There followed a scene that few of the Southern commanders liked to mention afterward. Every man in the ranks could see for himself that the return to the Confederate positions, across the open ground between the lines, would be a challenge of death. The bravest took the chance; the weak and the dispirited defied their commanders and chose surrender. When the broken divisions were back in their red trenches and able to estimate their losses, they found they had left behind in the Federal works and in the field between the lines probably 3,500 men. Of this total, approximately 1,900 were prisoners.
The action did not end with the return of the Confederates to their lines. An attack ordered by Meade against the picket lines in front of the II and VI Corps was successful and made the Confederate loss in prisoners that day heavier than in any day’s action on Lee’s front after the Bloody Angle. On the entire front, March 25, the Federal losses were 2,080 men. Gross Confederate casualties certainly reached 4,400 and perhaps 5,000. R. M. Stribling, who had taken his artillerists to Fort Stedman and served the guns there, had no illusions. “This attack,” he wrote subsequently, “demonstrated that Lee’s army had lost hope of final success, and the men were not willing to risk their lives in a hopeless endeavor….”21
Gordon’s responsibility for the greater part of the day’s casualties was not appraised at the time and is not easy to determine now. His repulse was due, in part, to his failure to appreciate the severity of the artillery fire he had to encounter in the attack or while retiring in the event of repulse. Much of his heaviest loss was sustained when his men were recrossing the open field between the works. In his account of preparations for the attack, Gordon made singularly little reference to the artillery’s part in the operation, and he seems not to have sought advice from Second Corps artillery commanders. Gordon’s other serious mistake was in assuming that he could capture easily the “three small forts” in rear of Stedman. In fact very little was known of these forts, and there had been little chance that Gordon’s men could find them in the dark. It seems strange that the engineers should not have known more of them; but perhaps Gordon, as in the case of the artillerists, may not have seen fit to consult with the engineer officers.
Gordon said later that the guides became lost in the rush of the advance columns and that the commanders had then been confused and unable to find the forts. With this he coupled the non-arrival of Pickett in support, though he had been warned that Pickett probably could not reach the scene in time to be of help.22
To none of this did the army command give thought after the failure of the attack. Nearer, fatal actualities absorbed every mind.
3
PICKETT AND PEGRAM: A CLOSING CONTRAST
Two days before the attack on Fort Stedman, Joe Johnston had telegraphed that Sherman and Schofield had formed a junction at Goldsboro, 120 miles from Petersburg. Johnston stated in fullest candor that his small command could not hinder Sherman’s advance to a union with Grant. That had been one reason Gordon’s assault had been set for the twenty-fifth. Now that Gordon had failed, every general officer and many a man of lesser rank sensed what Lee confided to the President on March 26: The time was at hand to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg and to unite with the forces in North Carolina.23
The one route to Johnston’s lines, with railroad communication all the way, was via the Southside Railroad to Burkeville, and thence parallel to the Richmond and Danville to its terminus. Beyond Danville the army could use the Piedmont Railroad which led to Greensboro, North Carolina. All rail movement directly west from Petersburg and all delivery of supplies at Petersburg from the Southside Railroad manifestly depended on keeping the enemy from that line of track. Lee’s army could not subsist many days if Grant seized the railroad beyond the extreme right of the Confederate line, which now rested on Hatcher’s Run. Once Grant was astride the railroad, Petersburg was lost. Ipso facto, Richmond was. If, in addition, the Federal cavalry could swing far beyond the Confederate right and get across the roads that led to Danville….
This must not be, but the threat now was imminent. Set free by Early’s defeat at Waynesboro, Sheridan had reached, on March 19, White House on the Pamunkey. On the day of Fort Stedman, Fitz Lee sent word that Sheridan again was moving. The destination of this heavy mounted force could be none other than the Federal left. Sheridan therefore must be kept from the Southside Railroad until preparations to evacuate Petersburg had been completed.
To oppose Sheridan, who counted some 13,000 sabers, the Confederates could employ Fitz Lee’s division, Rooney Lee’s, and Rosser’s, if what remained of Rosser’s forces could be termed a division. The strength of these units probably did not exceed 5,500. Butler was gone with his 2,200 men. Gone, too, was Hampton, whose leadership had offset odds on many a battlefield. The necessity that had compelled the dispatch of Hampton and Butler to the Carolinas might prove the decisive circumstance of the campaign; but there was no way of changing that. Fitz Lee must leave Gary’s brigade on the left and bring the rest to the right. This would supplement by 900 the division of Rooney Lee, whose 2,500 must bear the heavier part of the fight. Fitz, as senior, would command all. To strengthen this force, a desperate, clumsy proposal made by Longstreet had been adopted: Infantry were to be used in place of cavalry. Pickett’s division was to operate with Fitz Lee in protecting the right.24
On March 29, four days after the attempted breakthrough had failed, word came that Federal cavalry and infantry were moving south and west. Orders went out for an immediate concentration on the extreme right. During the night Pickett marched his troops across Hatcher’s Run to the trenches farthest westward. The next morning, March 30, Pickett, Dick Anderson, and Heth met with the commanding general. Reports were that the enemy had reached Dinwiddie Court House, and had artillery as well as infantry and cavalry. Later came abundant evidence that Federal horse were spread widely to the south of Five Forks. All practical means of dealing with this advance by Sheridan were considered. Pickett seemed to have the best opportunity. He was told to take his three brigades, two of Anderson’s, and six guns of William Pegram’s and march to Five Forks, where Fitz Lee then was. Rooney Lee and Rosser were to report there as well. Pickett was to be in general command. From Five Forks he must advance in the direction of Dinwiddie Court House and assail the enemy. It was an order in the old spirit of the army—to disdain odds and attack.
This was an honor for Pickett but it carried a weight of responsibility. Fortune had not been kind to him since that great, bloody day at Gettysburg. His expedition in North Carolina had not been successful; the effort to cope with Butler’s advance in May 1864 had put him in bed; the reputation of his famous division had been marred by the conscripts who no sooner reached the army than they tried to desert. Fame had passed him by. Now he must deal with Sheridan. A victory would be a triumph, but the roads were almost impassable, the men were hungry, the odds were frightful.
Soon after noon on the thirtieth General Lee rode grimly back to headquarters near Petersburg. Pickett was his own commander now. It was 4:30 before his column, harassed by small bodies of cavalry, reached Five Forks, a bare crossroads in the all-engulfing forest. There, as anticipated, Pickett found Fitz Lee. Rooney Lee and Rosser had not reached the rendezvous, and Pickett decided to wait until morning to continue his march. On March 31, with his cavalry reinforcement at hand, Pickett pressed his advance toward Dinwiddie Court House. His men were alert and full of fight; the spirit of the old army was apparently as stout as ever. After a day of sometimes sharp skirmishing with the blue cavalry, Pickett halted at dark within half a mile of the Court House.25
Approaches to the Southside Railroad from Dinwiddie Court House, with references to the Battle of Five Forks, April 1, 1865.
During the night he learned that Tom Munford’s outposts on the left had captured two infantrymen from Warren’s familiar V Corps. Pickett decided promptly that he should not remain in an advanced position. He had established that the Federal cavalry were in great strength at Dinwiddie Court House an
d had infantry support. He felt he should not expose his forces needlessly. It was better to take position where he could discharge his main duty, which was to protect the Confederate right flank and the approaches to the Southside Railroad. It was daybreak on the fateful first of April when the gray column began to move back northward through the mud. The enemy followed, but did not force a fight.
When Pickett reached Five Forks during the forenoon, he dispatched his wagons across the protecting shelter of Hatcher’s Run and reported his movements and his needs to General Lee. He received a telegram from the commanding general: “Hold Five Forks at all hazards. Protect road to Ford’s Depot and prevent Union forces from striking the Southside Railroad.” Lee forbade a farther retreat for compelling reasons: If Five Forks was taken and the enemy reached the railroad, all would be lost. Again, if Pickett abandoned Five Forks, the Federals could get above the headwaters of Hatcher’s Run and turn the Confederate right there. The position at Five Forks was weak, in itself, but strategically it was the most important in that sector. It had to be defended.26
Pickett wrote subsequently that he assumed his telegram concerning his withdrawal had been received at army headquarters, that reinforcements would be sent him, and that a diversion would be made in his behalf. On these assumptions, he may not have been vigilant or careful in deploying his troops to meet possible attack that day. Pickett put Rooney Lee’s cavalry on the right. On his left he placed a regiment, and no more than a regiment, of Munford’s troopers, to maintain contact with William P. Roberts’s weak cavalry brigade, which in turn tenuously connected Pickett with the Confederate right-flank trenches held by Dick Anderson. Roberts’s men were stout fighters but, like most of the regiments, they were lacking in field officers. A stronger brigade should have been in its place.
Between Roberts and Munford’s regiment on the left and Rooney Lee’s division on the right, and paralleling White Oak Road, Pickett deployed his infantry. With its left refused, Matt Ransom’s brigade of Bushrod Johnson’s division was on the extreme left. Wallace’s brigade of the same division joined Ransom. Next, extending as far as the crossroads, was George H. Steuart’s brigade. To his right was Terry. Beyond him as right-flank element was Corse’s brigade. Corse had not fought at Gettysburg, but Terry’s brigade had been Kemper’s, and Steuart’s had been Armis-tead’s.The descent of those Virginia soldiers from their furious charge up Cemetery Ridge to their pathetic defense of a wooded crossroads was the epitome of their army’s decline.
In rear of the infantry, the remaining units of Fitz Lee’s division were posted along the road running to the railway. As a reserve, north of Hatcher’s Run, were the two cavalry brigades of Dearing and McCaus-land, under Tom Rosser. The six guns of William Pegram were placed at intervals where the wooded country offered any field of fire. If these dispositions along White Oak Road were made with less care, and were followed by less than the usual field entrenchment, an explanation was offered, years afterward, by Fitz Lee: “We were not expecting any attack that afternoon, so far as I know.” He believed that his men and Pickett’s infantry could beat off any attack by Sheridan’s cavalry. If Federal infantry left their lines to support Sheridan, then a corresponding force from Dick Anderson would be sent to Five Forks. Such was the reasoning of Fitz Lee as well as of Pickett.
These two officers failed to realize the significance of a fight that occurred to their left on March 31. To discourage any attempt by the Federals to penetrate the gap between Anderson’s right and Pickett’s left, Lee had directed Anderson to attack on his front. At first there had been hope for success, but it faded quickly for want of reinforcements. Gloomily, sullenly, the men of Anderson’s command returned to their trenches. Losses were about 800. Reduced by that number, and with two of his brigades already assisting Pickett, Anderson manifestly was in no condition to give further aid to the right. Not realizing this, Pickett and Fitz Lee cherished the general belief that the commanding general somehow would contrive to achieve the “impossible,” even though, in this case, the line was already stretched to the breaking point.27
Besides their overconfidence, and their lack of understanding of the dread immediacy of the crisis, it is probable that a third consideration, a most human one, led them to assume that “general precaution” sufficed. Cavalryman Tom Rosser has spent a day on the Nottoway River immediately before moving on March 30-31 to Five Forks. The shad had been running in the Nottoway, and with a borrowed seine Rosser had caught many of the fine fish. He brought them with him, and when his division was ordered north of Hatcher’s Run as a reserve on April 1, he arranged for an afternoon shad-bake. In the assurance that this would provide a meal delectable at any time and incredible in the hungry days of bone-gnawing war, he invited Generals Pickett and Fitz Lee to his shad-bake. Neither man lost any time in preparing to keep the appointment.
Before Fitz Lee started for Rosser’s headquarters, Tom Munford dashed up with a dispatch from Roberts’s brigade on the extreme left. It reported that Roberts’s troopers had been attacked by overpowering Federals to the east of Five Forks, and that the brigade had been split and driven off by the attack. If this information was correct, then Sheridan had reached White Oak Road and destroyed contact between Pickett’s force and the right of the Confederate fortifications. The isolation of Pickett was a reality.
Fitz Lee was either impatiently hungry or uncritically skeptical. He said merely, “Well, Munford, I wish you would go over in person at once and see what this means and, if necessary, order up your division and let me hear from you.” With that, the chief of cavalry went off. Munford saw Fitz and Pickett riding northward together in the direction of Hatcher’s Run, some two miles distant, though he knew nothing of their destination or of their reason for being together. Their unannounced departure left Rooney Lee as senior officer, but he was far to the right, had no knowledge that his seniors had left the field, and no information of the skirmish on the left. Among the cavalrymen on the scene on the left, the senior was now Munford. The infantry, in the absence of Pickett, had Maryland Steuart as their commander. Pegram was the ranking artillerist. None, to repeat, knew that Pickett and Fitz Lee had quit the lines.28
The shad-bake was a social secret, but, as food was abundant, the affair was leisured and deliberate as every feast should be. If there was “something to drink” it probably was not shunned, but there was no evidence, then or thereafter, that any of the trio got drunk. Hours slipped pleasantly past. When two of Rosser’s pickets came to report the enemy advancing on the roads they were guarding, there was little concern. All appeared to be quiet; the enemy evidently was approaching but he was not attacking. With any skirmishes that might be opened, the officers at the front could deal.
After 4 o’clock Pickett asked Rosser for a courier to take a message to Five Forks. The man set off with the dispatch and doubtless the conversation around Rosser’s hospitable fire resumed. Soon there came from south of Hatcher’s Run a burst of infantry fire. In plain view, on the other side of the stream, the generals saw the courier captured by the Federals. At the same time, a line of bluecoats crossed the road.
That ended the party. Pickett took horse and galloped across Hatcher’s Run. He continued his pace until he came to a line of Fitz Lee’s cavalrymen, under Munford, defending the road to Five Forks. They were retreating slowly before Federal infantry not 100 yards distant. “Hold them back till I can pass to Five Forks,” Pickett called. Captain James Breckinridge, 3rd Virginia cavalry, heard Pickett’s appeal and led a brief counterattack. It cost Breckinridge’s life but probably saved Pickett’s. The general threw himself forward on his horse, with his head on the farther side from the enemy, and ran the gantlet of several hundred yards of furious infantry fire.29
The battle that had occurred while the generals were eating shad was ending by this time. It had been as swift as it had been disastrous. Sheridan had eleven brigades of cavalry and Warren’s V Corps of infantry. His full strength did not fall below 30,000 as aga
inst Pickett’s 10,000. Sheridan demonstrated against the Confederate right while prodding forward the V Corps against the Confederate left. Deployment of the Federal infantry for the final attack was bold and unconcealed. Munford sent courier after courier to report to Pickett or Fitz Lee. Neither general was to be found; nobody knew whither either had ridden. The attack was irresistible on the left. Soon it rolled Ransom back on Wallace. When Pickett rode on the field, the retreating left was more than half a mile west of the original position. Corse’s brigade held firmly together and was used to rally some of the fugitives. Rooney Lee beat off charges and, at dark, in good order, slipped away. Except for these stalwarts, those of Pickett’s men who escaped from the field were reduced to panic and were pursued till night. The number captured by the V Corps was 3,244, and by the cavalry some 2,000, along with 11 flags and 4 guns. It probably was a more costly day than that of the attack on Fort Stedman, more costly than any since the Bloody Angle of the preceding year.30
To the artillerists it was a day of disaster not to be recorded solely in terms of four guns lost or of good soldiers captured. The chief of artillery on the field, Colonel William Pegram, had felt keenly the death of his magnificent brother John, the general of the family, on February 6. Harry Heth and Dick Anderson had asked for Willie Pegram’s promotion to general officer and assignment to command an infantry brigade, and Powell Hill had endorsed the recommendation. It was returned, camp gossip had it, with the statement that “the artillery could not lose the services of so valuable an officer.” It mattered little to the young artillerist. Harry Heth called Pegram “one of the few men who, I believe, was supremely happy when in battle. He was then in his element.”
The frightful crash of Warren’s opening volley had sent Pegram racing toward the assailed left. Soon he was among his gunners there. They were firing furiously but in perfect order at Federals who were not more than 30 to 50 yards in their front. He rode out between the guns. “Fire your canister low,” he said to his men. A moment later he reeled and fell from his horse. “I’m mortally wounded; take me off the field,” he cried. In time an ambulance was found and he was borne to the rear.
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