Grant Under Fire

General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant came here three hours after the capture of Fort Harrison, hoping the early morning success could become a sweeping and perhaps decisive victory. As Confederate artillery continued to shell the fort intermittently, he assessed the situation, then sat near this spot with his back to a small traverse and wrote a dispatch reporting that General Ord had carried the strong works and some fifteen pieces of artillery and that his corps was ready to advance in conjunction with a nearby subordinate. During this, a shell burst directly over him, but Grant neither paused in his writing nor looked up. His narrow escape here preserved him for later service as the nation's eighteenth president.

Virginia · United States