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National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Washington, D.C. 1970
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402—Price $1
PROLOGUE 2 UNION STRATEGY 1864 5 STRATEGIC PETERSBURG 7 BATTLE OF PETERSBURG 10 FIRST UNION ATTEMPT TO ENCIRCLE PETERSBURG 17 BATTLE OF THE CRATER 24 FIGHT FOR THE WELDON RAILROAD 36 UNION ENCIRCLEMENT CONTINUES 42 LEE’S LAST GAMBLE 58 FIVE FORKS: BEGINNING OF THE END 64 FALL OF PETERSBURG AND RICHMOND 68
[Illustration: _In the final year of the Civil War in the East, the fighting focused upon Petersburg, an important transportation center for Richmond and Lee’s army. For 10 bloody months of combat, both from behind prepared positions and along the main routes of supply, Lee’s ragged Confederates held the city (shown here from north of the Appomattox River) against Grant’s numerically superior Federals. On April 2-3, 1865, Lee was forced to abandon both Petersburg and Richmond. One week later, he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, dooming the South’s bid for independent existence._]
By June 1864, when the siege of Petersburg began, the Civil War had lain heavily on both the North and the South for more than 3 years. Most of the fighting in the East during this period had taken place on the rolling Virginia countryside between the opposing capitals of Washington and Richmond, only 110 miles apart, and all of it had failed to end the war and bring peace to the land. Various generals had been placed in command of the Union’s mighty Army of the Potomac and had faced Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. So far not one had succeeded in destroying Lee’s army or in capturing Richmond.
Perhaps Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan had come the closest to success when, in the late spring and early summer of 1862, his Northern troops had threatened the Confederate capital, only to be repulsed on its outskirts. The other Northern commanders who followed McClellan—Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade—were less successful. Lee had met and turned aside their drives.