previous next
[234] face of musketry fire from the opposite bank. After the Southerners had been driven away, the bridge, three hundred and ninety feet long, was built in one hour and ten minutes. Another was immediately laid, and during the battle of Fredericksburg Heights these two were moved bodily to Fredericksburg and there placed in position. On May 4th, the materiel was hastily removed to the north bank, and the last plank was scarcely up when a force of Confederates appeared on the opposite shore.

Between Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, the engineers were engaged in building roads and bridges in the lines of the Federal army, and the individual officers, not on duty with the troops, were employed in reconnaissances, map-making, and on duty as staff-officers.

Through Gettysburg, back to Virginia soil, and on toward Richmond, the weary army again took its way, and throughout all the attendant hardships the faithful engineers worked for the welfare and efficiency of the other troops. There were numerous occasions during which they had to submit to fire from the opposing army without any opportunity to reply. Their duties were too important to permit them to suspend operations for so trivial an annoyance as being shot at.

The appointment of General Grant to the command of all the armies of the United States in the field, marked a turning-point for the troops of the Army of the Potomac, especially affecting the Engineer Corps. On March 10, 1864, he visited that army, the headquarters of which were near Brandy Station, in Virginia, and announced his intention of remaining with it in future campaigns, leaving General Meade in direct command, and transmitting all orders through him. The army was then lying on the north bank of the Rapidan.

Accurate maps and topographical information of the country between the Rapidan and Richmond were much needed. Reconnaissances had been made as far as the fords of the Rapidan, and that part of the country was well known,

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Meade (1)
Grant (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
March 10th, 1864 AD (1)
May 4th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: