Bissell and Bisbee in the Civil War -- 1865
The Battle of Petersburg, Virginia April 2, 1865
At the end of the fall of 1864, after the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, the 37th Massachusetts Infantry regiment had special duty for a few months, then went to fight in the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia beginning in December 1864 and continuing until April 3, 1865.
During that winter, they were in winter quarters comparable to the previous two years while they laid siege to Petersburg. The fighting at Petersburg over nearly a year involved a total of 70,000 killed and wounded on both sides, with an estimated 110,000 Union troops and something close to 50,000 Confederate troops still in place at the end of the battle.
This is a Union mortar pictured at the right, dubbed the "Dictator," with its crew in use at Petersburg, Va. It was moved on a specially strengthened railroad flatcar. It fired a 13-inch, 220 pound mortar shell using a 20 pound charge of gunpowder. Its cast iron tube weighed 17,120 pounds (this one was cast in Pittsburgh in 1862).
It was intended for use against heavy fortifications and for siege operations and was fired at the Siege of Petersburg. At a 45 degree angle, it could fire its explosive mortar shell 4,325 yards (a distance of just under 2 1/2 miles) or a bit further.
About a half mile to the west of where the 37th was fighting is where Captain Charles Gould of the 5th Vermont was one of the first into the rebel trenches. He was slashed in the head with a saber, bayoneted in the face and back and clubbed with muskets but he kept fighting and for those efforts he received the Medal of Honor. He lived until 1916.
Civil War
Medal of Honor
Even with weapons like the massive mortar above, it was still the infantry foot soldier who made the difference and had to win battle after battle in order to win the war. The 37th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was the first regiment from the Sixth Corps to enter St. Petersburg when the city surrendered on April 3, arriving 20 minutes after Robert E. Lee's army had pulled out. The Sixth broke through Confederate defenses southwest of the city, along the Boydton Plank Road line of the rebels, with the 37th Massachusetts and the 5th Wisconsin regiments leading Edwards' Brigade against the trenches held by a number of North Carolina rebel regiments.
When he learned of the Sixth Corps breakthrough his lines, General Lee notified Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis that it would be necessary to evacuate both Richmond (the Confederate capital) and Petersburg that night. Lee was hoping he could connect with Gen. Joseph Johnston's army in North Carolina to continue the war.
This Union supply wagon convoy on its way to Richmond shows the strength of Union military might at the end of the War, as the wagon train stretches to the horizon...
The Battle of Sailor's Creek
When Gen. Lee's army pulled out of Petersburg, Gen. Grant immediately sent Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry to harass Lee's force and cut off his attempts to get to North Carolina. Meanwhile, the Second Corps and the Sixth Corps were the veteran infantry troops sent to chase down Lee's army, with the 37th Massachusetts being assigned to the First Division of the Sixth Corps at this time. (Sources for this description of the April 6, 1865 Battle of Sailor's Creek, the last major battle of the Civil War, include the really excellent Civil War Trust website (civilwar.org) and the Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. The Civil War Trust is working to save a 130-acre portion of the Sailor's Creek battlefield site).
General Ewell's Confederate troops were on a hill on the west side of Sailor's Creek (which can be seen from the topographic lines in the map below), in a strong position. The stream was swollen beyond its banks from recent rain.
The Union infantry, after a 30-minute Union artillery barrage, was ordered at about 5:15 p.m. to assault across the stream, which was about four feet deep, and up the hill. The first division of the Sixth Corps, was on the left. The 37th regiment was using their new Spencer repeating rifles which could fire seven shots in quick succession from a magazine, without having to reload each time as they had done through most of the war with their muskets.
This is a Union supply wagon train entering Petersburg in April 1865. Note the length, it goes as far as you can see. Meanwhile, the 37th Regiment pressed on after Gen. Lee.
The Union troops managed to get across the stream and take cover at the bottom of the hill from which the Confederates were firing. The Union troops were firing within a few yards of the enemy and the Union troops closed around the Confederates, with bayonets used on each side in what one source called "a brutal melee." Ewell and 11 of his senior officers (including Robert E. Lee's son) and roughly 7,700 rebel troops surrendered, with another 8,800 Confederates killed or wounded. In this battle, more men were captured by the Union in actual conflict without any negotiation than on any other field in America. Lee, who was watching the battle from a distant knoll, was heard to exclaim, "My God! Has the army dissolved?" In what came to be known as "Black Thursday" among the Confederates, Lee lost roughly one-fourth of his army and the Union captured six Confederate generals.
Sergeant William Shaw's diary described the Battle of Sailor's Creek this way:
"Sheridan opened on them with his artillery, but could not dislodge them. He waited until the 6th corps came up, after which we formed our lines, then marched down quite a hill, crossed the creek, wading waist deep in mud and water, reformed our lines in line of battle...When all was ready, we rose up and began an advance up a hill...They gave us a terrible volley sending some of the line back a little, but we gave them shot after shot as fast as we could, which was not slow for our Spencer rifles, the only magazine gun in the army. [The rebels raised a whitle flag, pretending to surrender.] When we got among them, they pounced on us like tigers, using their bayonets, swords and butts of their guns. In an instant we saw their game, and met them on their own ground, using the same weapons...This is the 21st battle I have been in and the only one where the bayonet was used so freely."
The End of the War
Shaw wrote:
"April 9th, 1865. Fine day. Still pushing on after Lee. About 3 o'clock, this afternoon we arrived to within 3 miles of Appomattox Court House, a flag of truce in our front and cessation of hostilities for a time...at 4 o'clock P.M. General Lee surrendered himself and his entire command to General Grant. The glorious news of peace has come. Oh! What a day. We are all tired but seem to forget our weariness."
"June 8, 1865. Hot. Review of the 6th corps today in Washington. The boys had a hard time of it, many men dropped down in the street, some died."
George Bisbee married Betsey Smith and they had a daughter Myrtie Bisbee, born 21 Feb 1884.
To the left if his "mustering out" card, showing June 21, 1865.
This picture to the left is the living room in George and Betsey's home in the Berkshires, with George's Civil War rifle hanging over the fireplace. It looks to me as if there is a sword or machete also hanging to the left of the gun. George died in 1905.
John Bissell mustered out the same day as George Bisbee. John came home to the Berkshires and married Julie Ann Richardson. Their son Herbert Hunt Bissell married George and Betsey Bisbee's daughter Myrtie Bisbee and their son was Richard Meredith Bissell. John Bissell died in 1918.
In his "memoirs," Dick Bissell wrote the following remembrance of his grandfather John Hatch Bissell:
"A few years earlier Grandma Julie Ann passed away in that same bedroom. A few years further back Grandpa John Hatch Bissell passed away in that same room. With him he took a little bit of the shrapnel he had received in the Civil War that the medics had not removed when he was hit. I'm not surprised that they didn't find it because we didn't know that he still carried it until he spoke, very briefly, at social meeting at the Town Hall one evening. How I remember that evening. He was not a "large man" in fact he was rather small, but he sure was a big man up there on the stage to his five year old grandson."
[Ed. Note: I believe this meeting referred to might have been in 1915, the big national celebration of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, the same year that Richard Bissell would have been 5 years old.]
From September 1862 to June 30, 1865, the 37th Infantry lost during service 4 officers, 165 enlisted men killed or mortally wounded and 92 enlisted men dead to disease.