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THE CAMPAIGN TO APPOMATTOX
The coming of night on the final day of March 1865 found
Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant a worried man. For ten grueling
months he had personally directed Union operations in and around the
strategically important transportation and manufacturing town of
Petersburg, Virginia. An attempt to seize the city in June 1864 had
instead become a tedious siege that stretched through to spring. One
visible result was the miles of trenches, forts, and redoubts that
spread like a cancer across the Virginia countryside; another was the
seemingly endless series of small but sharp engagements, none of which
was decisive, but which cumulatively tightened the Federal vise.
Approximately 42,000 Federals fell killed, wounded, or missing in
fighting for little more than points of temporary advantage such as
Peebles Farm, Hatcher's Run, or the Jerusalem Plank Road.
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A PERIOD MAP OF THE APPOMATTOX AREA. (BL)
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Throughout it all Grant had held his lines with a tenacious grip,
forcing his opponent to do the same. The coming of spring meant that the
muddy Southside roads would become firm enough to support a rapid
movement of troops. Now Grant worried that the enemy commander, General
Robert F. Lee, would somehow find a way to slip out of the ring
tightening around Petersburg and escape south to link up with the only
other Confederate army in the east, General Joseph E. Johnston's, near
Raleigh. If that happened, declared Grant's military secretary Adam
Badeau, "a long and tedious and expensive campaign, consuming most of
the summer might be inevitable."
Always a man of action, Grant again had ordered armed men into motion
as he increased Union pressure against Lee's extreme right flank, which
was anchored near Burgess' Mill, five miles southwest of Petersburg.
There was fighting there on March 29 as the Federal Fifth Corps pushed
across the Boydton Plank Road below the Burgess' mill pond, followed by
a day-long combat on March 31, when the Fifth Corps, supported by the
Second, probed, but failed to penetrate, the Confederate defensive
works. The March 31 fighting alone cost the Union more than 1,800
casualties, while Confederate losses were about 800.
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LIEUTENANT GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT PHOTOGRAPHED BY MATHEW BRADY. (LC)
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GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE (LC)
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Further south and west this same day, a force of approximately 9,000
bluecoated riders under Major General Philip H. Sheridan battled rain,
mud, and angry Rebels in a bold attempt to end run the Confederate
entrenchments to cut Petersburg's only rail link to still-functioning
supply depots. Sheridan's thrust toward the South Side Railroad was
blocked near Dinwiddie Court House by a mixed force of cavalry and
infantry under the overall command of Major General George E. Pickett.
As night fell, Sheridan held on to his position only through a
combination of stubbornness, luck, and a lack of aggressive
follow-through by his opposite number. Grant ordered infantry to
Sheridan's assistance, and the pugnacious cavalry officer vowed to
resume the action in the morning.
A few soggy miles from where Grant chewed on his cigar and his
problems, Robert E. Lee pondered again the impossible alternatives facing him.
Since assuming command of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, Lee had
almost never faced a battle without the odds against him, but never did
they loom as long as they did this last day of March 1865. The siege of
Petersburg had been a death sentence for his once vaunted army, which
had suffered about 28,000 casualties. A brutal fall season of steady
combat, followed by a winter marked by periods of near starvation and
mass desertions, left the forces defending Petersburg and Richmond
dangerously weakened, with morale at an ebb point. Any tactical move Lee
made along one point of his stretched lines meant that he was risking
disaster at another. When his scouts detected the Union buildup against
his right flank, he felt he had to act, not only to protect the South
Side supply line but to keep the enemy from flanking his entire
Petersburg position. So Lee patched together a mobile force to meet
whatever it was that Grant was moving against him.
Lee's cavalry, which had been scattered from Richmond to areas south
of the entrenched Petersburg perimeter, was ordered to concentrate near
the threatened flank under the command of his nephew Major General
Fitzhugh Lee. From the Bermuda Hundred area between Richmond and
Petersburg, Lee drew out two brigades of Pickett's division, added a
third on duty near Petersburg, pushed in two
more from the forces at Burgess' Mill, and sent them out to fight
alongside the cavalry. More than 10,000 of Lee's precious military
assets were being used to thwart the enemy's design.
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MAJOR GENERAL FITZHUGH LEE (USAMHI)
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LIEUTENANT COLONEL HORACE PORTER (BL)
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Events on March 31 augured well for Lee's gamble. His troops posted
along the White Oak Road near Burgess' Mill not only repulsed the Yankee
probes, but for a few heady moments even ran roughshod over two
divisions of the enemy Fifth Corps. Pickett's mobile force stopped
Sheridan's riders near Dinwiddie Court House and were pressing him
heavily as night fell. But a victory celebration proved premature.
The fighting along the White Oak Road was ended by strong Union
reinforcements forcing Lee's men back into their entrenchments, with
little to show for their efforts. And early on the moming of April 1,
Lee learned to his horror that the victorious Pickett was withdrawing
his mixed force from the Dinwiddie area. Informed too late to halt this
retrograde movement, Lee nevertheless insisted that Pickett make a stand
at the strategically important road crossing known as Five Forks.
Pickett's move had been caused by the slow approach of the infantry
reinforcements Grant had ordered to Sheridan—Major General
Gouverneur K. Warren's entire Fifth Corps. The path of Warren's advance
put some of his troops squarely on Pickett's left flank and rear so the
Confederate officer felt he had no option but to retreat from such an
exposed position. Both commanders—Grant and Lee—now waited to
learn what the events of April 1 would bring.
Twenty-four hours later, just after darkness had settled in,
Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, one of Grant's most trusted aides,
pushed his way along the sloppy trails from Five Forks to army
headquarters. "The roads in places were corduroyed with captured
muskets," Porter recalled. "Ammunition trains and ambulances were still
struggling forward for miles; teamsters, prisoners, stragglers, and
wounded were choking the roadway." Porter's orderly could not hold back
the news the two carried, and he shouted to a group of soldiers along
the way that a great Union victory had been won this day at Five Forks.
Instead of a cheer, one of the soldiers in the group derisively thumbed
his nose and yelled, "No, you don't—April Fool!"
Minutes later, Porter was at Grant's headquarters, shouting the glad
tidings: in a battle that had begun late in the afternoon, troops under
Sheridan and Warren had attacked Pickett's men at Five Forks and, in
little more than two hours of combat,
had soundly routed the defenders. Of the approximately 10,000 men
under Pickett at Five Forks, nearly a third were killed, wounded, or
captured. "It meant the beginning of the end," Porter enthused, "the
reaching of the 'last ditch.'" Grant listened to his excited aide, then
calmly stood up and walked into his tent. When he emerged a few minutes
later he clutched a fistful of dispatches for transmission to the
various commands around Petersburg. Said Grant with no emotion: "I have
ordered an immediate assault along the lines."
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SKETCH BY ALFRED WAUD OF THE FEDERAL CHARGE AGAINST PICKETT'S FLANK AT
FIVE FORKS. (LC)
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It took time for Grant's orders to work their way through the
various levels of command, and it was not until dawn, April 2, that the
troops facing the Petersburg lines were ready to go. The action against
the enemy's fortified positions was concentrated along the axis of
the Jerusalem Plank Road and against the lines snaking southwest of
the city that shielded the Boydton Plank Road. The assault against the
first was made by the Union Ninth Corps, which fought a bloody but
inconclusive battle lasting throughout the day. Against the other target, however,
the Federal attack by the Sixth Corps succeeded in punching a gaping
hole in the thinly stretched C.S. defenses. Prompt follow-up attacks by
the Federals then rolled up Lee's lines as far south as Burgess' Mill.
It took a suicidal last stand by a handful of defenders in a pair of
detached forts near the city—Whitworth and Gregg—to prevent
the Yankee formations from entering Petersburg itself.
THE EASTERN FRONT, APRIL 1865: THE BEGINNING OF THE END IN THE EAST
While Sherman's 90,000 men watched Johnston's 37,000 men in North
Carolina, the Union armies under U.S. Grant moved to break the stalemate
at Petersburg. Using Sheridan's cavalry just arrived from the Shenandoah
Valley, Grant struck at Lee's extreme right flank. Sheridan's victory at
Five Forks cut Lee's last supply line, the South Side Railroad, and
forced him to abandon Petersburg and Richmond. Lee's only hope now was
to move south to link-up with Johnston.
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Robert E. Lee was a constant presence along this front as his men
fought desperately to buy enough time to save his army. Only the
last-minute arrival of reinforcements summoned from Richmond allowed
Lee to stabilize his lines when darkness ended the fighting. It was
during this day that Lee learned the fate of Pickett's force and that
the enemy had cut the South Side Railroad, eliminating the only military
reason to hold Petersburg. Once it was evacuated, Richmond too must
fall. It was a little after 10:00 A.M., April 2, when Lee dictated the
message to Jefferson Davis that signaled a decisive downturn in
Confederate fortunes: "I advise that all preparations be made for
leaving Richmond tonight."
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THE UNION ATTACK ON FORT GREGG, APRIL 2, 1865, AS SKETCHED BY
CIVIL WAR ARTIST ALFRED WAUD. (LC)
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WAUD'S SKETCH OF THE STORMING OF FORT MAHONE. (LC)
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More than a month earlier, Lee had anticipated such a circumstance
and issued a series of contingency orders. The April 2 assaults had two
serious effects on Lee's calculations. First, they initiated combat that
resulted in the loss (mostly through capture) of many of the veteran
troops posted along the lines struck by the Sixth Corps. Second, they
forced events to happen much more rapidly than had been anticipated in
Lee's planning, which, in turn, strained the Confederate command system
to the breaking point. Messages went astray, and critical orders failed
to reach their destinations. Perhaps the most serious breakdown occurred
when Lee's urgent request for the C.S. Commissary Department in Richmond
to send all available food rations to Amelia Court House was
delayed.
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