Today In Western History: Richmond Falls

April 3

Today in 1865, the Rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia, falls to the Union, the most significant sign that the Confederacy is nearing its final days.  In fact, there are only six days left.

For ten months, General Ulysses S. Grant had tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate

Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, USA
Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, USA

the city. After Lee made a desperate attack against Fort Stedman along  the Union line on March 25, Grant prepared for a major offensive. He struck at Five Forks on April 1, crushing the end of Lee’s line southwest of Petersburg. On April 2, the Yankees struck all along the Petersburg line, and finally the exhausted Confederates  collapsed under the weight of Grant’s extended front.

On the evening of April 2, the Confederate government fled the city with the army right behind. Now, on the morning of April 3, blue-coated troops entered the capital. Richmond was the holy grail of the Union war effort, the object of four years of campaigning. Tens of thousands of Yankee lives were lost trying to get it, and nearly as many Confederate lives lost trying to defend it.  Now, the Yankees came to take possession of their prize. One resident, Mary Fontaine, wrote, “I saw them unfurl a tiny flag, and I sank on my knees, and the bitter, bitter tears came in a torrent.” Another observer wrote that as the Federals rode in, the city’s black residents were “completely crazed, they danced and shouted, men hugged each other, and women kissed.” Among the first forces into the capital were black troopers from the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, and the next day President Abraham Lincoln visited the city. For the residents of Richmond, these were symbols of a world turned upside down. It was, one reporter noted, “…too awful to remember, if it were possible to be erased, but that cannot be.”

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Today In Western History: Richmond Falls

Today, in 1865, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant finally capture the trenches around Petersburg,

Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, USA
Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, USA

Virginia, after a dreary ten-month siege and Confederate General Robert E. Lee leads his troops on a desperate retreat westward.

Robert E. Lee, General CSA, Hero of the Confederacy
Robert E. Lee, General CSA, Hero of the Confederacy

The ragged Confederate troops could no longer maintain the 40-mile network of defenses that ran from southwest of Petersburg to north of Richmond, the Rebel capital 25 miles north of Petersburg. Through the long winter, desertion and attrition melted Lee’s army down to less than 60,000, while Grant’s army swelled to over 120,000. Grant attacked Five Forks southwest of Petersburg on April 1, scoring a huge victory that cut Lee’s supply line and inflicted 5,000 casualties on the already thin lines.  The next day, Lee wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, “I think it absolutely necessary that we should 

 Jefferson Davis, President of the CSA
Jefferson Davis, First and Only President of the CSA

 

abandon our position tonight…”  Davis began to pack the Government files.

Grant’s men attacked all along the Petersburg front. In the predawn hours, hundreds of Federal can-non roared to life as the Yankees bombarded the Rebel fortifications. Said one soldier, “the shells screamed through the air in a semi-circle of flame.” At 5:00 in the morning, Union troops silently crawled toward the Confederates, shrouded in darkness. Confederate pickets alerted the troops, and the Yankees were raked by heavy fire, but the determined troops poured forth and began over-running the trenches.  Four thousand Union troops were killed or wounded, but a northern officer wrote, “It was a great relief, a positive lifting of a load of misery to be at last let at them.”

Ambrose Powell Hill, CSA General
Ambrose Powell Hill, CSA General

Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill, a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia and one of Lee’s most trusted lieutenants, rode to the front to rally his men. As he approached some trees with his aide, two Union soldiers emerged and fired, killing Hill instantly. Hill had survived four years of war and dozens of battles only to die during the final days of the Confederacy. When Lee received the news, he quietly said, “He is at rest now, and we who are left are the ones to suffer.”

By nightfall, President Davis and the Confederate government were in flight and Richmond was on fire. Retreating Rebel troops set ablaze several huge warehouses to prevent them from being captured by the Federals and the fires soon spread. With the army and government officials gone, bands of thugs roamed the streets looting what was left.

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Today In Western History: Sheridan Closes In

On this day in 1865, the final offensive of the Army of the Potomac gathers steam when Union General Philip Sheridan moves against the left flank of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern

US General Philip Sheridan
US General Philip Sheridan

Virginia near Dinwiddie Court House. The limited level action set the stage for the Battle of Five Forks, Virginia, on April 1.  This engagement took place at the end of the Petersburg, Virginia, line. For 10 months, the Union had laid siege to Lee’s army at Petersburg, but the trenches stretched all the way to Richmond, some 25 miles to the north. Lee’s thinning army attacked Fort Stedman on March 25 in a futile attempt to break the siege, but the Union line held. On March 29, General Ulysses S. Grant,

Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, USA
Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant, USA

General-in-Chief of the Union Army and the field commander around Petersburg, began moving his men past the western end of Lee’s line.

Torrential rains threatened to delay the move as. Grant had planned to send Sheridan against the Confederates on March 31, but called off the operation. Sheridan would not be denied a chance to fight, though. “I am ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things!” he told his officers. They en-couraged him to meet with Grant, who consented to begin the move. Near Dinwiddie Court House, Sheridan advanced but was driven back by General George Pickett’s division. Pickett was alerted to the

CSA General George Pickett, sartorial dandy and lowest in his class at West Point,
CSA General George Pickett, sartorial dandy and lowest in his class at West Point,

Union advance, and during the night of March 31, he pulled his men back to Five Forks. This set the stage for a major strike by Sheridan on April 1, when the Yankees crushed the Rebel flank and forced Lee to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg.  The Rebel Confederacy had only a week left to live.

 

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