The Bermuda Hundred Campaign-Federal Leaders

In April 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant met with Major General Benjamin F. Butler and approved his plan to attack Richmond by moving an army up the James River while the Army of the Potomac moved against Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Butler was to land the Army of the James at Bermuda Hundred and move against Richmond, but because Grant knew Butler lacked significant combat experience, he placed two West Point trained combat officers, William F. “Baldy” Smith and Major General Quincy Gillmore, under him as corps commanders. This arrangement produced one of the war’s most contentious commands, and from the opening days of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, Butler and his subordinates quarreled openly, harming the operation and the good order and discipline of the army. Before the war Butler had been a lawyer and Massachusetts congressman, and in May 1862 he commanded the troops that entered New Orleans after its surrender to the Federal navy; although battlefield success eluded him, he was widely regarded as a brilliant administrator, and by 1864 he strongly supported the use of African-American soldiers and commanded more regiments of United States Colored Troops than any other general. Smith had graduated near the top of his West Point class in 1845, had fallen out of favor in Washington after the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, then served in 1863 as chief engineer in the Army of the Cumberland, where his skills impressed Grant; he came east in 1864 expecting to command the Army of the James, and his subordination to Butler created problems between them. Gillmore graduated first in his West Point class of 1849 and spent most of 1863 besieging Charleston in South Carolina; when assigned to Butler, he moved his Tenth Corps very slowly to Virginia, and this perceived foot-dragging quickly led to a feud between them.

Virginia · United States