Charles Carleton Coffin
Copyright© 2025 by William Elliot Griffis
Chapter 16: With Lincoln in Richmond
Whither now should Carleton go? There were but few fields to conquer, for the slaveholders’ rebellion was swiftly nearing its end, and Carleton felt his work with armies and amid war would soon and happily be over. He knew it was now time for Grant to deliver his blows, and make the anvil at Petersburg ring. Eager to be in at the death of treason, he hastened home, shortened his stay with wife and friends, and hurried on to City Point. As usual, he was present in the nick of time. He was able to write his first letter from the Army of the Potomac, descriptive of the attack on Fort Steadman, March 25th. On the 26th he saw again the sparkling-eyed Sheridan. Once more he began to use his whip of scorpions upon the editors and people who were bestowing all praises upon the Army of the West, with only criticism or niggardly commendation for the Armies of the Potomac and the James, with many a sneer and odious comparison. He witnessed the tremendous attack of the rebel host upon the Ninth Corps, hearing first the signal gun, next the rebel yell, then the rattling fire of musketry deepening into volleys, and finally the roar of the cannonade. Carleton, within three minutes after the firing of the first gun, took position with his glass and note-book, upon a hill. One hundred guns and mortars were in full play, surpassing in beauty and grandeur all other night scenes ever witnessed by him. In some moments he could count thirty shells at once in the air, which was filled with fiery arcs crossing each other at all angles. Between the flaming bases, at the muzzle and the explosion, making two ends of an arch, there were thousands of muskets flashing over the entrenchments. Yet, despite the awful noise and the spectacle so magnificent to the eye, there were few men hurt within the Union lines.
After forty hours of rain, the wind blew from the northwest, and the mud rapidly disappeared. Then Carleton began to look out for the great event, in which such giants as Lee and Johnston on one hand, and Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Hancock on the other, were to finish the game of military mathematics which had been progressing during four years. Carleton wrote, March 31, 1865, “How inspiring to watch the close of such a game.” He expected a great battle. “The last flicker of a candle is sometimes its brightest flame.”
He was not disappointed. On mid-afternoon of April 1st, Carleton was at Sheridan’s headquarters witnessing the battle of Five Forks, and the awful bombardment of Saturday night. Then went out Grant’s order to “attack along the whole line.” Now began the bayonet war. At 4 o’clock on that eventful Sunday, like a great tidal wave, the Union Army rolled over the rebel entrenchments. This is the way Carleton describes it in Putnam’s Magazine:
“Lee attempted to retrieve the disaster on Saturday by depleting his left and centre, to reinforce his right. Then came the order from Grant, ‘Attack vigorously all along the line.’ How splendidly it was executed! The Ninth, the Sixth, the Second, the Twenty-fourth Corps, all went tumbling in upon the enemy’s works, like breakers upon the beach, tearing away chevaux-de-frise, rushing into the ditches, sweeping over the embankments, and dashing through the embrasures of the forts. In an hour the C. S. A., —the Confederate Slave Argosy, —the Ship of State launched but four years ago, which went proudly sailing, with the death’s-head and cross-bones at her truck, on a cruise against Civilization and Christianity, hailed as a rightful belligerent, furnished with guns, ammunition, provisions, and all needful supplies, by England and France, was thrown a helpless wreck upon the shores of time.”
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