For almost ten months beginning in mid-June 1864, the Army of the Potomac besieged Petersburg and Richmond from the east and south while Ulysses S. Grant extended Union fortifications west of Petersburg and launched frequent attacks there and near Richmond, forcing Robert E. Lee to stretch his thin defensive lines and shift his outnumbered troops. The Army of Northern Virginia's last advance north of the James River took place across New Market Road in October 1864, when Charles W. Field's division, supported by Robert F. Hoke's division, was ordered to overwhelm August V. Kautz's cavalry on Darbytown Road and then turn south to recapture Fort Harrison, which Federals had occupied on September 29. The battle began successfully at dawn on October 7 as the Confederate assault overpowered the Union cavalry, but a two-hour delay allowed Alfred H. Terry to redeploy his division to meet the attack in the fields just north of here. For unknown reasons, Hoke's division failed to support Field, Union infantry armed with Spencer repeating rifles inflicted heavy casualties, wooded and difficult terrain disorganized the Confederate brigades, and John Gregg was killed while leading his Texas brigade. The attack soon collapsed, and the Confederate force withdrew west to its original defensive lines. Lee's last advance north of the James River resulted in more than 1,000 Confederate casualties while Federals suffered fewer than 500. The Union victory at the Battle of Darbytown Road can be attributed in part to Spencer rifles, a magazine-fed, lever-action weapon using metal cartridges with a firing rate of one shot every three seconds, much faster than the single-shot rifles most Confederates carried; James Spencer designed the rifle in 1860, the U.S. Army began introducing it in 1863, and Capt. Albert Maxfield of the 11th Maine Infantry wrote that it seemed as if the rifles fired "seven volleys in one."
