THE PETERSBURG DISASTER.
[Faost OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.] New York, Avast 6, 1884. Aw attempt was made on Saturday last, July 30, to carry the works before Petersburg by assault, and the result was signal and inglorious failure,—a failure of that kind which does not dis- hearten, but which vexes and makes ashamed, and adds to the sorrow for death and suffering both the aggravating reflection that our men died and suffered in vain and the stinging consciousness that there was no good reason for the sad reverse. In truth the plan was well laid, and all worked well up to the supreme decisive moment, and then some bungler's hand wrought confusion and det-at. An important work in front of General Burnside's division, and which defended a commanding hill, the possession of which was all-important to General Lee's maintenance of his position, was mined ; Lee was deceived by the successful demonstration north of the James mentioned in my last letter into withdrawing about 12,000 men from the works at Petersburg for the defence of Richmond itself ; the mine was sprung, the fort destroyed, and those who held it put out of the fight, all Grant's artillery ope• ned upon the enemy, and then in the midst of the confusion caused by the explosion and the cannonade the assault was made through the breach. The plan was good, the means for its successful execution were ample,—why did it fail ? Simply because the assaulting column, which should have been composed of the coolest and most intrepid troops in the army, men who had been long accustomed to fight at close quarters and to use the bayonet, was made up in part of negro regiments comparatively inexperienced, and in part of heavy artillery and dismounted cavalry who are serving asinfantry in General Burnside's corps. These troops charged, and at first so bravely that it is plain that under the ordinary circumstances of battle they would have behaved as handsomely as any soldiers in the world. They pierced a thick abatis, they made their way over tripping wires concealed by standing oats which threw them down upon spikes similarly concealed, and they did this under a sharp fire. For the movement was not made as promptly as it should have been, and the enemy had time to recover partly from the shock of the explosion and the cannonade before the head of the assaulting column entered the breach. Here the troops still behaved well, carried part of the line, took between 300 and 400 prisoners, and turned some of the abandoned guns upon the enemy. But they were not alert and vigorous enough in their movements to prevent most of the occupants of the work they had entered from retreating to the second line, from which and from enfilading positions of the line attacked a tremendous fire was poured upon
them. Now was the time for a rush of the whole column up the slope, the crest of which was the commanding position of the
inner works of the enemy. If this could have been seized and held for a short time the whole Union line would have been advanced and the town most surely taken. But instead of advancing the men hesitated,—the utmost efforts of their officers could not bring them to the charge in anything like handsome style. Two or three attempts were made, but they were feeble and half- hearted. Under such circumstances hesitation is perdition, and so it proved in this instance. Our own men wavered and fell back, the negroes were then led forward, they broke and rushed pell-mell to the rear ; all became confusion. Now the cause of this was not, or was but in a comparatively small degree, the fire to which the men were exposed. (I am writing not from mere hearsay or news- paper report.) It was their own excited imagination. A new and undefined dread of a new and untried danger filled their minds. The explosion of their own mine in the grey of the morning—it took place at half-past four, after an hour and more of delay and suspense—had produced a profound and very apparent sensation among them. They had seen a large earthwork with its guns and garrison blown up into the air by 10,000 pounds of powder, and stories of counter-mining by the enemy having been rife in camp for days before, they suddenly took a notion that the hill which they were to assault had been mined, and they could not be brought to brave this untried and fruitless peril. The sight which they had seen (for the first time every man of them) just before unnerved them. They shrank from this venture —it was not fighting. And so, although their officers fell before and around them by scores in the endeavour to lead them to the assault, they could not be brought up to it. Possibly if the assaulting column had been made up of picked regiments of the best corps instead of regiments chosen by lot from the least distin- guished, the result might have been the same ; but at least so important a service should have been committed to the men whose tried coolness and determination made them the fittest men to undertake it. As might have been expected, more men were lost in the retreat than in the attack, which, so hesitating had been the whole affair, was not given up until mid-day.
This reverse had at first a more depressing effect upon the sup- porters of the Government than any which the Union army has suffered since the first battle of Manassas Plains (Bull-Run). Yet this feeling was not justified by the loss incurred. For in the vain assault upon Fredericksburg heights Burnside lost 1,500 killed, 6,000 wounded, and 700 prisoners; but in this affair the killed and wounded amount to 2,600, and the prisoners taken, according to the account of the Confederates themselves, were 1,200, making the whole loss less than 4,000, or less by 2,300 than the mere wounded at Fredericksburg. The moral effect of the defeat in this instance was owing to the conclusion, hastily drawn, that if Lee can hold his lines at Petersburg with 30,000 men, what is to prevent his using his other thousands elsewhere—at Wash- ington, for instance, or in Pennsylvania, or at Atlanta ? The Peace pro-Slavery Democrats raised a great outcry, and for a day or two had many listeners ; but the mass of the people soon recovered their equanimity and their determination. Gold ad- vanced only 3i per cent., which with us is a mere trifle under present circumstances. What will next be done depends probably upon General Lee ; but Grant, and the Government, and the people, stand firm. The reverse, however, scores one more against -Mr. Lincoln's re-election, though most unjustly. What fault was it of his ?
I may properly say now what I learned from the front nearly a month ago, that Beauregard's works before Petersburg are so -strong that if defended by 50,000 men 200,000 could not carry them by assault. Yet this mine was not of General Grant's designing, and such an assault formed no part of his plan at any 'time. It was proposed by the Lieutenant-Colonel of a Penn- sylvania regiment who is an engineer, and General Grant con- sented to try it as a promising venture. The serious question for some one now is, "Whose blunder caused the failure?"
• The Confederate slaveholders have aehieved another great success, though of a different kind, in Pennsylvania. They have sacked and burned the little town of Chambersburg. On Saturday morning last, just about the time of the assault upon Petersburg, a detachment of General Jubal Early's forces, not more than 500 strong, rode into the town, took possession of it, and exhibited a demand signed by Jubal himself for 100,000 dols. in gold or 000,000 dohs. in Treasury notes, in default of which the place was to be burned. Now he of the wonderful name knew perfectly well that Chambersburg could pay no such sum as that upon the spot, for it is a little place of only 5,000 inhabitants, and the centre of a population of small farmers. But the townspeople had managed to carry off their goods and provisions out of his reach, and they must be made to suffer for his disappointment. There- fore the money not being produced the town was given up to pillage and to flames. Men of course were robbed of what money they had about them, of their watches and their clothes, —the very clothes they wore. All the little shops were ransacked, what was portable and desirable was taken, and the rest destroyed. In private houses women's closets, bureaus, and trunks were broken open, and their clothing and bed-linen destroyed before their eyes; their little trinkets were taken, and their modest hoards of finery used only on high days and holidays. Then the houses were fired. It made no matter by whom they were occupied or what was the condition of the family, the torch was ruthlessly applied. Sick people were carried out by their friends that the bed from which they had risen and the house from which they had not hoped to go alive might be burned behind them. In one instance a dead body- awaited burial, but the bereaved family could only obtain sufficient reprieve to enable them to inter it in the garden, and before they had finished their sad task they were driven from the hastily made grave by the flames of their burning home. By nightfall but little remained of the town except heaps of smouldering ruins. In forming his judgment upon the nature of this act, the strictly neutral and absolutely impartial foreign observer will doubtless give due weight to the facts that Chambersburg was of no more military importance to General Lee, either as a strategic point or as a depOt of munitions and subsistence, than any village in Great Britain or France, and that while the Union armies have of course seized upon all. places which had such importance, and appropriated or destroyed the stores and broken- up lines of communication, there has throughout the war been not a single instance of the pillaging and burning of a town by the "hordes of Northern Vandals" who have the audacity to go down to fight these "Southern gentlemen." The people around Chambersburg behaved with their usual pusillanimity. My readers may remember that I have mentioned before that the inhabitants of this part of Pennsylvania are mostly descendants of George III.'s Hessians, who have learned to speak English only during the present generation. They are the meanest-spirited and most sordid of the inhabitants of the Free States. It is said, however, that they wore provoked to indignation and resistance in one case. One of the Southern gentlemen, an officer (said, but incorrectly, to have been Major Gilmore), was found setting fire to a poor widow's house. He was fired upon and brought down wounded, when the infuriated people rushed upon him and trampled him to death, it is said, on the other hand, that he was killed, and that his dead body was spurned and kicked about. Remember what I have just said about these people. They have put up a piteous prayer for help from New York and New England, but our men are not very ready to give to or fight for those who in last year's raid made them pay even for the water they drank as they marched past the _doors of the houses they had come to protect. This raiding will probably be kept up, for Jefferson Davis has declared his intention to carry fire and sword into the towns and villages of the North. In the interests of my country I hope that he will carry out his purpose to the best of his ability, and for the same reason I wish success to all deputations to Lord Palmerston which, in the words of the Manchester Examiner, are "introduced under the virtuous auspices of Lord Clanticarde," and find a dis- interested and impartial spokesman in Mr. Spence."
A YANKEE.
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