Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864
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288 The Reduction of Battery Wagner
guarding the land approaches to Charleston were allowed to deteriorate.
Robert Knox Sneden, a topographical draftsman for the Third Corps who had
been captured during the Mine Run campaign, was transported to Charleston
for exchange in late November 1864. He closely examined the works at the
southern end of the railroad bridge over the Ashley River. ‘‘The red clay
earthworks were washed down to a few feet high by the recent rains,’’ he
recalled. ‘‘The corduroy roads leading to them were broken up and rails stuck
up in all directions. . . . The embrasures were all badly washed out by rain, no
platforms for guns were visible, and loose sand was everywhere.’’
∏∏
The operations around Charleston during the war involved a commitment
of forces on both sides that was modest compared with the campaigns in
Virginia, but they included relatively large amounts of guns and troops com-
pared with operations against other coastal ports. The city’s symbolic value
increased the public attention paid to these operations. As a result, few other
campaigns saw so much publicity focused on the handiwork of engineers.
The forts were the chief strength of the Confederate defense, for neither
Pemberton nor Beauregard commanded enough troops to adequately defend
the city without extensive earthworks. Despite Gillmore’s siege of Battery
Wagner, one is forced to conclude that the Confederates won the engineering
contest at Charleston in the long run. The city never was captured by siege-
craft or assault. It fell by default when Sherman’s huge field army crossed
its lines of communication in February 1865 during the march through the
Carolinas.
13 : From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth
B
y the time Battery Wagner fell, the Army of the Po-
tomac and the Army of Northern Virginia were rest-
ing quietly from the exertions of the Pennsylvania cam-
paign. Lee settled his men around Culpeper Court
House in the Piedmont, between the Rappahannock
River and the Rapidan River. Meade took position near Warrenton north of
the Rappahannock. Both armies used the Orange and Alexandria Railroad
as their line of communications, but Meade realized that this area was not
the true line of advance toward Richmond. The railroad led southwestward
from Alexandria, away from the Confederate capital. This bucolic region be-
tween Fredericksburg and the Shenandoah Valley was a strategic backwater.
Both Lee and Meade were forced into active operations because of de-
velopments in the west. Gen. Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee lost Chatta-
nooga, and Lee dispatched two divisions of Longstreet’s First Corps, leaving
but 45,000 men under his command. Lee also fell back to the south side of
the Rapidan. Meade learned of this transfer and slowly advanced to the
north bank of the Rapidan to prevent the Confederates from detaching more
men. Soon after, news of Bragg’s victory at Chickamauga arrived. Long-
street’s contingent played a large role in this crushing defeat, and the Union
Army of the Cumberland was forced to seek refuge in Chattanooga. The
news compelled Lincoln to send the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps of the Army
of the Potomac to reinforce the besieged Tennessee city, leaving Meade with
76,000 men. Lee seized the opportunity to strike at his opponent.
It began on October 8 when A. P. Hill’s corps crossed the Rapidan to flank
Meade’s position. Hill’s men shielded themselves by moving west of the
ridges and taking back roads, while pioneer detachments rebuilt several
bridges. Despite these precautions, Meade learned of the movement and
retired toward Centreville near the old Bull Run battlefields. Most of his
army crossed Broad Run along the track of the Orange and Alexandria Rail-
road on October 14. The Second Corps brought up the rear and was about to
cross when the van of Hill’s corps appeared on the scene only one and a half
miles north of Bristoe Station, a small depot that lay just west of the run. Hill
could see the tail end of a Union column east of the stream but had no idea
290 From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth
that the Second Corps was near the track to the south. He impetuously
ordered an assault on the column east of Broad Run by Maj. Gen. Henry
Heth’s division.
The resulting battle of Bristoe Station was a dismal Confederate mistake.
Only two of Heth’s brigades, totaling 4,000 men, were able to get into action.
The head of the Second Corps came up just before Heth launched his attack,
and the Federals sent skirmishers northward. They annoyed the two bri-
gades so much that the Rebel commanders conducted a right wheel to con-
front the unknown force advancing along the railroad. Two Federal brigades
of 3,000 men bore the brunt of this attack, but they were supported by three
batteries and had all the terrain advantages on their side. While the Rebels
advanced across an open, rolling landscape, the Yankees found that the rail-
road embankment was a ready-made breastwork. A ridge slope just behind
the track provided an ideal platform for the artillery, and the entire Second
Corps came up to extend the hastily formed line. Heth thought the Union
position could have been stronger only with the addition of earthworks.
His two brigades were met with a hailstorm of fire as they approached the
railroad embankment and were brought to a halt close to the blazing guns.
Some Confederates managed to push onto the track while others wrapped
around the Union right flank, which was in the air, but both attempts were
quickly repelled. The survivors retreated under the same heavy fire that had
stopped the advance, leaving more than 1,300 casualties on the field.
This ‘‘ill-judged’’ and ‘‘imprudently ordered’’ assault was entirely Hill’s
fault. He received a tongue-lashing from Lee that evening and the next
morning. The Second Corps quietly evacuated the battlefield that night and
rejoined Meade’s army at Centreville. Nothing had been accomplished ex-
cept to hasten the Army of the Potomac on its retreat. Lee retired on the
evening of October 15, wrecking the Orange and Alexandria Railroad as far
south as Rappahannock Station, where he established a defensive position.
The battle of Bristoe Station involved no earthworks, but it demonstrated the
effective use of existing terrain features. Once again a railroad embankment
came into prominence as a defensive feature, and the ridge was well utilized
by the Federal artillerymen to gain height advantage over their targets.
∞
Rappahannock Station
The pressure on Meade to do something after Bristoe Station was enor-
mous, but he had to wait while the Orange and Alexandria Railroad was
rebuilt. When that task was completed, Meade devised a plan to cross the
Rappahannock. He divided the Army of the Potomac into two wings, the
Fifth and Sixth Corps under Sedgwick and the First, Second, and Third
From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth 291
Corps under Maj. Gen. William H. French. Sedgwick was to advance from
Warrenton directly toward Rappahannock Station, some sixteen miles, early
on the morning of November 7. French was to move seventeen miles to
Kelly’s Ford, cross, and rush to Rappahannock Station to help Sedgwick.
Lee’s defensive posture along the Rappahannock River was flawed. Hill’s
corps was posted to the left of the railroad crossing, while Ewell was posi-
tioned to the right. Five miles downstream, Kelly’s Ford was the most vulner-
able point because the land on the north side of the river there was high. Lee
therefore established a fortified position some distance south of the ford.
He also established a bridgehead on the north side of the river at Rappa-
hannock Station. The bridge had been destroyed by the Federals when they
retreated early in October, and no fords were closer than Kelly’s; so the
Confederates erected a pontoon bridge 800 yards upstream from the charred
piers. Two redoubts already existed on high ground west of the railroad and
north of the river. These works had initially been built by the Confederates to
defend against an advance from the north, but the U.S. Engineer Battalion
had reworked them from September 3–22 to defend against an approach
from the south. Now Lee had to remodify them to face a northern threat
once again. One fort was 100 feet from the railroad, and the other, larger
work was 400 feet to the left of the first. A mile-long line of infantry trench
connected the two and continued east and west along the top of a low ridge,
with both ends connecting to the riverbank. The line was vulnerable on both
flanks. An attacker could use the railroad embankment as a cover to ap-
proach the smaller fort, and the infantry trench on the left wing was placed
too far on the Confederate side of the ridge crest, permitting attackers to
close in before they could be detected. This may have been a reversed Union
trench positioned on the military crest. There were no obstructions in front
of the line.
Moreover, the position was lightly held. Only Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays’s
Louisiana brigade of Ewell’s corps was in position. Under the temporary
command of Col. Davidson B. Penn while Hays was on court-martial duty,
the Louisiana Tigers were deployed in two lines. Two regiments occupied a
ridge a quarter-mile in front of the works, while the rest were thinly spread
out in the forts and the infantry trench. Penn had only two guns in each of
the two forts.
More help arrived when it became apparent that something was afoot.
Sedgwick’s 30,000 men closed in on Penn’s advanced position at 2:00 p.m.
on November 7 and easily pushed the 900 Louisianians off the ridge. The
Federals planted artillery there and began to bombard the forts. Two hours
later, Brig. Gen. Robert F. Hoke’s North Carolina brigade crossed the pon-
292 From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth
toon bridge and filled up the left wing of the position. Hays also returned and
resumed command of his brigade.
Meanwhile, French captured Kelly’s Ford with relatively little trouble. He
posted his artillery on high ground north of the river and sent one brigade,
preceded by a strong skirmish line, across the river. This small force captured
the works, secured the crossing, and enabled the engineers to lay two pon-
toon bridges. The Third Corps was across the Rappahannock by dusk, but
French could not push on to offer assistance to Sedgwick.
As it turned out, Sedgwick needed no help. He demonstrated on both
flanks of the Confederate position but made his main attack in the center, led
by Col. Peter C. Ellmaker’s brigade of Brig. Gen. David A. Russell’s division of
the Sixth Corps. The 6th Maine spearheaded the assault, supported by the
5th Wisconsin. The quarter-mile distance was open, but several natural ob-
stacles were in the way. The worst was a ditch some fourteen feet wide and
six feet deep; beyond it, a field covered with standing water, mud, stumps,
and brush had to be traversed. Several men of the U.S. Engineer Battalion
advised Sedgwick about the terrain and the defensive works they had helped
to build less than two months before. The Confederate line bent back so
much on the left that it was almost parallel to the Union line of advance, and
Hoke’s North Carolinians could not fire on the attackers due to the faulty
placement of the trench behind the ridge crest. The assault took the Rebels
by surprise when it was launched at dusk, and the 6th Maine managed to get
into the redoubts. A counterattack nearly reclaimed the works, but the rest
of Ellmaker’s brigade came up to secure the prizes.
The Confederate position collapsed. Of 2,000 defenders, only 461 es-
caped, and they set fire to the southern end of the pontoon bridge to prevent
the Yankees from pursuing. Lee lost an additional 360 men at Kelly’s Ford.
Meade’s losses were small, 42 at the ford and 419 at the station, but he
captured seven Confederate flags and four guns.
≤
The next morning, Capt. Francis Adams Donaldson stood on the parapet
of one of the captured Rebel forts. He could plainly see the open ground over
which his comrades had assaulted and noticed that the forts were not in
good shape. They ‘‘showed every sign of the battering they had received,
especially about the embrasures.’’ Lee and Ewell argued that the works at
Rappahannock Station, though flawed, were good enough to have held, but
Maj. Gen. Jubal Early disagreed. His division had supplied the garrison for
these works, and he reported them to be ‘‘very inadequate, and not judi-
ciously laid out or constructed.’’ In a sense, both assessments were correct.
There is no doubt that the fortifications were poorly planned and built, but
the garrison contributed to the defeat as well. There were too few troops and
From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth 293
too little artillery, and they were taken by surprise, even though they knew
for half the afternoon that a large force of Unionists was only a quarter-mile
away. The ground around Rappahannock Station did not lend itself to an
effective system of defense, and ultimately the blame rests on Lee for decid-
ing to hold the position. It could resist small attacks but not the massive
weight of two corps. Rappahannock Station was one of the more embarrass-
ing Confederate defeats of the war.
≥
Mine Run
Lee did not retire very far after the fall of Rappahannock Station. His
army constructed a five-mile-long defensive line, using bayonets and tin cups
in the absence of entrenching tools, between Brandy Station and Culpeper
Court House. The right of the line was anchored by Pony Mountain; Hill was
once again on the left and Ewell was on the right. But this was nothing more
than a temporary measure, for the position had no natural obstacle in front
and could easily be turned. Late on November 8, after Meade had crossed the
Rappahannock, Lee retired to a new line eighteen miles long on the south
side of the Rapidan. His right rested at Morton’s Ford, where the line was
refused four miles. The left rested at Liberty Mills, and Orange Turnpike and
Orange Plank Road ran roughly parallel to the rear of the Confederate line.
Meade spent two weeks developing a plan for the next phase of his cam-
paign. He would use fords downstream from Morton’s to gain access to the
turnpike and plank road and turn Lee’s right. Meade’s forces still outnum-
bered Lee’s, 80,000 to 50,000, and might be able to gain a decisive advan-
tage. The movement began on November 26, but the roads were muddy and
the Rapidan was flooded, making it impossible to keep to Meade’s timetable.
Moreover, Lee learned of the movement as soon as it started. He sent Ewell’s
corps, temporarily under Jubal Early, to move eastward on Orange Turnpike
while dispatching Hill along the plank road.
The initial clashes took place on November 27 several miles east of Mine
Run, as the Second Corps met Early and the Fifth Corps skirmished with Hill.
Lee ordered both columns to pull back that night to the west bank of Mine
Run and dig in. The Rebels once again were forced to use their bayonets and
even sharpened oak poles to break up the soil so it could be piled onto logs.
Meade spent November 28 scouting this fortified line. Warren recom-
mended turning the Confederate right, so Meade sent him with 18,000 men
to try. The movement began at dawn on November 29. Warren marched
eleven miles and crossed Mine Run, but it was too late in the day to attack.
Meade prepared a massive assault for the morning of November 30. He
wanted Sedgwick to hit Lee’s left with the Fifth and Sixth Corps while War-
294 From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth
ren struck the right with the Second Corps and two divisions of the Third
Corps. Warren would command 28,000 men and be responsible for the
major part of Meade’s plan. Positioned south of Orange Plank Road, his
command straddled an unfinished railroad grade, opposed mostly by Maj.
Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox’s division and Henry Heth’s division of Hill’s corps.
The Rebels worked hard to strengthen their works, using boards to move dirt
where spades were not available.
∂
The Mine Run campaign demonstrated how much Lee and his men had
come to value field fortifications. Some units dug three different lines in
three days. Lee’s staff officer, Col. Walter H. Taylor, marveled at the men’s
facility with the spade and ax. The line on the west side of Mine Run was
sited and constructed ‘‘in the course of an incredibly short time (for our men
work now like beavers),’’ he reported. Lee gave his personal attention to the
work, ‘‘directing important changes here and there.’’ The sound of chopping
could be distinctly heard in the Union camps on the night of November 29.
∑
‘‘The rapidity with which an army can construct a line of breastworks is
truly amazing,’’ wrote Capt. William J. Seymour, an aide on Harry Hays’s
brigade staff. ‘‘When trees are near at hand, they are felled in an inconceiv-
ably short space of time, the limbs stripped off, and their trunks are placed
lengthwise & on top of each other to the height of a man’s breast; the
interslices are filled with dirt—the whole forming an impenetrable barrier to
minie balls and fragments of shell. A top log is often placed on the works,
each end resting upon a block, thereby forming a crack of three or four
inches through which the men can fire and keep their heads protected by the
log.’’ All in all, Seymour was quite impressed by the Mine Run fortifications;
‘‘the works were more elaborately and substantially made than any our army
had previously constructed.’’
∏
Seymour was right. The men of Lee’s army had never built such a field-
work as this one at Mine Run. In addition to headlogs, a first for the Army of
Northern Virginia, they constructed traverses where needed. Early ordered
their construction on his part of the line to protect his men from a possible
enfilade fire where the stream curved to the rear and forced the line to curve
also. Early noted as well that the Federals occupied slightly higher ground on
his front, stimulating additional labor on the part of his men. ‘‘We at once
went to work like beavers and when the sun rose we were behind works that
could not be taken,’’ bragged Samuel D. Buck of the 13th Virginia.
π
Two segments of Lee’s Mine Run line are preserved and easily accessible,
offering insight into its design. A 200-yard segment south of modern County
Road 602, held by a portion of Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson’s division of
Ewell’s corps, has a good parapet, ditch, and trench. There are no traverses
From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth 295
Curved, closely
placed traverses
One-gun
emplacements
Intermittent trench
and ditch
N
Confederate Works at Mine Run, Segment of Line Held by
Rodes’s Division, November 30, 1863 (based on field visit, 1996)
on this segment of the line, which is located on the military crest of the
gentle slope that constitutes the creek bluff.
The other segment is more extensive and well preserved. It is three-
quarters of a mile long and on the part of the line held by Maj. Gen. Robert E.
Rodes’s division of Alabama and North Carolina troops. This segment has
thirty-one traverses and five artillery emplacements. The traverses range
from ten to twenty-five feet in length and are crammed close together, and all
are connected to the parapet. Virtually all are curved to the right, and they
are placed farther apart as one walks from left to right of this line. On the far
right, about one-third of the preserved segment has no traverses at all.
There are signs of hasty construction along the entire line. Most of the
preserved segment has a shallow ditch, but it is not continuous throughout.
The same is true of the trench. Both the ditch and the trench are irregularly
dug; at one point, the ditch curves so far from the parapet that there is a two-
296 From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth
foot-wide berm between them. The traverses are irregularly dug as well;
some are well formed, while others are unfinished or simply dug on one side
with the dirt banked to the left of the excavation. Curved traverses are
comparatively rare at other fortification sites. All of the artillery emplace-
ments are for one gun and shaped like a horseshoe. Called demilunes, they
are connected to the parapet and have natural earth as a platform.
Rodes’s line is on the military crest of the slope, about fifty yards in front
of and two feet lower than the natural crest. The slopes east and west of Mine
Run are irregular, and the terrain is generally level but cut up by numerous
streams that, through erosion, have formed low hills and ridges. The ground
appears easy to dig.
∫
The Rebels placed abatis in front of their line wherever possible, but Mine
Run itself was the chief obstacle for Meade’s men. It was deeper and larger in
1863 than it is today; some observers estimated it was fifteen feet wide.
Several reports indicated that the Confederates constructed small dams to
increase the depth to five feet in places, and more than one Federal later
reported seeing sharpened stakes, some under water, in the stream.
Ω
The Confederates changed an obscure land formation into one of the
strongest defensive positions of the war. Warren’s Second Corps moved into
position 300 yards from the Rebels on the morning of November 30. Sgt.
George D. Bowen of the 12th New Jersey gazed across the landscape at dawn
and saw a deep railroad cut in front and Confederate artillery sited to fire
down its length. He could even see the headlogs on top of the parapet
through field glasses. Bowen decided it was useless to attack and promptly
made out his will. A member of the 1st Minnesota thought the planned attack
was ‘‘ ‘a damned sight worse than Fredericksburg’ ’’ and vowed to go as far as
he could, ‘‘ ‘but we can’t get more than two-thirds of the way up the hill.’ ’’
∞≠
Charles A. Upson of the 14th Connecticut endured an anxious morning as
he contemplated the assault. He thought the compact lines of the Second
Corps were beautiful.
It was a splendid sight, . . . stretched a mile in length & one line behind the
other, bayonets glistening in the sun, waiting anxiously for the word—
‘‘Forward, double quick.’’ But still, beneath those blue jackets was many a
fluttering heart, and although every man would obey orders, still when
they looked on those lines of rifle pits and breastworks as far as the eye
could reach, which it seemed impossible to take, their cheeks blanched, I
know I felt my heart beat as audibly as the ticking of a clock, and the color
came and went on my cheek. I looked on the sun[,] on the beautiful land
around me as I thought for the last time.
From Bristoe Station to the Fall of Plymouth 297
Upson wanted to cry but thought his comrades would consider him cow-
ardly. Instead, he quietly resolved to kill ‘‘one rebel at least before I bit
the dust.’’
∞∞
M. R. Johnson of the 15th Massachusetts in the Second Corps remem-
bered that the men were too experienced to have any doubts about what
they were up against. ‘‘To a soldier who has seen two and a half years of
active service engineering becomes a study, and the most of us knew that
when our line should reach a certain point it would melt away like snow.’’
Third Corps brigade leader Robert McAllister scanned the Confederate posi-
tion that morning and believed his men could take it, but he would lose at
least half of them in a few minutes. He called the Confederate line a ‘‘worth-
less prize.’’ With Rebel soldiers standing on their works and taunting the
Yankees to come on, many Federals ‘‘marked their names on slips of paper
and pinned them to their blouses, should anyone survive to deliver the
message to their families,’’ according to John Haley of the 17th Maine. This
practice seems to have been most common among those Second and Third
Corps troops slated to make Warren’s attack on the Confederate right, but
men in the 118th Pennsylvania in the Fifth Corps, opposite the Confederate
left, also labeled themselves. One officer of the regiment ‘‘took a fools cap
sheet and in bold characters gave his name & address, ending with ‘was this
day mustered out the service, Nov. 30th, 1863.’ He placed this length wise
over his breast, pinning it fast and buttoning his coat over it.’’ Francis Adams
Donaldson wrote a more modest but equally sardonic message, ‘‘a few lines
to the effect that I was killed in this impending assault and asked the finder
of my body to kindly send this paper to my friends.’’
∞≤
Fortunately for these nervous soldiers, Warren hesitated to order the
assault. He was up early and scouted the Confederate line. Perhaps no
other corps commander in Meade’s army was as well prepared to assess the
strength of these works. Having graduated second in the West Point class of
1850, he had served in the topographical engineers. Warren’s role in laying
out Hooker’s fortified bridgehead at Chancellorsville has already been noted,
and he had also been Meade’s chief engineer at Gettysburg.
∞≥
Warren clearly saw the situation in the same light as his men and post-
poned the attack, which was scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Fifty minutes later, his
dispatch regarding this development finally reached Meade. The army com-
mander flew into a rage, angry that his massive assault had been derailed
and not knowing just how grim were the prospects. He also fumed that the
young Warren, who had been a member of his staff only a few months
before, was commanding the largest portion of his army and he was essen-
tially at his mercy. Knowing that Sedgwick’s attack would be worse than