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In May of 1864, General Butler led a surprise federal attack up the peninsula from Bermuda Hundred intended to sever the rail lines between Petersburg and Richmond. Butler proceeds to do some damage to the lines, but vulnerable between the two cities on either flank, is then forced back into the peninsula by Confederate counterattacks, where he builds earthworks to protect his army.
Once the Union forces are driven back, the confederate troops also put up a strong defensive line, bottling up the federal troops and keeping them isolated on the peninsula. The defensive line, known as the
Howlett Line, is anchored on two rivers, the James to the north, and the Appomattox to the south, and is matched by federal entrenchments facing it. To prevent the union troops from using the river to outflank the line, a heavy artillery battery is quickly constructed on the bluffs at the north end of the Howlett
Line. This battery is originally named Fort Howlett, after the Howlett house that stands a short distance away, but after Col Olin M. Dantzler is killed on June 2 leading the 22nd South Carolina Infantry in attempt to capture nearby federal Fort Dutton, the Battery is renamed
Battery Dantzler in his
honor. Two weeks later, on June 16, the battery was abandoned as General Beauregard sent all available troops south to hold off General
Baldy Smith’s advance on Petersburg from the south, and was recaptured later that same night. While mounting guns in the battery, three days later, the Confederate activity was spotted and the Federal sidewheeler
Agawam shelled the battery, killing one man, wounding several others, and dismounting one gun. The mounting of the guns was completed later that night, under cover of
darkness
.On June 21, the Battery Dantzler engaged the federal ironclad Saugus in an inconclusive three hour, long range artillery duel during which the
Saugus suffered damage to her turret and deck plates from a shot from a ten
(eight?) inch
Columbiad. The damage was slight, and left unrepaired until late in the summer.
In an attempt to bypass Battery Dantzler and others, and avoid sections of the mined
and blockaded river, soldiers under General Butler began working on the Dutch Gap canal 10 August 1864.
That fall, on November 29, double-turret monitor U.S.S.
Onondaga, under Commander William A Parker, and single-turret monitor
U.S.S. Mahopac, under Lieutenant Commander Edward E. Potter, engaged Battery Dantzler in a long range duel that ended inconclusively. They returned on December 5th through the 6th, with monitors
U.S.S. Saugus, and Canonicus, and this time the Saugus received a solid shot from one of Battery Dantzler’s 7 inch Brooke rifles that disabled her
turret.
The Confederate Navy made several attempts to go downstream past Battery Dantzler, their final river strongpoint, but were never successful in breaking the Union blockade, nor in reaching City Point in an attempt to shell it and disrupt Grant's supply line.
The most notable attempt came after dark on January 23, 1865 , when most of the Federal fleet had been sent away to bombard Fort Fisher in South Carolina. Three Confederate Ironclads, the C.S.S.
Virginia II, the Richmond, and the Fredericksburg along with a number of supporting gunboats moved down below Battery Dantzler, and initiated the battle of Trent's Reach. Things
went wrong for the Confederates from the start, as two of the
ironclads ran aground in the tidal river, and the subsequent pummeling of the immobilized boats and the others by Union batteries and the US ironclad
Onondaga forced the abandonment of the assault.
On April 2nd 1865, the Confederates abandoned Battery Dantzler with Grant's break through on the lines around the naval garrison joining in attempt to link with Johnston in South Carolina, but ultimately surrendering with Lee's army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865
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