Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Virginia, May–October 1864 369
proached the officer “with a careless lounging gait” and asked, “Isn’t there a cuss
with a black hat over here who bothers you a good deal?” “Yes he killed one of my
men this morning,” the officer replied. “Well said the sharpshooter I’ll watch for
him. He laid himself down by the loop hole & in ten minutes,” the officer wrote, “I
saw him slowly lift up[,] sight across his rifle & fire we were not troubled any more
by the man with the black hat. . . . I get four or five good shots most every day he
said as he lounged away.” 68
Not far away, Assistant Surgeon Merrill of the 22d USCI found himself in a
relatively quiet part of the line. “There is nothing stirring here,” he wrote. “We have
a tacit truce on our front—neither party disturbs the other.” From a hill behind the
Union position, Merrill had “a fair view of the rebel lines for a mile or more . . .
and we . . . can see both sides enjoying themselves during the day time. . . . There
is a melon patch between them, it is said, and both parties visit it at night. Water
melons are one of the greatest luxuries we have here now.” 69
Other men besides melon hunters crossed from one side to the other. Desertion
plagued the Army of Northern Virginia after three months of continual
fighting, a period of action that had no parallel in the war. Some dispirited Confederates
merely turned toward home; others headed for the trenches opposite,
where Union officers interrogated them and, if they took an oath and were willing
to perform civilian work for the North, sent them to Washington, D.C., or
even as far as Philadelphia. By mid-August, General Lee thought the problem
so grave that he mentioned it to the Confederate secretary of war. During the
two weeks before Lee wrote to the secretary, at least sixty-five of his soldiers
crossed to the Union lines. “Deserters came in on our Picket line the last two
nights,” wrote Capt. Edward W. Bacon of the 29th Connecticut (Colored), “&
were quite terrified when they found they had thrown themselves into the hands
of the avenging negro.” 70
Union officers learned from these deserters that Lee had dispersed his army
somewhat, detaching at least two divisions for service elsewhere while the rest
held the trenches. Seeing an opportunity, Grant decided to send the II and X
Corps to threaten Richmond. This would, he thought, cause Lee to withdraw
troops either from the Shenandoah Valley or the trenches south of the James
River to strengthen the defenses of the Confederate capital. A decision to draw
reinforcements from south of the James, Grant told Meade, might “lead to almost
the entire abandonment of Petersburg.” 71
The twelve thousand officers and men of General Hancock’s II Corps took
two days to withdraw from the trenches around Petersburg, board transport
vessels at City Point, and disembark at Deep Bottom, on the north bank of the
James. Maj. Gen. David B. Birney postponed the advance of his X Corps, a
68 L. L. Weld to My dearest Mother, 29 Aug 1864, L. L. Weld Papers, YU.
69 C. G. G. Merrill to Dear Father, 21 Aug 1864 (“There is”) and C. G. G. Merrill [no salutation],
28 Aug 1864 (“a fair view”), both in Merrill Papers.
70 OR, ser. 1, vol. 40, pt. 3, p. 693; vol. 42, pt. 2, pp. 4–5, 17, 28, 40–42, 53–54, 66, 76, 78, 84–85,
96–97, 103, 113–15, 125–28, 141–42, 1175–76. E. W. Bacon to Dear Kate, 26 Sep 1864, E. W. Bacon
Papers, AAS; J. Tracy Power, Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the
Wilderness to Appomattox (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 128, 182–83.
71 OR, ser. 1, vol. 42, pt. 2, pp. 112, 114–15, 123, 136, 141 (quotation), 167.