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A ruse of War.
When
General Butler landed at
City Point and Bermuda Hundreds, in the spring of 1864, with an army of thirty thousand men, and accompanied and guarded by gun-boats and iron-clads, why he did not at once occupy
Petersburg, to obtain which afterward cost so much blood to the
Federal army, is a question, the answer to which is not very obvious.
Petersburg, on the line of the railway leading south from
Richmond, the heart of the Southern Confederacy was distant twenty miles from
City Point, with which it was connected by a railway, a navigable river, and a broad highway in good condition, and passing through a level country not occupied by the military forces of the enemy.
I propose to furnish what I thought then, and think now, to be an answer to this question.
It will be a modicum of information, which may prove useful to the historian, when he comes to gather up all the facts for an impartial history of the four years war, which has left scars even on the
Constitution.
It will, moreover, be doing justice to the memory of
Major General George E. Pickett, a distinguished officer of the
Southern army, whose reputation is dear to us all of the
South.
To render my brief narrative intelligible to the reader not particularly informed of the military facts to which it has reference, it will be necessary first to state the situation in the Department of North Carolina with which
Petersburg was embraced, or so much of it as affected that point.
General Pickett was still in command at
Petersburg, though he had been relieved, when
General Butler, with
