In August of 1863, Charles Aikens of
Barnard Vermont was reunified with his wife Jane after having served
in the Union Army as a Nine Month volunteer. During his enlistment,
he had traveled from Barnard to Washington, DC and then into enemy
territory in northern Virginia. Just before his term of service
expired, his regiment, the 16th Vermont, embarked on a
forced march through Northern Virginia and Maryland, toward the
battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Arriving home almost
immediately after having fought in the battle of Gettysburg, Charles
spent a few months in Vermont, then reenlisted in the army. He
reenlisted in December of 1863, and was mustered into the 3rd
Vermont Light Artillery Unit on January 1, 1864.
Charles' second journey south took the
same route his first trip had, down the Connecticut River Valley by
train, through New York City, Philadelphia and into Washington, DC,
where he stayed in an encampment for a few weeks before going deeper
into Confederate territory. The 3rd Vermont Light
Artillery went further south than the 16th did, though,
all the way to Petersburg, Virginia. Petersburg is 129 miles further
south than Fairfax, where the 16th was stationed.
Petersburg was a city of 18,000
people. It was a supply base and railroad depot for the whole
Richmond, Virginia area. Five railroads operated through a junction
in Petersburg, which made the city vitally important to Richmond, the
capitol of the Confederacy. If Union forces could occupy Petersburg
and eliminate it as a supply center for Richmond, Richmond would be
indefensible, and Lee's army would have to abandon its capitol.
Beginning in the Spring of 1864, Grant's army spent nine long months
wearing down the Confederate defenses of Petersburg, in what became
known as the Siege of Petersburg, or the Petersburg/Richmond
campaign.
Petersburg was heavily defended. The
Confederates knew that Richmond depended on open transportation
routes through Petersburg, and had dug trenches all around the city
as early as 1862. Trench warfare, to become infamous in World War I,
was introduced to military history at Petersburg. By 1865, there were
53 miles of trenches around Petersburg.
The Petersburg Campaign was part of a
new strategy of General Grant's. Before this, the goal was to defeat
Lee in an open battle. This had failed time and time again, with huge
casualties, and Grant really wanted to end the war, so he decided to
switch gears. The Petersburg Campaign is often called the “Siege of
Petersburg”, but it wasn't really a siege in the traditional sense
of the term. The Union army didn't surround Petersburg and starve the
people out. Rather, they attempted to starve Richmond by cutting off
the transportation lines to Richmond that originated in Petersburg.
At the beginning of the Petersburg
Campaign, 20,000 Confederate troops were trying to hold off 67,000
Union attackers. It is hard to know exactly how many combatants were
there at any given time. Over the course of 9 months, there troops
moved in and out and both sides' armies were in a constant state of
movement. It is safe to make the general statement that the
Confederates were consistently outnumbered and the Federals were
consistently better supplied. In addition, many of the Confederate
soldiers were either very young, very old, or had already been
wounded in another, earlier battle. It is a credit to the tenacity
and bravery of the Confederate soldiers that they were able to hold
off the Union army for an incredible nine months.
Beginning on June 15, 1864,the Union
army began a direct assault on Petersburg. 42,000 Confederate troops
held off 62,000 Federal troops, due to the powerful defensive
earthworks and trenches all around the city. On the first day, the
Union almost succeeded in capturing the city. At least one
Confederate regiment and battery surrendered before darkness began to
fall. Rather than continue in the dark, Commanding General William
Smith decided to quit fighting and continue the assault in the
morning. The Confederates regrouped in the night, and it took the
Union 291 days more to accomplish what they could have done on that
first day. That first battle, which really accomplished nothing in
that the Confederate side did not get rid of the Union attackers, and
the Union attackers did not capture the city, resulted in 11,000
casualties. After the first failed assaults on the city, the Union
left lines of artillery and soldiers in place to harass the
entrenched Confederate defenders. Charles Aikens and the rest of the
Vermont 3rd Light Infantry Battery arrived at Petersburg
on June 18th, and set up shop on the artillery line there.
In late June, the Union focused mostly
on capturing railheads and destroying the railroads around
Petersburg. Fierce fighting ensued as Confederate troops rushed in
to defend these positions. On June 23, the First Vermont had
succeeded in tearing up half a mile of railroad track when they were
attacked and overwhelmed by Confederate forces. Many of them were
taken prisoner. The Union troops succeeded at disabling several of
the railroads. They didn't have any decisively successful battles,
but they did enough to make the situation just that much more
difficult for the increasingly overstretched Confederacy.
Meanwhile, Aiken and his batterymates
were in the relative safety of the artillery line directing fire at
the Petersburg trenches. Their Commander, Captain Romeo Start, in the
“Vermont Artillery Third Battery Unit History” tells that the
unit received their “baptism of fire” after it crossed the James
River at Wilcox Landing on June 17th, on the way to
Petersburg. He says that, “from June 20 to July 30 the battery was
almost daily and nightly engaged in artillery duels with the enemy's
batteries, so that during that period it was almost one constant
artillery engagement.”
The Union was still frustrated that
although they had made some headway in shutting down the railroad
lines, they still hadn't accomplished much in their main objective of
capturing Richmond. They came up with a creative new plan. They would
tunnel underneath the Confederate lines, plant explosives beneath one
of the Confederate forts and blow it up, then use the opening to
attack the Confederates from the rear.
At first, the plan was to have a troop
of Black soldiers be the first to attack after the explosion . This
troop was trained and drilled on the procedures they would use as the
first men in. At the last minute, the Union commanders changed their
mind and used white soldiers instead, fearing political reprisals if
the attack failed. What would be known as “The Battle of the
Crater” went down on July 30. The explosion created a crater 170
feet long, 70 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The explosion itself killed
between 250 and 350 Confederate soldiers.
You would think that, having done this
much damage inside the Confederate lines, the Union would have had it
made, but no. First off, the Union soldiers were so stunned by the
huge explosion they wasted precious moments before embarking on their
assault. Secondly, the black soldiers had been trained over and over
again to go around the crater. The newly chosen division went into
the crater, becoming sitting ducks for the Confederate defenders, who
obviously surrounded the crater and fired into it from above,
slaughtering the attackers. To make matters worse, in another
unbelievable development, Union reinforcements also went down into
the Crater. The Battle of the Crater was a resounding defeat for the
Union, with a loss of 4,000 men compared to Confederate losses of
1500. Captain Start describes the role of the 3rd
Vermont Light Artillery in the battle. “On the 30th of July, 1864,
when the great mine explosion took place in front of Petersburg, the
battery was occupying Fort Morton directly opposite the mine and the
enemy's redoubts which were blown up by its explosion. The battery
was hotly engaged with the enemy's artillery from 3:50 a.m. until
10:30 a.m., during which time three hundred and ninety-five shot and
shell were thrown upon the enemy's columns, which were within easy
range. The battery, being protected by the heavy embankments of the
forts, suffered no serious loss.” The 17th Vermont
regiment did go down into the Crater, however, and suffered about 40
killed, taken prisoner, and wounded, including all 8 of its officers.
General Ambrose Burnside resigned from the army, after General Grant
put him on “extended leave” as a result of the disaster at the
Battle of the Crater.
After the Battle of the Crater,
starting in August, battles raged over control of the railroads and
roads leading from Petersburg to Richmond. From August 30 to
September 6, the Vermont 3rd Light Infantry Battery
occupied Fort Sedgewick, also known as “Fort Hell” because it was
the nearest fort to enemy lines and thus received the worst fire from
rebel artillery. Captain Start mentions “Fort Hell” in his
history, saying, “From August 30 to the 6th of September, 1864, the
battery occupied the hottest place on the entire line before and
around Petersburg, known to the artillery as "Fort Hell."
Eugene Rolfe, a member of the Vermont 3rd Light from
Tunbridge, described “Fort Hell” in his diary. “It is a 19 gun
fort and is a complete line of fire with mortar and rifle shells
bursting in and around it. Getting our pieces into position we are
soon at work and in the excitement loose all fear. Along the whole
length of our line there is a continuous roar of musketry and
artillery with at times thirty or more great mortar shells in the air
at the same instant and in spite of the danger there is a strange
liking of the life one leads here where one lives years in a single
night.” (You can read Eugene's whole diary at the Artillery
Reserve Organization website:
http://www.artilleryreserve.org/main/rolfe.pdf
)
Fort Hell
The Union won some of these battles and
the Confederacy won some, but by February of 1865, the Union had
finally managed to shut down most of the supply lines to Richmond,
after both sides suffered huge numbers of casualties.
By March, General Lee knew he had to
attack the Union forces outside Petersburg. His army was weakened by
disease, desertion and a shortage of supplies. Generals Sheridan and
Sherman were headed toward Virginia, and the Confederate forces would
be no match for their armies combined with Grant's. On March 25, Lee
ordered an attack on Fort Stedman, a spot that he thought was weakest
in the Union's lines.
With the element of surprise, at first
the Confederate attack seemed to be succeeding, but the Union
commanders realized what was happening and sent reinforcements in to
bolster Union strength, then ordered an artillery barrage, turning the
tide of the battle. The Battle of Fort Stedman was a Union victory.
The Union lost 1,000 men and the Confederates lost 3,000 and could
not replace them. This latest loss decimated an army that had been
trickling away for the prior 9 months.
On April 2, Grant again led the Army
of the Potomac in a direct attack on Petersburg. In “The Final
Battles of the Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the
Confederacy”, A. Wilson Greene describes the moments before the
battle began. “Captain Romeo H Start of the 3rd Vermont
Battery, stationed at Fort Fischer, received the fateful directive.
His signal gun would launch 14 thousand troops toward Rebel
embankments a few hundred yards distant in the misty darkness,
fortifications one Federal soldier
called 'the strongest line of works ever constructed in America'.
Moments later a now anonymous Vermonter pulled the lanyard on his gun
and a solitary boom echoed across the clammy gloom.”
As the Union forces attacked the
defensive trenches around Petersburg after the signal from the
Vermont 3rd Light Artillery, the first brigade into the
trenches was the 5th Vermont, led by Captain Charles Gould
from Windham Vermont, who was wounded multiple times in hand to hand
combat, but fought on.
Gould received the Medal of Honor for his
bravery that day. Twenty minutes after the signal shot was fired, the
Confederate line was broken and the rebels began deserting the
trenches in retreat. Lee withdrew his army from Petersburg and Union
forces entered the city. Lee also withdrew his forces from Richmond,
and by the morning of Monday, April 3, the American flag was flying
above government offices in the former Confederate Capitol.
Although Lee was down, he did not
believe he was out just yet. He is quoted as saying that by holding
on to Richmond, the Union has dictated strategy, but the loss of
Richmond allowed him to do whatever he wanted, and he would dictate
strategy from then on. Maybe so, but he surrendered to General Grant
at Appomattox Courthouse one week later. Two months after Lee's surrender, in Brattleboro, on
June 15, 1865, Charles Aikens was mustered out of the United States
Army for the last time.
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