White Oak Road • Tour the Battlefield • The Armies • Battle Maps
The Confederate spoiling attack had maintained the flank of Lee’s defensive line for the day. But Warren’s Fifth Corps was now positioned on White Oak Road past the end of the Confederate line. A four mile gap existed between Anderson’s defenses and the hastily erected earthworks of George Pickett’s reinforced Confederate Division to the west at Five Forks. Warren’s Corps was now in that gap. Early the next morning it began its march to join Philip Sheridan’s Federal Cavalry Corps at Five Forks, down four miles of flooded, almost impassable, but completely undefended road. Warren would arrive on and behind Pickett’s flank, and the decisive Battle of Five Forks was the result.
