Background
In early June 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee were engaged in the Overland Campaign, facing each other in their trenches after the bloody Battle of Cold Harbor. Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler was bottled up in the Bermuda Hundred area to the east of Richmond, Virginia, attempting to distract Lee by attacking Richmond. Butler realized that Richmond was supplied by railroads that converged in the city of Petersburg, to the south, and that taking Petersburg would cripple Lee's supply lines. He was also aware that Confederate troops had been moving north to reinforce Lee, leaving the defenses of Petersburg in a vulnerable state. Sensitive to his failure in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, Butler sought to achieve a success to vindicate his generalship. He wrote, "the capture of Petersburg lay near my heart."
Petersburg was protected by fortifications known as the Dimmock Line, a line of earthworks 10 miles (16 km) long, east of the city, including 55 artillery batteries, and anchored on the Appomattox River. The 2,500 Confederates stretched thin along this defensive line were commanded by a former Virginia governor, Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise; the overall defense of Richmond and Petersburg was the responsibility of Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, commander of the Department of North Carolina and Southern Virginia.
Butler's plan was formulated on the afternoon of June 8, 1864, calling for 3 columns to cross the Appomattox and advance from City Point (now named Hopewell, Virginia) with 4,500 men. The first and second consisted of infantry from Maj. Gen. Quincy A. Gillmore's X Corps and U.S. Colored Troops from Brig. Gen. Edward W. Hinks's 3rd Division of XVIII Corps, which would attack the Dimmock Line east of the city. The third was 1,300 cavalrymen under Brig. Gen. August Kautz, who would sweep around Petersburg and strike it from the southeast. If any of these three forces made a breakthrough, it would be able to move into the rear of the defenders opposing the other two. Butler originally designated Hinks to command the operation, but Gillmore insisted that he was the senior officer and Butler later complained, "I was fool enough to yield to him."
Read more about this topic: First Battle Of Petersburg
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