Ewell’s Line of Defense

On Thursday, April 6, 1865, Confederate troops from the Richmond fortifications under General Richard S. Ewell held the high ground above Little Sailor’s Creek behind hurried breastworks of fence rails and earth as they awaited attack. Shortly after 5 p.m., Union artillery under Major Andrew Cowan, posted across the valley at the Hillsman farm, opened a thirty-minute bombardment that Ewell’s men endured without reply because they had no artillery. When the shelling ended, two divisions of General Horatio Wright’s Sixth Corps, about 7,000 men, formed for battle and crossed the waist-deep creek below. As the Federals advanced uphill, some waved handkerchiefs to tempt the Confederates to surrender, but Ewell’s men rose and fired two deadly volleys that broke part of the Union line and drove it back to the creek before the Confederates counterattacked and fierce hand-to-hand fighting followed. Realizing their desperate situation, Ewell’s men soon began surrendering, and by the end of the battle about 3,400 men and six generals had laid down their arms and gone into Northern captivity. In the fighting around Sailor’s Creek, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia lost about 7,700 men, nearly one-fifth of its fighting force, and Lee surrendered close to 30,000 men seventy-two hours later at Appomattox Court House. Confederate Major Robert Stiles recalled that the battle became a butchery of brutal personal combat, with men killing each other with bayonets, musket butts, and even their teeth. One Union soldier, Private Samuel Eddy, was pinned to the ground by a bayonet thrust through his body, shot and killed a Southern soldier who tried to take his rifle, pulled the bayonet free, walked to the Hillsman house for treatment, survived, and later received the Medal of Honor; fifty-six others also received the medal for their actions at Sailor’s Creek.

Virginia · United States