Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[679] parallel with the line of defences of Petersburg, and met no resistance except from some pickets, until he reached a point on that road some four miles distant from the enemy's intrenchments.

General Wise was evidently very much misinformed. He further said in his congratulatory order that he had Hood's and Batte's battalions of Virginia militia, about two hundred men each; the Forty-Seventh Regiment of Virginia Volunteers numbering about three hundred men; one company of Woods' Twenty-Third South Carolina with some fifty men; Sturdivant's Battery and Taliaferro's Cavalry, with which he kept our forces at bay and punished them severely until they reached the Jerusalem plank road.

General Kautz reports again that he captured all there were of Taliaferro's cavalry outside of the intrenchments.

Wise further adds that he had the following additional forces: Major Archer's corps of reserves, second-class militia, and one howitzer under the command of Brigadier-General Colston, which forces he puts at less than one hundred and fifty; one company of convalescents of say a hundred men more, with say one hundred men for the two batteries of artillery, Graham's and Young's, and say one hundred and twenty men more for a company of convalescents, and a company of penitents.¹ These, then, constituted the entire number of men south of the Appomattox under General Wise's command, being, all told, not more than fifteen hundred effective men.

General Kautz reports that he passed the entire line of the intrenchments, being opposed only by a small body of infantry and artillery which did him no damage, and hearing nothing from Gillmore, and not hearing his guns, he burned the camp of the enemy, destroyed their stores and ammunition, and came quietly home.

I felt that Gillmore's conduct was wholly inexcusable and cowardly, and I took measures to have him relieved from his command. He desired a court of inquiry, and was ordered to Washington for that purpose. For reasons unexplained to me that court never assembled, as it certainly did not report. General Gillmore's active service with the armies of the United States during the remainder of the war was desultory in character, and migratory in detail and assignment.