Globe Tavern was a Civil War engagement fought in Virginia, 1864. It was a Union victory.
While Hancock's command demonstrated north of the James River at Deep Bottom, the Union V Corps and elements of the IX and II Corps under command of Maj. Gen. G.K. Warren were withdrawn from the Petersburg entrenchments to operate against the Weldon Railroad. At dawn August 18, Warren advanced, driving back Confederate pickets until reaching the railroad at Globe Tavern. In the afternoon, Maj. Gen. Henry Heth's division attacked driving Ayres's division back toward the tavern. Both sides entrenched during the night. On August 19, Maj. Gen. William Mahone, whose division had been hastily returned from north of James River, attacked with five infantry brigades, rolling up the right flank of Crawford's division. Heavily reinforced, Warren counterattacked and by nightfall had retaken most of the ground lost during the afternoon's fighting. On the 20th, the Federals laid out and entrenched a strong defensive line covering the Blick House and Globe Tavern and extending east to connect with the main Federal lines at Jerusalem Plank Road. On August 21, Hill probed the new Federal line for weaknesses but could not penetrate the Union defenses. With the fighting at Globe Tavern, Grant succeeded in extending his siege lines to the west and cutting Petersburg's primary rail connection with Wilmington, North Carolina. The Confederates were now forced to off-load rail cars at Stony Creek Station for a 30-mile wagon haul up Boydton Plank Road to reach Petersburg. Confederate general John C.C. Sanders was killed on August 21.
Rain soaked the roads on the morning of August 18, yet Warren pushed his column southward anyway, brushing aside Confederate pickets and a cavalry brigade along the way. By roughly nine o'clock his men had reached the rail line near Globe Tavern. Griffin's division set to work tearing up the track, while one brigade from Ayres's command deployed in battle formation and pushed north to guard against any Confederate approach from that direction. Cutler's division stayed back as a reserve force. Around one in the afternoon, Ayres's men made contact with the enemy, prompting Warren to send Crawford's division forward on Ayres's right flank, hoping to turn the Confederate left.
In response, A.P. Hill dispatched two brigades from Heth's division along with one brigade drawn from Hoke's command to confront the oncoming Federals. Their assault came around two o'clock and hit hard, driving Warren's men back until they were less than a mile from Globe Tavern. Warren answered with a counterattack that recovered the lost ground, and his soldiers dug in as night fell. That evening, Lieutenant William Taylor slipped past the fortified lines on a dangerous scouting mission, an act later cited in his Medal of Honor award; Confederate soldiers caught and held him prisoner during the venture.
Fresh troops arrived after dark on both sides. Parke's IX Corps, freed from Petersburg's trenches once Hancock's
The toll of Globe Tavern ran to 4,296 Union men killed, wounded, or missing (251 dead, 1,148 injured, 2,897 captured or unaccounted for), while the Confederates counted 1,620 losses of their own (211 dead, 990 wounded, and 419 taken or missing). For the Confederacy, the defeat meant losing control of a vital stretch of the Petersburg Railroad, forcing them to haul supplies overland by wagon for 30 miles (48 km) from Stony Creek along the Boydton Plank Road to reach Petersburg. For Grant's army, it marked the first success of the siege and the fulfillment of an important goal. The Weldon line had been cut, and Grant's siege lines now stretched to Globe Tavern, though this setback did not yet threaten the Confederates in any decisive way. One of Lee's staff officers summed up the mood by noting that although the situation was inconvenient, no real damage had been inflicted.
Grant, however, felt only partial satisfaction with what Warren had accomplished, recognizing it as essentially a defensive success rather than a decisive blow. In his own words, he believed that once an enemy sortie was thrown back, it should be pursued relentlessly, since simply holding a position meant little while the real fighting happened elsewhere.
Determined to secure full command of the railroad, Grant ordered the II Corps back from its unsuccessful effort at Deep Bottom, where it had aimed to wreck the Petersburg line farther south. That decision set the stage for the Second Battle of Ream's Station, fought on August 25, 1864.
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