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| Huts at Dutch Gap.1 |
Sept. 29, 1864. |
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According to arrangement, Ord and Birney crossed the river on, pontoon bridges muffled with hay on the night of the 28th, the former at Aiken's and the latter at Deep Bottom.
Ord pushed along the Varina road at dawn.
His chief commanders were Generals Burnham, Weitzel, Heckman, Roberts and Stannard, and Colonel Stevens.
His van soon encountered the Confederate pickets, and after a march of about three miles, they came
upon the intrenchments below Chapin's farm, the strongest point of which was Battery Harrison, on a hill overlooking a great extent of country.
It was a very important work — the strongest around Richmond — but had not then its full complement of men, though re-enforcements were hurrying toward it. This fort Ord stormed and carried, together with a long line of breastworks, capturing twenty-two pieces of heavy ordnance, and about three hundred men. But the victory was gained at fearful cost.
General Burnham was killed; Stannard lost an arm; Ord was severely wounded; and about seven hundred men were lost by death or maiming, chiefly of Stannard's command, which bore the brunt of the assault.
Weitzel assumed the direction of the Eighteenth Corps when Ord was disabled; and Battery Harrison was named Fort Burnham, in honor of the slain general.
An attempt was made to capture Fort Gilmer, a little further on, but the assailants were repulsed with a loss of about three hundred men.
In the mean time Birney had moved out from Deep Bottom to assail the works on Spring Hill of New Market Heights. Three thousand colored troops of the Eighteenth Corps, under General Charles Paine, were put in column of division by General Butler, and sent in the advance.
They pushed rapidly forward, drove in the Confederate pickets, and proceeded to assail a redoubt on Spring Hill.
This was a strong work, with a tangled marsh, and a brook fringed with trees, that traversed it on the front; and it was further defended by abatis. These obstacles were little hinderance to the eager troops.
They swept across the marsh and the stream, scaled the height, carried the work at the point of the bayonet, and thus secured
the key-point to the Confederate defenses in that quarter.
Because of its importance it was desperately defended; and it was won by the black warriors at a fearful cost.
Two hundred of that storming party fell dead before reaching the works, and not less than one thousand, or one-third their number, were lost to the army by death, wounds, or captivity.
For their gallantry on that occasion, General Butler,
1 this was the appearance of the north bank of the James River, at Dutch Gap, when the writer sketched it, at the close of 1864. the bank was there almost perpendicular, and rose about thirty feet above the water. These huts and excavations were near the top.
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