Petersburg Battlefields

Before dawn on April 2, 1865, a thin line of Confederate sentries waited behind a newly established picket line, some in small half-moon-shaped earthworks and others behind linear works, charged with delaying any serious assault on 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 minutes, and in forty five minutes the fighting 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 surrendered at Appomattox 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 assault; he survived, but many of his men were killed, wounded, or captured. The Sixth Corps attack on April 2, 1865, was one of the largest assaults of the Civil War and one of its most consequential.

Virginia · United States