The Battle of Cumberland Church was fought on April 7, 1865, between the Union Army's II Corps of the Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Appomattox Campaign of the American Civil War.
After the Battle of Sailor's Creek on April 6, 1865, surviving Confederate troops of Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson and Major General John B. Gordon headed for the High Bridge, a double-deck structure with a railroad bridge on top and a lower wagon road bridge over the Appomattox River to cross to the north side of the river and continue their retreat to the west. The Confederates intended to destroy the bridge, which they had fought to save the day before in the Battle of High Bridge, but through mistakes and delays did not start to do so until Union troops of Major General Andrew A. Humphreys's II Corps began to arrive at the bridges. After a second smaller Battle of High Bridge, the Union soldiers at the scene kept the railroad bridge from total destruction and saved the wagon bridge in shape for use.
Humphreys's troops pursued the last division in the line of march, the division of Major General William Mahone to Cumberland Church about 4 miles (6.4 km) to the west and 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Farmville, Virginia where the Confederates began to fortify the high ground around the church. Soon, Lieutenant General James Longstreet with the entire remaining Confederate infantry moved up from Farmville, Virginia to join Mahone, burning the railroad and wagon bridges at Farmville after them. The Confederate cavalry and one infantry brigade that were left behind had to ford the river nearby.
After some fighting in transit to Cumberland Church in which Brigadier General Thomas A. Smyth was mortally wounded, Humphreys ordered his two divisions, which reached the church soon after Mahone, to attack the Confederate line. Finding the Confederate position too strong to take, Humphreys recalled Brigadier General Francis Barlow's division, which had been heading directly to Farmville in pursuit of Gordon's corps, and sent a message to Army of the Potomac commander Major General George Meade that Lee's whole army was north of the river. Humphreys suggested that reinforcements be sent in order to engage the full Confederate Army. Neither Humphreys nor Meade knew until later that the Confederates had destroyed the bridges at Farmville and no reinforcements could reach Humphreys that afternoon.
Mistaking a separate nearby cavalry engagement as the arrival of reinforcements engaging with Lee's infantry, Humphreys ordered another futile attack, which was repulsed by the Confederates. Colonel (Brevet Brigadier General) John Irvin Gregg was taken prisoner by the Confederates in the cavalry engagement. Since no reinforcements could quickly reach Humphreys and night was approaching, Humphreys ordered no further attacks. The II Corps had at least 571 casualties in the Battle at Cumberland Church and the cavalry had 74 in what is sometimes called the Battle of Farmville. Confederate casualties are unknown but have been estimated to be about half the number of the Union casualties. The National Park Service gives the number of Confederate casualties as 255.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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