Civil War Institute Interview: The Fight For The Old North State

Thanks so much to Cameron Sauers and the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College for the opportunity to discuss The Fight For the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January-May 1864 from University Press of Kansas.   

Grant's Bravery at Burgess Mill: October 27, 1864

As the Second Corps pushed toward the South Side Railroad during the October 27, 1864 offensive at Petersburg, Ulysses S. Grant rode forward with a single aide to examine the conditions at Burgess Mill on Hatcher's Run. Here is the description of the incident from Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 (Kent State University Press, 2013): 

U.S. Grant (LOC)

Concerned that a strong Confederate force would threaten any advance on the White Oak Road toward the South Side Railroad, Grant desired more than secondhand reports and sought to examine the ground at Burgess Mill personally.  He requested the company of his aide-de-camp, Orville E. Babcock, and directed  the rest of the party to stay behind. The two galloped on the Plank Road, past Egan, and to within several yards of the bridge at Hatcher’s Run, exposed to sharpshooter and artillery fire from the opposite bank. Severed telegraph wires littered the road in a tangled mass. Grant’s horse, distressed by the shells and balls zipping through the air, became ensnared, and strained to pull away, only  tightening the coil. With their commander in a tight spot, Union officers to the rear watched with increasing anxiety. 

Burgess Mill Battlefield, Oct. 27, 1864
from Richmond Must Fall

But Babcock coolly dismounted and untangled the horse, while Grant sat calmly in the saddle admonishing his aide to  avoid hurting the animal’s leg. The two pushed even closer to the bridge, where  Grant noted the dense brush on the banks, the trees slashed by the rebels, and the dams blocking the run. He then turned “slowly back as unperturbed as a man could be.” When he reached his fretful staff, he responded to their protests with a smile, saying, “Well, I suppose I ought not to have gone down there.” Thomas Livermore, the Hancock aide who ran the gauntlet earlier, noted that Grant had “exposed his own life . . . to find out with his own eyes whether our men were being killed to no purpose.”