In early spring 1865, as Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant prepared his ninth and final offensive of the Petersburg Campaign to break the nine-month siege of General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, he aimed to cut the last two Confederate supply lines, the Boydton Plank Road and the Southside Railroad. Using superior resources, Grant sought to stretch the Confederate right to a breaking point and force Lee to fight in the open to save these vital routes and the cities of Richmond and Petersburg. Major General Phil Sheridan, recently returned to the Union forces around Petersburg with his cavalry corps from the Shenandoah Valley, was assigned to outflank Lee's army and reach the Southside Railroad while the II Corps and V Corps of the Army of the Potomac moved against the Boydton Plank Road. On March 29, 1865, Sheridan reached the strategic crossroads of Dinwiddie Court House, thirteen miles southwest of Petersburg and seven miles from the Southside Railroad, with ten thousand well-equipped cavalrymen. Lee responded by setting in motion Major General George Pickett's newly formed mobile force of five thousand Confederate infantrymen drawn from the Richmond defenses, while about five thousand Confederate cavalrymen under Major General Fitzhugh Lee were ordered to concentrate at Five Forks to block the route to the Southside Railroad. The stage was set for the final campaign, and on March 30 at Dinwiddie Court House, as torrential rains that had begun the day before continued, Sheridan told his staff, "I tell you I'm ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things," pacing up and down and chafing like a hound on a leash.