August 7, 1864. |
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and captured their guns, trains, and five hundred men, with a loss to himself of only about fifty men.1
Grant was now satisfied that an efficient force was needed in the Shenandoah Valley, for the protection of Washington from seizure, and Maryland and Pennsylvania from invasion, and he proceeded to consolidate the Washington, Middle, Susquehanna, and Southwest Virginia Departments into, one, called the Middle Military Division, under the command of General Hunter.
The latter expressed a willingness to be relieved, and Grant assigned
General Philip H. Sheridan to the command of the new organization.
He entered at once upon his duties, and found himself at the head of over thirty thousand troops, with which to confront Early with about twenty thousand.2
Let us here leave Sheridan, and return to the army before Petersburg.
We have observed that the Nationals had secured a footing at Deep Bottom, on the north side of the James, and a quick communication between it and the main army by means of a pontoon bridge.3 This movement was a part of a plan of assault on the Confederate lines at Petersburg, in connection with the flowing up of one of the most powerful of the enemy's forts, situated within about a thousand yards of the city.
This was to be done by the explosion of a mine under the fort, which had been for nearly a month in preparation, under the immediate supervision of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants, of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania, of Burnside's corps.
He was a practical miner; and a greater portion of the men of his regiment had been recruited in the mining district.
He suggested the enterprise to General Potter, and when that officer proposed it to General Burnside, their corps commander, he heartily approved it. With indifferent tools and a great lack of proper materials, Pleasants began the task on the 25th of June, and on the 23d of July the mine was ready for use.4
1 So wild were rumors, that on the day when Averill defeated the Confederates at Moorfield, the impression was so strong that Early was across the Potomac with his army, heading toward the Susquehanna, that Governor Curtin issued
August 4. |
2 Sheridan's column for active operations consisted of the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps, and the infantry and cavalry of West Virginia, under Generals Crook and Averill. To these were added the cavalry divisions of Torbert and Wilson, sent to him from the army before Petersburg. His cavalry force was about ten thousand strong, and in fine condition.
3 See page 839.
4 The advance of the Ninth (Burnside's) Corps was within 200 yards of one of the strongest of the Confederate forts on the Petersburg lines, under which a mine was constructed. It was commenced in a hollow within
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