Download “The Siege of Petersburg Begins”

President Lincoln visits Grant at City Point and watches troop movements.
“The Siege of Petersburg Begins”
Gen. Lee said, “We must destroy this army of Grant’s before it gets to the James
River. If he gets there it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.
During the long bloody summer of 1864 many of the battles ended in tactically
indecisive stalemates but strategic victories for Grant as Lee failed to halt the
Union’s southward progress. Grant had taken control of the strategic initiative.
Ulysses’ plan was always to get Lee’s army into the open so the Union army could
destroy it but by the end of May 1864 Grant thought the Confederate army was no
longer capable of offensive actions and was only comfortable behind defensive
breastworks.
Now on June 15th only a few thousand Confederates stood between the Union
army and the defeat of the Confederacy. Grant’s army of 100,000 was south of the
James River and all but 3,000 of Lee’s forces were still in trenches north of the
river. Petersburg, Virginia and her Central Virginia railroad lay open to the Union
army for its taking. The roads and railroads of Petersburg were the last supply
route for Richmond and the Army of Northern Virginia.
Ulysses ordered two Corps, 15,000 troops, to advance at once and take the city.
The Corp commanders were afraid there were more Confederates in the
earthworks than reported by the scouts and it was nearing nightfall so no assault
was made. By dawn thousands of Confederate reinforcements had arrived by
railroad. Gen. Grant wanted no more bloodshed from frontal assaults. The siege
that neither side wanted was now the only thing either side could do. The failure of
his Corp commanders to make that single attack cost the Nation another ten months
of war, a fact that angered Ulysses until his death.
Both sides seemed to realize that the war was now going to end here. The
Confederates had been digging trenches and building elaborate breastworks for six
months as Grant’s troops pushed south but now the Union forces also built great
defensive fortifications. The two lines of forts ran over a hundred miles from north
of Richmond to south of Petersburg. In some places the enemy breastworks were a
mile apart but in most places the enemies faced each other over only a few hundred
feet.
The men from both sides got increasingly bored and in these areas where the
lines nearly touched Johnny Reb and Billy Yank played games. In some areas
targets were set up by one side and the marksmen in the opposite line was
challenged to hit the target. In other areas the game was deadly with each side’s
sharpshooters watching for any target of opportunity. The area between the
opposing forts became known as ‘no man’s land’. The Siege of Petersburg and her
system of breastworks is considered the precursor of the trench warfare of World
War I.
The artillery men were in their element when the armies stopped moving and
dug in. The small field pieces blazed away but soon the breastworks were too strong
to be damaged. Both side brought in bigger and bigger artillery. Grant ordered the
giant siege guns from the defenses of Washington to be added to the mix. Giant
railroad guns like the forty ton mortar, “Dictator”, blazed away at the Confederates
night and day. The ‘bomb proofs’, earth covered bunkers, got deeper and deeper
and both armies ‘hunkered down’.
Mortars of giant size fired on the Confederate
lines both day and night.
On the Union side the troops had all the supplies they needed. The rations may
not have been gourmet but no one in blue went hungry. Grant set up bakeries that
produced over 100,000 loaves of fresh bread daily for his men. Beef on the hoof was
plentiful as barge after barge delivered herds of cattle to the wharfs at City Point,
Virginia for the Union army. New uniforms, brogans (shoes), medicine, and
blankets for the upcoming winter flowed into the federal camps in amazing
numbers.
Union supplies pour in at City Point, Virginia.
The Confederate condition was completely different. The Confederate soldier
received a handful of dried corn or corn meal for his daily ration. A change of
uniform or brogans only occurred if a comrade died and he had been wearing
something better than yours. The Confederate work parties could only work for ten
to twenty minutes then had to rest. The best of the South was starving to death in
this battle of attrition.
Grant’s overall strategy was also playing a part in the Confederate soldier’s
moral. Gen. Sherman was following his orders to destroy the southern Confederate
armies and was in the process of Marching to the Sea. The letters from wives and
mothers that once said it was not too bad at home now told the soldiers from the
South how much their loved ones were suffering and pleaded to them to return
home. One thousand Confederate soldiers were slipping away each month from
Lee’s army by the Spring of 1865.