After the Battle of Cold Harbor in June 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant’s Union army crossed the James River, failed to break Petersburg’s outer defenses, and settled into a siege, forcing General Robert E. Lee to stretch Confederate forces nearly to the breaking point along a line almost 35 miles long to protect both Richmond and Petersburg. Through the summer of 1864, Union assaults north and south of the James repeatedly failed, but after Atlanta fell and a significant Union victory followed at Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, Grant ordered new attacks on September 29, 1864, against Richmond and Petersburg, including Fort Harrison and the works at New Market Heights. A Union force crossed the James on a military bridge just after dawn and captured Fort Harrison, the largest fortification in Richmond’s outer line, but Confederate troops held Fort Gilmer, Fort Gregg, Fort Hoke, and Fort Johnson, reshaped their line, and blocked the direct road to Richmond, leading to a stalemate for the war’s final six months. At New Market Heights, several regiments of United States Colored Troops captured the high ground after a bloody morning attack, marking the first time in the Virginia campaigns that African American troops independently mounted a major assault. Fighting at Peebles’ Farm from September 29 to October 2 consolidated the Union foothold west of Petersburg and created a base for further movement toward the transportation arteries supplying Lee’s army. Fort Gilmer itself was built in 1863 as part of the extensive fortifications constructed around Richmond during 1862 and 1863 by Confederate soldiers and impressed slaves, and it became a critical point in the Union effort to break into Richmond during the September 1864 fighting connected with the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm.
