Chapter 15

First Hatcher’s Run

On Thursday, October 27, the 20,000 men of Hancock’s 2nd Corps occupied the southwest section of the Union line surrounding Petersburg. The Appomattox River, which divided the city, formed its left flank and the Jerusalem Plank Road its right flank. The 155th was bivouacked near Fort Dushane, toward the middle of the2nd Corps sector. Augmented by returning sick and wounded, it numbered 130 men. Company I had 20 men. Ideally, regiments numbered 800 to 1,000 and companies 80 to 100.

Second Corps moved out at 3:30 a.m. in a battle plan suggested by Meade to Grant, whose purpose was to tighten the ring around Petersburg by seizing the Boydton Plank Road and further cutting the city’s supply line by capturing the South Side Railroad. The role of 2nd Corps was to outflank the Confederate line at Burgess’s Mill over Hatchers Run, and march on to occupy the South Side Railroad. Their objective depended on a link-up with General Warren’s 5th Corps.

At Burgess’ Mill, Hancock found a well-entrenched enemy led by General Heth positioned on the west side of Hatcher’s Run, overlooking Burgess’s Mill and the bridge over the run. Confederate General Hampton’s cavalrymen had dammed the creek days before and flooded the low-lying area on the east side of the run. If 2nd Corps men wanted to make their way north toward the railroad, they would have to wade across a flooded area and charge over a very narrow bridge. Meanwhile, three rebel brigades were driving from the rear under the command of General William Mahone to augment Heth’s force. Warren’s 5th Corps was nowhere to be found.

Shots sounded in the woods toward mid-morning to the north and east as Union pickets fired and ran from onrushing rebels. The 2nd Corps line had been outflanked on two sides and was now being attacked from what had been the rear.

New orders quickly came to company commanders to form a square a mile across in order to be able to fire in all directions. Two thousand men from Mahone’s brigades burst through Hancock’s right flank and into the square from the east. Second Division regiments closed in around the rebel brigades with a fierceness born of self-preservation. Mahone’s brigades, sensing the trap, turned and rammed their way back out of the square.

Throughout the afternoon, Mahone’s and Hampton’s brigades slammed through Union lines only to find themselves beset from all sides. During intervals of rebel reorganization, Hancock’s men rushed to build interior lines of logs and earth to avoid artillery and mortar fire from both Yankees and Confederates.

When attacks came, Hancock’s soldiers crisscrossed the square to meet them wherever on the square they came. For three hours, the fighting raged as rebel regiments carried out assault after assault to exploit the advantage they were sure was theirs, fighting with the confidence and abandon of certain victors. Hancock’s men held their position.

Tipping, seeing the situation before hearing orders, prompted his squad to be ready to about-face and fire. He had the best marksmen firing and the rest reloading to achieve maximum effect.

Toward the end of the day, a minie bullet tore into Sergeant Tipping and he slumped to the ground. John and the rest of the squad surrounded their beloved leader. They shook their heads in disbelief, anger, and disgust. Their sergeant had always seemed invulnerable to enemy fire. Blood was pouring from his left side. His face was ashen and his body limp.

After a day’s engagement, Southern commanders pulled their troops from the field. Stillness descended upon Union forces. That night at 10:00 p.m., fearing a resumption of the Confederate attack, Hancock ordered a hasty retreat eastward to the main Union lines. Wounded men, guns, wagons, and horses lay in its wake.

John grabbed a loose horse. With help from Mooney, he loaded Tipping’s body face down across the saddle. All that night, John led the horse through mud and brush back to their main encampment. He lifted the body into his tent and fell asleep.

The next morning, as soon as reveille sounded, John went for Father Gillen. He and Mooney raised the body onto a triangular ambulance wagon. Mooney led a procession of Tipping’s old squad in sad silence to a knoll overlooking the James River where they had dug a grave. Father Gillen said the Catholic graveside prayers and they buried their friend.

Hundreds of still, crumpled blue and grey uniforms were left behind guarding Boydton Plank Road and Burgess’s Mill, two of Confederate General Wade Hampton’s sons among them. More than 1,000 of the 1,728 Union soldiers who died there were supplied by 2nd Corps. Nineteen men of the 155th died on the field. George Tipping was the lone soldier from Company I to meet his fate. After the burial, John went on picket duty. Lying behind a tree, he cried.

Two days later, John wrote Catherine Tipping a brief but heartfelt letter of condolence.

On Saturday, November 5, the prisoners at Salisbury were divided into groups of 1,000 men led by a sergeant major and squads of 100 men with a first sergeant in charge of each squad. Each sergeant was to report the presence or absence of the men in his squad and draw down their rations. As Beasley and Donohue were dragging up a corpse from two holes west of them to the dead house, an old plot wrote another chapter in Donohue’s mind.

“Jimmie, we used to vote the dead in the Ward and pick up a few bucks. We kept them on the voting rolls long after we planted them. Why not keep the dead in a cool hole for a day before we drag them to the dead house? Then we’ll gain a second day by having our squad leader wait a day to hand in their names. We draw the rations of two extra men.”

Beasley went to the sergeant in charge of their squad and explained Donohue’s plot. The sergeant liked the idea. Over the next weeks, twenty dead men helped feed their comrades.

The seven shared equally whatever food Kinnane’s and Magowan’s souvenirs brought in trade. Still, the conditions of the camp and the onset of winter weather drained their bodies and spirits. Their clothes were rags held together by string torn from canvas. Sleeping underground exposed them to the ravages of dampness and cold. Melancholia weighed heavily on all the men in the camp as every day they saw ten or twenty men dragged to the dead house.

Word swirled through the camp that the prisoners would soon be paroled. The men took heart, believing Grant had changed his policy. As days dragged on with no paroles, they realized it was just a rumor.

Pat walked daily through a wing of the main building, converted to use as a hospital, where he saw sick and poorly clad soldiers lying on straw on the floor, vermin crawling on them. Some men were too weak to slap the lice from their faces. Blankets were scarce. No medicine was available to control dysentery, the leading cause of death. Watching his fellow soldiers die from disease bored into Pat’s head and left a permanent memory. There was not enough water for the nurses to wash their patients and no brooms or brushes to clean the floors.

Many patients were coiled up waiting to die in their holes or out in the open. Healthier prisoners visited friends to provide whatever comfort they could. Nurses drawn from among inmates returned to sleep with the rest of the prisoners. Pneumonia, typhoid, cholera, tetanus, tuberculosis, and smallpox raged through the camp like apocalyptic plagues. Almost every prisoner had dysentery.

Out of the blue, a guard approached Pat with a package from Gram that contained a variety of sausages, dried fruits and vegetables, and coffee. Pat ran back to his group to share his newfound bounty. Within an hour, the contents were gone. It was a miracle, they all agreed: “A package from heaven just when they needed something to heal their bodies and lift their spirits.” Twenty other men received packages sent by their families through the Sanitary Commission. It was the first time such packages were released by the commandant.

Three of the six competed with other prisoners to haul water and wood. Since they were among the stronger, they were chosen to cut down pine trees in the nearby woods. They loaded small logs on flat cars that carried them to the northwest corner of the stockade. There, the logs were unloaded and dragged inside. Each squad was allowed to keep the amount of wood three men could carry.

Pat dug up blackberry roots, thought to be a remedy for diarrhea, according to what Gram had told him when he was a kid. The three poured a few pails of water into a barrel, all they could carry. Two men extended a pole through holes in the barrel and carried it back to the prison on their shoulders. What they brought had to make do for 100 men.

Along the way to the woods and creek, civilians continued to trade sweet potatoes and cornbread for Yankee souvenirs.

On November 13, another load of “fresh fish” arrived—about 300 colored soldiers and 1,200 white. Guards stripped the coloreds of almost every bit of clothing, including blankets and coats, and left them naked to the weather. Salisbury now held almost 10,000 inmates.

On November 15, word came through an older guard that Lincoln had been reelected. The news spread as though on a breeze. Cheers rang out from all sides of the yard.

On November 25, a rebel relief column of sixteen Senior Reserve guards entered the stockade at noon. A group of prisoners attacked the column with clubs and disarmed the guards. Three of the guards were killed, eight to ten slightly wounded. One thousand inmates then rushed the main gate in an effort to reach the arsenal. Few got beyond the gate. The Reserve guards’ guns held only one bullet each. The remaining guards and two cannons fired upon the insurgents.

Soldiers from the 68th North Carolina Regiment who had just left their station at the prison were waiting for a train to transport them to their new assignment. They rushed back a short distance to the stockade and joined in the murderous fire. Sixteen prisoners were killed and sixty others wounded.

Pat and his friends remained in their burrow waiting to see which way the revolt went. Besides, they had other plans.

The aftermath of the revolt was worse than the revolt itself. Rations were reduced. Frail men soon began dying in twice the average daily number. Ultimately, about 250 men died because of the attempted escape.