On 5 February 1865 Union cavalry and infantry marched out of the siege lines around Petersburg, Virginia, to strike at the wagon trains that supplied Robert E. Lee's army. Three days of fighting at Hatcher's Run followed. Confederate General John Pegram was killed, and the Union extended its siege lines further west.
The siege lines stretch west
By February 1865 the armies had faced each other around Petersburg since the previous summer, and Grant kept pushing his entrenchments westward around Lee's right flank. In early February he aimed a new blow at the Boydton Plank Road, a route by which supply wagons reached Petersburg. The wider campaign is the subject of our article on the siege of Petersburg.1
On 5 February Brigadier General David Gregg's cavalry division rode by way of Reams Station toward Dinwiddie Court House to intercept the wagon trains. Major General Gouverneur K. Warren's Fifth Corps crossed Hatcher's Run and took position on the Vaughan Road to support him, and two divisions of the Second Corps under Major General Andrew A. Humphreys moved to Armstrong's Mill to cover Warren's right. Gregg's raid came to little: he found the plank road little used and took only some wagons and prisoners.2
Three days of fighting
Late on 5 February troops of Major General John B. Gordon's and Lieutenant General A. P. Hill's corps attacked Humphreys near Armstrong's Mill. The Union troops had dug in, and the attack was beaten back. During the night the Federals were reinforced by two more divisions.3
On 6 February the fighting moved south of the stream, to the Vaughan Road and the woods around Dabney's Mill. Part of Pegram's division attacked Gregg's cavalry on the Vaughan Road, and when Warren pushed a reconnaissance toward Dabney's Mill he ran into the divisions of Pegram and Major General William Mahone. Pegram was killed in the action. The Confederate counterattack drove Warren's line back until Union reinforcements stopped it late in the afternoon. On 7 February Warren's troops went forward again, and afterward the Federals extended their siege lines to Hatcher's Run.4
A short marriage
John Pegram was born in Petersburg in 1832 and graduated from West Point. He fought at Rich Mountain, Chickamauga and the Wilderness, and in the autumn of 1864 he led a division in the Shenandoah Valley. On 19 January 1865 he married Hetty Cary at St. Paul's Church in Richmond. Less than three weeks later his funeral was held in the same church, and he was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. His younger brother, the artillery officer William Pegram, was killed at Five Forks in April.5
Who won?
The sources weigh it differently. The American Battlefield Trust calls the battle inconclusive. The National Park Service sums it up this way: the Confederates had saved the Boydton Plank Road, but the Union had gained a good staging point for future offensives. Both agree that the Federals extended their siege works to the Vaughan Road crossing of Hatcher's Run, as does Humphreys.6
The American Battlefield Trust estimates the casualties at about 1,539 Union and 1,000 Confederate. Humphreys, who commanded the Second Corps in the battle, put the Union losses at about 1,470 killed, wounded and missing and recorded Warren's view that the Confederates had lost nearly as many. The two army commanders are portrayed in our article on Ulysses S. Grant and our article on Robert E. Lee.7
