Five Forks • Tour the Battlefield • The Armies • Battle Maps
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Visitor Center • Stop 1 • Stop 2 • Stop 3 • Stop 4 • Stop 5
Stop Two on the Five Forks Battlefield Auto Tour is ‘The Angle’ on the north side of White Oak Road about 0.7 mile east of the Five Forks intersection. (see map below)
Facing west down White Oak Road. The Confederate defensive line began here and ran along the right side of the road.
This was the eastern flank of the Confederate defensive line. The defenses here were ‘refused,’ or angled back to provide some protection from the side. Three guns were also placed here to provide additional strength.
Ayers’ Division of the the Union Fifth Corps attacked here, greatly outnumbering Ransom’s Confederate brigade. It was here that General Sheridan jumped his big black charger Rienzi over the Confederate earthworks carrying his heaquarters flag as depicted on the wayside marker.
The ‘Attack on the Angle’ wayside marker
The ‘Attack on the Angle’ wayside marker at Stop 2 on the Five Forks battlefield Toour
From the marker:
Attack on the Angle
“When we moved toward Five Forks…we were not expecting any attack that afternoon, so far as I know. Our throwing up works and taking position were simply general matters of military precaution.”
– Major General Fitzhugh Lee, CSA
You are standing on the left (east) flank of the Confederate line at Five Forks. Here the earthworks turned abruptly northward, forming an angle. Few of the 1,000 North Carolinians gathered behind these trenches on the afternoon of April 1, 1865, expected an attack. Neither did their commander, Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett, who had retired to the rear for a lunch of shad.
At 4:15 p.m., Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren’s Union Fifth Corps swarmed across what were open fields to your right. While two Federal divisions moved too far north and missed the Confederate line altogether, one division of 3,100 men struck the Confederates here. Brig. Gen. Matthew Ransom’s North Carolina brigade resisted fiercely. But the Federals rolled forward and vaulted the works. The Confederate line collapsed.
The Union success at the Angle initiated the destruction of Pickett’s division – a disaster for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
From the caption to the painting:
General Philip Sheridan – his headquarters flag in hand – joined the Union charge on the Angle. Of him, one man wrote, “It would be a sorry soldier who could help following such a leader.”
General Sheridan at the Battle of Five Forks by Henry Alexander Ogden.
Map and directions to Stop Two on the Auto Tour
Stop Two on the Auto Tour is on the north side of White Oak Road about 0.7 mile east of the Five Forks intersection. (37.243688° N, 77.356766° W)
Directions to the next stop on the Auto Tour:
Turn right out of the parking area and return to the Five Forks intersection. Continue through the intersection on White Oak Road; the parking area is just past it on the left.