Civil War Articles by Julian WilliamsPrelude To Petersburg - Still Holding On But Odds Not Good
This article was compiled by Julian Williams.
Cold Harbor was indeed the last real hurrah for the South. No more would the word "victory" mean what it had meant - although the South would win a few more encounters and hang tough for nearly another year. But the stage was set and the skirmishes and battles were leading to Petersburg - and siege. It was just a matter of time.
And Capt. Lucius Williams probably just squinted and looked to the heavens for an answer. Why, only last year, in 1863, was his little son, Thomas Jackson (Jack), born - the product of a hurried furlough home nine months previous. How he would like to see him. So much joy. But his poor wife, Catherine Garrison Williams, had died shortly after the baby came. So much sadness. Now he was up here with dead men stacked up like cordwood. He had missed so much at home. How his heart yearned and longed for the smell of yellow pine. For his kin and his friends. But he had kin and friends around him up here in this awful God-forsaken place. And for the time being, that would have to do. As his eyes took it all in, he must have stolen a quick look at his first cousin, Lt. Col. Wiley J. Williams. Like Lucius, and the others, he was doing he best he could.
But, enough of Cold Harbor. Piedmont, Virginia, was the next place. It was to be the first of those foretelling encounters of the bitter end. On Sunday, June 5, 1864, General W.E. "Grumble" Jones fought it out with the Federals. The battle lasted until mid afternoon when "Ole Grumble" was killed and Federal cavalry routed the Rebels. The North lost about 780 men and the South about 1,600 - of which about 1,000 were captured.
Now, that's all we need - to be headed to a Yankee prison. From Telfair, Cornelius R. Wooten of Company B, Georgia 49th, was captured. According to one source, he was sent from Camp Morton, Indiana, to City Point, Virginia, for exchange. The circumstances surrounding the exchange are not known here but the fact the exchange was made at all is interesting because Grant had about shut down all the exchanging business. Cruel as the practice might be, it was to his advantage to do this.
The Telfair soldiers, in spite of the ever-looming specter of defeat, refused to accept the role of the vanquished. As Grant tried to gain Petersburg from the east on June 15-18, he failed miserably and lost another 10,000 or so men. But Lincoln continued to supply his needs because the two men held a common view and objective - Lee was being beaten and they must not let up until the final white flag of surrender is raised by the Southern forces.
On June 24th, the Telfair men also participated in the effort to recapture a section of Weldon Railroad behind Federal entrenchments. Grant's men were cutting the railroad tracks to ribbons. This was another way of starving Lee's army. Hungry men usually are looking for something to eat - the enemy is not their quarry.
But patriotism and devotion to their cause, even though a lost one, never completely left the vision field of the Southern soldier. One poet expressed the latest fighting and fighters this way:
"Tattered and torn those banners now.
But not less proud each lofty brow,
Untaught as yet to yield:
with mien unblenched, unfaltering eye,
Forward, where bombshells shrieking fly,
Flecking with smoke the azure sky
On Weldon's fated field.
Sweeps from the woods the bold array,
Not theirs to falter in the fray,
No men more sternly trained than they
To meet their deadly doom;
While, from a hundred throats agape,
A hundred sulphurous flames escape
Round shot, and canister, and grape,
The thundering cannon's boom.
Swift, on their flank, with fearful crash
Shrapnel and ball commingling clash,
And bursting shells, with lurid flash,
Their dazzled sight confound:
Trembles the earth beneath their feet,
Along their front a rattling sheet
Of leaden hail concentric meet.
And numbers strew the ground.
They win the height, those gallant few,
A fiercer struggle to renew,
Resolved as gallant men to do
Or sink - in glory's shroud;
But scarcely gain its stubborn crest,
Ere, from the ensign's murdered breast,
An impious foe has dared to wrest
That banner proud."
It is difficult to analyze or even guess at the great determination and will of the men in grey. Was it pride of self or region or both? Was it a conviction that their state, or set of states, was being governed by an unwanted central power? Or, was it the fact they were caught up in a conflict that they did not understand - did not understand just how they arrived at this terrible point of resolution.
Surely, some few fought to maintain the ugly economic institution of slavery because they thought this would accrue to them a measure of financial gain. But to many more of the soldiers, this evil thinking was not what moved them to aggression against the Federals. In fact, many of them would benefit financially more without the presence of slave labor, which was indeed difficult to compete with.
We will probably never understand fully why these men made war. Here, ironically, in the face of the ugly and unacceptable practice of slavery, liberty was the battle cry of both sides.
Also, both sides petitioned Providence to deliver them. We are a lot like that today. We think we love liberty and call upon God. We probably need to look closer at both propositions. The liberty we so desperately chase after enslaves us and God probably often gives us an answer we don't really want - or can't understand. Either way we're angry. And that probably happened in the days of the Civil War.
So, the grimacing men of Telfair, squinting toward the heavens - angry, frustrated, but determined to make the best of it, march on to another day of War, knowing that something great and big is taking place - knowing that they are the participants in an arena in a game without rules - where both contestants are losers - played out by those who happened to be born at a peculiar time for a peculiar purpose. Unexpected by their ancestors, forgotten by their descendants, and scorned by others - gone with the wind. But necessary to resolution.
And a Rebel soldier sees an earthworm in the grave he is digging for his friend - and he gently nudges it out of the way to safety because he has come to know, in all this hell, that life is precious - oh, so precious. And, he smiles, through the parched dust around his eyes, because he feels that he is learning what God would have him learn. And he dreams of home - and cleans his rifle.
Credits:
Telfair History 1807-1987;
Telfair Soldiers In The Civil War by Robert H. (Bob) Swain;
The Civil War by Geoffrey Ward and Ric and Ken Burns;
Parts of the poem dealing with the Charge of Hagood's Brigade;
Don't Drink The Water by John and Anita Rigdon;
American Memory photographs;
various other sources.
