CHARLES CITY, Va. — Confederate Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee had every reason to be confident when his troops pulled up outside Fort Pocahontas on May 24, 1864. Beside him rode nearly 2,500 cavalrymen, including some of the South's most seasoned fighters. Defending the isolated, partly finished outpost before him on the James River were a few Yankee officers — and an untested force of about 1,100 black ex-slaves.
But nearly 134 years after the bullets began to fly in the battle, Civil War enthusiasts gathered recently to honor the unlikely Union victors with a highway marker commemorating their historic triumph. They also applauded the preservationist instincts of Harrison R. Tyler, the owner of nearby Sherwood Forest plantation, who followed his recent purchase of the site by commissioning what archaeologists are calling an "extremely significant" excavation.
"Even though I grew up a few miles from here — and knew of the trenches — I did not know about their importance until Mr. [ Edwin W. ] Besch told me," Tyler said, crediting the historian who told him about the long-forgotten battle.
Known as Wilson's Wharf during the Civil War, the remote landing became a strategic point in the Union's James River supply line during its 1864 advance on Richmond, Va., Besch explained.
Gen. Benjamin Butler, a former commander at Fort Monroe, assigned contingents of the U.S. Colored Troops to defend the vulnerable site because, as he noted in his reports, "I knew they would fight more desperately than any white troops, in order to prevent capture."
The Southern authorities, in turn, considered the garrison of ex-slaves a symbolic affront, especially after the soldiers raided nearby Sherwood Forest and other plantations in Charles City County. Their commander, Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild, incited the Confederates even more by forcing a local slave owner to endure a whipping from his own slaves, Besch said. Lee's objectives, then, were part strategic, part psychological, when he launched his first assault on the isolated, still-incomplete earthen fortification on May 24.
According to one Virginia private, the cavalrymen dismounted and advanced with their sabers drawn, hoping to frighten their outnumbered opponents into submission. Still, no one in the rebel army seems to have expected the resistance they met, Besch said. "Present my compliments to General Fitz Lee — and tell him to go to hell," the Union commander responded — after reading the Confederate cavalry leader's demand for surrender.
The Confederates also might have been overconfident when they launched their last, ill-advised assault on the well-defended east side of the fort three hours later.
"It was a stupid attack," said historian Edward G. Longacre, who describes the battle in his 1997 book, Army of Amateurs. "They got mowed down."
Lee's losses totaled nearly 200 men killed, wounded or captured, Besch said, but the Confederate leader — nephew of Gen. Robert E. Lee — later changed the numbers to lessen the embarrassment of his defeat. The Union, in contrast, suffered less than two dozen casualties — and scored a huge psychological victory for black soldiers.
Although tested on several previous occasions, including the September 1863 attack near Charleston made famous by the movie Glory, the U.S. Colored Troops never had defeated the rebels so decisively.
"It had a huge effect on the opinions of the Union's white troops, who previously thought the blacks were suspect," Longacre said. The battle remained largely overlooked by 20th-century observers until Besch, working as a consultant for the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission, stumbled on word of the fort's existence several years ago.
Sharing his research with Tyler, the grandson of President John Tyler, he eventually persuaded the history-minded landowner to purchase the property for its protection.
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© Copyright 1997 by David W. Tschanz.
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