Battle on the Skirmish Line

On May 23 and 24, 1864, Grant misread Lee’s withdrawal as a sign of Confederate weakness and ordered the Army of the Potomac to push aside scattered resistance and advance toward Richmond. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside was directed to move his Ninth Corps across the North Anna at Ox Ford and join the army’s two wings, but he found the ford too strongly defended to cross. Shortly after noon, trying to turn the Confederate position, he sent Ledlie’s brigade upstream to seize the ford from the south bank. Fifth Corps units under Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford supported the movement but ran into the sharpshooter battalions of Weisiger’s Virginia brigade and Colonel John C.C. Sanders’ Alabama brigade. The two sides fought about 400 yards in front of the trenches and just beyond the tree line, where Weisiger’s and Sanders’ 300 sharpshooters held back the Union advance for two hours and gave Confederate troops time to finish their line.

Virginia · United States