Evacuation of Yorktown

FURTHER PARTICULARS

PHILADELPHIA, May 5. – the Enquirer has a special dispatch from Fortress Monroe giving the following particulars in regard to the evacuation of Yorktown.

One mile beyond Yorktown,

Sunday 10 o’clock A. M.

All day yesterday the rebels kept up a fire on Gen. Porter’s division.  No one was hurt.  Our Parrott guns at Farnhal Court House occasionally answered them.  All last evening and up to midnight lively firing – was kept up, about that time the fire slackened considerably, at 2 o’clock stopped altogether.  We fired one or two more batteries at them by got no answer.  About 3 o’clock this morning a building at Yorktown was fired and Prof. Lowe and Gen. Heintzelman went up in a balloon and found it was their store house at Yorktown wharf at daylight they reported the forts empty, at 7 o’clock we occupied Yorktown without being again fired at.

Of the guns of the enemy nearly all remaining were spiked and dismounted.  By the side of the river batteries were large piles of ammunition, powder, balls and shells.  Eighty guns were in Yorktown which is surrounded by a semicircle, the earthworks were all constructed to cover one another in every position but they must have eventually yielded could we have got around them.

The gun we dismounted the other day killed and wounded four rebels.

The fort had been occupied by the First battalion New Orleans Artillery, the 8^th and 30^th Alabama regiments, the 10^th and 14^th Louisiana and 13^th & 45^th Georgia regiments.  These troops were ordered to report at Howard’s Grove four miles from Richmond and left the fort at midnight.  A rear guard was left who waited for appearances and then retired in the greatest haste.

Two deserters who left their regiment in Williamsburgh at daylight, says the whole rebel army was in a panic.

Prof. Lowe’s balloon reconnaissance discovered their rearguard at 9 A. M. to be four miles out.  Gen. McClellan immediately ordered out the artillery and cavalry and is pushing after them at full speed.

All our gunboats came up at 9 o’clock and landed some marines at Gloucester who raised the U. S. flag amid cheering that could be heard across the river.  The boats all then left and are now running up the York river shelling the banks on both sides.

A number of mines had been prepared for our troops by placing Prussian shells under ground on the roadways and entrances to the forts.  No whites were to be found and only a few negro women and babies.  The town was squalid and dirty.  A few days of rain would have been a specific.  A large quantity of meat, salt and fish was left.  All the tents were left but no horses or wagons.

Reports concur that the rebels consist of a mob of about 100,000 men ill fed, dirty and disheartened.  The road from Yorktown to Hampton on which they were encamped was guarded by Fort Magruder mounting a large number of guns part of which are taken away and part spiked and some of their works were well laid out, others were wretched contrivances.  The work upon them was finished on Friday night and the slaves sent to the rear under guard.  The rebels have nothing behind on which they can make a stand.  Last night their camp fires all along were the same as usual – the dense wood along the peninsula enabled them to leave without being seen by the balloon.

The large guns of the rebels are mostly columbiads taken from the Norfolk Navy Yard – Some of them have been recently mounted – The _____ although of the roughest character were very formidable being surrounded by deep gorges almost impassable.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 10, 1862, p. 4