Bermuda Hundred Campaign

Last updated April 19, 2019

The Bermuda Hundred Campaign was a series of battles fought at the town of Bermuda Hundred, outside Richmond, Virginia, during May 1864 in the American Civil War. Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, commanding the Army of the James, threatened Richmond from the east but was stopped by forces under Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard.

Bermuda Hundred was the first administrative division in the English colony of Virginia. It was founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1613, six years after Jamestown. At the southwestern edge of the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers opposite City Point, annexed to Hopewell, Virginia in 1923, Bermuda Hundred was a port town for many years. The terminology "Bermuda Hundred" also included a large area adjacent to the town. In the colonial era, "hundreds" were large developments of many acres, arising from the English term to define an area which would support 100 homesteads. The port at the town of Bermuda Hundred was intended to serve other "hundreds" in addition to Bermuda Hundred.

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the Greater Richmond Region. Richmond was incorporated in 1742 and has been an independent city since 1871.

American Civil War Civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865

The American Civil War was a war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War is the most studied and written about episode in U.S. history. Primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people, war broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. The loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery.

Background

In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was summoned from the Western Theater, promoted to lieutenant general, and given command of all Union armies. He left Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant, George G. Meade, and Butler against Robert E. Lee near Richmond; Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman to invade Georgia, defeat Joseph E. Johnston, and capture Atlanta; George Crook and William W. Averell to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia; Nathaniel Banks to capture Mobile, Alabama. This was the first time the Union armies would have a coordinated offensive strategy across multiple theaters.

Ulysses S. Grant was an American soldier, politician, and international statesman, who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. During the American Civil War Grant led the Union Army as its commanding general to victory over the Confederacy with the supervision of President Abraham Lincoln. During the Reconstruction Era, President Grant led the Republicans in their efforts to remove the vestiges of Confederate nationalism, racism, and slavery.

The Western Theater of the American Civil War encompassed major military operations in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee, as well as Louisiana east of the Mississippi River. Operations on the coasts of these states, except for Mobile Bay, are considered part of the Lower Seaboard Theater. Most other operations east of the Mississippi are part of the Eastern Theater. Operations west of the Mississippi River took place in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.

In the United States Army, United States Marine Corps, and the United States Air Force, lieutenant general is a three-star general officer rank, with the pay grade of O-9. Lieutenant general ranks above major general and below general. Lieutenant general is equivalent to the rank of vice admiral in the other uniformed services.

Grant and Meade attacked Lee's Army of Northern Virginia directly in the Overland Campaign. Butler's mission was to deploy his 33,000-man army via the James River to the Virginia Peninsula and strike northwest to Richmond. The objective was not to capture the Confederate capital directly, but to cut the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad —a critical Southern supply line—and force Lee to send reinforcements to that front, weakening him against Grant and Meade.

The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was also the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most often arrayed against the Union Army of the Potomac.

The Overland Campaign, also known as Grant's Overland Campaign and the Wilderness Campaign, was a series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, directed the actions of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and other forces against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although Grant suffered severe losses during the campaign, it was a strategic Union victory. It inflicted proportionately higher losses on Lee's army and maneuvered it into a siege at Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, in just over eight weeks.

The Virginia Peninsula is a peninsula in southeast Virginia, USA, bounded by the York River, James River, Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay. It is sometimes known as the Lower Peninsula to distinguish it from two other peninsulas to the north, the Middle Peninsula and the Northern Neck.

Butler was one of several political generals in the war—a man selected more for his support of Abraham Lincoln's upcoming re-election than his skill on the battlefield. His military career contained more controversies than victories. Grant hoped to compensate for Butler's weaknesses by assigning him two strong subordinate generals: Quincy A. Gillmore, commanding the X Corps, and William F. "Baldy" Smith, commanding the XVIII Corps. (Neither proved assertive enough to counteract Butler's inexperience.)

A political general is a general officer or other military leader without significant military experience who is given a high position in command for political reasons, through political connections, or to appease certain political blocs and factions.

Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman, politician, and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the U.S. economy.

X Corps was a corps of the Union Army during the American Civil War. It served during operations in South Carolina in the Department of the South, and later in Benjamin Butler's Army of the James, during the Bermuda Hundred and Petersburg Campaigns.

The campaign took its name from the fishing village of Bermuda Hundred on the peninsula at the confluence of the Appomattox and James rivers. The village is southeast of Richmond and northeast of Petersburg. It was downriver on the James from the practical limit of advance for Union warships, the fortifications at Drewry's Bluff.

The Appomattox River is a tributary of the James River, approximately 157 miles (253 km) long, in central and eastern Virginia in the United States, named for the Appomattocs Indian tribe who lived along its lower banks in the 17th century. It drains a cotton and tobacco-growing region of the Piedmont and coastal plain southwest of Richmond.

Petersburg, Virginia Independent city in Commonwealth of Virginia, United States

Petersburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 32,420. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines Petersburg with Dinwiddie County for statistical purposes. It is located on the Appomattox River. The city is just 21 miles (34 km) south of the historic commonwealth (state) capital city of Richmond. The city's unique industrial past and its location as a transportation hub combined to create wealth for Virginia and the Middle Atlantic and Upper South regions of the nation.

Butler's Army of the James disembarked from navy transports at Bermuda Hundred on May 5, the same day Grant and Lee began fighting in the Battle of the Wilderness. He also dropped units at City Point, which could be used to threaten Petersburg. For a brief time, Butler attempted to move out smartly. Opposing him was a Confederate "army" (the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia) of 18,000 under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard; some of these soldiers were pieced together from the ranks of teenagers and elderly men in the Richmond-Petersburg area, theoretically no match for Butler's soldiers. Beauregard's subordinate commanding troops around Petersburg was George Pickett of Pickett's Charge fame.

The Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5–7, 1864, was the first battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War. Both armies suffered heavy casualties, around 5,000 men killed in total, a harbinger of a bloody war of attrition by Grant against Lee's army and, eventually, the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. The battle was tactically inconclusive, as Grant disengaged and continued his offensive.

George Pickett 19th-century Confederate Army general

George Edward Pickett was a career United States Army officer who became a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He is best remembered for leading Pickett's Charge, the futile and bloody Confederate offensive on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg that bears his name.

Pickett's Charge was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Union positions on July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg in the state of Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. Its futility was predicted by the charge's commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and it was arguably an avoidable mistake from which the Southern war effort never fully recovered militarily or psychologically. The farthest point reached by the attack has been referred to as the high-water mark of the Confederacy.

Battles

The battles fought during the Bermuda Hundred Campaign were:

Port Walthall Junction (May 6–7, 1864)

On May 6, Brig. Gen. Johnson Hagood's brigade stopped initial Federal probes at Port Walthall Junction, a junction critical to controlling the railroad. On May 7, a Union division drove Hagood's and Bushrod Johnson's brigades from the depot and cut the railroad. Confederate defenders retired behind Swift Run Creek and awaited reinforcements.^[1] Soldiers of the Confederate States of America later melted down the railroad tracks leading to the port to manufacture cannon.^[2]

Swift Creek (May 9)

Butler made a thrust toward Petersburg and was met by Johnson's division at Swift Creek. A premature Confederate attack at Arrowfield Church was driven back with heavy losses, but Union forces did not follow up. After skirmishing, Butler seemed content to tear up the railroad tracks and did not press the defenders. In conjunction with the advance to Swift Creek, five Union gunboats steamed up the Appomattox River to bombard Fort Clifton, while Brig. Gen. Edward W. Hincks's U.S. Colored Troops division struggled through marshy ground from the land side. The gunboats were quickly driven off, and the infantry attack was abandoned.^[3]

Chester Station (May 10)

Elements of Maj. Gen. Robert Ransom's division conducted a reconnaissance-in-force against a portion of Butler's army that was destroying the railroad at Chester Station. The Confederates attacked near the Winfree House, and the Federals retired to their Bermuda Hundred entrenchments.^[4]

Proctor's Creek (May 12–16)

Butler moved north against the Confederate line at Drewry's Bluff but again adopted a defensive posture when his attack was not supported by gunboats. On May 13, a Union column struck the right flank of the Confederate line at the Wooldridge House, carrying a line of works. Butler remained cautious, however, giving Beauregard time to concentrate his forces. At dawn on May 16, Ransom's division opened an attack on Butler's right flank, routing many units. Subsequent attacks lost direction in the fog, but the Federals were disorganized and demoralized. After severe fighting, Butler extricated his army from battle, withdrawing again to his Bermuda Hundred line. Butler's offensive against Richmond was effectively ended.^[5]

Ware Bottom Church (May 20)

Confederate forces under Beauregard attacked Butler's line near Ware Bottom Church. About 10,000 troops were involved in this action. After driving back Butler's advanced pickets, the Confederates constructed the Howlett Line, effectively bottling up the Federals at Bermuda Hundred.^[6]

Aftermath

Butler's expedition was an overall failure, and he was "bottled up" at Bermuda Hundred, unable to move. Although he was able to distract Confederate forces for a brief time, their victories at Proctor's Creek and Ware Bottom Church enabled Beauregard to detach strong reinforcements for Lee's army in time for the fighting at Cold Harbor.

In Grant's Personal Memoirs he described a conversation with his Chief Engineer regarding Butler's predicament:

He said that the general occupied a place between the James and Appomattox rivers which was of great strength, and where with an inferior force he could hold it for an indefinite length of time against a superior; but that he could do nothing offensively. I then asked him why Butler could not move out from his lines and push across the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad to the rear and on the south side of Richmond. He replied that it was impracticable, because the enemy had substantially the same line across the neck of land that General Butler had. He then took out his pencil and drew a sketch of the locality, remarking that the position was like a bottle and that Butler's line of intrenchments across the neck represented the cork; that the enemy had built an equally strong line immediately in front of him across the neck; and it was therefore as if Butler was in a bottle. He was perfectly safe against an attack; but, as Barnard expressed it, the enemy had corked the bottle and with a small force could hold the cork in its place.
— Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs

Butler's forces were eventually used in the Siege of Petersburg. Bermuda Hundred was garrisoned by Federal troops throughout the siege.

Notes

↑ NPS Port Walthall
↑ Port Walthall (Historical Highway Markers). Virginia State Route 10 at Enon, Virginia 2.5 miles west of Hopewell, Virginia: Virginia Department of Conservation and Historic Resources. 1987.
↑ NPS Swift Creek
↑ NPS Chester Station
↑ NPS Proctor's Creek
↑ NPS Ware Bottom Church

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References

National Park Service battle descriptions
Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. 2 vols. Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86. ISBN 0-914427-67-9.

External links

Civil War in Chesterfield County, with animated battle maps

Coordinates: 37°20′36″N77°19′11″W / 37.3432°N 77.3197°W / 37.3432; -77.3197

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[1] NPS Port Walthall

[PortWaltHwyMrk-2] Port Walthall (Historical Highway Markers). Virginia State Route 10 at Enon, Virginia 2.5 miles west of Hopewell, Virginia: Virginia Department of Conservation and Historic Resources. 1987.

[3] NPS Swift Creek

[4] NPS Chester Station

[5] NPS Proctor's Creek

[6] NPS Ware Bottom Church