America’s Civil War: Last Ditch Rebel Stand at Petersburg

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After more than nine months of squalid trench warfare around the beleaguered Southern city of Petersburg, Virginia, the spring of 1865 found Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his 44,000-man Army of Northern Virginia facing an overwhelming enemy force of 128,000 troops commanded by the indomitable Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Lee had been successful against long odds before, but never before had he and his men faced a situation as desperate as this. Less than 150 miles away in North Carolina, General Joseph Johnston and his depleted Army of Tennessee were trying to hold back Major General William Tecumseh Sherman and four times as many Union troops, while a third Federal force, under Major General Philip H. Sheridan, had just joined Grant outside Petersburg. Soon, Lee knew, he would be facing more than 200,000 battle-tested foes. Not even Robert E. Lee could defy those odds.

It had already been a long and grueling winter inside the Confederate trenches at Petersburg. Hunger, cold, illness, desertions and the constant threat of deadly snipers had sapped the spirits of the once defiant Virginians. In one five-week stretch that winter, nearly 3,000 Southern soldiers deserted–nearly 8 percent of Lee’s total strength. The few new recruits that came into the army–usually grudgingly, via the widely hated draft–could not replace the hardened veterans of so many earlier campaigns. ‘The men coming in do not supply the vacancies caused by sickness, desertions, and other casualties, Lee admitted. Although the general still retained the affection and loyalty of his men, both Lee and his underlings realized that it was only a matter of time before the war reached a point of no return. Said one Maryland soldier: There are a good many of us who believe this shooting match has been carried on long enough. A government that has run out of rations can’t expect to do much more fighting, and to keep on is reckless and wanton expenditure of human life. Our rations are all the way from a pint to a quart of cornmeal a day, and occasionally a piece of bacon large enough to grease our plate.

Lee himself made a fruitless trip to Richmond to plead his army’s case before the Confederate Congress, but bitterly told his son Custis, I have been up to see Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving. Meanwhile, the Union forces were growing stronger by the day. A massive supply depot at City Point, seven miles northeast of Petersburg at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers, bulged with mountains of food, clothing, arms and ammunition for the Federal troops.

Lee’s desperate attempt to cut the enemy supply lines at the juncture of Prince George Court House Road and the City Point Railroad on March 25 went terribly awry. Major General John Gordon, aiming his assault at the enemy salient of Fort Stedman, quickly seized the fort, but a massive counterattack rained down death and destruction on the Confederate attackers. After only a few hours, Lee called off the attack, but not before losing another 4,000 irreplaceable troops while gaining absolutely nothing.

Even worse, Lee’s halfhearted assault put Grant on alert. The Union commander was no longer worried that Lee could defeat him (if indeed he ever had been), but he was concerned that the wily Confederate might slip away under cover of darkness and join Johnston’s forces in North Carolina. On March 29, Grant assembled 50,000 troops on the Union left under one of his favorite commanders, Sheridan, who had already cleared the Shenandoah Valley of all effective Rebel resistance. Two days later, Sheridan’s force pushed northwestward toward Five Forks, a strategic wilderness crossing a dozen miles south of Petersburg. Lee, rather than extending his thin lines of defense an additional four miles to meet the Union threat, dispatched a 10,500-man mobile force of cavalry and infantry to oppose Grant’s flanking movement. The idea was that the quicker-moving Confederate cavalry could bridge the gap between the existing lines and the 6,000 supporting infantry troops until they could be properly situated.

Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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