The Battle of Trevilian Station (also called Trevilians) was fought on June 11–12, 1864, in Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan fought against Confederate cavalry under Maj. Gens. Wade Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee in the bloodiest and largest all-cavalry battle of the war.
Sheridan's objectives for his raid were to destroy stretches of the Virginia Central Railroad, provide a diversion that would occupy Confederate cavalry from understanding Grant's planned crossing of the James River, and link up with the army of Maj. Gen. David Hunter at Charlottesville. Hampton's cavalry beat Sheridan to the railroad at Trevilian Station and on June 11 they fought to a standstill. Brig. Gen. George A. Custer entered the Confederate rear area and captured Hampton's supply train, but soon became surrounded and fought desperately to avoid destruction.
On June 12, the cavalry forces clashed again to the northwest of Trevilian Station, and seven assaults by Brig. Gen. Alfred T. A. Torbert's Union division were repulsed with heavy losses. Sheridan withdrew his force to rejoin Grant's army. The battle was a tactical victory for the Confederates and Sheridan failed to achieve his goal of permanently destroying the Virginia Central Railroad or of linking up with Hunter. Its distraction, however, may have contributed to Grant's successful crossing of the James River.
Following the bloody Union repulse at the Battle of Cold Harbor on June 3, Grant decided on a new strategy. Since May 4, his Overland Campaign had consisted of major battles against Robert E. Lee, each of which (the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna, Totopotomoy Creek, and Cold Harbor) was followed by a period of stalemate and then a maneuver around Lee's right flank in an attempt to draw him away from his entrenchments and into the open. Each maneuver brought the armies closer to the Confederate capital of Richmond, but the city was not the main objective—the destruction of Lee's army was the goal established by Grant and President Abraham Lincoln, with the understanding that Richmond and the Confederacy would fall if Lee were defeated.
Grant's new strategy was to march his 100,000-man army to the south, cross the James River, and seize the rail hub of Petersburg. This would cut off the supply lines to both Richmond and Lee, forcing the evacuation of the capital, and probably inducing Lee to attack Grant's army in a manner favorable to Grant's superior numbers and firepower. His plan required secrecy because his army would be vulnerable if intercepted while crossing the river and he sought to reach Petersburg before the city's defenses could be enhanced beyond the token force that was currently there. Therefore, on June 5 Grant ordered a cavalry raid by the command of Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan northwest toward Charlottesville. The raid had two initial objectives. First, Sheridan would draw the Confederate cavalry away from Grant's main army so his infantry corps could stealthily disengage from Lee's army at Cold Harbor and move toward the James. Second, the Union cavalrymen would tear up the Virginia Central towards Richmond, cutting off Lee's army from the much needed food supplies produced by the Shenandoah Valley. Sheridan was ordered to destroy the railroad bridge on the Rivanna River, just east of Charlottesville, and destroy the tracks from there to Gordonsville. Then, his men would turn back and destroy the track all the way to Hanover Junction, near Richmond.
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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