During June 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac (commanded by Major General G. Gordon Meade) had pulled out of their lines at Cold Harbor, Virginia – ending the Overland Campaign. From there they would cross the Chickahominy and James rivers, the latter of which would be the longest pontoon bridge used during the Civil War. Grant’s armies would then settle into the areas east and south of both Richmond and Petersburg. A siege ensued. Three months later, the siege continuing, Grant would order Meade to look for weak spots in the Confederate line, which could be exploited. On this day, 162 years ago, they would choose the fields around a farm lane – which would ignite the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights. Like so many of these Federal probes, Chaffin’s Farm would turn into a major battle – even by Civil War standards.
The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights
On the night of September 28–29, 1864, Major General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James slipped across the James River under cover of darkness. Ulysses S. Grant had ordered the movement as the northern half of a two-pronged offensive: threaten Richmond itself, force Confederate General Robert E. Lee to weaken the Petersburg lines, and perhaps crack the Confederate capital’s outer defenses. By dawn two Union columns were north of the river. Major General David Birney’s X Corps and Brigadier General Charles Paine’s division of United States Colored Troops advanced toward New Market Heights. Major General Edward O. C. Ord’s XVIII Corps moved up Varina Road against Fort Harrison on the Chaffin’s Farm line.
Fog clung to the low ground as the first attack went in at New Market Heights. Colonel Samuel Duncan’s brigade—the 4th and 6th United States Colored Infantry—stepped into a double line of abatis and palisades held by John Gregg’s Texas Brigade and supporting cavalry. The Confederates held their fire until the range was short, then tore the leading ranks apart. Duncan fell with multiple wounds. In roughly forty minutes the two regiments lost hundreds of men. Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th USCT seized the national colors after the bearers went down and carried them through what he later called “a deadly hailstorm of bullets.” A second wave under Colonel Alonzo Draper, later joined by Colonel John Holman’s brigade, finally reached and occupied the heights after the Texans withdrew toward the main line near Forts Harrison and Gilmer. Fourteen Black soldiers would receive the Medal of Honor for that morning’s work—fourteen of the sixteen Army Medals of Honor awarded to African American soldiers in the entire war. Paine’s division lost roughly one man in three.
At the same hour, farther west, Brigadier General George Stannard’s division of the XVIII Corps crossed fourteen hundred yards of open ground toward Fort Harrison. The fort was lightly held. Burnham’s brigade led; Brigadier General Hiram Burnham was killed on the parapet. All three of Stannard’s brigade commanders became casualties. Still the Federals swept over the works by about 7:30 a.m., capturing guns and prisoners. The captured fort was later renamed Fort Burnham. Attempts to exploit the breach failed. Attacks on Fort Gilmer, supported by Confederate gunboats on the James, were bloodily repulsed. Ord himself was wounded. Union troops inside Harrison grew disorganized; a supporting column under Charles Heckman drifted off course and was driven back.
Lee reacted at once, shifting some ten thousand men north of the James River. On September 30 Confederate counterattacks tried to retake Fort Harrison and failed. Both sides then dug in. The Confederates built a new line that isolated the lost forts. Richmond did not fall. Petersburg’s western approaches remained the main prize. Grant had nevertheless forced Lee to thin his Petersburg defenses, and the Union now held a permanent lodgment on the Richmond side of the river.
The two-day battle cost the Union about 3,372 men—391 killed, 2,317 wounded, 649 missing. Confederate losses ran near 2,000. United States Colored Troops, a fraction of the force engaged, suffered a disproportionate share of the casualties; the 6th USCT was nearly destroyed. Tactically the Federals had taken important ground. Strategically they had stretched Lee’s army once more. For six more months the two lines would face each other eight miles from the Confederate capital, until the final collapse in April 1865. The fighting at Chaffin’s Farm and New Market Heights remains one of the clearest demonstrations that Black soldiers would attack prepared works and hold them at terrible cost.
Early in the Overland Campaign, Grant writing to Major General Henry W. Halleck, in Washington City, stated, “[I]…propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” This was after suffering terrible losses – at two battles: the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House. These words would prove prophetic as the conclusion of the Overland Campaign would just shift the fighting to the Siege of Petersburg – which would last many more months. President Lincoln, after suffering through the slow, deliberate movements other Eastern Theater commanders’ handling of the Army of the Potomac, would state, “Have just read your despatch of 1 P.M. yesterday. I begin to see it. You will succeed. God bless you all.” Lincoln had a commander which would push with alacrity and hold onto Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia like a bulldog.
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