[712]
points the musketry fire broke out fiercely, then died down.
In our front the fight was over.
My battery moved forward under the direction of a staff officer, and we threw up an earthwork.
That night the news gatherers walked the battle lines.
They told us that the assault had been bloodily repulsed, excepting at one or two unimportant points.
And they also brought an exceedingly interesting bit of news or gossip, or a camp rumor.
They said: “We have heard from some of Butler's men that in the breast pocket of the coat of a Confederate officer, who was killed in front of their lines at Bermuda Hundred, on June 15, was found the ‘morning report’ of the Confederate army which was defending Petersburg on that day, and that this report showed that Beauregard did not have over ten thousand men, most of whom were militia, with which to defend Petersburg, and that Butler had laid this report before Baldy Smith and Hancock, and had urged them to make the assault and capture Petersburg before the Army of Northern Virginia came up; but that they, Smith and Hancock, had hesitated and dawdled the night away.” . . .
About seventy thousand of the good men we had crossed the Rapidan with lay dead behind us, or were in hospitals, or languished in Confederate military prisons.
So I, one morning, claimed my discharge, which had been ordered by Secretary of War Stanton while we were fighting in front of Cold Harbor.
Getting it, I went to Washington, where a commission in the Fourth United States Artillery awaited me.
The reader will now see why the whole Army of the Potomac was repulsed on the nights of the 17th and 18th of June, with plenty of moonlight to fight in, with a loss of prisoners captured, and two thousand killed and wounded. This was the last attempt of the Army of the Potomac to capture
Petersburg for many months, save by a mine and a siege, both of which were ineffectual to that end.
Having exhibited
General Smith's entire untruthfulness in his statements that I have brought to the reader's attention, I turn to the further statements contained in the letter to
Senator Foote which has already been referred to, that I had threatened
Grant, as he had been informed, with opposing the election of
Lincoln:--
I also learned that General Butler had threatened to make public something that would prevent the President's re-election.
