Wilson's Wharf

Wilson's Wharf, sometimes known as Fort Pocahontas, unfolded as part of the larger struggle waged when Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant pressed his Overland Campaign against the Confederate forces led by Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.

On May 24, a Confederate cavalry force under Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, numbering roughly 2,500 troopers, struck the Union supply base situated at Wilson's Wharf along the James River in the eastern part of Charles City, Virginia. Defending the position were two regiments of United States Colored Troops, about 1,100 soldiers strong, serving under Brig. Gen. Edward A. Wild. These men had been busy raising fortifications at the site, later named Fort Pocahontas, when the assault came, and they succeeded in driving the attackers back. This clash marked the first time Robert E. Lee's army had faced African-American soldiers on the field.

Background

Edward Wild trained as a physician and held strong abolitionist convictions before the war cost him his left arm during the fighting at South Mountain in 1862. Once he recovered, he organized a unit made up of men who had escaped bondage, known as Wild's African Brigade. In the winter spanning 1863 and 1864, he took these troops on a campaign along the North Carolina coastline, sending waves of fear through white residents who had lived alongside African slavery there since the beginning of the eighteenth century.

By May 1864, Wild's brigade had come ashore in Virginia, where they set to work constructing a fort at Wilson's Wharf. This position was part of a chain of defensive points meant to protect the supply routes for Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler's Bermuda Hundred Campaign. The site itself commanded a critical curve in the James River, sitting beneath tall bluffs, roughly 2 miles from Sherwood Forest, the residence of former president John Tyler. Southerners already regarded Wild's command with dread, and what followed only deepened that sentiment. His men liberated enslaved people and brought them into the ranks, and on one occasion they administered a whipping to a plantation owner notorious for his cruelty toward those he enslaved. Newspapers in Richmond condemned these events loudly, piling pressure onto Jefferson Davis's administration to bring Wild's activities to a halt.

Bowing to this pressure, Davis's military adviser, Gen. Braxton Bragg, directed Fitzhugh Lee to take his cavalry division and, in his words, "break up this nest and stop their uncivilized proceedings." At the same time his uncle, Robert E. Lee, was locked in combat with Ulysses S. Grant near the North Anna River, Fitz Lee assembled portions of three cavalry brigades along with the 5th South Carolina Cavalry Regiment, totaling 2,500 men and a single cannon, and covered 40 miles from Atlee's Station on his way to Wilson's Wharf. He anticipated an easy fight against poorly organized opponents, but instead discovered that the men holding Fort Pocahontas were alert and fully prepared to meet him.

Wild's garrison numbered 1,100 soldiers supported by two cannons, drawn from the 1st United States Colored Infantry Regiment and four companies bel

Battle

Shortly before midday on May 24, Confederate troops under Lee pushed forward and swept away the Union sentries stationed near the Charles City Road, roughly a mile north of the fort. The garrison found itself surrounded by half past one, at which point Lee dispatched a pair of officers bearing a truce flag to deliver terms calling for surrender. His message assured that captured black soldiers would be sent to Richmond and given prisoner of war status, but he warned that refusal would leave him unable to guarantee what might follow. Wild and his troops read this warning as a threat of death or bondage, a fear made sharper by the recent slaughter of black soldiers who had already surrendered at Fort Pillow just six weeks before. In response, Wild penned a note instructing that his regards be passed along to General Fitz Lee along with an order to go to hell, and he told the two messengers aloud that they were welcome to try taking the fort themselves.

Lee's strategy called for a pincer movement. The brigade of Brig. Gen. Williams C. Wickham swung around to the fort's eastern side, hidden within the ravines cut by Kennon Creek. Meanwhile, Col. John Dunovant and his 5th South Carolina troops staged a diversion against the fort's western flank to pull attention away from Wickham's approach. Dunovant's soldiers pressed forward until they reached the ditch and abatis, but a storm of fire forced them back. Wickham's column then dashed across open ground, only to run into crossing lines of musket fire, blasts of canister from a pair of 10-pounder Parrott rifles, and shelling from the naval vessel Dawn.

While Lee searched for a vulnerable spot in the fort's lines, help arrived for the Federals around four that afternoon, when the steamer George Washington delivered four companies belonging to the 10th USCI. Faced with this reinforcement, Lee ordered a retreat toward Charles City Court House, and by the following morning his men had ridden back to Atlee's Station.

Aftermath

The failed assault cost the Confederates roughly 200 men killed or wounded, while the Federals suffered far fewer casualties, six dead and 40 injured. Among the captives were a handful of Black soldiers, several of whom were executed on the spot, and one who was returned to his owner in Richmond. In terms of altering the war's course, the engagement counted for little, yet it handed a public relations triumph to the Union side. This clash marked the first major fight pitting the Army of Northern Virginia directly against Black troops, who held their ground effectively despite being outnumbered by their attackers. Rather than admit that they had been bested largely by African-American troops, Confederate accounts insisted that six gunboats and considerable numbers of white Federal soldiers had taken part in the fighting. Fitz Lee, for his part, downplayed both the size of his force and the extent of his casualties when he described the engagement afterward.