Background
Union forces under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had besieged Lee's army around the city of Petersburg, Virginia, since June 1864. The two armies spent the winter in an elaborate series of trenches and fortifications, stretching over 30 mi (48 km) from the outskirts of Richmond to Hatcher's Run southwest of Petersburg, foreshadowing the tactics to be used in World War I. As Grant had inched to the west over the winter, the Confederates extended their lines to compensate, but they were stretched too thin, having only about 1,000 men per mile (625 men/km) of defensive line. Lee knew that his army could not survive a siege indefinitely and looked for ways to escape his predicament as spring arrived, the rains diminished, and the local road system became passable again.
The Appomattox Campaign was preceded by the Battle of Fort Stedman on March 25, 1865, the concluding battle in the Richmond–Petersburg Campaign. This failed attempt by Lee to break the siege resulted in heavy Confederate casualties. Lee knew that Grant would soon move against the only remaining Confederate supply line, the South Side Railroad, and that would doom his army.
Lee was by now the commander of all Confederate armies. (Despite his fame throughout the Confederacy, for almost three years Lee had commanded only the army in northern Virginia.) His plan was to extricate himself from the Federal grip at Petersburg, withdraw to the southwest, resupply his starving army at Lynchburg, Virginia, and head south. There, the Army of Northern Virginia might be able to link up with Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's forces in North Carolina, defeat the Union army under Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman that was pursuing Johnston, and then return to strike a combined blow at Grant. In preparation for his breakout, he moved forces to his right flank.
Grant, meanwhile, brought additional forces to bear. Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan had returned with 5,700 cavalrymen from the Shenandoah Valley. Maj. Gen. Edward Ord's Army of the James came up to the Petersburg lines, which freed up two corps of Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac for offensive action against Lee:the II Corps under Maj. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys and the V Corps under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren.
Read more about this topic: Appomattox Campaign
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