Background

The movements that would culminate in the Battle of Five Forks began on March 29, 1865. With the arrival of the spring campaigning season, Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant decided to continue his strategy of stretching Union lines farther and farther to the Union left (the Confederate right) in an attempt to force Confederate general Robert E. Lee to extend his lines to the breaking point. Grant shifted his forces at Petersburg in order to concentrate on Lee’s right. The Union Fifth Corps, under the command of Gouverneur K. Warren, took up a position on the far left flank. Meanwhile, Sheridan’s cavalry corps swung far west, preparing to strike toward Dinwiddie Court House and then move north to sever the Danville Railroad and the South Side Railroad, the last remaining supply lines for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and the other Confederate troops in the entrenchments around Richmond and Petersburg.

On the afternoon of the March 29, Griffin’s division of the Fifth Corps clashed with units on the Confederate far right at Lewis Farm. The Union troops defeated the Confederates and pushed them back. This success convinced Grant that victory was close at hand, and he determined to convert Sheridan’s proposed raid into a full-fledged flanking maneuver.

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Concerned with Grant’s maneuver, Lee attempted to block it. The only troops available to blunt the Union advance, however, were the infantry division of George E. Pickett and the cavalry divisions of Rooney Lee, Fitz Lee, and Thomas Rosser. This task force, under the overall command of Pickett, marched westward, arriving in the vicinity of Five Forks on the afternoon of March 30, 1865.

Two battles on March 31, 1865, set the stage for Five Forks. The engagement that began first, and lasted until nightfall, was the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House, which developed between Sheridan’s cavalry, operating beyond the Union left flank, and Pickett’s task force. Both Sheridan and Pickett probed along the White Oak Road, which ran north to south. The opposing scouts met at Dinwiddie Court House, and a general engagement began as both generals fed more troops into the fight. Pickett managed the Confederate side of the encounter brilliantly, but failed to defeat Sheridan. The second engagement, along White Oak Road, involved units on Lee’s far right near Burgess’s Mill and Hatcher’s Run, and Union troops from the Fifth Corps and the Second Corps. The Union troops managed to push the Confederates back. By the end of the day, the tenuous link between Pickett’s exposed men near Five Forks and the bulk of the Army of Northern Virginia had been severed. Grant had turned Lee’s flank, and in doing so had cut off Pickett’s force.

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