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Burley weighed the risks and decided that his prison conditions could not significantly worsen if he tried to escape and was recaptured. One night, when the drains were full and water was seeping up through the floor, Burley and his five comrades pried open the grille in their barracks and, taking a big breath, lowered themselves into the pitch-dark pipe. Burley’s powerful physique enabled him to thrust his body along for twenty-five yards until he reached the end and could heave himself into the rushing river. Only one other Confederate managed the same feat. Burley was rescued by a passing sailboat, telling the crew that he had capsized while night fishing, which the captain either believed or chose not to question. He was taken to Philadelphia and from there he headed north to Canada, where he would be safe.

—

In Virginia, the Army of the Potomac was edging toward Richmond. “We must destroy this army of Grant’s before he gets to the James River,” Lee had urged General Jubal Early on May 29. “If he gets there, it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.”9 Two weeks later, on June 12, the Federals had not only reached the James but also crossed it, using pontoon bridges. Now only the small town of Petersburg, population 18,266, lay between Grant and the Confederate capital.10 The town straddled the five remaining railways and two main roads that connected Richmond to the rest of the state. From June 15 to 18, Grant ordered a continuous wave of attacks, losing more than ten thousand men over four days without breaking the Confederate defenses. “We have assaulted the enemy’s works repeatedly and lost many lives, but I cannot understand it,” Charles Francis Adams, Jr., wrote in anguish to his father on June 19. “Why have these lives been sacrificed? Why is the Army kept continually fighting until its heart has sickened within it? I cannot tell … Grant has pushed his Army to the extreme limit of human endurance.”11

The U.S. generals complained that their troops had lost their courage for frontal assaults. The men would make a show of going forward before hunkering down under cover. Grant tried one last time before he accepted the necessity for a long siege. He dispatched Sheridan on another cavalry raid with orders to attack Lee at his vulnerable points—the bridges, water tanks, and supply lines. On June 22, Grant ordered an assault against one of the five railroads. The 69th New York Volunteers were among the attackers.

Our Captain asked permission to lead us [wrote James Pendlebury]. He had been under arrest for some time and told me that he had a foreboding that in the next encounter he would be killed.… As we were entering into the charge he received a shot and fell at my side. I turned and said, “Captain, are you mortally wounded?” He said, “I am Jimmy, don’t leave.” There was one thing I had learnt always to have beside me, which I knew was most refreshing; I carried a supply of water because the first thing men who are wounded cry for is water. The captain thanked me for it and I stood beside him. I, myself, was so very thirsty that I lay down and literally slaked up every drop of water that I found in the imprint of a horse’s shoe in the clay. I forgot it was muddy I was so thirsty. I gave to my Captain many a drink during the throes of death. I turned him over many times and did all I could for him. After a while I got him on my shoulder and carried him into the shelter of the trees out of the sound of the whizzing bullets. I really thought I would never get out alive. By and by the Captain died and I got him on my back and carried him back to our works. We buried him in the breast works in front of Petersburg, Virginia.

Grant ordered a second charge, but many of the troops were done with fighting. The 69th was drunk before the attack—Pendlebury wandered forward in a daze, thinking he would dodge Confederate bullets if they came—and the men were captured en masse.12