Rebel Victories
While Grant battled Lee in eastern Virginia, his strategy elsewhere broke down. The Confederates
penned in General Butler on the Bermuda Hundred peninsula and sent General Sigel reeling at the
Battle of New Market, a Rebel victory capped by the charge of the Virginia Military Institute cadets.
GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864Railroad, he spent too much
time and energy making
sure that he was
thoroughly entrenched
at his new base.
The Confederates,
meanwhile, were
using the time to pull
in reinforcements
from everywhere they
could, and General
Beauregard arrived to
organize them.
When Butler did move
ponderously against a target,
Beauregard took him by surprise. On
May 16, Butler attacked batteries at
Drewry’s Bluff, which commanded a
bend in the James River and had long
been the bane of Union gunboats. In a
vicious battle in a tangled, swampy,
foggy pinewood—a battle that saw
bodies piled high outside makeshift
breastworks—Beauregard nearly
succeeded in cutting Butler off from his
base. He further pummeled Butler near
Ware Bottom Church on May 20. After
that, the Union
general was happy
to regain the safety
of his camp at
Bermuda
Hundred. With
barely half
Butler’s numbers,
Beauregard simply walled him in there,
building a line of fortifications across
the base of the peninsula. Beauregard
had “corked” Butler up, Grant ruefully
acknowledged, as if in a bottle.First Battle of Petersburg
In June, Butler blundered again. Having
heard that Petersburg might be very
lightly defended, because most of
Beauregard’s forces were in the
Bermuda Hundred lines, Butler sought
to win some long-overdue military
laurels by raiding the city. On June 9,
3,400 infantrymen and 1,300
cavalrymen crossed the Appomattox
River and approached the Dimmock
Line, as Petersburg’s encircling
fortifications were called. While the
tocsins (alarm bells) rang in the city,O
n the morning of May 5, when
Union general Benjamin Butler
landed on the Bermuda Hundred
peninsula between the Appomattox
and James rivers, he had a chance few
generals are ever offered. His Army of
the James was halfway between two
key Confederate cities—15 miles
(24km) from Richmond and 8 miles
(13km) from Petersburg—which
between them could muster a garrison
of only 5,000 militiamen. What was
more, the new commander of the
garrison, General P. G. T. Beauregard,
had still to arrive from Charleston.
Yet Butler missed his opportunity.
Although he did send tentative probes
out to the Richmond–PetersburgBEFORE
In May 1864, as Ulysses S. Grant began
operations against Robert E. Lee, other
Virginia campaigns were getting underway.
BUTLER’S ARMY OF THE JAMES
In April, a new army of over 30,000 soldiers was
formed under Benjamin Butler. Its task was to
sail up the James River, land south of Richmond,
and cut the Richmond–Petersburg railroad.
SIGEL’S FORCES IN THE VALLEY
On May 2, General Franz Sigel began advancing
up the Shenandoah Valley, where Stonewall
Jackson had defeated him ❮❮ 110 –11 two years
earlier. Sigel was to cut the railroad leading to
Richmond, while also preventing Confederate
reinforcements from reaching Lee.
CONFEDERATE OPPONENTS
In April, General P .G. T. Beauregard became
commander of forces in North Carolina and
Virginia south of the James River. Lee
selected General John C. Breckinridge to
confront Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley.
calling the militia to arms,
the assaulting infantrymen
were too intimidated by the
frowning parapets and
redoubts to mount an attack.
Instead they pulled back to
the safety of Bermuda Hundred.
A few miles away Butler’s cavalry
was in a severe fight. Storming the
southern part of the Dimmock Line
along the Jerusalem Plank Road, they
came up against the Battalion of Virginia
Reserves—125 “gray-haired sires and
beardless youths,” including city
councilmen, shopkeepers, and
teenagers—led by the retired Colonel
Fletcher H. Archer, a veteran of the War
with Mexico. In what became famous as
the “Battle of Old
Men and Young
Boys,” this scratch
force, many armed
only with ancient
muskets, repulsed
repeated assaults
for nearly two
hours. Even hospital patients helped
fight the Union horsemen who finally
also retreated to Bermuda Hundred.Valley defeats
Grant’s plans for a Shenandoah Valley
offensive had been thwarted, too. In
May, General Franz Sigel’s army was
first bogged down by rain, then saw
action at New Market. This was one of
the handsome towns through which
the Valley Turnpike rolled, as did the
road leading east across the Blue Ridge
Mountains and down into the cockpit
where Lee and Grant were slugging
it out. Lee believed Sigel would use
that route to attack his flank, and
on Sunday, May 15, General John C.
Breckinridge was trying to prevent that.
Cannonfire had driven many of New
Market’s residents into the cellars, but
the noise was even more terrifying
because thunderstorms continually
vied with the artillery. To counter
Sigel’s 6,000 soldiers, Breckinridge
had mustered a force of 4,000,Bermuda Hundred operations
A hand-drawn map depicts the Bermuda Hundred
peninsula, where Butler was confined by Beauregard.
Petersburg is just off the map in the bottom left-hand
corner, Richmond off the top left-hand corner.Confederate General Breckinridge
Former U.S. vice president and the
presidential candidate who in 1860
finished second only to Abraham
Lincoln, John C. Breckinridge was a
Kentuckian whose efforts to avert the
war continued until September 1861,
when he finally joined the South.The percentage of
Fletcher H. Archer’s
Battalion of Virginia
Reserves killed, wounded,
or taken prisoner in the “Battle of Old
Men and Young Boys,” June 9, 1864.