The Petersburg Breakthrough: End of the Siege

The ground around you was held by Confederate troops for nine and a half months, from June eighteen sixty-four through early April eighteen sixty-five, in one of the longest sieges in American history. When the lines finally broke, they broke fast.

Petersburg controlled the five railroads that supplied Richmond and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Grant understood that taking Petersburg meant taking Richmond and, eventually, ending the war. He brought his army south from Cold Harbor in June eighteen sixty-four in a bold flanking move and began encircling the city, extending his lines to the southwest to cut each Confederate supply line one by one.

The Confederates under Lee were superb defensive fighters and held their lines through summer heat, autumn mud, and winter cold. They repelled the famous Crater assault in July eighteen sixty-four, when Union engineers detonated four tons of powder under the Confederate position known as Elliott's Salient, blowing a hole thirty feet deep and one hundred seventy feet long in the Confederate line. The subsequent Union infantry assault collapsed in confusion, and Confederate troops counterattacked into the crater, costing the Union roughly four thousand casualties in what became one of the war's most horrific episodes.

But the Confederates could not extend their lines as fast as Grant could. By late March eighteen sixty-five, Lee's lines stretched nearly forty miles. When Sheridan's cavalry broke through at Five Forks on April first and Grant ordered a general assault on April second, the overstretched Confederate line gave way at multiple points simultaneously. Lee telegraphed Jefferson Davis that Richmond had to be evacuated that night.

The breakthrough battlefield preserves the ground where the nine-and-a-half-month stalemate ended in a single morning, sending Lee's army west toward its last week of existence.