Five Forks • Tour the Battlefield • The Armies • Battle Maps
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Strategic Situation • Confederate Position • Union Forces Arrive • Union Infantry Form Up
Union Infantry Attacks • Crawford Goes Astray • Confederate Line Crumples • Confederate Last Stand
Pickett had three infantry brigades from his own division and two attached from Anderson’s Division. He placed them along White Oak Road on both sides of the Five Forks intersection. The terrain was heavily wooded rolling ground, soaked from the heavy spring rains. A network of dirt roads – many of them just farm lanes – connected a handfull of farms.
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Pickett’s men threw up light earthworks along their position. On the eastern flank they “turned back” the defences at a right angle to protect against an anticipated attack down White Oak Road. Munford’s cavalry covered the east flank and “Roonie” Lee’s Cavalry the west. Artillery strengthened the line at the intersection, the Angle, and on the west flank.
The positions were good, although there were no terrain features to give them extra strength. Pickett would have preferred to take up a position behind Hatcher’s Run, a swiftly-flowing stream about a mile behind White Oak Road, but Lee wanted to hold the Five Forks intersection and, with the vital railroad only three miles to the rear, every yard he possibly could.
Pickett’s men were in position and the afternoon was slipping away. Although Wesley Merritt’s cavalry had shadowed them back from Dinwiddie there was no sign of Union infantry. So Pickett and cavalry commander Fitzhugh Lee accepted an invitiation from Thomas Rosser, whose brigade of cavalry was covering the rear north of Hatcher’s Run, to attend a shad bake on the north side of the run.