Fort Stedman

In the war's closing weeks, on March 25, 1865, Confederate forces struck a Union fortification along the Petersburg, Virginia siege lines in an engagement later called the Battle of Fort Stedman, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Hare's Hill. Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon led his men in a pre-dawn assault that marked the final significant Confederate effort to shatter the Siege of Petersburg. Though the attack achieved early gains, Gordon's troops could not hold their ground, and Union soldiers of the IX Corps, under Maj. Gen. John G. Parke, pushed them back.

Background

By March 1865, Lee's forces still held their ground

Battle

The assault under Gordon commenced at a quarter past four in the morning. Ahead of the main force went sharpshooters and engineers disguised as men deserting their army, sent to sweep aside Union pickets and clear away obstacles that might slow the infantry coming behind them. Behind these advance parties came three detachments, each numbering a hundred men, whose task was to break through the Union defenses and push into the territory beyond. Speed and stealth were essential to this plan, so much so that the men carried muskets left unloaded, ensuring that no stray shot would give away their position. The heaviest weight of the assault fell between Batteries XI and X, with one detachment pushing north toward Battery XI while the remaining two aimed at X and Stedman itself. The Confederates caught their opponents entirely off guard.

Brevet Brig. Gen. Napoleon B. McLaughlen commanded the Fort Stedman sector, and upon hearing the commotion of battle, he threw on his uniform in the darkness before dawn and rode south to Fort Haskell, near Battery XII, discovering it prepared to hold its ground. Continuing northward, he directed Battery XII to fire upon Battery XI and called on the 59th Massachusetts, held in reserve, to drive back the attackers. The Massachusetts men charged with bayonets fixed and briefly reclaimed Battery XI. Believing he had closed the single gap in the Union line, McLaughlen then rode straight into Fort Stedman itself. In his own account, he described crossing the parapet and encountering soldiers near the curtains whom he mistook, in the gloom, for his own pickets; he positioned them and issued commands about firing and placement, all promptly obeyed. Only afterward did he understand that these were Confederate soldiers, and they in turn recognized him as a Union commander, taking him prisoner. He was escorted back across the contested ground and handed his sword directly to Gordon.

Gordon himself arrived shortly after at Fort Stedman and discovered that events had gone better than he had dared to imagine. In a matter of minutes, his men had taken Batteries X, XI (won back after its brief loss to the 59th Massachusetts), and XII, along with Fort Stedman, tearing open a breach in the Union line stretching nearly a thousand feet. Lieutenant Colonel Robert M. Stribling directed Confederate gunners in turning the captured cannons at Stedman and Battery X against the Union trenches on both sides, raking them with fire. To the north, near Battery IX, the assault stalled. There, troops from Colonel Ralph Ely's brigade, chiefly the 2nd Michigan Infantry with skirmishers from the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters in support, formed a line that the Confederates could not effectively challenge, hampered as they were by the bewildering network of trenches. Gordon then shifted his focus southward, sending Clement Evans and his division against Fort Haskell. There the Union defenders held firm, firing canister from three guns to break the assault. Confederate cannon at Colquitt's Salient opened up on the fort, and Union batteries answered, joined by the enormous siege guns positioned farther back. At one point the Union flag over the fort fell, leading Federal gunners to believe the position had been overrun, and they turned their own fire on their comrades. Men rushed forward to raise the flag once more, and four lost their lives before the mistaken barrage finally stopped.

Word went back from Gordon to Lee that all was proceeding well, though Gordon had no notion yet of the difficulties beginning to mount. His three hundred-man detachments had lost their way amid the confusion of the rear, with many pausing to eat captured Union food instead of pressing forward. The cavalry, meanwhile, found no opening through which to exploit the breach. Pickett's Division suffered its own setback, hampered by rail problems so severe that only three of its four brigades left on time, and even those did not reach the field until midday, far too late to join the fighting. At the same time, the larger Union force was stirring into action. Parke responded with speed, calling on Hartranft's reserve division to seal the breach, while Colonel John C. Tidball positioned the reserve artillery on high ground east of Fort Stedman and began pounding the Confederate position.

Historian Noah Andre Trudeau described Hartranft in these terms: a man possessed, who from the moment news reached him that Stedman had fallen worked without rest first to contain the Confederate breakthrough and then, that done, to crush it entirely.

Aftermath

On the morning of March 25, an important figure almost found himself in the middle of the fighting. President Abraham Lincoln happened to be meeting with General Grant that day, and a review parade involving an entire division had been arranged nearby for those same morning hours. The Confederate assault forced organizers to push the ceremony back until afternoon. One captured Confederate soldier could hardly believe his eyes when he spotted the general and the president passing by shortly afterward, seemingly untroubled despite what he viewed as an enormous assault, riding past "as if nothing had happened." He and the other prisoners around him drew a grim conclusion from this composure, declaring unanimously that their cause was doomed. That same morning, Lincoln had wired Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton with news of his safe arrival around 9 P.M. the previous evening, adding that there was no fresh war news beyond what his son Robert, who served on Grant's staff, had mentioned about "a little rumpus up the line" that had ended roughly where it started.

What became known as the assault on Fort Stedman lasted only four hours and left Union defenses essentially untouched. Confederate forces actually had to pull their lines backward once Union troops pressed the attack elsewhere along the front. Lee had stripped strength from his own right flank in order to give Gordon's assault a chance at success. Meanwhile, the Union's II Corps and VI Corps captured a substantial stretch of fortified Confederate picket positions southwest of Petersburg, though the main defensive line there remained solidly held. This gain set the stage for Grant's decisive assault during the Third Battle of Petersburg, fought on April 2, 1865.

The human cost fell unevenly between the two sides. Union losses totaled 1,044 men, comprising 72 dead, 450 wounded, and 522 either missing or taken prisoner. Confederate casualties ran far higher at roughly 4,000, including 600 killed, 2,400 wounded, and 1,000 missing or captured. Beyond the numbers, the engagement left Confederate positions weaker and cost Lee soldiers he had no way to replace. From that point forward, his eventual defeat became simply a question of tim