Ostensibly, Anderson’s Corps had moved “for purposes of instruction, exercises and the re-establishment of their health and strength.” It was also hoped that the move would “have some effect in reducing the desertions,” although Anderson insisted that it did not.

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One captain in Ransom’s Brigade claimed the change had some positive results, saying “We are now luxuriating in the excellent winter quarters recently occupied by some Virginia troops.” But the respite proved short-lived. On March 20 the captain wrote, “There were two dress parades today, one at eight and a half A.M., the other at 6 P.M., two drills, Company and Squad from nine to eleven A.M., battalion from three to five P.M.” Lamented one Rebel private, “We were drilled like raw recruits.”

The tedium of drills ended abruptly for Ransom’s and Wise’s brigades on March 24. That night, those units moved back through Petersburg to their old positions. Before dawn on March 25, they joined in the fruitless, bloody assault on Fort Stedman—Lee’s failed attempt to penetrate a seemingly weak point in Grant’s siege lines. “Good God what a time!” recalled Confederate Captain Henry Chambers of the 49th North Carolina. “[T]he minie balls came in showers.” Anderson cited his losses at “about twelve hundred.”

Lee’s defeat at Fort Stedman sparked Union attacks against his weakened perimeter. “Several days passed this way,” Anderson wrote, “The enemy frequently feeling our lines, evidently under an impression that we were about to retire from them.”

By March 29, Anderson could muster only about 1,600 rifles to cover each of the three miles in his zone of command. That morning his thinning ranks along White Oak Road were a target of Grant’s spring offensive to cut the South Side Railroad and drive Lee out of both Petersburg and Richmond.

Three Union cavalry divisions under the aggressive Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan pushed beyond Anderson’s right flank toward Dinwiddie Court House. The Union V Corps, under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur Warren, followed closely before peeling away from Sheridan’s powerful mounted columns to march northward on the Quaker Road, which pointed like an arrow at the heart of Anderson’s Corps. Meanwhile, Union Maj. Gen. Andrew Humphrey’s II Corps pressed Anderson’s left flank.

Rebel pickets felled trees across Quaker Road and opened a brisk fire, but failed to stop Warren’s infantrymen from crossing Gravelly Run, where the bridge spanning the deep stream lay in ruins. Anderson hurled Wise’s and Wallace’s brigades at the Union spearhead near the Lewis Farm, east of the roadway, and Moody’s and Ransom’s brigades soon joined the melee. “The firing,” remembered one of Ransom’s veterans, “became as heavy…as I ever heard.”

The battle raged through pinewoods and clearings, skirting Quaker Road for nearly two hours. Union Brig. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain, whose brigade bore the brunt of Anderson’s assault, reported, “nothing but the most active exertions of field and staff officers kept the men where they were….” The battle finally turned when Warren fed several regiments and four Napoleons into the action. Near dusk, Anderson retired “into the breastworks” along White Oak Road, having lost more than 300 men against 380 Union casualties.

That night a heavy rain began to fall and continued into the next day, limiting operations. Lee used the lull to glean reinforcements from other points in his lines to counter the Yankee pressure on his right wing. From Richmond, the Confederate Cavalry corps under Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee arrived to tackle Sheridan’s cavalry near Dinwiddie Court House. And most of Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s Division, from Longstreet’s First Corps, reached Anderson overnight. But “a few hours afterwards,” Anderson wrote, Pickett “was detached to…support Fitz Lee’s Cavalry at Five Forks.”

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