Battle of the American Civil War
The Battle of White Oak Road, also known as The Battle of Hatcher's Run, Gravelly Run, Boydton Plank Road, White Oak Ridge was fought on March 31, 1865, during the American Civil War at the end of the Richmond-Petersburg Campaign and in the beginning stage of the Appomattox Campaign. Along with the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House which was fought simultaneously on March 31, the battle involved the last offensive action by General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to stop the progress of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's Union Army (Army of the Potomac, Army of the Shenandoah and Army of the James). Grant's forces were moving to cut the remaining Confederate supply lines and to force the Confederates to extend their defensive lines at Petersburg, Virginia and Richmond, Virginia to the breaking point, if not to force them into a decisive open field battle.
On March 29, 1865, the Union V Corps under Major General Gouverneur K. Warren moved to the end of the Confederates' White Oak Road Line, the far right flank of the Confederate defenses. At the conclusion of the Battle of Lewis's Farm on that day, Warren's corps took control of advance Confederate picket or outpost positions and occupied a segment of a key transportation and communication route, the Boydton Plank Road, at the junction of the Quaker Road. Warren's corps was the closest Union infantry unit to Major General Philip Sheridan's force which had moved about to Dinwiddie Court House, Virginia west of the end of the Confederate lines and just south of Five Forks, Virginia. Five Forks was an important road junction for control of the critical Confederate supply line of the South Side Railroad (sometimes shown as Southside Railroad).
Colonel Frederick Winthrop's brigade of Brigadier General Romeyn B. Ayres's division of the V Corps took a further advance position across Gravelly Run near the Confederate White Oak Road Line in torrential rain on March 30, 1865. Ayres was unaware of how close his men were settling in near the Confederate White Oak Road Line and that contrary to his observation and belief, the Confederate line extended beyond the end of his new position. This, and the separation between Ayres's corps and Sheridan's cavalry, were important factors when Ayres's troops were surprised by a Confederate attack the next day. Warren's corps, led by Brevet Major General Charles Griffin's First Division, counterattacked, pushed the Confederates back to their original lines, secured advanced positions and cut the Confederates access to direct communication with Pickett over White Oak Road and the Boydton Plank Road. After securing his position, Warren also was able to send units to outflank and drive off Pickett's forces which were in a position to inflict a serious defeat on Sheridan's troopers whom Pickett's force had pushed back that day at Dinwiddie Court House.
The battles at White Oak Road and Dinwiddie Court House, while initially successful for the Confederates, even a tactical victory at Dinwiddie, ultimately did not advance their lines or achieve their strategic objective of weakening and driving back the Union forces or separating Sheridan's force from support. The battles and their aftermath set the stage for the Confederate defeats and the collapse of Confederate lines at the Battle of Five Forks on the following day, April 1, 1865, and the Third Battle of Petersburg (also known as the Breakthrough at Petersburg) on April 2, 1865 and ultimately led to the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia after the Battle of Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865.
Background.
Military situation.
Siege of Petersburg.
When two unobserved corps of the Union Army of the Potomac, which combined with the Union Army of the James outside Petersburg, failed to seize the city from a small force of Confederate defenders at the Second Battle of Petersburg, the 292-day Richmond–Petersburg Campaign (Siege of Petersburg) began. Union General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant had to conduct a campaign of trench warfare and attrition in which the Union forces tried to wear down the less numerous Confederate Army, destroy or cut off sources of supply and supply lines to Petersburg and Richmond and extend the defensive lines which the outnumbered and declining Confederate force had to defend to the breaking point. After the Battle of Hatcher's Run on February 5–7, 1865 extended the lines another , Lee had few reserves after manning the lengthened defenses. Lee then knew that part or all of his army must leave the Richmond and Petersburg lines, obtain food and supplies at Danville, Virginia or possibly Lynchburg, Virginia and join General Joseph E. Johnston's force opposing Major General William T. Sherman's army in North Carolina. If the Confederates could quickly defeat Sherman, they might turn back to oppose Grant before he could combine his forces with Sherman's. Lee began preparations for the movement and informed Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate States Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge of his conclusions and plan.
Battle of Fort Stedman.
Aware that Sherman's army moving through North Carolina might combine with Grant's army at Petersburg if General Joseph E. Johnston's army could not stop Sherman, and that Lee's own declining army could not hold the Richmond and Petersburg defenses much longer, in March 1865, General Lee accepted a plan by Major General John Brown Gordon to launch an attack on Union Fort Stedman. The objective would be to break the Union lines east of Petersburg, or at least to compel the Union forces to shorten their lines by gaining ground in a substantial attack. This was supposed to permit Lee to shorten the Confederate lines and send a substantial force to help Johnston, or if necessary to give the Confederates a head start in evacuating Richmond and Petersburg and combining Lee's entire force with Johnston's dwindling army.
After Gordon's surprise attack on Fort Stedman in the pre-dawn hours of March 25, 1865 resulted in the capture of the fort, three adjacent batteries and over 500 men while killing and wounding about 500 more, the Union IX Corps under Major General John G. Parke promptly counterattacked. The IX Corps recaptured the fort and batteries, forced the Confederates to return to their lines and give up their advance picket line and inflicted about 4,000 casualties, including about 1,000 captured, which the Confederates could ill afford.
On the afternoon of March 25, at the Battle of Jones's Farm, Union forces of II Corps and VI Corps captured Confederate picket lines near Armstrong's Mill and extended the left end of the Union line about closer to the Confederate fortifications. This put the VI Corps which was holding this section of the line, within easy striking distance, about , of the Confederate line. After the Confederate defeats at Fort Stedman and Jones's Farm, Lee knew that Grant would soon move against the only remaining Confederate supply lines to Petersburg, the Southside Railroad and the Boydton Plank Road and possibly cut off all routes of retreat from Richmond and Petersburg.
March 29 movements.
Grant's orders.
On March 24, 1865, the day before the Confederate attack on Fort Stedman, Grant already had planned an offensive for March 29, 1865. The objectives were to draw the Confederates out into a battle in which they might be defeated, or cut the remaining road and railroad supply and communication routes between areas of the Confederacy still under Confederate control and Petersburg and Richmond if the Confederates held their lines. The Battle of Fort Stedman had no effect on Grant's plans. The Union Army lost no ground due to the attack and their casualties were a small percentage of their force.
Grant ordered Major General Edward Ord's to move part of the Army of the James from the lines near Richmond to fill in the line to be vacated by the II Corps under Major General Andrew A. Humphreys at the southwest end of the Petersburg line before the II Corps moved to the west. Ord moved two divisions of Major General John Gibbon's XXIV Corps under Brigadier Generals Charles Devens and William Birney and one division of XXV Corps under Brigadier General John W. Turner to the south side of the Appomattox River. This freed two corps of Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac for offensive action against Lee's flank and railroad supply lines: Major General Humphrey's II Corps and the V Corps under the command of Major General Gouverneur K. Warren. Grant ordered these forces, along with Major General Philip Sheridan's cavalry, still designated the Army of the Shenandoah, consisting of the First Division of Brigadier General Thomas Devin and the Third Division of Brigadier General and Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer but both under the overall command of Brigadier General and Brevet Major General Wesley Merritt as an unofficial corps commander and the Second Division of Major General George Crook detached from the Army of the Potomac for this mission, to move west. The objectives were to bring on an open field battle to defeat the Confederates in combat or to cut the Southside Railroad and the Boydton Plank Road, which connected with the previously severed Weldon Railroad to Petersburg, and the Richmond and Danville Railroad to Richmond, and to stretch Lee's line to the breaking point.
Lee's orders.
Lee, who was already concerned about the ability of his weakening army to maintain the defense of Petersburg and Richmond, realized that the defeat at Fort Stedman would encourage Grant to make a move like the one he was planning. Lee already had prepared to send some reinforcements to the western end of his line, and a mobile force beyond the end of the line to protect the junction at Five Forks, on the morning of March 29 when the Union infantry under Warren and Humphreys and the cavalry under Sheridan began their southwestward movements. Later that day Confederate forces under Major General Bushrod Johnson engaged Brevet Major General Charles Griffin's First Division of the V Corps at the Battle of Lewis's Farm.
Union infantry movement.
Before dawn on March 29, Warren's V Corps moved west of the Union and Confederate lines while Sheridan's cavalry took a longer, more southerly route toward Dinwiddie Court House and Humphrey's II Corps filled in the gap between the existing end of the Union line and the new position of Warren's corps. Warren's corps led by the First Brigade of Griffin's First Division under the command of Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain proceeded up the Quaker Road toward its intersection with the Boydton Plank Road and the Confederates' nearby White Oak Road Line.
Battle of Lewis's Farm.
Along Quaker Road, across Rowanty Creek at the Lewis Farm, Chamberlain's men encountered brigades of Confederate Brigadier Generals Henry A. Wise, William Henry Wallace and Young Marshall Moody which had been sent by corps commander Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson and his division commander Major General Bushrod Johnson to turn back the Union advance. A back-and-forth battle ensued during which Chamberlain was wounded and almost captured. Chamberlain's brigade, reinforced by a four-gun artillery battery and regiments from the brigades of Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General Edgar M. Gregory and Colonel and Brevet Brigadier General Alfred L. Pearson, who was later awarded the Medal of Honor, drove the Confederates back to their White Oak Road Line. Casualties for both sides were nearly even at 381 for the Union and 371 for the Confederates.
After the battle, Griffin's division moved up to occupy the junction of the Quaker Road and Boydton Plank Road near the end of the Confederate White Oak Road Line. Late in the afternoon of March 29, 1865, Sheridan's cavalry occupied Dinwiddie Court House on the Boydton Plank Road without opposition. The Union forces had cut the Boydton Plank Road in two places and were close to the Confederate line and in a strong position to move a large force against both the Confederate right flank and the crucial road junction at Five Forks in Dinwiddie County to which Lee was just sending defenders. The Union forces were also nearly in position to attack the two remaining Confederate railroad connections with Petersburg and Richmond, if they could take Five Forks.
Encouraged by the Confederate failure to press their attack at Lewis's Farm and their withdrawal to their White Oak Road Line, Grant decided to expand Sheridan's mission to a major offensive rather than just a possible battle or a railroad