On to Appomattox

While the two armies eyed each other across no man’s land at Cold Harbour, Grant was doing the logistics for his next move.  The Union army then disappeared & Lee had no idea where it went. Grant took his army right around Richmond across two major rivers to attack Petersburg south of Richmond.  If the Union took Petersburg Richmond would be cut off from supply & doomed.  But once again the Army of the Potomac moved too slowly.  It broke through the outer defences, then dithered while the Confederates made a new line.   Lee’s army hunkered down behind a hundred miles of entrenchments, matched by a parallel line of Union works.  More attempts to break though were made without success, then winter came & the war ground on into 1865.

Much of the entrenchments remain visible today, especially in the area north of the James & around Petersburg.  It was WWI 50 years ahead of time.

But by the spring of 1865 the Union had constructed a military railroad around the outside of the lines around Petersburg & had the logistics in place to strike west & finally cut Richmond’s supply lines.  Sheridan outflanked the defences of Petersburg & on April 1 Picket’s division was overwhelmed at Five Forks.  The last railroad to Richmond was cut & Lee had no alternative but to withdraw.  He struck west with the Union army baying at his heels.  Early’s Division was cut off & captured at Sailor’s Creek.  By April 9 Lee was 100 miles from Richmond, but realised he too was cut off & surrounded by the Union army & he surrendered his remaining 30,000 men to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. 

We followed the lines from the James to the Appomattox River, then around Petersburg.

There are an awful lot of remains of fortifications around Richmond & Petersburg.  Mostly they are now masked by woods preventing you seeing their lines of. But the info boards often have wartime photos that allow you see what they were like at the time.  As in these now & then pics of Fort Johnson above. 

Fort Drewry was a Confederate fort that stopped the Union gunboats going up the James to bombard Richmond.  They tried, but the CSA guns were too big & too well sited.

Finally at Five Forks there was open battle again.  But not a very interesting battlefield being flat with patches of woods that may or may not relate to what was there in 1865.  The Rebs had a bad luck day.  Their general was absent having a late lunch when the Union attacked & part of the attack missed the Reb's left & accidentally outflanked it.

But at Five Forks we found the start of the Lee’s Retreat Trail & we just had to follow that all the way to Appomattox.   The sites of series of actions on the way were not very photogenic, but we got the feel of the desperate situation Lee's army was in.

We finish our Civil War campaign with a selfie at Appomattox.