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THE DATE APRIL 2, 1865, is an important, and yet relatively unknown, day in U.S. history. On that day 140 years ago, Federal soldiers pierced the thin lines of Robert E. Lee's beleaguered Army of Northern Virginia at Petersburg.
Lee's men would have faced certain annihilation without the remarkable bravery of a small band of Confederate veterans who made a last stand.
Many will recall that Petersburg did fall and, with it, the Confederate capital of Richmond. But Lee's army escaped because of the steadfast fight by a handful of Southerners in the face of overwhelming odds at Fort Gregg. Most Americans have never heard of Fort Gregg, and yet they should because the soldiers from both armies exhibited abundant heroism on that fateful day.
In the darkness of April 1, 1865, soldiers from Brig. Gen. James Lane's North Carolina brigade and Brig. Gen. Edward Thomas' Georgia brigade stood 10 paces apart to cover Lee's depleted line southwest of Petersburg. This swampy wooded area comprised Lt. Gen. A.P. Hill's Third Corps sector. At around 10 p.m., the ground shook as Union artillery unleashed a tremendous fusillade designed to soften up the Confederate defenses. Confederate cannons roared to life in response. Ambrose Powell Hill, famous Culpeper County native and a 23-year army veteran, had less than nine hours to live.
Under the cover of shrieking shells and shot, thousands of blue-clad infantrymen moved forward to their own picket lines. These soldiers dropped to the wet, cold ground and awaited the inevitable orders to attack the Confederate position only a short distance away. Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant believed a massive infantry assault along the entire Petersburg line would quickly locate Lee's weak points. Many of Grant's men knew this attack represented their best hope to end the war in the eastern theater. These soldiers also realized what an assault against the heavily fortified Rebel works really meant--many of them would not live to see their next meal.
When the artillery barrage stopped, nervous Confederate pickets fired toward the ominous sounds coming from the Union line. Federal pickets returned the fire, but at some point an eerie stillness fell over the lines. James Lane's North Carolinians unknowingly stood directly at the apex of Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright's Sixth Corps attack.
Several hours later, a lone blast from a Vermont cannon signaled the attack. The time was 4:40 a.m., April 2. Chilled and shivering Union soldiers pushed themselves off the ground and moved toward the Confederate lines. Their predawn attack quickly shattered the North Carolina position. Exuberant Union infantryman rolled east into the Georgia flank.
Pvt. John Andrews, 14th Georgia, described the difficult scene at first light: "The whole country was blue with them as far as we could see, and I lost hope right then and there."
Fear-stricken Georgians and North Carolinians bolted out of their trench lines just ahead of the blue wave. Cpl. Joseph S. Kimbrough, 14th Georgia, recalled, "Our skirmish line commander no longer tried to keep us in the ranks, and each man constituted himself a committee of one to look out for his own safety."
Those Confederates fortunate enough to survive this initial attack streamed east toward the western edge of Petersburg. The tall earthen walls of Fort Gregg stood less than a mile from the Georgia line. Pvt. Frank Edwards, 35th Georgia, wrote, "I outran bullets, men and all and did not receive a scratch; but I lost my old shoes. I regretted this, and would have turned back, but I reflected that I had no time for shoes just then."
Edwards found a chaotic scene near the fort as officers raced about trying to rally the demoralized men. Another bastion, Fort Whitworth, sat about 600 yards north of Gregg. Both forts stood atop a ridge 2 miles west of Petersburg. Each was open on one side; therefore, one fort could not survive in battle if the other fell to the enemy.
The crescent-shaped Fort Gregg, built in the fall of 1864, faced south overlooking the Boydton Plank Road. A defensive trench that connected both forts ran from north to south. The angled walls of Gregg towered 15 feet over a rain-filled moat. The ground beyond the moat gently sloped down to the road.
Soldiers from Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Harris' Mississippi brigade soon joined the North Carolina and Georgia veterans behind the walls of Fort Gregg. These men dragged extra ammunition and weapons to their firing positions along the parapets. Two artillery gun crews added some needed firepower. Best estimates placed the Fort Gregg garrison at around 300 men. They would soon face 5,000 soldiers from six Union brigades.
Maj. Gen. Cadmus Wilcox rode into the fort to rally the men, but the nearby explosions of Federal artillery cut short his impassioned horseback speech. Wilcox told the men that they held the safety of Lee's army in their hands, and he urged them to hold to the last man. Their gift of time would allow reinforcements to reach Petersburg. Wilcox and his small staff then raced east to the relative safety of the western Petersburg defense line. Members of the garrison turned their attention to the southwest.
Some 800 yards away stood two blue battle lines stretching to the horizon. Sunlight glinted off thousands of bayonets. These men belonged to Maj. Gen. John Gib- bon's Union 24th Corps. They nervously waited for their own artillery fire to stop. This fire was so accurate and heavy that the Southern artillerists inside Fort Gregg abandoned their cannons and sought shelter in the fort's bombproof.
Two mixed brigades of Union men, commanded by Cols. Thomas O. Osborn and George B. Dandy, stood in the first line and waited for the order to attack. These men hailed from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Connecticut and New York. Their fateful order came around 1 p.m. These soldiers started toward Fort Gregg as if on parade.
The fort's defenders, side by side along the parapet, strained for a better view as thousands of enemy soldiers stepped from the wood line. As the enemy came into range, Confederate small-arms fire accompanied by canister belched forth. Gaps appeared in the blue ranks, yet they quickly filled. Frank Edwards wrote, "Just as fast as they would come up, we would shoot them down."
Through the sheer weight of numbers, the Union line sloshed into the moat and reached the walls of Fort Gregg. Many Federal soldiers pressed against the base of the thick walls because the Confederate soldiers could not see downward to fire at them. Mississippi Capt. A.K. Jones recalled, "When they got in twenty-five or thirty yards of the fort, they were safe, for we could not see them again until they appeared upon the parapet."
The Federal troops clawed and scaled the walls. One Georgian remembered the first Yank he was sure he killed. "I got ready to shoot through a port hole and as I raised my gun to shoot, a Yank stuck his face in the hole. I fired in his face and he fell." Capt. Jones described a similar recollection: "But no sooner was a head seen than it was withdrawn with a minie ball in it."
Exhausted Federal troops struggled to stand up in the frothy water of the moat. They stuck bayonets into the walls for footholds so they could clamber upward. Some soldiers climbed up the backs of their comrades to try to reach the top. Bitter hand-to-hand fighting erupted all along the parapets as blue-clad soldiers reached the top and then struggled to stay there. Members of the Confederate garrison threw hand grenades or lit artillery fuses and tossed them into the blue masses.
The 199th Pennsylvania, on the right flank, suffered the second-highest number of Union casualties for the day, with 16 killed and 65 wounded. The commander of the 100th New York died as he tried to climb the parapet on the fort's left side. The 10th Connecticut commander fell with a severe wound. This unit received the distinction of losing the most men on this day, with 10 killed and 79 wounded.
Union officers screamed for reinforcements, and Col. Harrison Fairchild ordered his 89th New York forward, followed by the 158th New York. They rushed toward the west wall of Fort Gregg. Here, the wall was vulnerable because it sloped down to the trench that connected to Fort Whitworth.
The blue infantry finally stormed across the moat and over the trench into the exposed rear of Fort Gregg. There, the commander of the 89th New York was killed, while the 158th New York lost three of their color corporals.
A second line of Union infantry entered the fray. Lt. Col. Andrew Potter maneuvered his brigade, composed of the 116th Ohio and 34th Massachusetts, to the right. The other brigade, commanded by Col. William B. Curtis, moved into the left portion of the line. This brigade comprised the 12th West Virginia, 54th Pennsylvania and 23rd Illinois. Curtis later joined other Union commanders who each argued that one of their men first planted a flag on the ramparts of Gregg. The confusion of battle simply prevented the certainty of that honor.
One thing was certain, though. Those first Federal soldiers over the parapets paid a heavy price. Sgt. James P. Ryan, the 54th Pennsylvania's color sergeant, fell dead as he planted the colors on the wall. Maj. Nathan Davis, also of the 54th Pennsylvania, received severe wounds in the charge, but he refused to leave his men. Confederate fire finally killed Davis as he struggled across the top of the wall. Lt. Joseph Caldwell, 12th West Virginia, was one of the first to rush into Fort Gregg, and he dropped dead to the ground with a bayonet wound.
A Louisiana artilleryman de-scribed the brave heroics of Pvt. Lawrence Berry: "It was then that the brave and gallant No. 4 on the gun nearest the stockade, which was double-shotted with canister, was ordered by the federals, who had by then swarmed on the parapet, not to pull the lanyard which he held, but quick as a flash the brave Berry, of the Third Company, Washington Artillery, shouted back, 'Pull and be damned.' Useless to say that all in front of that gun were swept off, and our gallant artilleryman was shot down at once, and thus the heroic Berry sold his life dearly."
The numerous reinforcements John Gibbon called on to aid the attack were a luxury the men inside Fort Gregg lacked. Wounded Confederates, with their blood staining the ground, loaded rifles and passed them to their colleagues along the walls. The Confederate artillery crews worked with precision as the walls shook with each pull of the lanyard. Against great odds, the garrison fought for over an hour and a half. The unequal balance finally tilted toward the Federals.
Angry Union soldiers finally forced open the sally-port entrance along the north side. Throngs of Northerners poured into Fort Gregg. Twenty-five more minutes of the most desperate kind of fighting ensued. Numerous Federal flags unsteadily wavered on top of the parapet as their defiant bearers received the brunt of the remaining Confederate fire.
Sgt. James Howard, 158th New York, grab-bed the flagstaff out of the dying hands of the third color bearer shot down that day. He planted the staff on the parapet. The wooden pole immediately splintered--shot in half. Howard snatched the pole stub to keep the flag up. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts.
A 14th Georgian who had previously vacated Fort Gregg reported, "I saw some five separate and distinct lines of Yankees charge the gallant fort. The slaughter was terrible, and not until the walls of the fort were scaled was the garrison silenced." Men swung rifle butts as clubs. The garrison members who ran low on ammunition hurled rocks at the invaders.
Capt. Jones counted six assault columns against Fort Gregg's walls. "When the fort was finally captured, the parapet was covered with dead men in blue. I am satisfied that the last assaulting column walked on the heads of the other columns, who were packed in the ditch like sardines in a box, for they made no halt at all, but rushed on over the parapet into the fort. Before the last assault was made, the battle flags of the enemy made almost a solid line of bunting around the fort. The noise outside was fearful, frightful and indescribable, the curses and groaning of frenzied men could be heard over and above the din of our musketry. Savage men, ravenous beasts!"
As the frenzied blue horde swarmed over the walls of Fort Gregg, Jones believed many of them were under the influence of whiskey. He reported that many exasperated Union infantrymen began shooting Confederate survivors on the spot. Blue-clad officers with cocked pistols halted this misconduct. The men of both sides were jammed into the fort so tightly, Jones wrote, that "it was impossible almost to shoot a Confederate without hitting a Federal. We lost about forty men killed in the fort after its capture, and fully that many Federals were killed by their own men."
"Our ammunition gave out," wrote 35th Georgian Frank Edwards. "I don't think there was a cartridge left. I never saw such heroism as was shown there. I saw we were gone. All our hand grenades were exhausted."
Edwards did not feel optimistic with death lying all about. "Although we had holes to shoot through we lost a great many men. There was not one among us that thought we would escape from the fort alive. I just give up. They left a few of us, and we surrendered."
Cadmus Wilcox adamantly praised the beleaguered garrison when he wrote, "The heroism displayed by the defenders of Battery Gregg has not been exaggerated by those attempting to describe it. A mere handful of men, they beat back repeatedly the overwhelming numbers assailing them on all sides."
By 3 p.m., the surviving members of the Fort Gregg garrison had dropped their weapons. Col. Curtis claimed that Capt. William A. Smiley, 12th West Virginia, took the surrender of Lt. Col. James Duncan, a Mississippian and the senior officer inside Gregg.
Gruesome carnage littered the ground inside and out. Capt. Jones, a witness to many horrific battlefields, described the view in front of the walls of Gregg: "The dead of the enemy lay literally in heaps, much thicker than they were in front of the stone fence at Fredericksburg, or in the angle at Spotsylvania Courthouse."
Maj. Gen. Gibbon said of the attack on Fort Gregg: "This assault, certainly one of the most desperate of the war, succeeded by the obstinate courage of our troops, but at a fearful cost."
Gibbon's men found the parapet and grounds inside Gregg littered with the dead, bloody bodies of 56 defenders and another 250 prisoners some 200 of who lay wounded. Gibbon's own casualty figures were simply staggering. His losses during the day, most of which occurred around the two forts, amounted to 10 officers and 112 enlisted men killed with another 27 officers and 565 men wounded. These figures totaled 714 soldiers.
Although the Fort Gregg garrison's sacrifice was great, they had accomplished their mission. These few men had delayed Grant's assault long enough for Lt. Gen. James Long-street's reinforcements to reach Petersburg and shore up Lee's lines.
The downtrodden Army of Northern Virginia escaped that night under the cover of darkness from Petersburg. This momentary re-prieve enabled Lee's grizzled veterans to fight again until the inevitable showdown and surrender one week later at another famous Virginia site: Appomattox Court House.
