June 16, 1864---The Great Central Sanitary Fair; The Second Battle of Petersburg (Day Two)

JUNE 16, 1864:           

The Second Battle of Petersburg (Day Two):  

General P.G.T Beauregard C.S.A. was to write later of June 16^th that Petersburg "at that hour was clearly at the mercy of the Federal commander, who had all but captured it." But General Baldy Smith, the Federal commander on site, does all but capture it. Instead, he waits for reinforcements.

Seeing this, Beauregard acts fast. He orders the troops positioned between The Bermuda Hundred and Petersburg to withdraw to the Dimmock Line surrounding the city.

Had General Benjamin Butler U.S.A. marched his 30,000 man Army of The James on the heels of the suddenly vanishing-Confederate troops that had been blocking his path for weeks, Butler could have easily destroyed them and taken undefended Richmond. Had he done so, it is likely that both Petersburg and Richmond could have fallen in a single day, and the war might have ended with stunning suddenness. But Butler, like Smith, does nothing.  

By midday, Beauregard has 14,000 men holding the Dimmock Line. This is nothing in comparison to the 50,000 Federals that appear in the distance just hours after the Dimmock Line is occupied. Generals Grant and Meade had arrived. When Grant discovered that neither Smith nor Butler had moved aggressively against the paper tiger that was Petersburg, he fumed, but rather than waste time with recriminations he ordered a reconnaissance for weak points in the defensive line. 

 

Fighting broke out, and the Confederates recaptured a number of battery positions in the line because the Union troops holding the batteries fall back at the first sign of hostility. The Union’s troops are still suffering from what historian James McPherson calls “Cold Harbor Syndrome.” They are hesitant to attack the Confederates in force lest they take brutal casualties.  

President Lincoln addresses the Great Central Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His speech reads in part:

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible . . . It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the “heavens are hung in black.” Yet it continues . . . [M]ost is due to the soldier, who takes his life in his hands and goes to fight the battles of his country. In what is contributed to his comfort when he passes to and fro, and in what is contributed to him when he is sick and wounded, whether from the fair and tender hand of woman, or from any other source, is much, very much; but . . . there is still that which has as much value to him . . . that while he is absent he is yet remembered by the loved ones at home---he is not forgotten . . . [W]hen is the war to end? . . . I do not wish to name a day, or month, or a year when it is to end. I do not wish to run any risk of seeing the time come, without our being ready for the end, and for fear of disappointment, because the time had come and not the end. We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time. Speaking of the present campaign, General Grant is reported to have said, I am going through on this line if it takes all summer. This war has taken three years . . . I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more. I have never been in the habit of making predictions in regard to the war, but I am almost tempted to make one — If I were to hazard it, it is this: That Grant is this evening, with General Meade and General Hancock, of Pennsylvania, and the brave officers and soldiers with him, in a position from whence he will never be dislodged until Richmond is taken . . .