A Journal of the American Civil War: V3-2

By Theodore P. Savas

Balanced and in-depth military coverage (all theaters, North and South) in a non-partisan format with detailed notes, offering meaty, in-depth articles, original maps, photos, columns, book reviews, and indexes.

Sumter Light Artillery – unpublished reports of Sumter Artillery from Wilderness to Petersburg – Geary’s White Star Division at Wauhatchie

• Language: English
• Publisher: Savas Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954547247

Book preview

THE SUMTER ARTILLERY

The Story of the 11th Battalion, Georgia Light Artillery During the War Between the States

James L. Speicher

¹

When Georgia joined the Confederacy on January 19, 1861, a prominent planter from Sumter County named Allen Cutts organized an artillery battery for service in the Confederate Army. An organizational meeting took place in Price’s Warehouse in Americus, Sumter County’s seat, located 50 miles southeast of Columbus and 118 miles south of Atlanta. When the original roll was called, the battery contained 150 names and included three ordained preachers and four surgeons.² While some of the men hailed from neighboring Marion and Schley Counties, the majority of the men were from Sumter County, and the unit was designated the Sumter Flying Artillery. Even though he had only a high school education, his Mexican War combat experience and natural intellect easily won Cutts the position of commander of the battery with the rank of captain.³

The Sumter Flying Artillery left Americus en route to Richmond, Virginia on July 6, 1861, and was officially mustered into Confederate service nine days later. Even though the battery was without artillery pieces, it was ordered to report to Manassas on the day of its muster. The Georgians arrived at Manassas on July 22, too late to participate in the victory of the previous day. Curiosity led many of the men to visit the battlefield, where they saw the dead being removed or buried where they had fallen. It was a sobering sight for the new soldiers.⁴

In early August, the battery received its first allotment of guns, six 6-pound howitzers which had been captured from the Federals at First Manassas. By the end of the month, the unit received two additional guns, a seventh 6-pound howitzer and a 12-pound howitzer. Captain Cutts boasted, Our battery is composed of guns captured from the enemy at the Battle of Manassas Plains on the 21 July 1861. It is an honor to have them & a privilege to use them against their former owners which I am satisfied this command will do successfully should an opportunity afford itself.⁵ By September, after the battery was bolstered by thirty new recruits from Sumter County, Cutts found himself in command of a 180-man, eight-gun battery.⁶

The artillerymen did not get an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities in the field until the 20th of December, 1861, when the Sumter Flying Artillery took part in a foraging expedition under the command of Brig. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart. Captain Cutts took half of the battery as the artillery support for the four infantry regiments and the large train of wagons which accompanied Stuart.⁷

The objective of Stuart’s forage party was Dranesville, Virginia, 15 miles southeast of Leesburg, where large stores of food had been reported. Leaving the Centerville camps at 4:00 a.m., Stuart was unaware that a Union force under Brig. Gen. E. O. C. Ord, consisting of five Pennsylvania regiments (the 1st Pennsylvania Rifles (Bucktails), and the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 12th) and Hezekiah Easton’s artillery battery, was already en route to the same destination. When Brigadier General Stuart arrived at Dranesville, he found Union troops holding Drane Hill, a strategic piece of high ground on the outskirts of Dranesville where the Georgetown Road and the Leesburg Pike intersected.⁸

Realizing the military advantage Drane Hill provided the enemy, Stuart moved his units to the south side of the high ground and deployed his men. According to Stuart, his intention was to fight a delaying action which would allow his wagon train the time needed to withdraw to safety.⁹

As with all military encounters, terrain played a major role in the deployment of Stuart’s troops. Using the Centerville Road which lead up to Drane Hill as his center of position, he placed the 1st Kentucky and the 6th South Carolina to the left of the road, and the 10th Alabama and 11th Virginia on the right. Heavy woods on both sides of the Centerville Road meant that the only area suitable for the deployment of Captain Cutts’ artillery was on the road itself, about 600 yards in front of the enemy. This deployment placed the battery in an extremely vulnerable position, exposed to the Union artillery. Cutts’ pieces opened on the enemy deployed on Drane Hill at about 1:00 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, Captain Easton’s two Union 12-pound and two 24-pound howitzers returned the fire, which played havoc among the Georgia artillerymen. So inferior was Cutts’ position that General Stuart later wrote:

…their artillery fire, which opened about fifteen minutes after ours began, had little effect upon the infantry, but played with telling effect along the road, as from its position and the straightness of the road in our rear it raked the latter with shot and shell completely. Their caissons and limbers were behind in a brick house completely protected from our shot, while our limbers and caissons were necessarily crowded and exposed.¹⁰

During the engagement, both commanders attempted to turn the left flank of his opponent without success. Two hours of fighting ended when Stuart withdrew his troops in good order after his wagons were out of danger. Cutts had to leave behind one limber that had been destroyed by a hit from one of Easton’s guns, and one damaged caisson. In addition, one of the pieces had to be helped from the field by a detachment of men from the 11th Virginia.¹¹

Stuart singled out Cutts’ Battery for special praise in his report, in part because of the large casualties incurred by the unit. Their baptism of fire cost them six men killed and 14 wounded, or 50% losses. Three of the latter were later discharged for disability. Thirty-nine battery horses had also been killed, which demonstrated the intensity of the fighting at Dranesville. Despite the losses incurred in the December foray, morale remained high. Shortly after the battle Cutts wrote Although our loss was heavy in the recent engagement we are still able to man the battery and are ready for future service. After returning to camp, the battery went into winter quarters near Centerville, Virginia. Allen Cutts, in his first engagement, lived up to his post-Manassas boast.¹²

In March of 1862, Captain Cutts received authorization to recruit three additional batteries in order to form an artillery battalion. Using the Sumter Flying Artillery as a nucleus, he sent several of his officers back to Sumter County during March and April to recruit the three new batteries. On May 22, Captain Cutts was promoted to major and four days later to lieutenant colonel in command of the newly formed 11th Battalion, Georgia Light Artillery.¹³

The batteries of the new Sumter Artillery Battalion were designated by letter and commanded by the following officers: Battery A, Capt. Hugh Madison Ross; Battery B, Capt. John V. Price; Battery C, Capt. Charles Peter Crawford; and Battery D, Capt. James Appleton Blackshear. To round out the battalion, a fifth battery was created when Company A of the 9th Georgia Infantry transferred into the artillery service on December 12, 1861 by Special Order 580. The new artillerymen were designated Battery E.¹⁴

The commander of Battery E was Capt. John Lane, the son of Brig. Gen. Joseph Lane of Mexican War fame.¹⁵ Joseph Lane was a United States senator and the vice-presidential candidate running with John C. Breckinridge against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. Born in Indiana in 1838, John Lane was admitted to the U. S. Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1857 in company with such future notables as Alonzo Cushing and George Armstrong Custer.¹⁶ Lane resigned from West Point on February 16, 1861, and received a commission as second lieutenant of artillery on March 16. Following assignments at Fort Pulaski, Georgia, and as an aide to Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith in Centerville, Virginia, he was assigned to Company A, 9th Georgia Infantry, just before it joined the artillery. Following company elections, he was promoted to captain and became commander of Lane’s Georgia Battery, which was assigned to the Reserve Artillery, commanded by Col. William Nelson Pendleton. Lane would play a prominent role in the fortunes of the men from Sumter County.¹⁷

* * *

Early 1862 saw the reorganized and revitalized Union army, now under the command of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, attempt the first major campaign to capture Richmond since Irvin McDowell’s advance ended in disaster at Bull Run in July of 1861. McClellan planned to move his massive army via transports down to the tip of the peninsula formed by the James and York rivers, and thereafter move inland and capture the Confederate capital. After finally forcing the evacuation of the Confederates from Yorktown, McClellan managed to thrust his army to the outskirts of Richmond, where he again confronted heavy field fortifications and a determined Confederate army under the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston, in one of his few offensive battles of the war, launched a confused and piecemeal series of attacks against McClellan’s Unionists on May 31 at Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. The attacks continued through most of June 1. Although the tactical results were insignificant, the battle would have a profound impact on the future course of the war. During the first day’s fighting, Johnston was severely wounded and forced to relinquish command to Gustavus Smith, who quickly proved that he was incapable of holding such a position of responsibility. The following day, President Jefferson Davis placed Gen. Robert E. Lee in command of the army. General Lee spent the next several weeks preparing his soldiers to defend Richmond from the impending onslaught of McClellan’s army.

The opening phase of the Seven Days Battles (June 25-July 1, 1862) found the Sumter Battalion as part of Brig. Gen. Pendleton’s Reserve Artillery. The battalion had moved from its winter quarters to a camp near Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond. Even though this was the battalion’s first opportunity to engage the enemy, a number of factors prevented the organization from operating at full strength. John Lane’s Battery E had been temporarily attached to Maj. John J. Garnett’s artillery division of Brig. Gen. Daniel R. Jones’ Division, Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder’s Corps.¹⁸ Captain Crawford’s Battery was not deemed ready for the field, and so it, too, was unavailable for service with the battalion. This company, Crawford later lamented, has not been trained for want of equipment.¹⁹ Consequently, the battalion operated on the Peninsula with only three (Ross, Price, and Blackshear) of its five batteries.²⁰

By June 25, McClellan had transferred his army to the south side of the swollen Chickahominy River except for Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter’s V Corps, positioned on north of the stream on the Union right. With the river separating McClellan’s army into two unequal segments, General Lee grasped the offensive and pounced on the isolated corps, bringing on a series of engagements known as The Seven Days Battles.

During the actions against the Union right (Mechanicsville on June 26 and Gaines’ Mill on the following day), the divisions of Brig. Gen. John Magruder and Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger were manning the Confederate positions south of the Chickahominy River opposite four Union corps (Edwin Sumner’s II Corps, Samuel Heintzelman’s III Corps, Erasmus Keyes’ IV Corps, and William Franklin’s VI Corps). Cutts’ three batteries were initially deployed in support of Huger on the Williamsburg Road, just over six miles from Richmond. For three days, June 26-28, Huger and Magruder maintained their positions, tying down their adversaries. After the fighting around Gaines’ Mill on June 27, McClellan ordered a general retirement of his entire army toward the James River. Keyes’ IV Corps vacated its works on the following day, with the other three corps following early on June 29. Cutts’ batteries did little during the heavy fighting north of the Chickahominy except shell Union pickets in the woods-to their front.²¹

On the 29th, elements from Huger’s Division discovered that the Union forces directly opposing them—Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman’s III Corps—had abandoned their works and were retiring toward the James River with the rest of the army. Ben Huger, believing he had an overabundance of artillery, ordered two of Cutts’ batteries, Price’s and Blackshear’s, to return to their camps near Oakwood Cemetery. The remaining battery (Ross) was attached to Brig. Gen. Ambrose R. Wright’s Brigade of Huger’s Division until July 7, but it was not further engaged.²² Of Cutts’ three batteries engaged on the peninsula, only Ross’ sustained any casualties during the fighting, and those consisted of only two men wounded.²³

While Cutts’ three batteries marked time with Huger, Captain Lane’s detached battery deployed at Mrs. Price’s farm on June 25, one mile south of New Bridge overlooking the Chickahominy on New Bridge Road. The battery suffered its first casualty of the war soon thereafter during a duel with Union artillery across the river.²⁴ In a letter to his wife on July 4, 1862, Pvt. Jesse Battle described the incident when he wrote …we lost one man…by the name of Thomas Lewis who lived near Raytown…struck by a cannon ball and tore nearly in two, killed instantly.²⁵

About 10:00 a.m. on June 27, the batteries of Captain’s Lane and Brown were ordered to move to a position near the house of Dr. Garnett, also located just over a mile south of New Bridge. From Garnett’s, the batteries tested the strength of a Union battery located 600 yards to their east near the Golding house.²⁶ Both batteries unlimbered in