth Corps, supported by two divisions of Ord's command, assaulted the works on their front at about the same hour, and speedily drove every thing before him to the Boydton plank road, where he turned to the left toward Hatcher's Run, and, pressing vigorously along the rear of the Confederate intrenchments, captured several thousand men and many guns. In the mean time, Ord's other division had broken the Confederate line on Hatcher's Run, when the combined forces swung round to the right, and pushed up the Boydton road, toward Petersburg, from the southwest.

When the triumphs were known, Humphreys, holding the Union left to the westward of Hatcher's Run, advanced with the divisions of Hays and Mott, and stormed and captured a redoubt on his front. The Confederates retired, and the two divisions moved up the Boydton road, and took position on the left of the Sixth Corps. Miles, in the mean time, had joined Sheridan, by whom he was directed to push toward Petersburg. by the White Oak road, and attack the remains of the Confederate army west of Hatcher's Run, gathered at the intersection of the Claiborne road. Sheridan followed with the divisions of Bartlett and Crawford, of the Fifth. Miles carried the point designated, drove the Confederates across Hatcher's Run, and pursued them sharply to Sutherland's Station on the South Side railroad, well up toward Petersburg. When about to attack them there, Humphreys reclaimed Miles's division, when Sheridan returned to the Five Forks, and then, with the Fifth Corps, took a route across the South Side railway at Ford's and Wilson's stations, to strike the Confederates at Sutherland's, in the rear. Miles, by Humphreys's order, had, meanwhile, attacked and routed the foe, capturing two guns and six hundred men. And so it was, that on the 2d of April, the South Side railway was first struck at three points and the long coveted triumph in cutting that very important line of Lee's communications, was achieved. At about the same time the Confederate lines at the south of Petersburg were assaulted by Gibbon's division of Ord's command, and Forts Gregg and Alexander-two strong redoubts-were carried, by which the defenses of the city were much weakened, and the besieg

⚫ 1865.

544

EVACUATION OF RICHMOND ORDERED.

ing lines shortened. In this assault Gibbon lost about five hundred men. Fort Gregg was manned by two hundred and fifty Mississippians, who fought so gallantly that, when it was surrendered, only thirty effective men were left. The Confederates were now confined to the inner line, close around Petersburg. There they were strong, because more concentrated; and Longstreet, who had crossed the James from the defenses of Richmond on the north side, with some brigades, had pushed forward with Benning's, of Field's division, and joined Lee at ten o'clock that morning. So strong did Lee feel, that he ordered a charge on the besiegers, to regain some of the works on his left, carried by the Ninth Corps. Heth commanded the charging party, which consisted of his own division of A. P. Hill's corps. So heavily did the Confederates press, that the troops holding City Point, were ordered up to the support of the Ninth Corps. Heth was repulsed, and so ended the really last blow struck for the defense of Richmond by Lee's army. In that movement, General A. P. Hill, one of Lee's best officers, and who had been conspicuous throughout the war, was shot dead while reconnoitering.

Lee now perceived that he could no longer hold Petersburg or the capital, with safety to his army, then reduced, by enormous losses in the space of a few days, to about thirty-five thousand men, and he resolved to maintain his position, if possible, until night, and then retreat with the hope of making his way to Johnston by the Danville railroad. Immediately after the repulse of Heth, or at half-past ten o'clock in the morning, he telegraphed to Davis, at Richmond, saying, in substance, "My lines are broken in three places; Richmond must be evacuated this evening." It was the Sabbath. The Arch-conspirator was in St. Paul's (Episcopal) church, when the message reached him by the hand of Colonel Taylorwood. With evidences in his face of a crushing weight upon his feelings, he immediately but quietly left the church, when, for a moment, the deepest and most painful silence prevailed.' The religious services were closed; and before Dr. Minnegerode, the rector, dismissed the congregation, he gave notice that General Ewell, the commander in Richmond, desired the local forces to assemble at three o'clock in the afternoon.

to be

For hours after the churches were closed, the inhabitants of Richmond were kept in the most painful suspense. Rumor said the city was immediately evacuated. The "Government" was as silent as the Sphynx. Panic gradually took the place of judgment; and when, toward evening, wagons were seen a-loading with trunks and boxes, at the "Departments," and were driven to the station of the Danville railway, and the inhabitants were satisfied that the capital was about to be abandoned, the wildest confusion and alarm prevailed among the open and conspicuous enemies of the Republic, who felt constrained to follow the Conspirators in their flight, to avoid the expected wrath of their outraged Government. Gathering up the

9

1 A Confederate staff officer, who accompanied the "Government in its flight that night, says that, at that time, Benjamin, "Secretary of State," being a Jew, was not at church, but was "enjoying his pipe and solitude' Mallory, "Secretary of the Navy," a Roman Catholic, was at mass in St. Peter's Cathedral. Trenholm, "Sec. "Postmaster-General," was at Dr. Petre's Baptist church, and

retary of the Treasury," was sick. Reagan,

Breckinridge, "Secretary of War," was at Dr. Duncan's church.

2 An eye-witness wrote:

"At all the private houses that I passed-houses of regular Richmond familiesthe balconies were filled with ladies, evidently resolved to brave the dangers consequent on being left alone. They were mute. They looked terror-stricken, and, in many cases, powerless and mute. The crisis had come with fearful suddenness upon them, although for years it impended. "Wolf" was cried so often, when, at last it came, they could not credit the fact, or, crediting it, they were palsied. It was not resignation; it was nearer

akin to desperation. It was woeful to witness their sturdy, stolid sadness."

THE FLIGHT FROM RICHMOND.

ran

545 most valuable and portable articles within reach, they packed for a journey. they knew not whither. So great was the demand for vehicles beyond the supply, because of their having been pressed into the "Government" service, that as much as one hundred dollars in gold were given for a conveyance from a dwelling to the railway station.' The open disloyalists literally to and fro, and were at their wits' end ;" and, at eight o'clock in the evening, President Davis left the city by railway, taking with him horses and carriages, in case the road should be interrupted, declaring that he was determined not to give up the struggle, but to make other efforts to sustain the hopeless cause. At nine o'clock, the Virginia Legislature fled from the city to Columbia, in canal boats. The "Congress" had already departed, and all that remained of the "Confederate Government," at midnight, was the "War Department," represented by Major Melton. The gold of the Louisiana banks, that had been sent to Richmond for safety, and that of the Richmond banks, was sent away by the Danville road early in the day.

3

With the darkness came greater confusion, alarm, and dread; and then, when it was too late, the city authorities, and others, remembered the warnings given them by General Ewell, of the great dangers to which the city would be exposed in the event of evacuation, and the execution of an order of Congress for the destruction of cotton, tobacco, and other property which the owners could not carry away, stored in four great warehouses in Richmond, to prevent its falling into the hands of the Government. The City Council were assembled in the evening, and the only thing that they could do for the public safety, was to order the destruction of all liquors that might be accessible to lawless men, that so they might be kept from the outgoing or incoming soldiers. This was done, and, by midnight, hundreds of barrels of spirituous liquors were flowing in the gutters, where it was gathered up in vessels by some stragglers of the retreating army, and rough citizens, and produced the very calamity the authorities were trying to avert. Meanwhile, Ewell had been directed, in spite of his own remonstrances, and that of private and public citizens, to issue an order for the firing of the warehouses, at three o'clock in the morning. There was a fresh breeze from the south, and such fires might produce the destruction of the whole city. A committee of the common council went to the war office to remonstrate with whomsoever might represent the "Department," against the execution of the order. Major Melton rudely replied, in the cruel spirit evinced by

1 Mrs. Davis, the wife of the chief Conspirator, had already sold every thing which she could not conveniently carry with her, excepting the furniture of the house, and had gone, five days before, to Danville, in North Carolina, to await the coming of her husband.

2 Public warehouse at the head of the basin situated near the Petersburg railway station; Shockoe warehouse, near the center of the city, by the Gallego Flouring Mills; and the warehouses of Mayo & Dibbrell, in Cary Street, a square below Libby prison.

3 So early as the first of February, General Lee called General Ewell's attention to that order of "Congress," when the latter conferred with the Mayor and Councilmen and leading citizens, warning them of the danger of mob violence between the time of the exit of the Confederate troops and the entrance of the National troops. He urged them to obtain the passage of a law by the Virginia Legislature, for enrolling, as a local guard for defense, all men whose age exempted them from military duty, but nothing was done. My efforts were useless," Bays General Ewell, in a letter to the author, in November, 1866, giving an account of the evacuation. The Legislature thought it inhuman to make old men perform any military service (I thought some were afraid of their popularity), and they would do nothing more than authorize any persons to volunteer into an organization for city guards that chose, while the citizens were only active in trying to get others to volunteer. The result was that only three men volunteered." The Legislature of Virginia, at that time, “was far from being a Roman body of men, and many would not risk losing their seats," said an eminent Confederate officer, to the writer. VOL. III. 113

546

RICHMOND IN FLAMES.

Davis earlier in the evening, just before he left, when a similar remonstrance was offered to him, that their statement that the burning of the warehouses would endanger the city, was "a cowardly pretext on the part of the citizens, trumped up to endeavor to save their property for the Yankees." Ewell had no alternative, as a soldier, but to obey; for the law, and the order from the "War Department," were imperative. The torch was applied by somebody. At daybreak the warehouses were in flames. The city was already on fire in several places. The intoxicated Confederate soldiers, joined with many of the dangerous class of both sexes, had formed a marauding mob of fearful proportions, who broke open and pillaged stores, and committed excesses of every kind. From midnight until dawn, the city was a pande monium. Here and there stores were set on fire. The roaring mob released the prisoners from the jail and burned it. They set fire to the arsenal, tried to destroy the Tredegar Iron Works.' Early in the morning, one of the large mills on the borders of the river was set on fire; and at about the same time, the doomed warehouses burst into flames. From these the conflagration spread rapidly, for the fire department was powerless, and by the middle of the forenoon, a greater portion of the principal business part of the town was a blazing furnace.

April 8, 1865.

a

2

and

While the terrible drama was in action, between midnight and dawn, the Confederate troops were making their way across the bridges, to the south side of the James River. At about three o'clock, the magazine near the the almshouse was fired and blown up, with a concussion that shook the city to its foundations, and was heard and felt for many miles around. This was soon followed by another explosion. It was the blowing up of the Confederate ram, Virginia, below the city. At seven o'clock in the morning, the retreating troops were all across the stream, when the torch was applied to Mayo's Bridge and the railway bridges, and they were burned behind the fugitives. At about the same time, two Confederate iron-clads (Fredericksburg and Richmond) were blown up. receiving-ship, Patrick Henry, was scuttled and sunk, and a number of small vessels, lying at Rocketts, were burned. The bursting of shells in the ar‍senal when the fire reached them, added to the horrors of the scene. At noon, about seven hundred buildings in the business part of the city, including a Presbyterian church, were in ruins.

more

The

1 See page 86, volume II. "Many buildings," said General Ewell, "were fired by the mob, which I had carefully directed should be spared. Thus the arsenal was destroyed against my orders. A party of men who proceeded to burn the Tredegar Iron Works, were only deterred by General Anderson's arming his employees and threatening resistance. The small bridge on Fourteenth Street, over the canal, was burnt by incendiaries, who fired a barge above and pushed it against the bridge.- Ewell's Letter to the Author.

2 General Ewell said: "I left the city about seven in the morning, and, as yet, nothing had been fired by my orders, yet the buildings and depot near the bridge were on fire, and the flames were so close as to be dis agreeable as I rode by them."-[Letter of General Ewell to the Author.] He also mentions seeing from the hills above Manchester, the flames burst through the roof of a fire-proof mill, "on the side farthest from the large warehouses;" and he was informed that Mr. Crenshaw found his mill full of plunderers, who were about to burn it, and he saved it by giving them all the flour. Ewell was offered, by the "Ordnance Department," turpentine to mix with the tobacco, to make it burn more fiercely, but he refused to use it because it would en danger the city. After considering all the facts and circumstances, the writer is impressed with the belief, that the humane Ewell never issued the prescribed order for firing the warehouses, but that the work was done by t less scrupulous hand, connected with the "War Department." Ewell had specially advised care in keeping the fire-engines in order, in the event of a conflagration. "These," he said, "were found to be disabled: and Jones, who was connected with the "War Department," says, in his Diary, under date of April 3, "shells were placed

in all the warehouses where the tobacco was stored, to prevent the saving of any."

3 See note 8, page 531.

1