In the aftermath of the defeat at Reams Station of the Second Corps, which was widely regarded as the Union Army of the Potomac’s finest corps, Gen. Winfield S. Hancock was humiliated. “Hancock the Superb,” so dubbed by Gen. George B. McClellan, was proved mortal after all. Gen. John Gibbon, commander of the Second Division of the Second Corps, to which the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry was attached, was so upset with Hancock for not sending for reinforcements sooner, that he almost resigned his commission.

The Confederate infantry and cavalry units that had gone into battle that 25th of August returned to the Petersburg defenses elated. They had tasted sweet victory once again. They believed even more fervently in the rightness of his cause and in final victory, and they were confident that they could assault and take any position from the Yankees, fortified or not.

Within the ranks of the Fourteenth Connecticut, fewer men answered the call of the roll. The death of Captain William Hawley (Company K) grieved every member of the once again small regiment. Since the previous October, when there had been about 660 men present for duty, their numbers had been reduced through combat and disease, so that there were but 167 men in the fight at Reams Station. Fifty-one of these men were lost as casualties (killed-5, wounded-18, missing-28). This loss was comparable to Gettysburg the year before. The Fourteenth went into that battle with about 160 men, 66 of whom were listed as casualties (killed-10, wounded-52, missing-4).

Curiously, the men were not despondent. In fact, there was a growing understanding within the ranks that they were now engaged in the final stages of the war, the beginning of the end, we might say. The Union perimeter around Petersburg had been extended westward and encompassed the Weldon Railroad. Confederate supply trains could come only as far north as Stony Creek. Wagon trains had to carry the supplies the remainder of the way to Petersburg, a distance of thirty miles, much of it along the Boydton Plank Road.

A few days later the men would learn that Atlanta had fallen to Union forces. The same slow, encircling, strangling strategy Sherman had used was being employed at Petersburg. Over the coming weeks Federal fortifications would be extended even farther to the west and the Boydton Plank Road would become the next target for the Army of the Potomac, and for the men of the Fourteenth Connecticut.

“I immediately hunted for cover, which I was so fortunate to find in a deserted rifle-pit a short distance to the rear.”  Sgt. Henry Lydall, Company F, Fourteenth Connecticut Vol. Inf., regarding the fight at Ream’s Station, August 25, 1864.

The Weldon Railroad was the only railroad link from Petersburg to the only open Confederate port on the eastern seaboard—Wilmington, NC. In the Battle of Globe Tavern (Aug. 18-21), Lee’s troops, under Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill, tried again and again to drive the Union Fifth Corps, from the railroad near Globe Tavern. Hill’s attacks only forced Maj. Gen. G. K. Warren to draw his lines back a short distance along the railroad, but the Federals never gave up possession of the vital link. In the end, Hill was forced to admit defeat and withdraw north toward Petersburg.

The Union Second Corps, under Maj. Gen. W. S. Hancock had left the north side of the James River August 18th and had marched all the way around the Petersburg siege lines to the western end on the Union entrenchments at Globe Tavern. It was a distance of about thirty-five miles, but the roads were muddy from summer storms. The going was hard and no period for extended rest was given. The men were exhausted when they finally arrived in support of the Fifth Corps.

The Fifth Corps remained at Globe Tavern working to extend the Union trenches to secure the railroad while the Second Corps, now only two divisions strong (about 9,000 men), moved slowly south down the railroad. With Miles Division on the lead they tore up the rails and heated them to glowing red over piles of flaming ties so that the rails were unusable. But the movements of the Second Corps had not gone unnoticed. Understrength and detached from the rest of the army as they were, the two divisions of Hancock’s Corps (1st – Miles and 2nd – Gibbon) made a tempting target.

It was a great risk for Lee send a strong assault force ten miles south from the safety of the Confederate lines. He would have to strip thousands of defenders from his Petersburg defenses, but it was a risk Lee had to take. He assembled a force of eight infantry brigades and two cavalry divisions and sent them south to “punish the enemy.” (Click here for a Civil War Trust map of the Battle of Ream’s Station.)

Despite their weariness the men of the Fourteenth Connecticut spirits were high the evening of the 24th. They had reached a small depot called Ream’s Station and they had helped to destroy the railroad for a distance of about six miles. And, for the first time since their first battle at Antietam almost two years ago, all ten of the company captains were present and fit for duty.

At about 11:30 that night, Gen. Hancock received a message from Gen. Meade’s headquarters informing him that a large force of enemy infantry was marching in his direction. Hancock arranged his defensive position in the shape of a pointed horseshoe, with the open end toward the east. The north and south sides of the horseshoe were only about two hundred yards apart, with Miles’ Division protecting the north and Gibbon’s Division the south. Hancock positioned most of his artillery at the closed western end along the railroad.

The first Confederate assault came shortly after noon on August 25th, from the northeast against the western end of Hancock’s horseshoe. Federal artillery quickly stopped the attack and drove the Rebels back to the cover of the woods. A few hours later the Confederates rushed forward again, this time from the southwest, and again heavy fire from their front and sides forced them to fall back. At about 5:30, a third assault was launched, this time led personally by Gen. Henry Heth. At first, it appeared that it would end as the previous two assaults had, but just as it seemed to Gen. Miles the day would be won, one of his brigades on the northwest portion of the horseshoe panicked and started a stampede for the rear.

The words of Sgt. Charles Blatchley (Co. I, 14th CT) describe the utter confusion that followed: When at last the railroad line gave way, we were called from our line to this side to repel the charge, and facing about we countercharged over the little “V” shaped battle ground to meet the oncoming foe. In the tempest of conflict that followed, organizations almost disappeared. When near night the attempt was made to reform a part of the line and fill up a gap in what had been our original line, General Smyth (the brigade commander) called for the One Hundred and Eighth New York and the colonel responded, “I am here, General, but I have no regiment.” To the call for the Fourteenth Connecticut, perhaps ten of us answered “here.” In obedience to the order, with perhaps a score of others, we dashed into the gap, to be swept as quickly out of it by the enfilading fire which the enemy at that moment poured in from the toe of the horseshoe.

Amid the blinding flashes of a terrible thunderstorm in one of the darkest nights I think I ever saw, both sides retreated and we lost, besides a great number of men, all our artillery but one single gun that a little party, of which I was one, pulled out by hand in that driving storm. These were the first cannon that the Second Corps ever lost and it is said that General Hancock sat at the root of a tree beside the road that night, the picture of distress over the disaster.

(Excerpted from History of the Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Vol. Infantry by Charles D. Page.)

After Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s serious threat to Washington in July, Gen. U. S. Grant dispatched Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan to organize Union forces in northern Virginia and West Virginia into a fighting force that would not only keep Early at bay, but also seize and control the entire Shenandoah Valley.

About August 10th, Gen. Lee allowed word to leak out that he had sent an entire infantry corps northward to reinforce Early. Lee hoped that Grant would send more troops to reinforce Sheridan, thus moving the bulk of the fighting north and lifting the siege of Petersburg. In reality, Lee sent only one division, but Gen. Grant believed the false report, and instead of reacting the way Lee hoped he would, Grant employed the same strategy he had used at the end of July—threaten Richmond directly.

On August 9th, Col. Theodore Ellis reported the strength of the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry as 14 officers and 160 enlisted men. A few days later, Ellis was away from the regiment, and his second in command, Lt. Col. Samuel Moore, not only commanded the regiment, but was also in temporary command of the Third Brigade (Smyth), Second Division (Gibbon), of the Second Corps (Hancock). On Saturday, August 13th, under orders directly from Gen. Hancock, Moore marched the brigade to the wharves at City Point where they boarded five steamboats.

That evening the steamers cast off and turned downriver toward Newport News. Speculation was rampant as the men tried to guess where they were headed—Washington, Baltimore, or other points along the east coast were spoken of with wild expectation. But not even Lt. Col. Moore knew their destination. At midnight, Moore took an envelope from his pocket and opened it. It held orders, sealed by Gen. Hancock himself. Moore went immediately to find the captain of the vessel. He told the captain to reverse course and put in at Deep Bottom.

At dawn on Sunday, as they approached the landing at Deep Bottom, the transports came under fire from Confederate artillery nearby, but no harm was done and soon the steamers tied up. The men disembarked and set up a defensive perimeter around the landing. At about 10 a.m. Gen. Hancock arrived with the rest of the Second Corps and Lt. Col. Moore was relieved by Col. Pierce of the 108th New York. (Click here for a map – Second Battle of Deep Bottom.)

The following day the regiment was ordered to relieve a skirmish line of the Third Division. Their route lay over open ground in plain sight of the enemy, and to advance in any type of regular formation would have been suicidal. Moore divided the regiment into small squads of six to eight men each. He then sent one squad at a time running zigzag across the field to the advanced position, which they held for the remainder of the day.

The Fourteenth was also called upon for a special assignment. Federal gunboats, including the USS Agawam, which carried two one-hundred pound Parrot rifled cannon, were shelling the Confederate fortifications along New Market Heights. Confederate guns fired back and at times made it quite uncomfortable for the Union sailors. A detail of the Fourteenth, probably including the men of Company D, who carried the Sharps rifles with the Berdan alterations, was sent forward to maintain fire on one of the Rebel guns. The men did their job so well that the gun did not fire from 9:30 in the morning for the remainder of the day (probably the 16th or 17th). Years after the war a Confederate officer who had been in the fort that day met a member of the Fourteenth Connecticut. The fire of the Fourteenth’s sharpshooters had been so accurate that it prevented all efforts to load and fire the weapon.

Although the Second Battle of Deep Bottom lasted until August 20th, the Fourteenth returned to Petersburg on the 18th. They had lost one man killed, a second mortally wounded, and six others wounded. Although the fighting yielded no victory for Grant, it did force Lee to once again rob the defenses around Petersburg to stop the Union threat to Richmond north of the James, and this reduced the force that Lee was able to muster against Gen. Warren’s Fifth Corps along the Weldon Railroad southwest of Petersburg.

You might think, with the Civil War well into its third year, that some of the hard lessons the Army of the Potomac learned earlier in the war would have stuck. But you would be wrong. Lawrence J. Peter’s principle of organizational structures, known as The Peter Principle, states that people are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence, and the army was a tragic example of the principle. The command structure of the Army of the Potomac was still populated with Ineffective or incompetent officers, and as the siege of Petersburg got under way, this ineptitude would cost many soldiers in blue their lives.

Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock had been wounded July 3rd, 1863 at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge. A nail and shards of wood, possibly from his saddle, were driven deep into his upper thigh. The wound had healed slowly, and Hancock did not return to command of the Second Corps until April, 1864. The Overland Campaign had been hard on him and his men,and, as the general’s physical reserves were drained from him, the old wound became more and more of a problem. When the corps drew up before Petersburg, he could barely walk, let alone ride a horse. On June 18th, Hancock yielded command of the Second Corps to his senior division commander, Maj. Gen. David B. Birney, a political general who had the reputation of being cold, and who was not well-liked by the men in the ranks.

Early on Wednesday, June 22nd, the Union Second and Sixth Corps held a long line of breastworks south of Petersburg along the Jerusalem Plank Road (Jerusalem is now Courtland, VA). The Second Corps, under Birney, held the northern part of the line, while the Sixth, under Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright held the south, with a combined force of about 27,000 men.

The plan for the day was simple. The two corps were to work together to advance in a grand right wheel movement (like a swinging gate) to take control of the Weldon Railroad to the west and bring them up squarely against a new line of Confederate works. The north end, or pivot point, of the Second Corps line was anchored by Gen. Gibbon’s Division, which included the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. They would have the shortest distance to march. Gen. Mott’s Division formed the center of the Second Corps line and the south end, next to the Sixth Corps, was held by Gen. Barlow’s Division. (Click here for a Wikipedia map.)

When the advance started at about 8 a.m., the Second Corps began to swing right as expected, but Wright’s Sixth Corps advanced along the Globe Tavern Road. When they ran into Wilcox’s Confederates, Wright’s men dug in and Wright refused to go any farther. A gap widened between the Sixth Corps and Barlow’s Division of the Second.

Gen. William Mahone, an aggressive division commander in Lt. Gen. A. P. Hill’s Corps seized the opportunity and at about 3 p.m., launched an attack on Barlow’s exposed flank. Barlow’s flank collapsed. Fire from three sides quickly routed them and sent them falling back on Mott’s Division with Mahone’s men close behind. Mott’s men did little to stem the Confederate assault and fell back to the works they had left that morning. And after some fighting Gibbon’s Division also withdrew to the line parallel to Jerusalem Plank Road as did Wright’s Corps. The Union force had been soundly defeated by less than one third their number. Poor execution by Wright’s corps caused some to call for his dismissal.

Second Corps casualties in this miserable affair were almost 2,400 (650 killed or wounded, 1742 captured). Sixth Corps total casualties were only 150. As the fortunes of war go, the men of the Fourteenth Connecticut saw hardly any fighting. The Confederates withdrew to their entrenchments, and two days later the Federals advanced to claim all of the land they had tried to take by force.

This unfortunate episode in the history of the Second Corps brought to light several serious problems in the Army of the Potomac. I have already alluded to the problems of command. Additionally, the men were worn out from being constantly on the go since the beginning of May. A supply base on the south side of the James River had not yet been built, so food shortages continued to be a problem. It was also learned that men could not just be replaced when they fell in battle. About his own division, Gen. Gibbon reported that on May 1st he had 6,800 men fit for duty. As of June 30th, casualties were almost 6,200, among whom were 380 officers. The ranks had been filled with 4,263 replacements. His division had, both literally and figuratively, been drained of life and was virtually unfit for further duty.

I have no doubt that,had a rested and ready Army of the Potomac arrived before Petersburg, rather than a spent and exhausted one, the city would have been quickly taken. As it was, the siege that resulted from Federal failure would stretch out over nine months.