208 The American Civil War
affair I have witnessed in the war.' There
would be no other chance to go straight at
Petersburg until the war's final week. For
Grant, it was back to striking westward
toward the railroads.
The struggle for the railroads
Ten days after the fight for the Crater,
another gigantic explosion rocked the
region. In the war's most dramatic incident
of espionage and sabotage, Confederate
agent John Maxwell blew up a time bomb
on a barge full of explosives at Grant's
headquarters complex at City Point, a few
miles below Petersburg. The result, a colonel
wrote to his wife, was 'terrible - awful -
terrific.' The blast and secondary explosions
killed 50 Federals, destroyed several
structures, and did millions of dollars'
worth of damage. The North's seemingly
bottomless industrial capacity easily replaced
the losses, but Southerners had occasion
to cheer a daring and dramatic act.
Supplies and their transportation took
center stage through the summer and fall of
- Railroads and wagon roads leading
into Petersburg from the west and southwest
sustained Lee's army around the city and
also supplied sustenance for both troops
and civilians around the national capital,
30 miles (48km) northward. Lee had to fight
to keep those lines open. Grant welcomed
the chance to close them, and to meet Lee's
dwindling strength in the open, away from
the powerful fortifications that neutralized
the armies' differences in strength.
In mid-August, Grant moved again toward
the Weldon Railroad. This time he stuck
there. On the 18th, Warren's Federal V Corps
effected a lodgment near Globe Tavern on
the railroad. Two Confederate brigades
hurried to the site and routed an isolated
Union detachment, but did not have nearly
enough strength to drive Warren away. The
next day a further Confederate effort, this
time in more strength, again achieved
localized success. A Virginian fighting near
Globe Tavern called it 'the warmest place'
General Gouverneur K. Warren led his Federal V Corps
in several sweeps south and west from Petersburg,
steadily extending the lines and stretching Lee's
Confederates toward breaking point. (Public domain)
that he ever had been in, 'subjected to fire
from the front, right flank, & rear all at the
same time.'
In fact, it was Warren's right flank that
came under the greatest pressure. He lost
most of two seasoned regiments as prisoners,
and the situation seemed desperate for a
brief interval. Reinforcements enabled
Warren to hold fast on 19 August, and on
21 August he handily repulsed a series of
Southern attacks. In one of them, a bullet
tore through both of General John C. C.
Sanders' thighs and he bled to death. He had
reached his twenty-fourth birthday four
months before. A few days later his sister
back in Alabama wrote to a surviving brother
of her wrenching loss. Fannie Sanders
described dreaming of John every night,
then awakening to the living nightmare of
the truth. 'Why! Oh why, was not my
worthless life taken instead of that useful
one!' Fannie cried. 'I have been blinded
with tears.' Families on both sides of the
Potomac had abundant cause for grief.