Battle of Hatcher's Run: Winter Advance

The Battle of Hatcher's Run, fought February fifth through seventh, eighteen sixty-five, was the last major Union extension of the Petersburg siege lines before the final campaign in late March and early April. It extended Grant's left flank about four more miles to the west and moved the Union line closer to Boydton Plank Road.

Grant sent the Second Corps and Fifth Corps westward on February fifth, ostensibly to intercept a Confederate wagon train moving supplies along Boydton Plank Road. They reached the road at Hatcher's Run, a small creek southwest of Petersburg, but the wagon train had already passed. Rather than withdrawing, Grant ordered the corps to hold and extend the Union line to include the ground they had taken.

The Confederates counterattacked on February sixth, striking the Fifth Corps in a sharp engagement that briefly threatened to cut off Union forces along the run. The Fifth Corps was driven back before the Union line stabilized. Over the following days, Union engineers built new fortifications incorporating the gained ground into the permanent siege line.

The extension was significant because it forced Lee to extend his own lines correspondingly, further thinning an already stretched force. By this point Lee was struggling to feed his army. Desertion rates were climbing sharply as soldiers from the Carolinas and Georgia received letters from home describing Sherman's march. Lee warned Jefferson Davis in February that his men were deserting faster than he could replace them.

Hatcher's Run was the last piece of the puzzle before the final offensive. The ground taken here brought the Union line closer to Boydton Plank Road, and when Grant made his final move in late March, the Confederate position had already been compressed and weakened by months of exactly this kind of methodical extension.