Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

North Carolina and Virginia, 1861–1864 331
& keeping up with them in their raids which I begin to think are of very little account
. . . as far as ending the war is concerned.” 69
Throughout the rest of March, Verplanck must have found Union operations in
Tidewater Virginia equally unsatisfactory. The day after Duncan’s brigade returned
to Yorktown, the 4th, 5th, and 6th USCIs boarded transports and crossed the James
estuary to Portsmouth. From there, passenger cars took the 5th eight miles south
toward the Great Dismal Swamp to guard the railroad against an expected raid
by Confederate cavalry. “The products of this region are pine, peanuts & sweet
potatoes,” wrote Lieutenant Scroggs, who had farmed in Ohio before the war and
found little to admire in the South. “No doubt a favorite resort of musquitoes in
their season. Truly a delectable country.” The threat of a raid seemed to evaporate
once the troops arrived. On 9 March, railroad cars and transport ships bore them
back to Yorktown. 70
There, they did not disembark. Instead, the 22d USCI joined them on the transports
and all went up the York River to land at a tobacco warehouse on the opposite
shore, just above where the Mattaponi River joins the Pamunkey to form the
York. The point of the expedition was to punish Confederate sympathizers in the
region, who, General Kilpatrick claimed, had ambushed part of his cavalry during
the failed raid on Richmond ten days earlier. General Butler called it a matter of
“clearing out land pirates and other guerrillas.” Kilpatrick was to lead about eleven
hundred mounted men and six guns from Gloucester Point along the north shore
of the York River, driving before them two regiments of Confederate cavalry that
were supposed to be in the neighborhood, along with any irregulars. The infantry
from Yorktown, landing upriver, was to block the Confederate retreat. 71
The transports steamed up the York, sometimes running aground, and did not
reach the landing until well after dark. When they finally arrived, the infantry saw
“the whole horizon . . . ablaze with the camp fires of men, who at that time ought to
have been twenty-five miles below,” Assistant Surgeon Merrill wrote. Kilpatrick’s
men had moved forward before the troops from Yorktown had even arrived. Poor
communications between Kilpatrick and Wistar plagued the expedition during the
next three days, until rain and rising streams brought operations to a halt. The cavalry
managed to burn public buildings and warehouses at King and Queen Court
House and took some fifty prisoners, most of them civilians. 72
More serious than the failure of the expedition was the relaxation of discipline
that some officers saw in their men as they moved around the country in small
groups. “Kilpatrick’s men are in no sort of discipline & leave desolation wherever
they go, robbing defenseless men & women & in general are as lawless a
set of devils as they could well be,” Lieutenant Verplanck complained. In the 22d
USCI, Merrill wrote, Colonel Kiddoo “told the boys not to steal hens, chickens,
turkies, geese or anything of the sort, but if any of the above-mentioned called
them ‘damned niggers’ to knock ’em right over the head. Pretty soon up runs a
69 OR, ser. 1, 33: 170–71, 183–88, 202, 205, 207, 210, 213; Verplanck to Dear Mother, 13 Mar
1864.
70 NA M594, roll 206, 4th and 6th USCIs; Scroggs Diary, 6 (quotation), 7, and 9 Mar 1864.
71 OR, ser. 1, 33: 240–41, 662, 671 (quotation).
72 Ibid., pp. 243–44; C. G. G. Merrill to Dear Father, 13 Mar 1864, Merrill Papers.