A Cool Head at Burgess Mill: Captain James Farwell, 1st Minnesota Battalion

Burgess Mill Battlefield, LOC

On October 28, 1864, the day after the Battle of Burgess Mill southwest of Petersburg, Minnesota Captain James C. Farwell found his command isolated on the picket line - abandoned in the wake of the Second Corps' withdrawal after intense fighting on the Burgess Farm the day before. Gathering his command, Farwell managed a successful escape back to the Union lines. I found his testimony, excerpted below, at the National Archives in Lieutenant Colonel Horace P. Rugg's court martial transcript. Farwell's story is further detailed further in Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864.

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Testimony of Captain James C. Farwell, 1st Minnesota Volunteers
Horace Rugg Court-Martial Transcript (Farwell testimony), Record Group 153 (LL-
649), NARA.

Question by the Judge Advocate: What did you do at 9:30 o’clock in the morning of the 28th of October 1864 with your command?

Answer: I called in what men I had posted in my front during the night and also  the 19th Regt Mass Vol. which I knew were posted in the edge of the timber. I sent out men from 7 until 8:30 am, in different parties to see if our troops were occupying the same position they did on the night before or had left. They failed to report back. I then sent a commissioned officer up to the house where the Battery was stationed in the afternoon on the 27th. He went to the house; came back on the run and reported that we had no forces there but that the enemy’s cavalry were advancing. 

I satisfied myself that our troops had left and started out of the timber. Ninety-three enlisted men and five commissioned officers was the command I had. As soon as we commenced marching out the enemy followed in our rear and struck the timber and commenced firing. We crossed the plank road and the enemy’s cavalry came down on a charge from the plank road at the same time we were crossing. I about faced the command and ordered them to fire. We broke the cavalry—they scattered and went back to the rear. 

I then marched into the timber, after we had gone some quarter of a mile in the timber the enemy charged in where we were, with a yell. I did not halt the command. I kept marching, and marched about a mile and a half and halted the command to rest them, then formed them in two ranks and took the course by the sun; struck the Weldon Rail-road about 1½ miles north of Reams Station about four or half past four o’clock in the afternoon of the 28th. I then followed the Rail-road up until I came to our cavalry pickets. On the morning of the 29th I reported to Division and Brigade headquarters.

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Fearing capture during the cross-country march back to the Union lines, Farwell tore the national colors and handed a star to each man with him at the time “so that the enemy would have failed to capture them, except after the death of the whole command, and the search of their bodies.” Farwell and his band made it through the wet, tangled countryside, forded Hatcher’s Run, and arrived safe at camp, where they were greeted as heroes.