Clio Muses

As General Picket is attempted to withdraw from yesterday’s devastation at Five Forks , General Grant directs the Army of the Potomac (AOP) to pursue Lee in three columns. The center column composed of three infantry corps and part of the Sheridan ’s Cavalry Corps will follow the main body of the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV). The columns to the left and right (or north and south) will use forced marches to outflank and outmarch the ANV in order to circle around it. The first objective of the southern column was to interdict the Richmond & Danville Railroad south of Amelia Court House thus preventing supplies from reaching the ANV or from the ANV using the rails to flee south. At this point, the ANV consisted of about 30,000 troops, 200 guns, and around a 1,000 wagons. If Grant is successful in the next couple of days, those wagons will not pick up supplies at Amelia Court House. It has been over 72 hours since Lee’s soldiers have eaten. Their horses are becoming so weak from hun...

1 April 1865: The retreat to Appomattox continues. Sheridan renews his attack on Lee’s flank at Five Forks , VA. Lee orders General Picket (of Gettysburg fame) to “Hold at all costs.” By evening the cost to the Army of Northern Virginia is 5,000 casualties, the loss of General Picket’s division, and a valuable road network that now would serve to speed up the Union attack. “. . . the Army of the Potomac , officers and men, were so elated by the reflection that at last they were following up a victory it its end, that they preferred marching without rations to running a possible risk of letting the enemy elude them. So the march was resumed. . . .” General Ulysses S. Grant, The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant William S. McFeely, ed. (De Capo Press: New York ), 1982, p. 543.