A Thousand Words a Battle: New Market Heights
Battle of Chaffin’s Farm, New Market Heights
September 29-30, 1864
The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm was fought on September 29-30, 1864, and part of several separate but related actions along the New Market Heights line and the Confederate forts protecting Richmond. During the battle, the United States Colored Troops courageously attacked and captured the Confederate defenses. Fourteen African American soldiers and two of their white officers earned the Medal of Honor for their gallantry during the fighting.
The following excerpts from a speech General Benjamin Butler gave before the Congress in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1874 recount the story of his men at New Market Heights:
I came into command again in Virginia in 1863. I there organized twenty-five regiments, with some that were sent to me, and disciplined them. Still all my brother officers of the Regular Army said my colored soldiers would not fight; and I felt it was necessary that they should fight to show that their race were capable of the duties of citizens; for one of the highest duties of citizens is to defend their own liberties and their country’s flag and honor.
On the 29th of September, 1864, I was ordered by the Commanding General of the armies to cross the James River at two points and attack the enemy’s line of works; one in the center of their line, Fort Harrison, the other a strong work guarding their left flank at New Market Heights; and there are men on this floor who will remember that day, I doubt not, as I do myself. I gave the center of the line to the white troops, the Eighteenth Corps, under General Ord, and they attacked one very strong work and carried it gallantly. I went myself with the colored troops to attack the enemy at New Market Heights; which was the key to the enemy’s flank on the north side of James River. That work was a redoubt built on the top of a hill of some considerable elevation; then running down into a marsh; in that marsh was a brook; then rising again to a plain which gently rolled away toward the river. On that plain, when the flash of dawn was breaking, I placed a column of three thousand colored troops, in close column by division, right in front, with guns at “right shoulder shift.” I said, “That work must be taken by the weight of your column; no shot must be fired;” and to prevent their firing I had the caps taken from the nipples of their guns. Then I said, “Your cry, when you charge, will be, ‘ Remember Fort Pillow!” and as the sun rose up in the heavens the order was given, “Forward,” and they marched forward, steadily as if on parade—went down the hill, across the marsh, and as they got into the brook they came within range of the enemy’s fire, which vigorously opened upon them.
It became my painful duty, sir, to follow in the track of that charging column, and there, in a space not wider than the Clerk’s desk and three hundred yards long, lay the dead bodies of five hundred and forty-three of my colored comrades, fallen in defense of their country, who had offered up their lives to uphold its flag and its honor as a willing sacrifice; and as I rode along among them, guiding my horse this way and that way lest he should profane with his hoofs what seemed to me the sacred dead, and as I looked ‘on their bronzed faces upturned in the shining sun to heaven as if in mute appeal against the wrongs of the country for which they had given their lives, and whose flag had only been to them a flag of stripes on which no star of glory had ever shone for them—feeling I had wronged them in the past and believing what was the future of my country to them—among my dead comrades there I swore to myself a solemn oath, “May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I ever fail to defend the rights of these men who have given their blood for me and my country this day and for their race forever'” and, God helping me, I will keep that oath.
[Great applause on the floor and in the galleries][1]
— Steward Henderson
[1] Benjamin Butler, speech, 7 January 1874, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.
