Battle of Fort Stedman - Background

Background

In March 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee continued defending his positions around Petersburg, but his Army was weakened by desertion, disease, and shortage of supplies and he was outnumbered by his Union counterpart, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, by about 125,000 to 50,000. After the defeat of his subordinate, Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early, at the Battle of Waynesboro in the Shenandoah Valley, Lee realized that an additional 50,000 men under Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan would probably join Grant's army at Petersburg. Furthermore, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman was marching north through the Carolinas to join Grant as well. Lee had to avoid being outnumbered almost 4 to 1 by these arriving forces and he asked Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon for advice. Gordon replied that he had three recommendations, in decreasing order of preference: first, offer peace terms to the enemy; second, retreat from Richmond and Petersburg, link up with the Confederate army in North Carolina under General Joseph E. Johnston, jointly defeat Sherman, and then go after Grant; third, fight without delay. An argument ensued, with Lee rejecting the political implications of the first choice and indicating the difficulty of the second, but Gordon left the meeting with the impression that Lee was considering those options. On March 6, however, Gordon was summoned back to headquarters and Lee told him that "there seemed to be but one thing that we could do—fight. To stand still was death. It could only be death if we fought and failed."

Gordon later wrote in his memoirs that he "labored day and night at this exceedingly grave and discouraging problem, on the proper solution of which depended the commander's decision as to when and where he would deliver his last blow for the life of the Confederacy." He worked on his plans until March 23 and decided to recommend a surprise attack on the Union lines that would force Grant to contract his lines and disrupt his plans to assault the Confederate works (which, unbeknownst to Lee and Gordon, Grant had already ordered for March 29).

Gordon planned a pre-dawn assault from the Confederate stronghold known as Colquitt's Salient against Fort Stedman, one of the fortifications in Union lines that encircled Petersburg, named for Griffin A. Stedman, a Union colonel from Connecticut who had been killed in the vicinity in August 1864. It was one of the closest spots to the Confederate works, there were fewer wooden chevaux de frise obstructions protecting it, and a supply depot on the U.S. Military Railroad was less than a mile behind the fort. Directly after capturing Fort Stedman and its artillery, Confederate soldiers would move north and south along the Union lines to clear the neighboring fortifications and make way for the main attack, which would lead to the main Union supply base of City Point (also Grant's headquarters), ten miles (16 km) northeast on the Appomattox River.

The assault force was three divisions of Gordon's Second Corps (under Brig. Gen. Clement A. Evans, Maj. Gen. Bryan Grimes, and Brig. Gen. James A. Walker), two brigades from the Fourth Corps division of Maj. Gen. Bushrod R. Johnson (under Brig. Gens. Matt W. Ransom and William H. Wallace) in close support, and two brigades from Maj. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox's Third Corps division in reserve. Lee had also ordered the division of Maj. Gen. George Pickett of the First Corps to move from its position north of the James River in time to join the action. This represented almost half of Lee's infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia: 11,500 men from Gordon's corps and Bushrod Johnson's division, 1,700 of Wilcox's men nearby, and 6,500 from Pickett moving up. Maj. Gen. W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee's cavalry division was designated to exploit the expected infantry breakthrough. Opposing them were the Union IX Corps commanded by Maj. Gen. John G. Parke, defending the first 7 miles (11 km) south from the Appomattox River, and manning in Gordon's front (from north to south) artillery Batteries IX and X, Fort Stedman, and Batteries XI and XII. Parke's 3rd Division, under Brig. Gen. John F. Hartranft, was in reserve behind the lines. While Maj. Gen. George G. Meade was away at City Point with Grant, Parke was the acting commander of the Army of the Potomac, although he would not realize that until after Gordon's attack started.