Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road: Mahone's Counterpunch

Grant's grand strategy at Petersburg had two tracks: apply relentless pressure on the Confederate defenses, and systematically sever every railroad feeding the city. On June twenty-first, eighteen sixty-four, just days after the siege began, he sent the Second Corps under General David Birney swinging west toward the Weldon Railroad, one of the last arteries connecting Petersburg to the rest of the Confederacy. The Weldon line ran south to Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Atlantic ports beyond. If Grant could cut it, Lee's logistical position would become untenable.

The Union advance went smoothly at first. Birney's infantry extended the siege lines westward along Jerusalem Plank Road and tore up a short stretch of the railroad, while a separate cavalry raid under Wilson struck other lines. But a gap opened in the Union line, a seam between corps where coordination broke down in the thick woods south of Petersburg.

Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill spotted it. He sent William Mahone's division, one of the most aggressive fighting formations in Lee's army, through that gap with orders to drive through and roll up the Union flank. On June twenty-second, Mahone's men hit the exposed side of the Second Corps and sent it reeling. Well over a thousand Union soldiers were captured before the line stabilized.

The Confederates ultimately failed to drive the attackers away from the Jerusalem Plank Road entirely, and the Union lines extended a mile or more to the west. But the Weldon Railroad stayed in Confederate hands for another two months. Mahone had bought Lee precious time, and his reputation as Lee's attack dog was cemented. Later that summer he would be involved in yet another brutal fight near these same roads, as the siege ground on through the Virginia summer and into the killing autumn.