June 1864 – April 1865

The Siege of Petersburg would include whole armies and departments during its nine and a half month history but its beginning was modest. On June 8, 1864 Union Major General Benjamin Butler at Bermuda Hundred south of Richmond sent a raid of 4,400 men from his Army of the James to try to seize Petersburg. Petersburg was surrounded by extensive earthworks but was held by less than 1,000 defenders under former Virginia Governor Henry Wise. They were boys too young and men too old to serve in the front line units, stiffened with a few recovering front line troops from the hospitals. But they were enough to hold off the Federals until two regiments of cavalry arrived from Confederate Lieutenant General Pierre Beauregard’s small force facing Butler at Bermuda Hundred.

Six days later Grant sent Butler’s entire 18th Corps to try again, and followed it over the next two days with all four infantry corps (the 2nd, 5th, 6th and 9th) from the Army of the Potomac. At first Wise had barely two thousand men to meet them and the eastern side of the Confederate defensive line was overrun. Lee was unconvinced that Grant had moved his entire force south and refused to send reinforcements from his Army of Northern Virginia at Richmond until he saw proof that Grant would not smash his way past him as soon as Lee weakened his lines. But Beauregard understood the threat and stripped the defences of Bermuda Hundred to reinforce Petersburg. It was enough to slow the Union push until Lee awakened to the danger and began to send his battle-hardened veterans south. Badly coordinated attacks by the exhausted Federals ground to a halt in heavy casualties, leading Grant to dig in and begin a siege.

This set the theme for the next nine months. Union forces tried flank moves only to be met by a Confederate defence – and usually a counterattack – rushed in from another part of the lines. The fortifications around Richmond and those around Petersburg were connected by the positions at Bermuda Hundred, forming a chessboard dozens of miles across. Confederate forces could move between the three sectors by rail, while Union troops utilized water transport on the James River and the military railroad that connected their port at City Point with the Petersburg lines.

Even as Grant started his move south Lee detached his 2nd Corps under Jubal Early. It would move to the Shenandoah Valley and play the same game Stonewall Jackson had run in 1862 when he had drawn away several times his number in Union troops from the fighting around Richmond. Early was nearly into the suburbs of Washington before Grant admitted the threat, but he detached the Union 6th Corps from Petersburg barely in time to save the city. Grant followed it with two divisions of the 19th Corps just returning from Louisiana intended for the Bermuda Hundred front, and two of the Army of the Potomac’s three cavalry divisions.

By mid-July Lee had the 1st, 3rd and 4th Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia with seven infantry divisions and a cavalry corps with three divisions, as well as three undersized infantry divisions from the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia. It was a little under 60,000 men – about 10,000 less than he had had a year earlier at Gettysburg. Facing this, Grant had over 110,000 men in the 2nd, 5th, 9th and Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac and the 10th and 18th Corps of the Army of the James.

This disparity in numbers didn’t stop Lee from thinning his lines even further in August to send Kershaw’s Division of the 1st Corps and Fitz Lee’s Cavalry Division to reinforce Early in the Shenandoah Valley. Early was tying down more than twice his number of Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley, and Lee approved of the math and wanted to sustain the operation.

But by the end of fall in 1864 three Confederate defeats in four weeks ended the gamble in the Shenandoah Valley. First Kershaw’s Division returned to the trenches around Richmond. In December the sadly reduced survivors of the Second Corps returned under their senior surviving division commander, John Gordon.

At the same time Grant reorganized the 10th and 18th Corps of the Army of the James. Both corps had two divisions of white regiments and one division of black soldiers (with white officers). They were reorganized as the all-white 24th and all-black 25th Corps.

Lee’s meager reinforcement from the Shenandoah was more than offset as he was forced to detach troops to deal with threats in the Carolinas. Hoke’s infantry division left around Christmas. Connor’s Brigade (once Kershaw’s) from the First Corps returned to South Carolina in January. At the end of that month Butler’s Cavalry Division – one third of Lee’s cavalry – headed south along with Cavalry Corps commander Wade Hampton, as much from a need for remounts as from the threat of Sherman’s advancing army.

Just as deadly to Lee’s army was a desertion rate that all winter averaged close to 100 men a night. Some crossed over to Federal trenches where Grant paid a bounty to each Confederate who brought in a weapon. Others evaded the pickets of both sides and simply set out for home, often in sizable bands of well-armed men who could defy the provost guards. And while Grant also had problems with desertion, a steady stream of replacements and regular supplies of food and equipment saw Federal numbers grow as the winter went on.

In March the remnants of the bands of Jubal Early’s cavalry that had wintered in western Virginia came down to Petersburg, the last reinforcements Lee would see. But Grant also gained from the end of the fighting in the Shenandoah. Wright’s Sixth Corps returned, followed by two divisions of cavalry led by Sheridan, who had finished off Early and his survivors at the Battle of Waynesboro and was hungry for more. As the last spring of the war began Lee had less than 40,000 starving, worn out men to face Grant’s 125,000. When the weather improved enough for the armies to move, the end came quickly.