The Battle of Totopotomoy Creek locally , also called the Battle of Bethesda Church, Crumps Creek, Shady Grove Road, and Hanovertown, was fought in Hanover County, Virginia on May 28–30, 1864, as part of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant's Overland Campaign against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
As Grant continued his attempts to maneuver around Lee's right flank and lure him into a general battle in the open, Lee saw an opportunity to attack the advancing V Corps, under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren with the Second Corps of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early. Early's divisions under Maj. Gens. Robert E. Rodes and Stephen Dodson Ramseur drove the Union troops back to Shady Grove Road, but Ramseur's advance was stopped by a fierce stand of infantry and artillery fire. Grant ordered his other corps commanders to conduct a supporting attack along the entire Confederate line, which was entrenched behind Totopotomoy Creek, but only the II Corps of Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock crossed the stream; they were quickly repulsed. After the battle, the Union army resumed its moves to the southeast and the Battle of Cold Harbor.
After Grant's army escaped from the trap that Lee had set for it at the Battle of North Anna, it began to move again around the right flank of Lee's army, in a continuation of the maneuvering that had characterized the campaign throughout May 1864. It traveled southeast on the north bank of the Pamunkey River, hoping to find the appropriate place to break through Lee's lines. On May 27, Union cavalry established a bridgehead on the south side of the river, near the Hanovertown Ford. As Grant's infantry crossed, cavalry divisions from both armies fought to a standstill at the Battle of Haw's Shop on May 28.
Lee's army was in precarious shape as it stood in entrenchments behind Totopotomoy Creek. Although the cavalry action at Haw's Shop had given Lee valuable intelligence that indicated Grant's avenue of approach, the Confederates were short on supplies, due to the Union disruption of the Virginia Central Railroad. They were also short on men. Lee requested that General P.G.T. Beauregard send him reinforcements from his 12,000-man army, sitting relatively idle as they bottled up Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler's army at Bermuda Hundred. Beauregard initially refused Lee's request, citing the potential threat from Butler. Lee was determined despite this disappointment, and despite the persistence of his recent dysentery at North Anna. He wrote to President Davis, "If General Grant advances tomorrow I will engage him with my present force." (On May 30, appeals to Confederate President Jefferson Davis caused Beauregard to relent and send 7,000 men, the division of Maj. Gen. Robert Hoke, to join Lee.)
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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