May 23, 1864---The Battle of The North Anna River (Day One)

MAY 23, 1864: 

The Battle of The North Anna River (Day One): 

 

The Battle of The North Anna River is, like the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, more a three day long running series of area engagements than a single concentrated battle. 

On the morning of May 23rd Union troops began to assemble at Mt. Carmel Church several hundred yards north of the North Anna River. The assemblage is chaotic, and it takes several hours to sort out unit from unit. 

General Winfield Scott Hancock’s men move eastward along Telegraph Road (present-day U.S. 1) toward the Chesterfield Bridge planning to cross the river. General Gouvernor K. Warren’s men move westward toward Jericho Mills Ford, also planning on fording the river. 

The Battle of The Chesterfield Bridge: Overlooking the Telegraph Road, the Confederates have thrown up a dirt earthwork, known to history as Henagan’s Redoubt. As Hancock approaches the Chesterfield Bridge, his troops begin to take fire from the Redoubt. Union artillery responds in force. By chance, several cannonballs strike Robert E. Lee’s temporary HQ which is nearby. Lee is miraculously uninjured even though canister shot blows holes in the wall against which he is standing. The battle at Chesterfield Bridge continues all day, until Henagan’s Redoubt is overrun by the Union. Although the Confederates flee across the bridge the Union command decides to dig in for the night just north of the crossing. 

The Battle of Jericho Mills Ford: The crossing at Jericho Mills Ford is accomplished without a shot being fired, but as the Union moves southward, it is hit hard by South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia units moving in impressively synchronous order. Warren’s line threatens to break at Jericho Mills, but, once again, Union artillery comes into play, and the troops from Dixie are forced to fall back. 

The Hog Snout Line: By evening, the Union is holding the northern bank of the North Anna River and has a beachhead on the south bank. Lee, the wise combat engineer, realizes that he cannot hold along the line. Instead, he orders his engineers to devise a five mile line of earthworks on the south side of the North Anna River. Shaped like an arrowhead, what becomes known as the “hog snout line” has its apex at Ox Ford, the only defensible river crossing. Warren’s forces at Jericho Mills Ford will run afoul of the west wing on the arrowhead, while Hancock’s forces at Chesterfield Bridge will run afoul of the right wing. Of course, the Union army could just as easily flank and avoid the Confederate army with reasonable effort, but Lee is counting on Grant to be pugnacious.

May 22, 1864---The Red River Campaign is over

MAY 22, 1864:

Robert E. Lee has one advantage over Ulysses S. Grant and it is that the smaller, more compact, Army of Northern Virginia can move more quickly than the behemoth that is The Army of The Potomac, especially on its home ground. While it has thus far been Grant who has disengaged first and moved first during every step of the Overland Campaign, Lee always discovers where he is going and manages to get there first. And so it is today, as units of the Southern army assemble along the bank of the North Anna River.

Grant, in transit, has a few moments to attend to military housekeeping, and so he issues orders officially bringing the Union’s Red River Campaign to an end. In three months of fighting the Union has accomplished precisely none of its objectives in the Campaign, the major ones being the restoration of all of Arkansas and Louisiana to the Union. A vast combined Army-Navy undertaking, the Red River Campaign has descended from an offensive to merely being offensive.

Small, ill-equipped, but fast-moving Confederate units have been able to harry the large, better-equipped Union forces all during the Campaign. As a result the Union troops have returned to their starting points, neither defeated nor victorious, but merely brought to a standstill. All in all, the Campaign has degenerated into a huge waste of materiel and lives.

Grant might be able to damn his uncertain commanders, but he is experiencing the same unyielding resistance in Virginia. Unlike all his subordinates though, Grant understands that the Civil War is a war of attrition --- engage the enemy, stay engaged, and wear them down slowly but surely with the inevitability of gravity. The cost is high, Grant admits, but the Confederacy is gobbling its seed corn to continue the fight. It is just a matter of time.

Still, Grant is aware that the Campaign in the Western Theatre is good and finally over when he reads reports of the Battles of Mansura, Louisiana (May 16) and Yellow Bayou, Texas (May 18). In both battles neither side recorded any casualties. A Civil War battle without casualties is a rare blessing indeed; but to have two consecutive battles without casualties in the same Campaign is a sign that the fight has gone out of both friend and foe. In modern parlance, they could have stayed home and phoned it in.

Reading these field reports, Grant ends the Campaign. Portions of Louisiana and Arkansas will remain in rebel hands for the balance of the war. This is regrettable, but Lieutenant General U.S. Grant knows two things: One, that victory in the East will mean victory, and two, that he will need those troops and ships to obtain that victory. The Red River Campaign is over. 

May 21, 1864---To The North Anna River; The Circassian Genocide

MAY 21, 1864: 

In Virginia, Union troops moving southward toward the North Anna River run headlong into Confederate troops engaged in a reconnaissance in force. The resulting skirmish, though not very large, alerts Robert E. Lee to the exact position of The Army of The Potomac. He maneuvers in order to block their access to the River. 

Elsewhere in the world, after decades of localized warfare, the Tsarist Empire of Russia defeats the Circassians, a Muslim ethnic group famed since antiquity as warriors. The traditional home of the Circassians is along the Black Sea coast between the Crimea and the Caucasus. Upon the signing of the formal surrender on this day, Russian forces immediately begin a brutal campaign of expulsion / genocide against Circassian civilians, who are brutally tortured, raped, murdered and mutilated in the tens of thousands within only a few weeks. There is an international outcry. Survivors flee to the Ottoman Empire, where they are treated as enemy aliens. The Tsarist government later admits to killing 400,000 Circassians and exiling 400,000 to Turkey; however, Ottoman records show that only 75,000 Circassians entered their realm. Some modern sources estimate that only 150,000 of 1.5 million Circassians survived the genocide. 

May 20, 1864---Crossing the Mattaponi River

MAY 20, 1864: 

Samuel H. Bassitt (1848-1925), a sixteen year old Ohio boy who ran off to join the army, writes home to his parents from the battlefield in Georgia. His letter reads in part: 

I am well and in the best of spirits and hope you folks are the same. Well Father we have laid still today that is to say we haven't marched any. We have had considerable skirmishing since we left Chattanooga. We drove the Rebs out of a town called Resaca but there was considerable loss on both sides. We have had skirmishes ever since with them. We are now within 60 miles of Atlanta. I tell you ole Grant is giving them fits up at Richmond, the news is that the Rebs are going to evacuate Richmond and then come down here and run us out, but I'll tell you they will have a sweet time if they undertake that game. Well Father you asked how I liked to be a soldier by now and I like it well so far. You mentioned you wanted to get a discharge for me since all soldiers under 18 was entitled to one. So you go ahead and get the papers showing I am under 18 and send them to the Provost Marshall and I can get my discharge. I must bring my scribbling to a close for now. 

In Virginia, U.S. Grant and The Army of The Potomac cross the Mattaponi River.


In Washington, D.C., President Lincoln signs into law the Bill creating the Official Records (OR) of the War of The Rebelliom, an archive of every report, order, and document generated during the war.  

May 19, 1864---The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House comes to an end

MAY 19, 1864: 

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (Day Twelve) (The Battle of Harris' Farm (Day Two)): 

 

Although Robert E. Lee can report to Richmond with complete honesty that he has repeatedly frustrated Ulysses S. Grant’s tactical goals in this Spring’s battles, Marse Robert’s conscience must be pricking him hard. 

Lee is learning the awful truth of President Lincoln’s words after Fredericksburg, that if that battle could be fought “over again, every day through a week of days . . . the army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man, the Army of The Potomac would still be a mighty host, the war would be over, the Confederacy gone.” 

For although Lee has inflicted over 20,000 casualties on The Army of The Potomac during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House and almost 18,000 during the Battle of The Wilderness immediately preceding it --- a total of almost 40,000 men rendered either dead or combat ineffective in just two weeks, a terrible toll --- The Army of The Potomac is still 85,000 strong. 

Lee’s much smaller Army of Northern Virginia began the month with 65,000 effectives; it now has 40,000 fighting men. 

And Grant has not been driven off. Yes, he disengaged in The Wilderness, and yes, he is disengaging at Spotsylvania Court House this very day, but the bitter Battle of Harris' Farm is a Union victory at the last; what’s worse is that Grant is maneuvering around Lee’s flank just as he did when he marched his men out of The Wilderness. Even as he disengages, Grant keeps up a harassing fire. 

Moving south toward Richmond, the Union army is still on the offensive. Lee has no choice but to attempt to stop Grant. He moves. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House comes to a sanguinary end.

While the recent bloody battles are tactical draws, strategically Grant is in control of the field. The Yankee and Rebel armies are like two pirouetting dancers, or perhaps two boxers in the clinches, holding on to each other and pummeling each other to gain an advantage. With every spin, Richmond, and the end of the war, comes closer. 

Despite the agony he is inflicting on individual men and units in the Federal army, Lee is well aware he cannot keep up this relentless slugfest. Eventually, and far sooner than Grant, he will run out of troops, run out of supplies, and run out of weapons. In the end he will run out of options.

Although he is still, and will forever be, lionized by the South, and with good reason, Lee has not gone to war on a large scale since Gettysburg. His actions in the last winter’s Mine Run Campaign were tentative. Robert E. Lee is no longer the Lee of Chancellorsville or even Second Manassas. Historians speculate that he may have suffered a coronary sometime in the Spring of 1863, rendering him physically weaker, less decisive, and inherently more cautious. Lee’s health problems cannot be confirmed with absolute certainty. But what he has lost for a certainty is Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart.  

While the Southern Command is still better far than most of the Northern Command, Lee is down to his second string players. At the very same moment in time that Lee is burying Jeb Stuart, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan are coming into their own as leaders of the Union armies. 

Grant will never be beloved like Lee, Sherman is viscerally different than Jackson, and Sheridan is a paler version of Stuart. But Lee is no longer facing the gout-ridden Scott, the unlucky McDowell, the timorous McClellan, the arrogant Pope, the dull Burnside or the frightened Hooker. He is not even facing Meade, the victor of Gettysburg, as senior commander. 

Grant may not be subtle. In fact, he has all the panache of a mallet. But Lincoln has found his General.