Grant's Left Hook: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, May 5–June 7, 1864

By Sean Chick and Herbert M. Schiller

A history of the series of American Civil War battles fought at a town outside of Richmond, Virginia.

Robert E. Lee feared the day the Union army would return up the James River and invest the Confederate capital of Richmond. In the spring of 1864, Ulysses Grant, looking for a way to weaken Lee, was about to exploit the Confederate commander’s greatest fear and weakness. After two years of futile offensives in Virginia, the Union commander set the stage for a campaign that could decide the war.

Grant sent the 38,000-man Army of the James to Bermuda Hundred, to threaten and possibly take Richmond, or at least pin down troops that could reinforce Lee. Jefferson Davis, in desperate need of a capable commander, turned to the Confederacy’s first hero: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. Butler’s 1862 occupation of New Orleans had infuriated the South, but no one more than Beauregard, a New Orleans native.

This campaign would be personal.

In the hot weeks of May 1864, Butler and Beauregard fought a series of skirmishes and battles to decide the fate of Richmond and Lee’s army.

Historian Sean Michael Chick analyzes and explains the plans, events, and repercussions of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign in Grant’s Left Hook: The Bermuda Hundred Campaign, May 5-June 7, 1864. The book contains hundreds of photographs, new maps, and a fresh consideration of Grant’s Virginia strategy and the generalship of Butler and Beauregard. The book is also filled with anecdotes and impressions from the rank and file who wore blue and gray.

Praise for Grant’s Left Hook

“A superb installment . . . one of the best books in the ECW series (easily rating among the top handful in this reviewer’s estimation). Sean Chick’s Grant’s Left Hook is highly recommended reading.” —Civil War Books and Authors

“An excellent, very informative book about one of the least understood campaigns of the Civil War . . . also quite readable, and is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the great conflict, and particularly for those who like tramping across battlefields.” —The NYMAS Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781611214390

Book preview

Grant’s Left Hook

T

HE

B

ERMUDA

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UNDRED

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AMPAIGN

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5 – J

une

7, 1864

By Sean Michael Chick

Chris Mackowski, series editor

Chris Kolakowski, chief historian

The Emerging Civil War Series

offers compelling, easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War’s most important battles and stories.

Recipient of the Army Historical Foundation’s Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry Award for contributions to the literature on the history of the U.S. Army

Also part of the Emerging Civil War Series:

The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial of the Civil War Dead

by Meg Thompson

Bloody Autumn: The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864

by Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt

Call Out the Cadets: The Battle of New Market, May 15, 1864

by Sarh Kay Bierle

Dawn of Victory: Breakthrough at Petersburg, March 25-April 2, 1865

by Edward S. Alexander

Grant’s Last Battle: The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

by Chris Mackowski

Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-7, 1864

by Chris Mackowski

Hurricane from the Heavens: The Battle of Cold Harbor, May 26-June 5, 1864

by Daniel T. Davis and Phillip S. Greenwalt

No Turning Back: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign

by Robert M. Dunkerly, Donald C. Pfanz, and David R. Ruth

A Season of Slaughter: The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, May 8-21, 1864

by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White

Simply Murder: The Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862

by Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White

Strike Them a Blow: Battle Along the North Anna River, May 21-25, 1864

by Chris Mackowski

To the Bitter End: Appomattox, Bennett Place, and the Surrenders of the Confederacy

by Robert M. Dunkerly

Also by Sean Michael Chick:

The Battle of Petersburg, June 15-18, 1864 (University of Nebraska, 2015)

Grant’s Left Hook

T

HE

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ERMUDA

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UNDRED

C

AMPAIGN

M

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5 – J

UNE

7, 1864

By Sean Michael Chick

Savas Beatie

California

© 2021 Sean Michael Chick

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-61121-438-3

First edition, first printing

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chick, Sean Michael, 1982- author

Title: Grant’s left hook : the Bermuda Hundred Campaign,

May 5-June 7, 1864 / by Sean Michael Chick.

Description: First edition. | El Dorado Hills, California : Savas Beatie, 2019.

Series: Emerging Civil War series

Identifiers: LCCN 2019008410| ISBN 9781611214383 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781611214390 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Bermuda Hundred Region (Va.)--History, Military.

Virginia--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Campaigns. | United States--History--Civil

War, 1861-1865--Campaigns. Classification: LCC E476.57 .C47 2019

DDC 973.7/36--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019008410

Published by

Savas Beatie LLC

989 Governor Drive, Suite 102

El Dorado Hills, California 95762

Phone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.savasbeatie.com

Savas Beatie titles are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more details, please contact Special Sales, 989 Governor Drive, Suite 102, El Dorado Hills, CA 95762, or you may e-mail us at [e-mail], or visit our website at www.savasbeatie.com for additional information.

This book is dedicated to my good friend Jordan Grove, to whom I have talked about the Civil War more times than I can count.

Table of Contents

A

CKNOWLEDGMENTS

F

OREWORD

by Herbert M. Schiller, M.D.

P

ROLOGUE

C

HAPTER

O

NE

: Plans Within Plans

C

HAPTER

T

WO

: Preamble to a Campaign

C

HAPTER

T

HREE

: An Auspicious Arrival

C

HAPTER

F

OUR

: Cavalry Raids and Naval Setbacks

C

HAPTER

F

IVE

: The Fighting at Swift Creek and Chester Station

C

HAPTER

S

IX

: To the Gates of Richmond

C

HAPTER

S

EVEN

: The Battle of Drewry’s Bluff

C

HAPTER

E

IGHT

: The Battle of Ware Bottom Church

C

HAPTER

N

INE

: Stalemate

C

HAPTER

T

EN

: Ramifications

B

ERMUDA

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UNDRED

C

AMPAIGN

D

RIVING

T

OUR

by Scott Williams and Sean Michael Chick

A

PPENDIX

A: Placed in an Unworthy Position: The Command Relationship Between Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard by Jordan Grove

A

PPENDIX

B: Jefferson Davis Loses a Slave: The Flight of James and Betsy Pemberton by Sean Michael Chick

A

PPENDIX

C: An Opportunity Lost: Action at Bermuda Hundred, June 16-17, 1864 by Thomas J. Howe

A

PPENDIX

D: President Butler? The Strange Story of an Unlikely Presidential Nomination by Michael Kraemer

A

PPENDIX

E: Butler Unbottled: Benjamin Butler after the Civil War by Mark Wahlgren Summers

A

PPENDIX

F: The History of Bermuda Hundred Preservation by George L. Fickett, Jr.

O

RDER OF

B

ATTLE

S

UGGESTED

R

EADING

A

BOUT TH

E A

UTHOR

Footnotes for this volume are available at http://emergingcivilwar.com/publications/the-emerging-civil-war-series/footnotes

* * *

List of Maps

Maps by Hal Jespersen

Bermuda Hundred and Vicinity

Butler’s Advance

First Battle of Port Walthall Junction

Second Battle of Port Walthall Junction

Kautz’s Raids

Swift Creek

Chester Station

Federal Advance May 12-13, 1864

Battle of Drewry’s Bluff

Port Walthall Junction

Battle of Ware Bottom Church

Battle of Wilson’s Wharf

Bermuda Hundred Driving Tour

Federal Attack

Confederate Attack

For the Emerging Civil War Series

Theodore P. Savas, publisher

Chris Mackowski, series editor

Christopher Kolakowski, chief historian

Sarah Keeney, editorial consultant

Kristopher D. White, co-founding editor

Maps by Hal Jespersen

Design and layout by Cassandra Clark and Chris Mackowski

P

HOTO

C

REDITS

:

Autobiography of Isaac Jones Wistar (aijw); Battles & Leaders (b&l); Chesterfield Historical Society (chs); George Fickett (gf); Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (fl); Harper’s Weekly (hw); Sandy Hester (sh); History of the First Light Battery Connecticut Volunteers (flbcv); Henry Kidd, http://www.henrykiddart.com/ (hk); Library of Congress (loc); Scott Mauger (sm); National Archives (na); Photographic History of the Civil War (phcw); Puck (puck); Andrew Simoneaux (as); Scott Williams (sc); South Carolina Library (scl)

Acknowledgments

Writing is usually considered a solitary act. When I hear this, I recall the words of John Donne: No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. I would like to thank those who aided me in crafting this book. The origins of the work came, in part, from my association with Bryce Suderow, one of the best and most relentless researchers in the business. George Fickett provided me with resources and encouragement—without him, the present work would not have been completed. With Fickett’s encouragement, I dug deeper and read the definitive accounts by William Glenn Robertson and Herbert M. Schiller. I decided to craft an introductory work that combined the best of what both men had to offer plus my own insights into the campaign. I also wanted to discuss in greater detail the battle of Ware Bottom Church, an obscure battle but arguably the most important engagement of the campaign.

The best place to submit a work on Bermuda Hundred seemed publisher Savas Beatie for the Emerging Civil War Series. Robert Orrison put me in contact with Chris Mackowski, who showed early interest in this work and encouraged its completion. Daniel T. Davis also offered invaluable assistance.

Robertson, Gordon Rhea, and John Horn also encouraged and aided this work. Schiller, a true gentleman and scholar, read the manuscript, offering several invaluable insights, particularly regarding the battle of Drewry’s Bluff. He was also kind enough to write a foreword. Chesterfield County local Mark Jacobson also read the manuscript and, along with Scott Williams, Jerry Netherland, and Bryce Suderow, was instrumental in constructing a more accurate appraisal of Ware Bottom Church. While working on this book, I was able to discuss aspects of the campaign with a variety of people, including Joseph A. Rose, Robert Krick, Jr., and Hampton Newsome, each of whom offered penetrating comments.

The text itself was edited by Liz Cannon Lesher with some help from Suderow, Schiller, and Jacobson. The maps were created by Hal Jespersen, one of the best in the business. He was assisted in part by Williams, Jacobson, Netherland, Fickett, and Suderow. Robertson kindly allowed us to use some of his maps, and Mackowski allowed us to use his map of Wilson’s Wharf. I collected many of the images and added photographs provided by Scott Williams, George Fickett, Andrew Simoneaux, and Bill Halkett. Getting a photograph of Butler’s grave was quite a chase, but I was aided by Joshua Underwood, Michael D. Pierson, and Scott Mauger. Leslie Johns Ray also loaned me her camera for some last minute photography.

One of the most fun aspects was enlisting the aid of friends and colleagues to compose the wonderful appendixes collected in the back. Fickett crafted a firsthand account of his efforts at preserving historical sites associated with the campaign. I made contact with Thomas Howe, who came out of retirement to write about the last battle fought on the Bermuda Hundred lines in June 1864. Howe also included some penetrating comments from A. Wilson Greene. Jordan Grove, with whom I have had many long and humorous discussions about the war, offered his usual fair insight in the workings of generals. Michael Kraemer came out of semi-retirement to craft a first-rate essay on Benjamin Butler’s political aspirations; Kraemer enjoyed the experience so much that he is returning to the profession. Lastly, my old mentor Mark Wahlgren Summers, one of the top American historians, wrote about Butler’s political career after 1865. These works added much to my own account of a forgotten but important campaign of the Civil War. I am forever grateful to all who contributed.

I continue to hope that my work is a credit to the professors who taught me, in particular Summers, Harry S. Laver, Barbara Forrest, Joanne Pope Melish, and Jeremy Popkin. Lastly, I would like to offer my general thanks to Daniel Chick, Patricia Acker Chick, William Joseph Chick, Derek Green, and Maya Lowy, as well as Charles Nunez and the New Orleans Civil War Roundtable. In your particular way, each of you made this happen.

The Bermuda Hundred campaign today can be pieced together at a number of small parks and sites.

(sw)

Foreword

Herbert M. Schiller, M.D.

The Bermuda Hundred campaign was an integral part of the May 1864 Union offensive. For the previous three years, Federal efforts had been largely uncoordinated, but now, with the appointment of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as general in chief of the United States Army, change loomed.

One of the opening moves in the campaign was the seizure of Fort Powhatan.

(sw)

The spring offensive would coordinate on three major and two minor fronts. First, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman would leave Chattanooga and move against Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in northwest Georgia. Second, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks would leave New Orleans for Mobile, Alabama. (This campaign never took place as planned.) Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Army of the Potomac, under direct command of Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and accompanied by Grant himself, would cross the Rappahannock River in northern Virginia and attack Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Coordinated with Meade and Grant’s offensive move, on one of the two minor fronts, Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel would lead Union forces up the Shenandoah Valley, destroying agricultural areas and, more importantly, preventing Confederate reinforcements from joining Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Finally, the second minor front: Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler would ascend the James River with a force of over 30,000 men on a multi-pronged mission: to land between Richmond and Petersburg, to destroy the railroads leading into both Petersburg and Richmond, to invest Richmond from the south, and to prevent crucial reinforcements from aiding Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Butler’s army would serve as a detached left wing of the Army of the Potomac. Sean Chick’s book focuses on this last campaign: Butler’s objectives, maneuvers, and fights with the Confederates around Bermuda Hundred.

Many of the dead of the Army of the James were buried near City Point.

(sw)

The Bermuda Hundred campaign is difficult to understand for a variety of reasons. The chronology is straightforward enough and well summarized in the following text. What makes understanding the events problematic is that the involved terrain, ranging over large parts of Chesterfield County between Richmond and Petersburg, was far to the east and south of Petersburg, as well as west of both Richmond and Petersburg. Events of the campaign occurred primarily May 5 through May 20, with the gradual denouement during the following ten days. Also, multiple concurrent events overlap, and this book seeks to explain clearly those events.

Even before General Butler’s Army of the James disembarked at Bermuda Hundred on May 5, 1864, his cavalry had begun a five-day raid to the south of Petersburg, a raid which ultimately resulted in the destruction of two railroad bridges on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, a vital Southern supply line; repairs took ten days and caused disruption of the movement of men and supplies needed in Petersburg. The raid was one of the complicated movements of the campaign.

Parker’s Battery was the first portion of the Bermuda Hundred to be preserved. It was saved in 1928 and given to the National Park Service in 1944.

(sw)

As the Army of the James ascended the James River on May 5, the Army of the Potomac locked in mortal combat with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in the Wilderness, and the government in Richmond began the scramble for supporting troops to send northward. Confederate authorities in Petersburg, some twenty miles to the south of the capital, panicked as they sighted the increasing numbers in Butler’s flotilla on the James River and begged for reinforcements to save the lightly defended city. The Richmond government initially denied the requests, not appreciating the nature of the threat and desperately focused on finding manpower for Lee.

While the Confederate leadership scrambled, Butler’s force disembarked and began constructing its defensive earthworks across the neck of the Bermuda Hundred peninsula. Within a day, Butler dispatched the first of two reconnaissance details to investigate, and then destroy, the railroad connecting Richmond and Petersburg. Then, a second series of complicated moves began.

As Confederate authorities realized the growing threat to Petersburg and the south of Richmond, what had begun as a quest for reinforcements for Lee now became a frenzied search for men to defend these two vital Confederate cities. Yet another series of complications began as Southern troops begin to arrive from North Carolina, South Carolina, and eastern Tennessee over dilapidated railroads, walking along part of the Weldon railroad since the bridge had been destroyed on the Nottaway River by the earlier Union cavalry raid. Thus, the third series of complications began, and the Confederate scramble for reinforcing troops dragged on from May 4 until at least May 12.

As the search for Confederate reinforcements continued, Butler’s forces then mounted a second and larger movement, this time a somewhat better coordinated effort to destroy a major portion of the Richmond-Petersburg Railroad. On May 9 and 10, the Federals exited their entrenched lines and for two days wrecked miles of railroad and telegraph lines. At the