The Siege of Petersburg lasted 292 days, from 15 June 1864 to 2 April 1865, when Union armies under Grant finally broke Lee's lines south of Richmond. It was a war of trenches and railroad raids, scarred by the failed mine attack at the Crater, and its end forced the evacuation of Richmond and led to Appomattox.1
In 1860 Petersburg was the second-largest city in Virginia, and in 1864 it mattered because of its railroads. Five railroads met there, and they made the town the supply center for Richmond and for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.2
It is often called the longest siege in American history, although the town was never fully surrounded. For more than nine months two armies dug, mined and raided along a front that kept stretching west.
Part of The greatest battles of the Civil War · Before: The Battle of Cold Harbor · Next: The Battle of Mobile Bay
From the Overland Campaign to Petersburg
In May 1864 Grant took the war to Lee in a campaign that never let go: the burning thickets of the Battle of the Wilderness, then the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House and its Bloody Angle. At Cold Harbor in early June a frontal assault failed at heavy cost.3
Instead of attacking again, Grant slipped away. His army crossed the James River in mid-June and swung south toward Petersburg, aiming at the railroads rather than at Lee's entrenched army.4
The first assaults, 15 to 18 June 1864
On 15 June, by Beauregard's own account, the Confederates holding the defenses of Petersburg against the Union Eighteenth Corps had "a real effective for duty of 2200 only"; a National Park Service handbook by Richard Lykes puts his force at less than 4,000. Union troops broke into the outer works but did not push on, and within three days Lee's army arrived to man a new line.5
The final attacks on 18 June were costly. The 1st Maine Heavy Artillery suffered 632 casualties, killed, wounded and missing, in a charge that by most accounts lasted about ten minutes, the heaviest loss suffered by any regiment in a single action of the war. Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top, was wounded so badly that he was promoted to brigadier general in the belief that he would die; he survived. Grant turned to siege operations.6
Trenches, railroads and City Point
The siege was really a slow fight for the railroads, with each Union offensive reaching farther west. In August 1864, at Globe Tavern, the Union Fifth Corps seized the Weldon Railroad and held it against repeated counterattacks. From then on Lee's supplies from the south had to be hauled by wagon around the Union flank along the Boydton Plank Road. The last line, the South Side Railroad running west to Lynchburg, became the prize of the whole campaign.7
Behind the Union lines the war became an industry. Grant arrived at City Point on 15 June 1864, where the James and Appomattox rivers meet, and turned the landing into a vast supply base with wharves, a bakery and a hospital.8
The Battle of the Crater, 30 July 1864
The most famous episode of the siege began underground. Men of the 48th Pennsylvania, many of them coal miners, dug a tunnel of about 510 feet under a Confederate fort and packed its end with 8,000 pounds of black powder. Burnside planned to lead with about 4,300 men of the United States Colored Troops in Edward Ferrero's division, and each brigade had trained for its role.9
On the day before the assault Meade, having consulted Grant, ordered Burnside to use a white division instead. Grant later testified that he had agreed with Meade's objection: Meade had said that if the Black troops led and the attack failed, "it would then be said, and very properly, that we were shoving those people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them." Burnside had his division commanders draw lots for the job, and it fell to James Ledlie's division, which had not trained for the assault.10
The mine exploded after the first fuse went out, at 4:44 in the morning according to the American Battlefield Trust and at about 4:45 according to Lykes. The Trust puts the Confederates killed by the blast at 352, most of them South Carolinians; Lykes writes that at least 278 were killed or wounded. Instead of going around the crater, the Union troops poured into it and were trapped, while Ledlie stayed behind the lines in a bombproof. Ferrero's men were finally sent in, and counterattacks led by William Mahone sealed the breach. Union losses were about 3,800. Encyclopedia Virginia puts Confederate losses at about 1,500, the American Battlefield Trust at fewer than 1,200; the USCT division alone lost about 1,300.11
The fighting ended in an atrocity. Black soldiers who tried to surrender were killed, and some who had been taken prisoner were shot afterward; Confederate witnesses themselves admitted a great deal of unnecessary killing. Grant called the Crater the saddest affair he had witnessed in the war. Burnside and Ledlie never returned to their commands.12
Winter in the trenches, 1864 to 1865
Through the autumn and winter both armies turned the ground into a fortress. The historian Earl Hess describes wire entanglements, mines and countermines, buried torpedoes and underground bombproofs that sheltered the men holding the works. The Union engineers' map, their 1865 survey by Nathaniel Michler and J. E. Weyss, shows how far the lines had spread. By the end, the fortifications stretched for some 37 miles.13
From September 1864 Union offensives aimed at the Boydton Plank Road and the South Side Railroad. The Confederate lines thinned as they lengthened, and by March 1865 Lee's army was weakened by disease, desertion and a shortage of food and supplies.14
Fort Stedman, Five Forks and 2 April 1865
Lee tried one last blow. Before dawn on 25 March 1865 John B. Gordon's troops stormed Fort Stedman, but Union counterattacks under John Parke sealed the break within hours. The failed attack cost Lee men he could not replace.15
A week later Philip Sheridan, with cavalry and Warren's Fifth Corps, struck the Confederate right at Five Forks. On 1 April he broke George Pickett's line and took about 4,000 Confederate soldiers prisoner, while Pickett himself was away at a social gathering.16
On 2 April Wright's Sixth Corps broke through the lines held by A. P. Hill, who was killed trying to reach his troops. Forts Gregg and Whitworth held long enough for Lee to organize a retreat, but the South Side Railroad was cut. Lee told Jefferson Davis that Petersburg and Richmond must be evacuated, and Union troops entered the capital on 3 April. The pursuit ended at Appomattox Court House on 9 April.17
The Union view
For the Union command Petersburg was the plan that worked after the plans that did not. Grant failed to take the town in June and again at the Crater, and in the fall of 1864 Lincoln's re-election was still in doubt. Yet the siege pinned Lee in place while Sherman marched through Georgia. Grant's army was fed from City Point and steadily reinforced, and officers such as George Meade and Sheridan learned to combine digging with sudden blows at the railroads. The Union won by patience and logistics as much as by assault.18
The Confederate view
For the Army of Northern Virginia Petersburg was a defense that bought time and could not bring victory. Once Lee's army was tied to the trenches, it could no longer maneuver. His soldiers held the lines for more than nine months, repelled the Crater attack and beat back several offensives, often on short rations and in harsh winter conditions. Lee needed the railroads to feed both his army and Richmond, and when Five Forks and the breakthrough of 2 April cut the last one, he had no choice but to leave.
If you visit
Petersburg National Battlefield was established in 1926 as a national military park and redesignated a national battlefield in 1962. Its separate areas include the Eastern Front, with Fort Stedman and the Crater; the Western Front, with Fort Gregg and Poplar Grove National Cemetery, which holds the remains of more than 6,100 soldiers; Grant's headquarters at City Point in Hopewell; and the Five Forks battlefield. The National Park Service suggests a full day for the whole park.19
Why Petersburg still matters
Petersburg foreshadowed the trench warfare of 1914 to 1918, and it showed that railroads and supply could decide a war. It is also where thousands of Black soldiers fought for the Union, and where some were killed after trying to surrender. Remembering both is part of telling the story honestly. See also the greatest battles of the Civil War and on this day in military history.20
