The Fatal Charge of the First Maine at Petersburg: Petersburg Video Tour

so here we are we're at the petersburg national battlefield park and we've been talking about some of the initial salts at petersburg a lot of what we've discussed uh involved the initial assaults on june 15 1864. maybe we talked a little bit about what's going on on june 17th 1864 but now we're moving on to another day the the 18th of of june 1864 and and you know in a way might mark the end we'll see if will agrees on that the end of the sort of the first offensive the initial attacks on petersburg we'll see um about that but what we're going to talk about here we've got doug allman behind the camera and i'll turn it over to will green in a second is just one of the sad affairs this happens in war there's a lot of sad affairs at war but as far as the initial attacks this one's always seemed particularly costly and sad to me so let's start that with will green thanks gary we're standing along the original road bed of the prince george courthouse road that connected the county seat of prince george county with the city of petersburg behind me or in front of me and behind the camera is an embankment that still survives of the road bed and this embankment would provide some cover for the regiment that would be involved in the assault that we're going to talk about here now as gary pointed out this is the day four of grant's initial attempt to capture petersburg he succeeds in capturing two miles of the confederate line on june 15th the confederates fall back to a second line that line is attacked on june 16th and 17th rendering that line incapable of being defended and the confederates fall back to a third line and that third line is uh sometimes referred to uh as well i'll skip that part of it because we're starting to get into too much detail there the third confederate line is going to be where we're going to finish up our walk here today now general mead understands that the clock is running out on him uh in other words uh he realizes that sooner or later the army of northern virginia is going to be heading down to petersburg and the window of opportunity of attacking the confederates when they are grossly outnumbered is quickly ending so at about four o'clock in the morning on june the 18th he orders his core his various cores the fifth core the second core and the ninth core in one division of the sixth core there's about eighty thousand federal troops located south of the appomattox river on that morning to advance and attack the second confederate line and as they go forward they realize hey this line has been abandoned where are the confederates and they look several hundred eight hundred to a thousand yards ahead of them and they see the new the raw earth of a new confederate line called the harris line named after david b harris who was general beauregard's chief engineer who laid out that line meade orders the troops to go forward that morning but they really don't make a serious advance at all one of the quotes that i think illustrates this is referring to two brigades of john gibbons division and this officer says the officers jumped up we waved our swords and gave the order to charge but our men did not stir the more i saw they were going to refuse to go the more urgent i became the men knew that they could not they could what they could and could not do they had decided that they could not take this line they had experience the whole brigade acted the same way not a man started meade would repeat his orders to attack late in the morning on june the 18th and a similar situation occurred now these federal soldiers were not cowards the officers were not cowards there was complaints about an inability to coordinate these attacks to support one another and the federal soldiers frankly by june 18th were getting a little tired of attacking fixed confederate positions by 2 30 in the afternoon mead was furious he was so frustrated that he punched the button on his military machine and nothing would happen so he sent an order to the acting commander of the second corps david b bernie and that order said i have sent a positive order to general burnside and warren to attack at all hazards with their whole force i find it useless i find it useless to a point an hour to affect cooperation and i am therefore compelled to give you the same order you have a large core powerful and numerous and i beg you will at once as soon as possible assault in a strong column the day is fast going and i wish the practicability of carrying the enemy's line settled before dark well general bernie turns to a couple of his division commanders francis barlow and john gibbon and he orders them to deploy for an assault and one of barlow's regiments was the first main heavy artillery and i think many of us understand that these heavy artillery units had been stationed in the washington defenses for a couple of years where they had seen nothing more dangerous than a dress parade but when the casualties began accumulating in grants overland campaign he called these heavy artillery units down to the army of the potomac gave them rifles and told them they are now in the infantry now the first main heavy artillery had taken terrible casualties at the battle of spotsylvania they were not rookie soldiers yet their regiment was as large as many of the brigades they still had some 950 men in their regiment and they came down this road they deployed behind this embankment in three different lines and their officer gave them their commanding officer gave them the the orders for this attack the first line they divided he divided his name was daniel chapin he divided the regiment into three battalions the first battalion was to go forward and clear out all the obstructions so that there was an open path to the confederate fort which was just several hundred yards up this hill in front of us the second battalion would follow the first and fire to suppress the confederate resistance and the third battalion then would charge across and into the confederate fort now if you read about the attacks of the first main heavy artillery you will often read accounts that say these were naive soldiers who had no combat experience and therefore had no idea what they were getting into which is poppycock these guys knew exactly what they were getting into and there's plenty of quotes uh that uh substantiate that nevertheless they agreed to go forward the bravery that it would take to make this assault would be tremendous now there were two regiments behind the first main and then there were two brigades behind them that were supposed to follow up the first main success and over on hares hill over to my right there were two brigades of gibbons division that were poised to make an assault from their position against the confederate high ground here that became known as kolkwitz salient colquits salient was simply a fortified position a salient as we all know was a projection in the line uh it was a very important projection because it sort of separated the second core from the ninth core so that they really couldn't cooperate together and it was manned by a couple of regiments of georgians from alpha colquitt's brigade along with some alabamans from uh from archibald gracie's brigade we're only talking about three or four regiments are up here and there were seven union brigades poised to make the attack but it would be the first main heavy artillery that would lead the assault and what we can do is walk in the footsteps of these brave 950 men from maine actually it wasn't 950 is about 900 because 50 lucky guys were responsible for watching the knapsacks that the other soldiers had had taken off uh so those were the fellas that were that that drew the through the best straw that day as they walk up now as we do this walk you have to bear in mind there were no trees this was a cornfield that belonged to the to the hair family so the ground cover has changed significantly but when we get through this this non-historic woods will break out into the open field and you'll see exactly what the first main heavy artillery saw and as we're making our walk as mil as will mentioned these are not green soldiers if you think about the summer of 1862 is when lincoln's going to issue his second call for volunteers that's when regiments like the 20th main and the 19th main and the 121st new york some of these regiments that we think of as excellent union regiments that join the army in the summer of 1862 by now are forming the backbone of the army the potomac that's when the first main heavy artillery joined they were actually originally the 18th main and then redesignated as heavy artillery before being sent to washington and then ultimately joining grant during the overland campaign some of these men have served in other regiments prior to joining the first main heavy artillery and as we'll mentioned they saw combat at spotsylvania courthouse so we think of these heavy artilleries uh heavy artillery regiment the first main heavy artillery they were not seeing combat for the first time like will mention and they've been in the army for as long as joshua chamberlain so just keep that in mind when you're thinking about the heavy artillery heavy artillery had seen heavy action uh at cold harbor specifically the seventh and the eighth new york heavy artillery the second connecticut heavy artillery and then those same regiments are going to see action on the 16th and 17th here at petersburg so by the time it rolls around the first main has sort of had a respite compared to the other heavy artillery regiments that have been involved since cold harbor and they're making this attack their second taste of combat but they are itching to prove that they are every bit as good soldiers as the other men in their brigade what i find interesting is that one regiment in that brigade the 11th new jersey recall that they were in their regimental history said they were not asked to participate in this fight another thing worth mentioning about the other regiments in that brigade is that some of them are towards the end of their enlistments the 115th pennsylvania is about four days away from leaving grant's army and um some of the another regiment is going to end up the 16th massachusetts is going to end their their term of enlistment in july and some of the new jersey regiments in their brigade are going to end their terms of enlistment in october so these brigades are dwindling and as as will mention the clock is ticking not only because these troops are heading to petersburg but because grant's army is going to lose men very quickly well we're still we're still moving in these three lines of uh of troops of about 300 men per line now the extension you know one of the things that i think people have a hard time understanding on battlefields is getting the scale you know we're walking along this trail and i guess your your mind starts to think well there were four guys on the trail and they're going forward here this line extended all the way from what the what is the park tour road now to over here to our right which is now a subdivision so this was a line that was about 300 yards in length uh with three different ranks moving forward again the woods were not here this was open ground but we are down in defilade i hope that the camera can pick up the fact that we are down below the crest of a hill but we are just about to get out of defilade and into range of and view of the confederates up in the strong point on the high ground here called colquitt salient and it is no accident that the veterans of the first main heavy artillery place their monument right over here because this is the point equal with equal with this uh equal with this line here here is the point where the first main begin to take their casualties and can the camera pick up the back of an interpretive sign up on top of the hill if you can see that in that direction right there that is going to be the nose of coal quit salient and as this as these 900 main boys in three long lines of almost 300 yards in length get to this point this part of the geography they start taking casualties and one of the officers said the field in front of us became a burning seething crashing hissing hell in which human courage flesh and bone were struggling with an impossibility to either succeed or to return with much hope of life we were laid out in squads and companies it beggars description and within 10 minutes time 10 minutes time 632 of the roughly 900 soldiers who made this attack were shot killed or wounded in 10 minutes which represents the largest single loss of any regiment in any civil war battle in the entire war this whole field would have been covered with the corpses and writhing wounded of these men of the first main heavy artillery confederate casualties here were unreported gracie had one or two regiments involved in the fighting here he reported one killed and 24 wounded we don't have any casualties from culkwood's brigade but they were very few as well not only were the main boys getting shot from straight ahead of us but they were getting fire from their right flank as well and they were just completely decimated so this monument is a good landmark it shows you and there's a one of the many values of monuments it it's here for a reason and the reason is this is the latitude in which the first main starts getting this slaughtered not a single main soldier made it up to the front here and as i say in 10 minutes time and about less time than we've had on this video two-thirds of these few this huge regiment were shot down did any of the other union troops go forward they didn't and again i don't want to assume that it may have anybody think that these fellows were cowards some of the regiments in support got up took a few steps forward and hit the ground so that they obeyed orders and then they then they hit the ground against confederate fire they had just seen enough and although there would be one more union attack on june 18th in front of the ninth corps this was almost the end of the first petersburg offensive and although it had captured two confederate lines and it made lots of progress they did not succeed in capturing petersburg or eliminating the army of northern virginia the army of the potomac was just not the same army on june 15th 16th 17th and 18th that it had been when it crossed the rapidan river on may 4th the flower of that army its officers and its fighting men were lying in shallow graves or back in hospitals in orange county and spotsylvania county and hanover county and the army that got here was simply exhausted they had combat fatigue and you had regiments like the first main heavy artillery that still had a lot of spunk in them but they when mead would push the button on his military machine instead of going into action like it did at wilderness or spotsylvania or even cold harbor it just simply made a whirring sound and didn't go anywhere and so the first petersburg offensive ends and the rest of the campaign for petersburg the next 288 days fly in the future let's we're going to make our way over to the monument um and as will mentioned 632 men from maine are going to lay out in this field writhing in agony some of them dead and their names are on this monument here to the first main heavy artillery and one of those names is a man named james emerson james emerson had enlisted in the army in 1861 as a member of the third main and while on the virginia peninsula had suffered severe heat stroke and epileptic seizures that sent him home and got him discharged and sent so he's back home in maine and then according to a letter in his pension record uh his wife repudiates him and refuses to see him or be involved with him whatsoever because he's come because he's come home ostensibly and then he will re-enlist in the first main heavy artillery and then will then find himself here on june 18 1864 and he will be in one of those three lines he'll be wounded six times in the fighting there his body will be taken off the field he survives he survives the fighting long enough to get back to a washington dc hospital where he will then have a couple of amputations and then ultimately succumb to his wounds on june the 30th and james emerson is buried in one of the civil war sections at arlington national cemetery and his name is here on this on this monument so indeed battlefield monuments not only talk about the place where something happened but also serve as memorials for those who fought and these are not just names on a on a bronze plaque these are real people every one of these people mortally wounded were killed in 10 minutes time on june 18th in far away petersburg virginia a place that those fellows from maine would have no idea where it was on the map two years ago three years ago all had loved ones who cared about them they had families they had futures they had hopes and they all they gave them up for whatever cause that they were fighting for and the chances are they were fighting to preserve the union out here and willing to give up their life knowing full well when they took off those knapsacks and put them on the ground and line up for this attack that many of them would never come home thank you all for watching and supporting battlefield preservation you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 17,517

Rating: 4.9885879 out of 5

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, Petersburg Civil War Tour, Maine troops Petersburg, Petersburg Tour, Petersburg Live, First Maine Petersburg, A. Wilson Greene, Will Greene, Garry Adelman, Petersburg Battlefield Tour

Id: qJ_uyQ21A-A

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021