Official Records of the Rebellion

Official Records of the Rebellion: Volume Eleven, Chapter 23, Part 1: Peninsular Campaign: Reports

The Document

CAMPAIGN OF THE PENINSULA. (The preceding portion of this report appears in Series I, Vol. V, pp. 69—76.)

The last days of March were days of labor. The signal camp of instruction was abandoned. The detachments of instructors (of which mention has been made) were formed and ordered to the armies of Generals Halleck and Butler. The office of the signal officer was, at the suggestion of Capt. Samuel T. Cushing, Second Infantry, U. S. Army, and acting signal officer, placed in charge of that officer, who well arranged and superintended its duties while the army went through the campaign of the Peninsula. The Signal Corps of the Army of the Potomac was partially reorganized. A detachment of officers and men was assigned to each army corps. The last equipments for the field and camp were completed, and the corps was then ready to accompany any movement of the Grand Army. Whatever time was else unemployed was given to the vigorous practice in signals of those whose short experience at the camp of instruction had rendered this practice necessary. As the embarkation took place at Alexandria the signal officers of each army corps were distributed among the vessels carrying those corps. The aid they gave in the regulating, by the rapid telegraphing of messages, the embarkation of the forces, the facility with which the movements of the loaded transports were through them directed, and the precision they were able to cause in the arrangements for the debarkation of the great bodies of troops at the end of the voyage were subjects of pleasing surprise and of favorable comments, official and unofficial, among the numerous generals and other officers who were witnesses. Especial mention was made, I am informed, by Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter of the services rendered on this voyage by the signal detachment which, commanded by Lieut. H. L. Johnson, Fifth Connecticut Volunteers, and acting signal officer, accompanied the forces under General Porter.

The detachment serving with General Heintzelman was so well appreciated that a detail from it was sent back by that general from Fortress Monroe to aid in the sailing of the divisions under General Hooker, which, then belonging to Heintzelman’s corps, were to sail at a later date. The signal officers accompanying the corps commanded by General Keyes on the voyage down the Potomac were much employed. The signal detachments commanded by Lieuts. N. Daniels, Third Wisconsin Volunteers, and acting signal officer, and F. Wilson, Fifth Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps, and acting signal officer, and assigned, respectively, to the corps commanded by Major-General Sumner and Major-General McDowell, did not accompany the movement of the Army of the Potomac at this time.

On March 31 the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, on board the steamer Commodore, moved from Alexandria. A reserve party of seven officers, with their flagmen, accompanied them. The enlisted men of this party, the horses, stores, and wagons, with the extra stores for the corps of the Army of the Potomac, were on the same day shipped upon a sailing vessel. On the evening of April 2 the steamer Commodore arrived at Fortress Monroe, Va.

[227]

On April 3 the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac were nominally stationed a mile north of Hampton, Va. But very few tents were pitched, however, and this camp could hardly with propriety be styled one.

During the movement down the river it had been made known that a movement of combined land and naval forces against Yorktown was intended. As soon as headquarters had moved from the steamer Commodore an interview was had with Commodore Goldsborough, then commanding the fleet near Fortress Monroe, and arrangements were made to send a detachment of signal officers and men on board the flotilla, then under orders to sail for Yorktown, under the command of Commodore Missroon.

On the next day the army transport with stores, &c., arrived. A night of hard labor sufficed to discharge her, and early on the following morning the reserve signal detachment, fully equipped, with its stores and means of transportation, was ready for the field. A detachment of 3 officers and 6 men, commanded by Lieut. J. W. De Ford, Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps, and acting signal officer, was ordered to the fleet. A few hours’ rest was given to men and horses, yet stiff from the voyage, and at sunset on the 5th of April the party moved toward the front. A rapid night march over roads crowded with immense trains of wagons, and through fields, to avoid obstacles else impassable, and part of a day’s toil through deep mud on narrow ways, encumbered with the impediments of a great army, brought the party on the afternoon of April 6 to the camping-ground, near Dr. Powers’ house, of the first regular camp of headquarters of the Army of the Potomac made on the Peninsula in time to pitch their tents with the first there pitching.

The general advance of the Army of the Potomac had been made on April 4. On that night headquarters bivouacked at Big Bethel. On the following night they occupied a few uncomfortable sheds of a rebel cantonment near the now-selected encampment. In the general advance of the army the army corps under General Keyes moved upon the James River side of the Peninsula, and after heavy skirmishing touched the enemy’s lines at Lee’s Mill, near the Warwick River. The country into which this army corps moved was almost unknown to our generals. It was flat and covered with dense forests. The low formation of the ground and heavy rains had made it swampy. Through this the roads, nearly impassable, led. On all the march the detachment of the signal corps serving with these forces, under Lieut. B. F. Fisher, was on duty. There were no elevated points whence general observation could be had, and the character of the country made signaling impossible. The duties of such temporary reconnaissances as are made by scouts in such cases devolved upon the signal officers. They were among the first to follow the devious roads, to recognize the presence of the enemy, to study with their telescopes his strength and movements, and to hasten to report as well as they could such facts as they were able to note to the generals with whom they served. The advance of this column was checked near the line of the Warwick River, and General Keyes established his headquarters at Warwick Court-House.

The column under General Heintzelman, moving on the York side of the Peninsula, passed through a country difficult indeed, but both more open and better drained than that penetrated by the forces under General Keyes. The division of Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter constituted the advance of this column, and after minor encounters with [228] the enemy, in which they precipitately fled, it came under fire, and was checked by the guns and works at Yorktown. The duties of signal officers accompanying this column were, as with the other wing of the army, those of exploration and reconnaissance.

General Heintzelman established his headquarters at the saw-mill near the head of Wormley’s Creek, on the Hampton road.

On the 6th of April a number of vessels of the fleet appeared in the bay off Yorktown. A few exchanges of shots with the enemy’s batteries bearing upon the river front convinced the naval commanders that with wooden vessels they could not pass between Yorktown and Gloucester, nor could they encounter without disaster the heavy metal and plunging fire of the enemy’s guns. The fleet drew out of range, and anchored in the Roads about 3 ½ miles from Yorktown.

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How to cite this article

Official Records of the Rebellion: Volume Eleven, Chapter 23, Part 1: Peninsular Campaign: Reports, pp.223-228

web page Rickard, J (19 November 2006), http://www.historyofwar.org/sources/acw/officialrecords/vol011chap023part1/00012_04.html


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