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Volume CXXXI, Number 21 |
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Tom Hyde's last campaign and the gray horse
KID WONGSRICHANALAI
COLUMNIST
After campaigning in northern Virginia for most of the
summer and leading cavalry raids around the Petersburg area, Thomas W.
Hyde, of the Bowdoin Class of 1861, was ordered, along with the Sixth
Corps of the Army of the Potomac, to board transports in early July?their
destination unknown.
A veteran of almost all the eastern battles of the Civil War, Hyde remembered the rejuvenating freshness of the ocean air. It truly gave a second wind to the troops who had been stuck in the dust and mud of Petersburg for weeks. The men soon learned that they were headed to Washington, D.C. A rebel raid led by General Jubal Early was pounding at the gates of the Union capital. As the Sixth Corps disembarked and raced through the streets towards the fighting near Fort Stevens, the crowds cheered their arrival. The veteran troops quickly formed into battle line.
After a swift but sharp engagement, the enemy was driven
from the field.
Following the rescue of Washington, the Sixth Corps was detailed to clear
out the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of the Confederacy. Fighting
in the Valley had its dangers. Not only was there still a fierce Confederate
army to contend with but it was also the realm of the rebel guerilla John
Mosby, the infamous "Grey Ghost."
Hyde had a number of close calls but his adventures in the
Shenandoah were cut short when the enlistment for the 7th Maine ran out.
Riding home to Maine with his original regiment, Hyde was mustered out
of the Union Army near the end of 1864. But with the guns still firing
in Virginia, Hyde sought a commission as the colonel of the newly formed
First Maine Veteran Volunteers. He needed to get back into the field.
In this endeavor, Hyde was successful, but before he could
get his regiment together he was on the move again. Ulysses Grant had
promoted the energetic General Phil Sheridan to command the Union forces
in the Shenandoah. In a number of battles, Sheridan successfully pushed
back the Confederate Army and came close to destroying it at the Battle
of Cedar Creek in October of 1864.
Hyde, upon reaching Washington, learned of the clash at
Cedar Creek and immediately longed to be a part of it. He rode through
the Valley, trying to catch up with Sheridan and described what the once
plentiful Shenandoah resembled:
The country looked about as Germany may have looked after the Thirty
Years' War…. All was stillness for fifteen miles; it was the abomination
of desolation, not even the 'low of cattle and song of birds.'
Hyde arrived not in time for the battle and was disappointed
that he had missed a chance for promotion. Still, he found himself the
ranking colonel in his brigade and was thus given its command. This was
the third brigade of Getty's Division, of the Sixth Army Corps, comprised
of six regiments (the 43rd, 49th, 77th, and 122nd New York Regiments,
the 61st Pennsylvania, and the First Maine Veteran Volunteers).
On December 10, 1864, the Sixth Army Corps was returned
to the Army of the Potomac around Petersburg. As the men set to work in
building their winter quarters, Hyde noted that:
This time…there was hope in the air; all were beginning to feel
that the next campaign would be the last, and most of the army now recognized
the fact that emancipation had been the end for which the war had been
permitted in the scheme of Providence.
Hyde would have to wait till the new year before he got
to test his brigade in the field. During the fighting spaked by Lee's
attack on Federal-held Fort Stedman on March 25, 1865, Hyde's brigade
was called upon to counterattack the rebels. Twenty-four years old at
the time, Hyde wrote about his first ever experience as a brigade commander:
I felt that the time had at last come, so often longed for, when it
should be settled whether I could command six regiments in action to my
own satisfaction. It was an unknown problem, a somewhat dreaded problem
too. It was not a question of danger at all, for in great responsibility,
personal danger is little thought of by any one. What is to be dreaded
is, not doing the right thing at the right time.
In the end, Hyde should have been proud, for his brigade
did a commendable job.
Hyde's second chance to see his men perform in battle came
soon afterwards on April 2nd. Following the rebel defeat at a crossroads
called Five Forks, Grant ordered a general assault all along the Petersburg
front. Hyde's 1,600 man brigade was chosen as the wedge of a Sixth Corps
storming column aimed at the vital Southside Railroad, behind enemy lines.
The ground he was to cover was filled with "five formidable lines
of abattis." To counter these obstacles Hyde had a unit of ax-men
lead the charge, cutting their way as they advanced.
When the signal was given, the men in blue breached the
rebel lines, overcoming obstacles and fortifications. Hyde's men were
in the forefront, racing for the Southside railroad. With that cut, they
reformed and began chasing the retreating rebels.
The success of Hyde's men continued until the entire division
came to a halt near a hill, which was home to a fierce rebel battery.
Hyde noted that "a fine-looking old officer, on a gray horse"
was personally directing the movements of the guns. It was a last ditch
effort, Hyde could tell, for everywhere the rebel lines were crumbling.
Assigning a part of his brigade to flank the hill and shoot the artillery
horses, to prevent the guns from escaping, Hyde ordered his brigade to
charge towards the stronghold, crashing through a swamp. This time the
division successfully took the hill. Once on top of the guns, Hyde conversed
with a rebel officer, asking him who the man on the horse had been. "General
Robert E. Lee," was the reply.
Hyde was shocked by this answer. Surely, if he had moved
faster, he could have captured the Confederate general and ended the War
right then and there. But Hyde was too exhausted to beat himself up over
things that had not happened. He sank to the ground after nineteen hours
of fighting and marching and slept once reinforcements had come up to
relieve his weary brigade. The next morning he was on the move again.
Off the Sixth Corps went, chasing after Lee. It was a race that had but
one ending and the fate of the Confederacy was sealed on April 9, 1865,
when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Hyde remembered that day:
Toward noon a sudden stillness came. The usual thunder around the horizon
became strangely silent. It seemed as if we were marching into a vacuum.
I dashed ahead to see what it meant, and within a mile came upon our revered
division commander, General Getty, sitting under a tree, his face in his
hands. "What is it, general?" "Lee has surrendered,"
was the reply. I joined him on the ground, and…tears fell…
Next Time: Hyde Goes Home & Problems in the Senate.
Some editing (by the Orient staff) may have occurred before
this piece was published. To view a full version of the entire series
(including source citations) please visit my website. (This site includes
the Chamberlain and Howard Series and is updated weekly during the school
year) at: http://www.bowdoin.edu/~kwongsri
Also, please send comments and ideas to: kwongsri@bowdoin.edu