Siege of Petersburg - Background

Background

In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and was given command of the Union Army. He devised a coordinated strategy to apply pressure on the Confederacy from many points, something President Abraham Lincoln had urged his generals to do from the beginning of the war. Grant put Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman in immediate command of all forces in the West and moved his own headquarters to be with the Army of the Potomac (still commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade) in Virginia, where he intended to maneuver Lee's army to a decisive battle; his secondary objective was to capture Richmond (the capital of the Confederacy), but Grant knew that the latter would happen automatically once the former was accomplished. His coordinated strategy called for Grant and Meade to attack Lee from the north, while Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler drove toward Richmond from the southeast; Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel to control the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman to invade Georgia, defeat Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, and capture Atlanta; Brig. Gens. George Crook and William W. Averell to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia; and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks to capture Mobile, Alabama.

Most of these initiatives failed, often because of the assignment of generals to Grant for political rather than military reasons. Butler's Army of the James bogged down against inferior forces under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard before Richmond in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. Sigel was soundly defeated at the Battle of New Market in May and soon afterward he was replaced by Maj. Gen. David Hunter. Banks was distracted by the Red River Campaign and failed to move on Mobile. However, Crook and Averell were able to cut the last railway linking Virginia and Tennessee, and Sherman's Atlanta Campaign was a success, although it dragged on through the fall.

On May 4, Grant and Meade's Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River and entered the area known as the Wilderness of Spotsylvania, beginning the six-week Overland Campaign. At the bloody but tactically inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness (May 5–7) and Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (May 8–21), Grant failed to destroy Lee's army but, unlike his predecessors, did not retreat after the battles; he repeatedly moved his army leftward to the southeast in a campaign that kept Lee on the defensive and moved ever closer to Richmond. Grant spent the remainder of May maneuvering and fighting minor battles with the Confederate army as he attempted to turn Lee's flank and lure him into the open. Grant knew that his larger army and base of manpower in the North could sustain a war of attrition better than Lee and the Confederacy could. This theory was tested at the Battle of Cold Harbor (May 31 – June 12) when Grant's army once again came into contact with Lee's near Mechanicsville. He chose to engage Lee's army directly, by ordering a frontal assault on the Confederate fortified positions on June 3. This attack was repulsed with heavy losses. Cold Harbor was a battle that Grant regretted more than any other and Northern newspapers thereafter frequently referred to him as a "butcher". Although Grant suffered high losses during the campaign—approximately 50,000 casualties, or 41%—Lee lost even higher percentages of his men—approximately 32,000, or 46%—losses that could not be replaced.

On the night of June 12, Grant again advanced by his left flank, marching to the James River. He planned to cross to the south bank of the river, bypassing Richmond, and isolate Richmond by seizing the railroad junction of Petersburg to the south. While Lee remained unaware of Grant's intentions, the Union army constructed a pontoon bridge 2,100 feet (640 m) long and crossed the James River on June 14–18. What Lee had feared most of all—that Grant would force him into a siege of Richmond—was poised to occur. Petersburg, a prosperous city of 18,000, was a supply center for Richmond, given its strategic location just south of Richmond, its site on the Appomattox River that provided navigable access to the James River, and its role as a major crossroads and junction for five railroads. Since Petersburg was the main supply base and rail depot for the entire region, including Richmond, the taking of Petersburg by Union forces would make it impossible for Lee to continue defending Richmond (the Confederate capital). This represented a change of strategy from that of the preceding Overland Campaign, in which confronting and defeating Lee's army in the open was the primary goal. Now, Grant selected a geographic and political target and knew that his superior resources could besiege Lee there, pin him down, and either starve him into submission or lure him out for a decisive battle. Lee at first believed that Grant's main target was Richmond and devoted only minimal troops under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard to the defense of Petersburg.