Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[254] which I was restricted by my orders, I wrote to General Scott that I proposed to make the reconnoissance in person that very day, with the intention, if I found it practical, of seizing Newport News, and intrenching a force there by which this important point could always be held unless our government lost control of Hampton Roads. Therefore I embarked at midday with twenty-five men and three gentlemen of my staff. We steamed up past Sewall's Point, being saluted from the enemy's battery there by a cannon shot, the ball of which fell far short of its mark. I then answered the salute in derision with a rival shot from a rifle, which carried its bullet as far as the enemy's cannon. We landed at a little jetty at Newport News, and climbed the banks. Here there burst upon my sight one of the finest scenes that I ever beheld. At the point nearest the river was a farmer's house shaded by some very fine elms, and a field of some sixty or seventy acres, a perfect plain, covered with a beautiful growth of spring wheat waving in the light wind.

Even this cursory examination proved to me that the point was all I could hope for. Sailing a mile or two up the James River, we turned about and reached home in time for an early supper.

That evening I organized an expedition of two thousand men, some artillery, and some heavy guns to command the river, with the necessary intrenching tools, and with three days rations in the haversacks of the troops.

We got off the next morning at seven o'clock, and at half-past 8 we were ruthlessly trampling down that field of wheat in pitching our camp and marking out the line of intrenchments stretching across the point from water to water.

One of the regiments was that of Colonel Phelps, and I detailed him in command. From that time Newport News was always the place where the fleet of the navy found fine air, fine anchorage, and plenty of water, and was never disturbed by a hostile shot until the arrival of the Merrimac, and the sinking of the frigates Congress and Constellation, in the spring following.

That we were not a day too early was shown by the immediate occupation by the rebels of Pig Point, which lies precisely on the opposite side of the James River at its junction with the Nansemond.