WARWICK — Warren H. Potter Jr. remembers the family reunions in northeastern Connecticut, picnicking with his aunts, uncles and cousins and hearing the stories about his great-grandfather George Warren Potter, hero of the Civil War.

He lost an eye. He won the Medal of Honor. He helped end the war.

“You never knew how much of it was myth,” Potter said.

Well, in the case of George W. Potter and his unit, Rhode Island Light Artillery Battery G, the answer was: not much.

From Union Gen. George McClellan’s invasion of the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862 through Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in April 1865, Battery G was in nearly every major battle the Union Army fought in the East during the Civil War.

On Thursday and Friday, the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery has scheduled events at the Benefit Street Armory in Providence to mark the 150th anniversary of the unit’s finest hour.

It came before dawn on the morning of April 2, 1865, when 17 volunteers from Battery G followed the lead Union infantry units that stormed the Confederate trenches around Petersburg, Va. Armed with only cannon tools, their sponge rammers and lanyards, they seized control of enemy cannon there, turned them on the rebels and helped ensure a Union breakthrough that led to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox seven days later.

For their bravery that day, the 17 men earned the Medal of Honor.

The commemoration, which is open to the public, will begin Thursday at 7 p.m., with a talk by Robert Grandchamp, author of "The Boys of Adams' Battery G," a history of the unit. He will be followed at 8 p.m by Fred Zilian, who will talk about Rhode Islanders in the Civil War, and then retired state Supreme Court chief justice and Abraham Lincoln expert Frank Williams will speak.

On Friday evening, there will be a 7 o'clock cocktail reception, followed at 9 by an unveiling of a bronze plaque commemorating Battery G.

Retired Brig. Gen. Richard J. Valente, lieutenant colonel, commanding, of PMCA, said the armory was chosen because it was where Rhode Island artillerists trained. The 150 men who volunteered for Battery G drilled there, sometimes for 12 hours a day, Valente said, each learning the specific job he had to do to fire the cannon.

Collaboration

Grandchamp said the firing of a Civil War cannon required a crew of seven men, each with a specific job. One shoved a wet sponge down the barrel to put out any embers from the previous shot, lest they ignite the powder for the next charge and kill everyone around the gun.

Others loaded gunpowder and the shell, aimed the gun, inserted the fuse and ignited it.

Behind them were men who had to sort out the ammunition and hand it to the cannon crew, and there were teamsters who kept control of the six horses it took to haul each piece of artillery. Every man was cross-trained to do every other man’s job.

They had to be able to do it rapidly and in rhythm with one another, Grandchamp said, like a carefully choreographed dance routine. If one man was off, it wrecked the assembly-line flow behind and ahead of him. And, Valente said, the pace had to be kept while enduring enemy cannon and rifle fire.

The assault

In April 1865, Union Gen. Ulysses Grant had been besieging Petersburg for 10 months when he decided to push it. He ordered a massive assault on the Confederate trenches for April 2, hoping to break that thin gray line.

Battery G’s commander, Capt. George Adams, had his own plan. The attacking federals couldn’t bring cannons with them, he told his commander, but he could lead a group of volunteers to go in with the infantry, take the first Confederate cannon they found and turn it on the enemy.

At 4 a.m., he and 17 volunteers lined up behind the lead infantry units in the assault. They didn’t have guns, just the tools they needed to work the Confederate cannons. They crossed the open ground between the armies while cannon and gunfire zeroed in on them. They’d either be among the first through the line, Grandchamp said, or the first to be shot.

A Vermont regiment got to one of the Confederate gun emplacements and fought off the rebel cannoneers. Adams and the Battery G men poured in after them, taking over the guns and firing on the counterattacking Confederates. They worked the two guns until they ran out of ammunition, Grandchamp said, firing more than 100 rounds.

Potter was wounded in the charge, hit in the left eye, and was carried back. Pvt. Luther Cornell suffered a serious shoulder wound and was sent back as well.

The Union troops kept the gap open, pouring in more men and routing the Confederates. Lee had to abandon Petersburg and Richmond, withdrawing the remnants of his army and starting what would be a seven-day chase to Appomattox and the surrender; and Battery G was there, too.

Fight for medals

In 1860, Rhode Island had a population of just under 175,000. Grandchamp said it sent about 24,000 men to the war, about 2,000 died in it. Battery G saw 17 battles and had 82 casualties, including 17 dead and 55 wounded. Eighty of its horses were killed.

For some of the men, there would be one more fight, the one for their medals.

The Army’s Medal of Honor was created by Congress in 1862 as a way to honor gallantry in action “during the present insurrection.”

Unlike today, the medals weren’t presented at a ceremony. Once the nomination by a commander in the field was endorsed by his superiors and approved by the War Department, Grandchamp said the medals were mailed to the recipient. But in Battery G’s case, Grandchamp said the War Department only sent medals to two sergeants and two corporals, leaving out the privates.

Interest in the Civil War surged in the 1880s. Potter found out that he and the other privates in the unit had been approved for the medals but never got them. So he wrote his congressman, Henry J. Spooner, and in 1886 Spooner got the War Department to send Potter his medal. He repeated the favor for John Corcoran, of Pawtucket, in 1887. Charles D. Ennis, of Charlestown, got his with the help of the Army's quartermaster general in 1892.

Grandchamp said the remainder were never sent, either because the recipients died or didn't seek them.

A military museum

Potter died in 1918. He’s buried in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, his grave topped by a life-sized cannon barrel carved from granite. In an only-in-Rhode-Island twist, Spooner’s grave is less than 30 feet away.

Though Battery G disbanded in 1865, Valente said the PMCA wants to see that the unit is remembered. The group is hoping the event will help locate artifacts from the unit that could become part of a museum of all Rhode Island military units at the armory.

“We aren’t a militaristic state, but we have a proud military history and we want people to be aware of it,” he said.

As he stood in the middle of the armory’s main hall, Valente said the corps was particularly excited to have descendants of the Battery G men at the event, for them to stand where their great and great-great grandfathers had drilled before leaving for the war.

“Their ancestors have been here,” he said. “They trained here and they left through those doors. This is hallowed ground. It truly is.”

—jhill@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7381

On Twitter: @jghilliii

THE MEN OF BATTERY G

James Barber, Westerly, 22, fisherman;

John Corcoran, Pawtucket, 21, machinist;

Luther Cornell, Coventry, 23, farmer;

Charles D. Ennis, Charlestown, 19, farmer

John H. Havron, Providence, 19 , farmer

Samuel E. Lewis, Coventry, 20, farmer;

Archibald M. Malbourne, 22, West Greenwich, farmer;

George W. Potter, Providence, 18, student (Brown University);

Henry Griffith, Keene, N.H., 27, farmer;

Henry Kendall, Providence, 19, teamster;

Warren P. Franklin, 38, sailor;

Carl Guhl, Boston, 33, tailor;

John P. Kronke, Providence, 24, sailor;

Henry Krull, New York City, 25, machinist;

William F. Short, Pawtucket, 24, operative;

James Taft, Providence, 34, laborer;

Horace B. Tanner, Hopkinton, 25, farmer;