Shock Troops of the Confederacy by Ray Fred

Author:Ray, Fred [Ray, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CFS Press
Published: 2006-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

His regimental historian characterized Wooten’s exploits as “proverbial,” adding that “he was liberally used by division, corps and army headquarters for ascertaining the enemy’s lines or movements.” On another occasion General Lee asked that General Lane “catch a Yankee” for information on their movements, and Lane passed the assignment to Wooten. “After sitting a while with his head between his hands, he [Wooten] looked up with a bright face, and said: ‘I can get him.’ Early next morning, followed by a crowd of laughing, ragged Rebels, he marched seven prisoners to headquarters, and with a merry good morning, reported: ‘I couldn’t get that promised Yankee for General Lee, but I caught seven Dutchmen.’” Wooten became so notorious that Yankee pickets often anxiously inquired across the lines as to whether “Major Hooten” was about, and on other occasions Union officers asked to be introduced to him during truces.5

The Crater

The siege of Petersburg dragged on all summer, and on July 30 the Federals literally tried to blow the stalemate open with a mine. While a regiment of Pennsylvania coal miners dug the shaft and packed it with powder, the Union chiefs made their plans for the assault. The man chosen to lead the attack was General James Ledlie, the hero of Ox Ford. The mine went off just before 5 a.m., obliterating a section of earthworks along with the battery of artillery holding it and killing nearly three hundred South Carolina infantrymen. The white soldiers of Ledlie’s division and the black troops of Ferrero’s division crowded into the crater, where they became inextricably mixed up and, held back by a thin line of Confederate reserves, lost their momentum. The Confederates hastily brought up reinforcements, including Colonel David Weisiger’s (formerly Mahone’s) Virginia brigade. Weisiger’s sharpshooters, under the command of Captain William Wallace Broadbent, “a man of gigantic strength and stature,” marched with them. Broadbent’s sharpshooters were essentially a sixth regiment, nearly as strong as the line outfits. Their presence was more or less an accident, as they were just preparing to go out on picket duty that morning.

They soon found themselves embroiled in one of their most desperate fights of the war. “We had no order to charge that I ever heard,” wrote one Rebel, “but, seeing a column of Negro soldiers being pushed over the breast-works and lodged in a ditch, we, one and all, said that if we did not go now we would all fall later, and we started in zig-zag shape. Soon all minor officers said forward, and we rushed up to the Crater.”6

“The line was about one hundred and fifty yards in length when it started forward,” recalled another, “but with the men moving at slightly different paces and lengthening out a little on the right as the right regiments and sharp-shooters obliqued to the right towards the crater, before we were half across the field, the line had probably lengthened a hundred or two feet, and widened to twenty feet or more, and the men thus moving

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