Second Petersburg • Petersburg Timeline
Grant’s First Assault – June 15
Grant began his move south from Cold Harbor by ordering Butler to repeat the June 9 and 10 attack with much larger numbers. He sent Union Major General Gustavus Smith’s 18th Corps and Kautz’s cavalry division. Confederate Brigadier General Henry Wise had received few reinforcements after the raid on June 9. His 2,000 men were still spread very thinly from redoubts 1 to 23.
Both Smith and Kautz reached Petersburg late in the day. Smith attacked with over 16,000 men. He sent them forward in heavy skirmish lines that provided poor targets for the Confederate artillery but still overwhelmed the Confederates. By nightfall of June 15 Union’s forces overwhelming numbers had overrun redoubts 3 through 12,about three and a half miles of the Confederate defenses, and seemed to have a clear march into Petersburg the next day.
Beauregard pulled back and dug in along Harrison’s Creek while Smith consolidated his gains until morning.
Winfield Hancock’s Second Corps arrived to reinforce Smith after a long and exhausting march, but Hancock didn’t have clear orders and deferred to Smith’s decision to wait to continue the attack.
June 16
During the night the Confederates formed a temporary defensive line while beginning yet another, more permanent line a short distance to its rear. General P.G.T. Beauregard, in overall command of Confederate forces south of Richmond, worked feverishly to bring in Robert Hoke and Bushrod Johnson’s divisions as reinforcements, stripping his defensive lines at Bermuda Hundred. Heavy Union reinforcements also poured in, with Burnside’s Ninth Corps joining the attack after long and exhausting marches.
This gave Grant 50,000 men against Beauregard’s 14,000. Despite the odds the attack was only partially successful, grinding slowly forward but not breaking through the Confederate lines at any point. Potter’s division of the Ninth Corps captured another mile of Confederate trenches before being stopped by a secondary line, but attacks by Ledlie’s and Hartranft’s divisions failed.
By the end of the day Meade arrived on the field with Gouverneur Warren’s Fifth Corps, giving the Federals 67,000 men against 20,000 Confederates. Confederate engineers finished a line of earthworks to replace the parts of the Dimmock line overrun by Union forces. During the night most of the Confederate defenders fell back into the new defences, leaving a thin line of skirmishers along the Harrison’s Creek line. And Beauregard was reinforced during the night by Kershaw’s and Field’s divisions from the Army of Northern Virginia.
June 17
Throughout the 17th Union forces pressed forward in large numbers but in isolated, uncoordinated attacks. Having slowed the Union advance, the Confederates were able to withdraw into their newly completed defensive lines. Grant ordered an attack all along the line on the 18th.
June 18
The result was a disaster. The Union attackers easily advanced through the lightly held Harrison’s Creek line before being stopped cold at the new defences. Two more assaults were made against the now well entrenched and fully manned Confederate lines and were thrown back with heavy casualties. It was here the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery,operating as infantry, lost 632 of its 900 men in a few minutes, the highest number of killed and mortally wounded of any regiment in the United States Army in a single day of battle in the Civil War.
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