March 25, 1865---The First "last battle" of the Civil War: The Battle of Fort Stedman

MARCH 25, 1865

The Battle of Fort Stedman: 

The Battle of Fort Stedman was the earliest of a surprising number of battles described (erroneously) as “the last battle of the Civil War.”  That it certainly was not. But the Battle of Fort Stedman represented the beginning, and the end, of Robert E. Lee’s 1865 Spring Offensive designed to turn the course of the war. 

Mighty Fort Stedman, the Union hinge of the Confederate defensive line

Lee knew that he could not remain in the Richmond-Petersburg pocket. His men were starving and sick, ill-supplied and losing morale. Confederate troop desertions had reached a peak in January and February of the year, leaving Lee with simply not enough men to successfully defend the 40 mile long entrenchments they occupied, which now stretched from north of Richmond to south of Petersburg, below the Appomattox River. 

The lines around Petersburg, Spring 1865

Grant had not engaged Lee in very many open battles during the frozen winter, but he had continuously stretched his lines southward, forcing Lee to do the same. The anchor of Grant’s southern extremity was an emplacement called Fort Stedman. Lee knew that the Yankee and Rebel troops around this far end of the line had been quietly fraternizing since Christmas, and he knew that if he could exploit their trust and concentrate a large enough force to punch through the Union lines there he could move down the Appomattox River and link up with Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina. 

The obstacles were formidable. The Union armies had reached gargantuan proportions in March of 1865.  Men had been culled from western frontier posts and from less-active units in the Western Theatre to swell Grant’s ranks. Sherman had detached some units from his force in North Carolina to join Grant. There had been a surge in new recruits. Most Union men realized that the war was nearing its end. Wanting to qualify for a veterans’ pension, and just wanting to be on hand for the expected celebrations, many men who had previously dropped out of the war dropped back in --- there were some 200,000 Union desertions recorded during the war. Many of these men had enlisted and deserted more than once, whether because they wanted multiple signing bonuses or because they disliked their original units, or for a myriad of other reasons --- most of them were back in the ranks by late March 1865. And there were overlooked men from the Pacific Coast States and the Territories who enlisted late in the war for similar reasons. Grant had nearly 150,000 men facing Lee’s 25,000. 

This behemoth of an army was well-dressed, well-armed, well-shod and well-fed --- all the things Lee’s army was not. Only in fighting skill could a Johnny Reb of 1865 match a Billy Yank of the same time. And only in sheer grit could a Johnny Reb outmatch a Billy Yank. 

The Lincolns, staying at City Point, were jolted awake before dawn by the booming of cannons and a rush of activity at Headquarters. Mary Lincoln, who had been decidedly fluttery, was horrified to discover that she had brought her husband to the middle of a battlefield (even though the battle was ten miles away). Cannon flashes lit the dawn sky, and the crack of musket fire set the nervous First Lady on edge. She was suffering from a punishing migraine, a condition she developed after she struck her head on a rock during her suspicious carriage “accident” in July 1863. But Mary knew that “Father” was ill and had little enough energy to listen to her complaints, so she kept silent.

Ten miles away, just outside Petersburg, the Yankees were also jolted awake by Rebs screaming like banshees. The Confederates came pouring out of their trenches in the thousands. Catching their Union ‘friends” asleep in their trenches, they blasted and bayoneted their way through the first (outer) ring of Union earthworks, and captured Fort Stedman quickly. Turning the cannons of the fort against the Union trenches, the Confederates managed to blow a large gap in the Union lines. They came through, ten thousand of them. The Confederacy’s first short-term objective was achieved. 72 Federals died in the attack, 450 were wounded, and 522 were captured or missing at the end of the battle.

Once beyond the outer ring, Lee’s plan was to seize a fortress complex overlooking the inner ring and to likewise force an opening there. Beyond the inner ring, Joe Johnston’s army was only a hard gallop away.

The Confederate plan was a sound one --- except that, once through the outer ring, the men discovered that their second short-term objective, the “fortress complex,” was nothing more than a ruin of an old, long-abandoned and now useless Confederate defensive works. The Southern attack lost momentum for a few crucial minutes as confusion seeped down into the ranks from the Officer Corps. 

The delay caused by this confusion was fatal to the Confederate forces --- the Union had just enough time to call up additional troops and artillery in both the inner and outer rings, and they began firing furiously at the men trapped between the lines. 

“A metallic storm,” one Confederate called it afterward, shells “screeching and screaming like fiends,” as another described it. 

Caught in the Union crossfire, most of the Confederates who attempted the breakthrough died in that nightmarish No-Man’s Land.  

“The victims had ceased fighting, and were now struggling between imprisonment on the one hand, and death or home on the other,” said a Confederate commander who managed to survive unhurt and make it back to his own lines. Only a bare handful do. 

As the firing ended, Union troops swept onto the battlefield. “The whole field was blue with them,” recalled another soldier in gray. “I think the columns must have been twenty deep.”   

The 100^th Pennsylvania retook Fort Stedman and replaced the Confederate colors with their own. A cheer went up from the boys in blue. Almost 1,000 Confederates never heard it. They lay dead on the ground. Another thousand were taken prisoner, and nearly 3,000 were wounded and rendered hors de combat. Most of the survivors were those who never reached as far as Fort Stedman in the first place.  Of the 10,000 men who made the attack 50% were killed, wounded or captured.  

By 8:00 A.M. it was all over. Robert E. Lee lost a full quarter of The Army of Northern Virginia at Fort Stedman. The Confederate Spring Offensive was over. It lasted just under three hours. 

Lincoln described the attack as “a little rumpus up the line” in an ordinary telegram to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and added that he had “no war news.” Indeed, not long after the attack, Lincoln was out and about reviewing the troops and shaking hands. 

A Confederate prisoner who saw the President described Lincoln as, “not the least concerned, as if nothing had happened." The President’s sang-froid snapped the Rebel’s resolve, and that of his fellow prisoners:"[W]ith one accord [we] agreed that our cause was lost."            

Later that afternoon, after a formal parade, the President asked if he could visit the Petersburg front in the vicinity of Fort Stedman. General Grant was uneasy exposing the President to danger, but he acceded to his Commander-in-Chief’s request. Lincoln rode to Fort Stedman on horseback. Mary, who insisted on going along, traveled by carriage. When the slower moving conveyance lost sight of the President on the muddy roads, Mary panicked, and ordered the carriage driver to make better time. As the carriage bounced along over the muddy ruts, a particularly bad jolt lifted Mary out of her seat. She struck her still aching head on the carriage top.

As for the President, he was appalled at the destruction he saw. Blood stained banners --- his enemy’s and his own --- lay torn and trampled in the mud. Not a green living thing could be seen anywhere. The few remaining structures still standing along his route were smoldering. Bodies lay everywhere. Confederate and Union men lay side by side in the peace that death brings, having been torn to pieces in the war that troubled their lives.  The corpses of horses, their guts spilling from torn bellies, their ribs stark but bloodstained in the dirt, littered the ground. Lincoln undoubtedly gagged at the overwhelming stench of death. He occasionally lifted his hand to his eyes to shade them, and perhaps he quietly wiped away the tears that kept stinging --- Is it the gun smoke? he must have wondered.  He did not turn back, but rode the full circuit in the company of his officers and men, seeing it all. He surely regretted his earlier cavalier description of the “little rumpus up the line.” This was no rumpus. This was total war in all its horror.

When Lincoln arrived back at Headquarters he was badly shaken, but put a brave face on it. Introduced to the charming and witty wife of General Edward Ord, also named Mary, he gallantly took her arm and began walking with her --- and with Ord, U.S. Grant, and Julia Grant --- to lunch.

General and Mrs. Ord, with one of their daughters, sometime after the war

It was at this point that Mary Lincoln’s carriage pulled up with the pained, sore and no doubt distraught First Lady more than ready to get out. Seeing another woman on her husband’s arm she flew into an unaccountable rage, accused Mrs. Ord of having designs on her husband, called her “all kinds of vile names” (most of which can be easily enough imagined), and then verbally abused the President, who bore it all with resigned patience. She angrily shook off Julia Grant’s hand, and raged until Mary Ord dissolved in tears. Finally, the storm spent, she piteously complained of “a headache,” and swooned, though whether this was intentional or not, no one can say. (It was considered form for a badly-behaving Nineteenth Century woman to “get the vapors” as a convenient excuse.)

“Mrs. Lincoln is quite ill,” the President explained apologetically, and helped his wife back to their stateroom on board the U.S.S. BAT. Mary, sick and humiliated, did not emerge for several days.

What no one could possibly imagine was that Mary Lincoln’s tirade would have consequences that would affect each one of the people present, herself not least of all, consequences which still echo down the storied halls of history today.

The Presidential Box, Ford's Theatre