Confederate Counterattack

After the loss of Fort Harrison, General Robert E. Lee moved quickly to try to retake it, accompanying a large body of reinforcements from Petersburg on September 29. On the next afternoon, he sent five veteran brigades totaling 5,000 men against the fort. Union infantrymen holding the position had little protection because they had not had time to build substantial entrenchments or enclose the old Confederate fort, but superior weaponry and an outstanding field of fire across the treeless plain in front of them favored the defenders. The Confederate attacks were disjointed and ended disastrously, with more than 1,000 casualties, and Fort Harrison remained in Union hands for the rest of the war. Five years later, a battlefield visitor recalled seeing many Confederate dead from September 30, 1864, their bones still scattered in a field northwest of the fort and in nearby bushes, with two large piles of bones later gathered and burned to ashes by the tenant of the land. In the days after the attack, Confederates steadily shelled the Union defenders of Fort Burnham while both armies built new lines.

Virginia · United States