Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Virginia, May–October 1864 357
move downhill and “right into the town.” The honor of capturing Petersburg would
belong to black soldiers. 42
Meade demurred. Just two weeks earlier, he had told his other corps commanders
that he was reluctant to use Ferrero’s men even for routine picket duty
in front of the Union lines. That he would assent to the black division’s leading a
major assault was unimaginable. Having already told Grant his doubts about the
entire mine project, he proposed to Burnside that they submit the question of the
black troops’ role in the attack to the commander of all the Union armies. 43
Meade presented the matter as a political question, Grant told congressional
investigators that December. “General Meade said that if we put the colored troops
in front . . . and it should prove a failure, it would then be said, and very properly,
that we were shoving those people ahead to get killed because we did not care
anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front.”
A presidential election lay less than four months ahead. Grant, whose wife’s family
owned slaves, had adhered without a murmur to the Lincoln administration’s
policies of emancipation and black enlistment in the spring of 1863. Such loyalty,
besides his victories at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, helped to cement
his good relations with the president. Grant saw Meade’s point at once, and
on the afternoon of 29 July, some twelve hours before the explosion and attack,
Burnside received a message from Meade’s chief of staff: “the lieutenant general
commanding the armies . . . directs that [the attacking] columns be formed of the
white troops.” 44
Burnside had three divisions of white infantry with which to carry out this order.
The two closest to the site of the mine, led by Brig. Gen. Robert B. Potter and Brig.
Gen. Orlando D. Willcox, were worn out from weeks of digging trenches under enemy
fire. Somewhat better rested, Burnside thought, was Brig. Gen. James H. Ledlie’s division,
although it would have to undertake an overnight march in order to reach the next
day’s battlefield. “So I said, ‘It will be fair to cast lots,’” Burnside recalled the scene.
“And so they did cast lots, and General Ledlie drew the advance. He at once left my
headquarters, in a very cheerful mood. . . . [N]o time could be lost in making the necessary
arrangements, as it was then certainly 3 o’clock in the afternoon and the assault
was to be made next morning.” 45
Within a few hours of Meade’s conversation with Grant, Ferrero learned
that the white divisions of the IX Corps, and not his own men, would lead the
attack. Burnside had certainly revealed his own plans for the black division
some time before 17 July, when Ferrero mentioned “the proposed assault” in
a letter. A few weeks after the event, Burnside told a court of inquiry that he
had “instructed [Ferrero] to drill his troops” in preparation for the attack. Survivors
of the assault continued for the rest of their lives to debate the question
of the division’s readiness. Ferrero’s report, dated two days after the assault,
mentioned no special training. Captain Rogall wrote in his diary about the 27th
42 OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, pp. 126, 136 (quotation).
43 Ibid., pp. 60, 130–31, and pt. 3, pp. 187, 192.
44 Ibid., pt. 1, p. 137 (“the lieutenant”); Report of the Joint Committee, 2: 18, 111 (“General
Meade”). Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and
Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 3–5, 36–46.
45 OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 1, p. 61.