IN THE EARLY MORNING HOURS of April 2, 1865, a collection of Vermont soldiers and Rhode Island artillerymen performed what was aptly remembered as “one of the most perilous exploits of the war.” During the Union assault at Petersburg, Va., the New Englanders captured two Confederate howitzers and, as the battle raged around them, reversed the guns and began firing at the Rebels. For their contributions in the eventual Union victory that broke the Confederate lines around Richmond, leading to Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox one week later, seven members of the battery and two Vermonters received Medals of Honor.
Representing the Ocean State in this daunting mission was Battery G of the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery. No surprise, as artillerymen from Rhode Island were regarded by many as the best in the Union Army. The nation’s smallest state would, in fact, send 10 batteries to the front during the war, all of them trained by the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery, a militia organization dating back to 1801. Battery G was mustered in in the fall of 1861, the unit an amalgamation of Yankees from the rural parts of Rhode Island, the sons of the business elite from Providence, and Irish and German immigrants.
First engaged at Yorktown, Va., in April 1862, as part of the 2nd Corps, the battery would fight at Fair Oaks on the Virginia Peninsula and in the subsequent Seven Days’ Battles. At Antietam in September 1862, its guns were heavily engaged at the
