Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[669] many men could be sent to the aid of Grant. Owing to the disputes between Gillmore and Smith as to the line of fortification, it was in no condition to be safely held by fifteen thousand men.

The rebel troops being driven away, Beauregard came to the conclusion to make no further attack upon my lines. About nine thousand of his men were sent to Lee by the way of Richmond,¹ and Colquitt's brigade of fourteen hundred men was sent to Chaffin's Bluff. Those which were ordered to Lee could not have joined him, under the condition their railroad transportation and supplies were in, before the 3d of June. Between that time and the battle of Cold Harbor there were no considerable losses, and, as Grant reports, the contests during that time were in his favor; so that he was not impeded at all by the want of troops from the Army of the James. He got sixteen thousand of them on the 28th of May before the next great battle at Cold Harbor was fought, and they included the best men I had.

Whoever, therefore, reported to Grant that I was not holding ten thousand men from Lee's army, simply told what was not the fact, probably to break up my army. I believe it to have been Halleck. It may have been Sheridan, as he made a raid upon Richmond at that time expecting to capture it, because, as he supposed, the troops had been drawn from there to Lee's army, and they would fear no attack from me, my troops being withdrawn from Bermuda Hundred.

Those sixteen thousand men under Smith were of no earthly advantage to Grant. It would have been very much more to his advantage if he had not had them, as without them he probably would not have made the fight at Cold Harbor. That fight was simply an indiscriminate slaughter of our men to the number of eighteen thousand, and more than three thousand were of the troops I had sent,--and better officers and soldiers never stood in line.

On the 22d of May, Fitzhugh Lee was sent to capture Wilson's Wharf, Fort Pocahontas. As has been already stated, the place was seized when we went up the river, so that our transports should not be stopped.

Fitzhugh Lee thought that with his cavalry, infantry, and artillerymen, amounting to some twenty-five hundred men, he could easily