Struggle on the Orange Plank Road

On May 5, as Grant and Meade learned of Ewell's approach on the Orange Turnpike, they also discovered General A.P. Hill's corps advancing on the Orange Plank Road, threatening to cut the Army of the Potomac in two if it reached the Brock Road. Union commanders rushed General Winfield S. Hancock's Second Corps to the crossroads and secured it for the North. At 4 p.m., Hancock attacked Hill's line, and amid low logworks and fires Hill's men resisted stubbornly. After four hours of fighting, Hill's battered line still held. Shortly after dawn on May 6, the Army of Northern Virginia came under attack again, and on the Plank Road Hill's thin line collapsed under the renewed assault. Confederate disaster was averted when General James Longstreet's corps, twenty thousand strong, arrived and struck Hancock's exposed left flank, rolling up the Union line. In the confusion, Longstreet was shot by his own troops. Lee renewed the attack five hours later, but Hancock had by then rallied his men behind strong earthworks, and the Confederate assault, Lee's last grand attack of the war, failed.

Lake of the Woods, Virginia · United States