JUNE 16, 1864:
The Second Battle of Petersburg (Day Two):
General P.G.T Beauregard
C.S.A. was to write later of June 16th 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 . . .
