Before dawn on April 2, 1865, a thin scattering of Confederate sentries waited behind a new picket line, some in small half-moon-shaped earthworks and others behind linear works, tasked with delaying any serious assault against the main defenses. When Gen. Horatio G. Wright authorized the attack, Capt. Romeo H. Start of the 3rd Vermont Battery fired the signal gun at Fort Fisher, and three divisions of Union troops surged forward. The Confederate pickets were quickly overwhelmed, the Federals reached the main earthworks within moments, and in forty five minutes the assault was over. At 5:15 A.M., United States flags flew over the Confederate defenses, ending the 292-day stalemate. Richmond and Petersburg were evacuated that night, and Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox followed one week later. Col. Thomas W. Hyde led a brigade in the Second Division of the Sixth Corps across this ground, while Gen. James H. Lane commanded four North Carolina regiments directly in the path of the attack. The Sixth Corps assault on April 2, 1865, was one of the largest attacks of the Civil War and helped bring about the fall of the Confederate capital.