America’s Civil War: Last Ditch Rebel Stand at Petersburg

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Lee remained so long at the front that he eventually had to ride away at a gallop on his beloved Traveller, under heavy artillery fire. A shell burst so near the little band of retreating riders that the horse of one of his staff officers was killed. This caused Lee to rapidly jerk his head to one side, as he sometimes did when angry, and glare over his right shoulder toward the source of the fire as he rode along. Some shells also passed through the just-abandoned Turnbull house, setting it on fire and soon leaving only four tall chimneys standing where the headquarters had been.

As he rode through a thin inner line that was beginning to form across the open western end of the earthworks, Lee was cheered by his men as enthusiastically as he had been when he rode into the opening around the Chancellor house following Stonewall Jackson’s flank attack at Chancellorsville almost two years earlier. Before leaving the Turnbull house, Lee found time to send a telegram to the War Department in Richmond (received at 10:40 a.m.) stating, I advise that all preparations be made for leaving Richmond tonight. This dispatch was delivered to President Jefferson Davis, who was attending Sunday morning service at Saint Paul’s Church. After receiving the message, Davis got up quietly and left the church to prepare for the evacuation of Richmond that night.

The army had achieved so much for Lee that even now he must have wondered if there might not be one more miracle left. In a way there was, for otherwise the troops would never have been able to get away from Petersburg. Relief came in the form of two small earthworks under construction just beyond the south end of an open area, where it was hoped that an inner line could be established and held. Fort Gregg and Fort Baldwin (also called Battery Whitworth from its nearness to the Whitworth house) were about a quarter mile apart and mutually supporting. The works were occupied by Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Harris’ Mississippi brigade, which was a part of Maj. Gen. William Mahone’s division of Hill’s III Corps. This brigade had been one of the first reinforcement units to be thrown into the broken mule-shoe salient at Spotsylvania 10 months earlier. During that battle, Lee had been riding beside Harris at the head of this column when a solid artillery shot passed under Traveller’s raised forefeet as the rearing horse pawed in the air. Soldiers of the brigade called out: Go back, General Lee! For God’s sake, go back! Completely composed, he said, If you will promise to drive those people from our works, I will go back. The troops shouted their promise, and then made good on it with the assistance of an Alabama brigade from Mahone’s division that arrived shortly thereafter.

Harris’ brigade consisted of the battle-thinned remnants of four Mississippi regiments (the 12th, 16th, 19th and 48th), which numbered about 400 men in total–not even enough for one good-sized regiment. The brigade was augmented in the Gregg and Baldwin redoubts by about 100 North Carolinians who had been cut off from Maj. Gen. Cadmus Wilcox’s division of Hill’s corps when the left of Wilcox’s line had collapsed during the Petersburg breakthrough. Harris put just under half of those troops into Fort Gregg (214 men, including portions of the 12th and 16th Mississippi and the remnants of Brig. Gen. James Lane’s North Carolina brigade), along with two rifled cannons, one manned by the famed Washington Artillery of New Orleans and the other by the 4th Maryland Battery.

Harris took the rest of the men (about 286, including most of the 19th and 48th Mississippi) and three guns from the Washington Artillery with him to Fort Baldwin, which lay just north of Fort Gregg and had a field of fire of a mile and a quarter to cover, running all the way to the Appomattox River on the north.

Fort Gregg was a square earthwork with a water-filled ditch around three sides of its steeply sloped walls. On the north side, the building of a trench and an elevated parapet to connect with Fort Baldwin had only just begun, and this unfinished section gave a narrow access into Fort Gregg. Likewise, there was an opening in the side of Fort Baldwin to accommodate the planned connecting entrenchment. Thus, each fort depended somewhat on the sweeping cannon fire of its neighbor to prevent enemy forces from entering through its open side. Also, there was no ditch along the unfinished side of the Gregg garrison.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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