General Grant’s finishing strategy was for Sheridan’s Cavalry Corps to gain Five Forks, then cut the South Side Railroad beyond Lee’s right flank. Grant reasoned that once Lee caved in under the Union offensive, his next move would be west and then south. It was thought he would try to unite with General Joseph Johnston’s army in North Carolina via the Richmond & Danville Railroad.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Orders were passed to Sheridan to move to Dinwiddie Court House a few miles south of Five Forks on March 29, with strong infantry support to follow. Sergeant McCabe wrote that the scouts were ‘ordered to go to Din-waedy Cot House som 18 mile from Petersburgh. We got thair and it Rained all that Night and the General got up with his troops and the Scouts was kept going all Night in the Rain trying to cut the wires and Locate the Rebel lines. We found a Big force of the Rebels at 5 foks and the Scouts was kept Buesy watching Waid Hampton, Fitsu Lee, and Wm Harry Lee.’

Young’s detachments preceded the mounted thrust westerly across the Weldon Railroad to the courthouse road junction. Things went well for the Union. On April 1, Sheridan routed the Rebels at Five Forks, and the blue-coated infantry had cracked the Petersburg front by the evening of April 2.

Lee’s army was soon retreating westward on the north side of the Appomattox River, with the exception of one wing to the south of it that was hurrying along the Namozine Road. Their collective goal was Amelia Court House, where rations and ammunition would be issued prior to the march down the Richmond & Danville line through Jetersville, eight miles distant, and thence through Burkeville, the same distance, by the night of the 4th.

Notwithstanding their obvious predicament, the Confederate wing south of the river made good time, with W.H.F. Lee’s division serving as the rear guard. On the 3rd, Maj. Gen. George Custer’s cavalry caught up with Lee at Namozine Church, and it took only half an hour for him to defeat a North Carolina brigade. Southern Brig. Gen. Rufus Barringer tried to escape through a patch of woods, but later recalled, ‘I found it picketed…I was taken prisoner…Maj. Young and party especially Sgt. McCabe, treated us well. Taken to Sheridan’s H. Qtrs.’

McCabe and his party of five men had presented themselves as being from the 9th Virginia Cavalry. When McCabe saw Barringer, he rode ‘out and Met him and Shook hands with him and We Road Back into the Squad and after geting all the information from them…we asked him to Surrender . . . . They handed over their armes and we tooke them to Head Quats . . . . I got my Medal of Honor for capturing the General.’

On April 4, while one group of Young’s men caught up on their sleep, others fanned out ahead of the Federal cavalry columns. The Federal troopers secured Jetersville in the afternoon, and one staff officer, Lt. Col. Frederic Newhall, witnessed Major Young in a ‘little thicket by the side of the railroad, his horses tied to the trees, and a score of his men with cocked carbines imposing silence on a regiment of prisoners, and bagging unsuspecting game which his mounted decoys were leading in.’

On April 5, some of the scouts from Brig. Gen. Henry Davies’ brigade crashed into Rebel wagon trains that had just crossed over the river at Clementown Bridge. The blue thunderclap drove away a mounted escort and captured a battery of cannons. Scout James Campbell took two flags. As a reward, he was selected to take an urgent dispatch to General Grant that afternoon to urge the Army of the Potomac to move more quickly.

Campbell delivered the message to Grant at his headquarters 10 miles east of Burkeville, and the scouts then led him north that night to meet and deliberate with Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. Two sets of scouts set out from the meeting a little past 10 p.m., heading for Maj. Gen. Edward O.C. Ord’s XVIII Corps headquarters to order him to advance across the rail line and cut roads leading southward. One pair was captured, though they were spared execution.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to