Five Forks

On April 1, 1865, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Five Forks, a road junction in Dinwiddie County southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, in what proved to be one of the final engagements of the Siege of Petersburg as the Civil War drew to a close. Major General Philip Sheridan led the Union troops to victory over a Confederate contingent from the Army of Northern Virginia under Major General George Pickett. More than 1,000 Confederate soldiers became casualties, and as many as 4,000 were captured, while Sheridan's men secured Five Forks itself, a position critical to holding the South Side Railroad, the line the Confederates depended on for both supplies and a potential escape route.

The action followed the fighting at Dinwiddie Court House on March 31. Around 10:00 pm that night, infantry from the V Corps started moving up near the battlefield to bolster Sheridan's cavalry. Pickett had been instructed by his superior, General Robert E. Lee, to hold Five Forks "at all hazards," given how much depended on the position.

The following afternoon, roughly around 1:00 pm, Sheridan used small arms fire to hold the Confederate center and right flank in place, and shortly thereafter the concentrated force of V Corps infantry, under Major General Gouverneur K. Warren, struck the Confederate left. A quirk of sound carrying through the woods meant that Pickett and his cavalry commander, Major General Fitzhugh Lee, never heard the battle begin, and their officers were unable to locate either man once fighting started. Union troops lacked the reconnaissance needed to fully capitalize on the resulting Confederate disarray, yet they still managed, partly through happenstance and partly through Sheridan's direct urging on the field, to collapse the Confederate line entirely. In the aftermath, Sheridan stripped Warren of his command of V Corps, a decision that stirred controversy and stemmed largely from personal animosity between the two men rather than any clear failing in the field. With Five Forks and the route to the South Side Railroad now in Union hands, Lee had no choice but to give up both Petersburg and Richmond, setting in motion his last retreat of the war.

Background

The nine-and-a-half-month struggle for Richmond and Petersburg, often called the Siege of Petersburg, opened when a pair of Union corps slipped away from Cold Harbor at the close of the Overland Campaign without being detected, then joined forces with the Army of the James near Petersburg. Despite this combination, Union troops could not wrest the city from its outnumbered Confederate garrison during the fighting of June 15 through 18, 1864, known as the Second Battle of Petersburg. From that point forward, Grant, serving as General-in-Chief, pursued a strategy built on trenches and slow attrition, hoping to grind down the smaller rebel army, sever its supply routes into Petersburg and Richmond, and stretch Confederate defenses past their limit. Remarkably, the Confederates held both Richmond and Petersburg, a vital rail hub and supply depot situated 23 miles south of the capital, for more than nine months against a much larger enemy, relying on a defensive posture and skillful use of earthworks and trench lines.

Fighting at Hatcher's Run from February 5 through 7, 1865, stretched the Confederate lines another 4 miles, leaving Lee with scarcely any troops in reserve once the new positions were manned. He recognized that this arrangement could not last indefinitely, and concluded that his best remaining option was to withdraw some or all of his men from the Petersburg-Richmond front, resupply at Danville or perhaps Lynchburg, and unite with Joseph E. Johnston's command, then facing Sherman's army in North Carolina. A swift victory over Sherman might even allow the combined Confederate forces to wheel around and confront Grant before he could link up with Sherman himself. Lee set this plan in motion and shared his reasoning with President Davis and Secretary of War Breckinridge.

Davis, however, insisted that Richmond's defenses be maintained, and win

Beginning of Appomattox Campaign

Grant had already mapped out an offensive set to begin on March 29, 1865, formulating this plan a full day before Confederates struck at Fort Stedman on March 24. His aims were twofold: lure Confederate forces into open combat where they could be crushed, or, failing that, sever the last roads and rail lines linking Petersburg and Richmond with the shrinking territory still under Confederate control. Nothing about Fort Stedman altered these designs. Union forces had ceded no territory in that fight, felt no pressure to pull back their lines, and their losses amounted to only a fraction of their overall strength.

To free up troops for the coming push, Grant directed Major General Edward Ord to shift a portion of the Army of the James away from the Richmond front and into the position soon to be abandoned by Major General Andrew A. Humphreys's II Corps at the southwestern edge of the Petersburg line. This maneuver liberated two full corps from Meade's Army of the Potomac, Humphreys's II Corps and Gouverneur K. Warren's V Corps, for an assault on Lee's flank and his rail supply network. Grant instructed these infantry units, together with Philip Sheridan's mounted force (still called the Army of the Shenandoah), to march westward under Sheridan's command. Sheridan's horsemen included divisions led by Brigadier General Thomas Devin and Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, both answering to Brevet Major General Wesley Merritt acting as an informal corps chief, plus Major General George Crook's division pulled from the Army of the Potomac. Though Grant doubted the Confederates would risk a pitched battle, his underlying goals stayed unchanged.

Lee, already troubled by his army's dwindling capacity to hold Petersburg and Richmond, understood that the setback at Fort Stedman would embolden Grant to strike at his right flank and his lifelines of transport and communication. By the morning of March 29, Lee had begun shifting reinforcements westward and assembling a mobile strike force of roughly 10,600 men, combining infantry, cavalry, and artillery, under Major General George Pickett with cavalry chief Fitzhugh Lee. Their mission was to extend beyond his line's end and hold the vital crossroads at Five Forks, a position from which Union troops could otherwise reach the Confederacy's few remaining open supply routes.

Before sunrise that same day, Warren's V Corps swung west past both armies' fortifications while Sheridan's troopers took a longer path south toward Dinwiddie Court House. Humphreys's II Corps slid into the space Warren's departure had opened. Leading Warren's advance was Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain's First Brigade, part of Brevet Major General Charles Griffin's First Division, marching north along Quaker Road toward its junction with Boydton Plank Road and the nearby Confederate White Oak Road defenses.

Near Lewis Farm, where Quaker Road crossed Rowanty Creek, Chamberlain's soldiers ran into Confederate brigades commanded by Henry A. Wise, William Henry Wallace, and Young Marshall Moody, dispatched by Fourth Corps leader Richard H. Anderson and division commander Bushrod Johnson to blunt the Union push. The fighting swayed back and forth, and Chamberlain himself was wounded and nearly taken prisoner. Bolstered by a four-gun battery and additional regiments from the brigades of Brevet Brigadier Generals Edgar M. Gregory and Alfred L. Pearson (the latter later receiving the Medal of Honor), Chamberlain's men eventually pushed the Confederates back toward their White Oak Road position. Losses were roughly equal, 381 on the Union side against 371 for the Confederates.

Once the fighting ended, Griffin's division advanced to seize the crossroads of Quaker Road and Boydton Plank Road, close to the Confederate line's terminus. That evening, Sheridan's cavalry rode into Dinwiddie Court House along Boydton Plank Road without meeting resistance.

Battle

On the evening of March 31, 1865, the sound of combat told Major General Gouverneur K. Warren, commanding the Union V Corps, that Confederate troops were forcing Sheridan's cavalry backward near Dinwiddie Court House. He responded by sending Brigadier General Joseph J. Bartlett's brigade to strengthen Sheridan's position. Cutting across open ground, Bartlett's men swept Confederate pickets away from Dr. Boisseau's farm, located just east of Crump Road. Pearson's column, however, was held up because Confederates had torn apart the Gravelly Run bridge on the Boydton Plank Road. Close to 8:20 pm, Warren let Meade know about the bridge damage and the possible holdup, but Meade kept this detail from Sheridan.

Meade instructed Warren to have his whole force prepared to march. By 9:17 pm he ordered Warren to pull off the line and rush a division to Sheridan immediately. At 9:45 pm Meade first told Grant that Bartlett had advanced to Dr. Boisseau's farm, asking whether the entire corps ought to follow. He did not mention that sending the whole corps had originally been Warren's own suggestion. When

Aftermath

Once the Confederate infantry brigades broke apart, the men who remained pushed north across woods and fields, crossed Hatcher's Run at a ford, and made their way over the W. Dabney road toward a spot close to the South Side Railroad. Pickett managed to bring some order to the scattered remnants and then led them, now grouped again into their units, toward Exeter Mills near where Whippornock Creek meets the Appomattox River, intending to cross there and rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia.

Once Crawford's division came to a stop, Warren sent Colonel Bankhead to inform Sheridan of the situation and request further orders. Around 7:00 pm, Colonel George A. Forsyth arrived from Sheridan's staff carrying a message stripping Warren of command: he was relieved from leading the Fifth Army Corps and told to report immediately to Grant for new orders. Sheridan later explained this decision by pointing to what he saw as Warren's sluggishness in preparing his men for the assault near Gravelly Run Church. He was further irritated by the hesitation shown by Gwyn's brigade during the return attack, which he blamed on a lack of confidence stemming from Warren's failure to properly inspire his troops. At the same time, Sheridan issued instructions naming Griffin as the new V Corps commander, with Bartlett taking over Griffin's division and Pearson stepping into Bartlett's former brigade, ordering them to chase the retreating Confederates along White Oak Road. The battle had already been won by this point, with both Sheridan and Griffin arriving at Five Forks.

Shocked by the news, Warren went in person to Sheridan's headquarters to plead for the order to be withdrawn. Sheridan's response was blunt and dismissive: he would not reconsider and expected the order to be followed. Many of Warren's fellow officers and soldiers were taken aback by his dismissal, and several later wrote in his defense, suggesting that jealousy over Warren's contribution to the victory had driven Sheridan's actions. The 1883 Warren Court of Inquiry ultimately concluded that his removal had been unwarranted, a finding that has led numerous historians to agree that Sheridan treated him unfairly.

Around 7:30 pm, Colonel Horace Porter, who served on Grant's staff and had witnessed the fighting, rode back to headquarters. He delivered news of the triumph with visible excitement, telling Grant that more than 5,000 Confederate prisoners had been captured. This success at Five Forks cleared the way for Union forces to reach the South Side Railroad. Upon hearing of the victory near 8:00 pm, Grant instructed Meade to have Humphreys' II Corps and Parke's IX Corps prepared to advance, aiming to prevent Confederate troops from slipping out of Petersburg and joining forces against Sheridan. He also announced to the officers present that he had called for a general assault across the entire line.

Seeking clarity, Meade questioned Grant since a 4:00 a.m. attack along the whole front had already been ordered. Grant clarified that both Humphreys and Parke should look for opportunities to advance that same night, with Humphreys sending skirmishers ahead and launching an attack should the Confederates begin abandoning their positions. Should the Confederate line hold firm instead, Miles's division was to move down White Oak Road to strengthen Sheridan's position. Grant additionally ordered Wright, Parke, and Ord, the latter commanding Gibbon's XXIV Corps from the Army of the James, to open fire on the Confederate defenses. However, these commanders reported that darkness made an assault impossible. Union guns began firing on the Confederate positions across from Petersburg at 10:00 pm and continued until 2:00 am, but the Confederates held their ground, and the main Union assault finally commenced around 4:40 am.

With no aides on hand, Grant turned to Sylvanus Cadwallader, a correspondent for the New York Herald, asking him to carry word of the Five Forks victory, along with captured Confederate flags, to Lincoln, who was staying aboard the River Queen at City Point. Upon receiving the flags, Lincoln remarked that here at last was something tangible, something real, and declared it a sign of victory. The artillery bombardment was already underway by