v1.1.2 / chapter 86 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* There wasn't much that Joe Johnston could do to stop the advance of Sherman's army into North Carolina. Johnston made a stand at Bentonville, North Carolina, that forced Sherman to pause, but did the Yankees no serious harm; the rebels then had to fall back in the face of overwhelming Federal superiority. To the north in Petersburg, Robert E. Lee performed one last offensive against the Union lines that failed miserably. Now Grant's man Sheridan began to move in for the kill.
* After a muddy slog north out of Columbia, South Carolina, Sherman let his men rest at Cheraw, South Carolina, from 3 March to 5 March, and then led them into North Carolina. Sherman knew that North Carolinans had never been extremely enthusiastic about the Confederacy, and so passed down the word to tell troops to be on their good behavior. Guards were posted at houses to prevent looting, but the rowdies had their fun anyway, setting forests alight.
Sherman also encouraged the troops to "fan the flames of discord" between the North Carolinans and the South Carolinans, to emphasize how the South Carolinans had made so much unnecessary trouble for everyone and then proven far from up to the challenge when they got it. Since there "never was much love lost between them" in the first place, Sherman thought this would not be difficult.
The rains were coming down again and the marching was miserable, but the Federals still managed to press on. Lacking information about the progress of Union forces to the north, Sherman sent three couriers through Confederate lines, two in rebel uniform and one in civilian clothes, to go to Wilmington. They carried a message to request from whoever was in charge there to send a vessel up the Cape Fear river to Fayetteville with sugar, coffee, and hardtack.
Sherman marched into Fayetteville on 11 March. The next day, 12 March, an Army tug came upriver from Wilmington, having been sent by General Terry. It delivered few supplies, but it did bring very useful dispatches and newspapers to tell Sherman what was going on.
The news was very good. In particular, Sherman was very pleased to hear that Schofield was driving on Goldsboro, and had detached XXIII Corps under General Jacob Cox to drive up the Atlantic & North Carolina Railroad line to obtain a supply route from the coast to the interior. Sherman sent the tug back downstream with a message to send a larger vessel loaded with sugar, coffee, hardtack, and whatever shoes, socks, and underwear that were available. Sherman's troops were beginning to look thoroughly raggedy. Terry was not able to provide much in the way of clothing, but he did provide coffee and sugar, which were very welcome.
* The news carried by the tug was a bit out-of-date and did not tell Sherman that Cox had got into a nasty fight, beginning on 8 March, the day he left New Berne and moved west. Joe Johnston had been trying to consolidate his forces, amounting in all to a little more than 21,000 men, in Smithfield, North Carolina, ahead of Sherman's advance, and was looking for an opportunity to delay a link-up between Sherman and Schofield. Johnston needed to gain time to allow Lee to escape from Petersburg and join him, creating a force large enough to seriously threaten the Federals.
Braxton Bragg had come down from Wilmington with Hoke's division. Bragg realized that Schofield had separated Cox and the XXIII Corps, providing an opportunity. Bragg wired Johnston to provide him with such forces as could be spared, and Johnston complied. Bragg's troops hit Cox's columns on the morning of 8 March in swampy terrain near Kinston, on the Neuse river, and made good progress at first, capturing a thousand Yankees. However, Bragg had no more than 8,500 men to Cox's 15,000, and although Bragg halted the advance, that was all he had the strength to do.
Having done all he could be reasonably expected to do under the circumstances, on 10 March Bragg withdrew, sending the troops on to Smithfield and Joe Johnston, while the bridges over the Neuse were burned behind them. Bragg had some reason to be pleased with the Battle of Kinston, as it came to be called, since he had inflicted 1,257 casualties on Cox, most of them taken prisoner, at a loss of about a tenth of that many rebels, and he had successfully delayed the movement of the Yankees. It had been a long time since Braxton Bragg had enjoyed a victory and no doubt it was something of a relief at a time when everything else seemed so dismal.
Johnston wished things had gone a bit better, but in the sum of matters the action had been a plus, allowing him to focus on the threat from Sherman to the south in Fayetteville. The odds were not good and Johnston knew it, though he did get some satisfaction when one of his political allies, Texas Senator Louis Wigfall, informed him that Mr. and Mrs. Davis seemed to be extremely distressed over the current military situation. On 14 March, Johnston replied to Wigfall: "I have a most unchristian satisfaction in what you say of the state of mind of the leading occupants of the Presidential Mansion. For me, it is a very sufficient revenge."
* However, if there was a joke in the situation, Johnston knew it was on him. Sherman led his army north from Fayetteville over the Cape Fear river on 14 March, destroying the town's arsenal and other militarily important facilities as he left. He shed himself of the tens of thousands of refugees, both black and white, clinging to his rear by the blunt measure of herding them under guard to refugee camps set up at Wilmington.
As usual, the advance was split in two, with Slocum leading the northwestern wing and Howard leading the southeastern. Sherman had plenty of respect for Joe Johnston, all the more so because Sherman believed Johnston's army was about twice as big as it really was. Sherman marched cautiously, ready for action. Slocum feinted towards Raleigh to keep Johnston confused.
The marching continued to be difficult, with persistent rains and plenty of mud. Wheeler's cavalry skirmished with Kilpatrick's troopers, but there wasn't any major Confederate resistance until the morning of 16 March, when Slocum's wing ran into a roadblock set up by Hardee near the town of Averasboro, with 11,000 rebels under his command.
Sherman had known Hardee was in the area. One of Hardee's brigade commanders, Colonel Albert Rhett, had blundered into Union cavalry the afternoon before, failing to recognize them for what they were. The troopers told him to halt in coarse language; he threatened to report them to Wade Hampton for insubordination to a superior officer; they informed Rhett that he had a mistaken view of matters. The colonel dined with Sherman.
Hardee wasn't expecting to hold the Federals for long. Johnston had ordered him to perform a delaying action to buy time; the action would also help determine just how big Sherman's army really was, and if Raleigh was actually Sherman's objective. Hardee's men were dug in on good ground and the mud was a continuing hindrance to the Federals. Despite repeated Yankee attacks, Hardee's men held out all day. They withdrew after dark, Hardee having achieved his objectives. The Federals lost about 682 men, the rebels 865.
Sherman was irritated with the whole thing, unhappy with the idea of fighting endless small skirmishes with Confederate forces. In the best of all possible worlds, he would be able to combine forces with Schofield at Goldsboro and then take on Joe Johnston, with the almost certain result of snatching up all the rebels in the area at one grab. Sherman was even more irritated when the rains began to come down even harder than before, the torrents beginning on 17 March, Saint Patrick's Day. One officer wrote later that 17 March and the following days were "among the most wearisome of the campaign. Incessant rain, deep mud, roads always wretched but now nearly impassable ... "
The rains worked in Johnston's favor. He ordered his forces to assemble in Bentonville to ambush Slocum's wing on the morning of 19 March. A nasty fight resulted. Slocum didn't realize he was up against almost everything that Johnston had available to throw at him. The problem from Johnston's point of view was in the key phrase "almost everything". Hardee had been delayed, both by the mud and by misleading directions, and didn't get in place with his troops until the afternoon of the 19th, well after the attack had jumped off. Johnston had achieved surprise, but didn't have the strength to follow it up with Slocum's destruction.
Johnston still pushed Slocum very hard. Slocum sent messengers to Sherman, who was on the march with Howard's wing, to hurry up reinforcements and ammunition, while the troops dug in. The rebels attacked again and again all day, Slocum reporting: "The assaults were repeated over and over again until a late hour, each assault finding us better prepared for resistance." Given the fact that the Federals had massive reinforcements coming up through the rain and mud, Johnston's best chance was at the outset, and the odds grew steadily worse against him as the hours passed. By the morning of 20 March, the 20,000 rebel survivors of the previous day's fighting had pulled back to a defensive position shaped like a "V", with one arm facing Slocum's wing and the other facing Howard's, now coming onto the battlefield.
The Confederates were outnumbered three to one. Sherman had a chance to completely wipe them out, but then he got cautious. A heavy battle would leave him with lots of wounded, and given the condition of the roads they would be very difficult to take care of. He did not press his advantage, hoping instead that Johnston would decide to pull out.
Surprisingly, Johnston was still in position when the sun came up on the morning of 21 March. Johnston would have left but he was concerned about his own wounded, wanting to get as many of them to safety as possible while he held on to his earthworks to buy time. Sherman was inclined to let them go, but Major General Joseph Mower, one of the division commanders in Frank Blair's corps and highly aggressive, took things into his own hands and led his division forward in an attempt to cut the single bridge the rebels had available for withdrawal. Things went well for Mower until he was hit by strong Confederate counterattacks. He called for reinforcements, certain he could exploit his breakthrough, but Sherman sent back a curt order telling him to pull his men back to Federal lines and stay there. Later on Sherman admitted: "I think I made a mistake there."
Johnston completed his withdrawal during the night and his army was on the road, unpursued, the next morning. Mower's attack had struck a personal blow to Hardee, since his only son, 16-year-old Willie, had insisted on joining the ranks as an infantryman for the battle, to be mortally wounded, dying a few days later. Oliver Howard grieved as well, since he had given Willie Sunday school lessons at West Point before the war.
* In fact, despite Sherman's timidity, Johnston had got much the worse of the fight, losing about 2,606 men to 1,646 Federals. He had managed to delay Sherman's advance, but nothing was gained thereby. In any case, Johnston was not inclined to take another shot at Sherman, at least by himself. Johnston wrote Lee on 23 March: "Sherman's force cannot be hindered by the small force I have. I can do no more than annoy him." Johnston suggested that the only option left was for Lee to withdraw south to combine forces, concluding: "I respectfully suggest that it is no longer a question whether you leave your present position; you have only to decide where to meet Sherman. I will be near him."
By this time, Sherman had already achieved the primary objective of this phase of his campaign, the capture of Goldsboro. Schofield had arrived there on 21 March, and Sherman rode in on the 23rd. Sherman now had a combined force of almost 90,000 men. Sherman planned to rest and refit his troops for the next phase of the campaign, and was very annoyed to find that the railroads to the west seized by Schofield weren't in working condition just yet, since they were needed to bring in supplies. He ordered that three shifts be organized to repair the railroads and get the supplies moving at all costs.
The railroads were working by 25 March. Sherman took one of the first eastbound trains on the restored line to New Berne that day, where he boarded a steamship to go north for a meeting with Grant, and as it turned out, the President.
* Lincoln arrived at City Point on 24 March on the steamer RIVER QUEEN with his wife and son Tad. He came just in time to witness a battle, at least from a distance.
Robert E. Lee knew his situation was becoming increasingly desperate. The ranks of his army were dwindling, and those men who remained were starving and ragged. Lee went to Richmond one day to talk with Virginia congressmen, and though they were sympathetic to his difficulties, they had nothing to give him. Lee dined that evening with his son Custis, and afterwards vented his frustration: "Well, Mr. Custis, I have been up to see the Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except eat peanuts and chew tobacco, while my army is starving. I told them the condition my men were in, and that something must be done at once, but I can't get them to do anything."
Lee paced, then went on: "Mr. Custis, when this war began I was opposed to it, bitterly opposed to it, and I told these people that unless every man should do his whole duty, they would repent it. And now -- they will repent."
Despite all the hardship, he did not consider giving up; in fact, with his customary aggressiveness, he was planning to attack. If he kept to his works, sooner or later the Federals would break through and that would be the end of the game. Sheridan's final defeat of Jubal Early meant that a large, aggressive, well-trained, well-equipped Union cavalry force would soon be operating in his rear, and the longer Lee stayed pinned down, the worse things would be. In addition, Sherman's army was steadily moving north, and once it arrived that would absolutely be the end of the game.
Lee needed to regain his mobility, even if it meant finally giving up Richmond. He could not quite leave at the time, since the roads were still muddy, but he needed to ensure that the Yankees didn't improve their grip on his lines in the meantime. Lee had met with Jefferson Davis on 4 March to tell the president that Richmond would probably have to be abandoned. Davis hardly blinked, asking Lee if it might be wise to anticipate the army's withdrawal by evacuating the government immediately. Lee replied that it wasn't necessary just yet, and went back to headquarters impressed by Davis's "remarkable faith in the possibility of still winning our independence."
Leadership of the attack was assigned to General John B. Gordon. The target was Union Fort Stedman, due east of Petersburg, one of the weakest links in the Federal line. The military railroad that linked the southern end of the siege works was a mile or two behind the fort, and if the rail line could be cut, Union defenses to the south would have to be evacuated until a supply line could be restored. Gordon proposed seizing Fort Stedman and using captured Yankee guns in batteries outlying the fort to support a drive on the rail line.
The rebels swept over Fort Stedman in the dim dawn hours of 25 March, with pioneers chopping through the abatis in front of strongpoint to let the spearhead groups through. The Confederates achieved complete surprise, the Yankee pickets who did spot the advancing rebels thinking they were just more deserters, and the fort was quickly overrun. Gordon was ecstatic and pushed his men to expand the breach.
Then it all went to hell immediately. Although Confederate gunners had gone forward behind the first wave to man captured Yankee guns, rebel intelligence had been faulty: there were no outlying batteries around the fort with guns to seize. The momentum of the attack faded as starving rebel soldiers took the time to wolf down captured Federal rations. The Yankees along either side of the breach refused to be budged, with Federal gunners pouring fire into the attackers. General John G. Parke, commander of IX Corps and in charge of that section of the line, threw in a division of reinforcements under the command of General John Hartraft, who as a colonel had led the attack on Burnside's Bridge at Antietam.
The rebel assault was hopeless, and at 8:00 AM Lee ordered the recall. However, the Federals were fully aroused and even retreating in the face of all the fire seemed suicidal to many Confederate soldiers. Hundreds surrendered. The attack was a dismal failure.
Meade, who had been absent at City Point, arrived back at the lines later that day. Realizing that Lee had almost certainly pulled soldiers from his defenses to make the attack, Meade ordered II Corps and VI Corps to assault Confederate lines in front of them. They did so very successfully, not making a decisive breach by any means, but taking hundreds of prisoners and obtaining positions that provided a grip into Confederate defenses in anticipation of further operations. Grant was already putting together the pieces of a big push.
* The final tally in the struggle for Fort Stedman was a loss of 1,600 rebels shot and an astounding 1,900 taken prisoner. The Yankees only lost a thousand men, about half taken prisoner. It was to be the very last offensive of the once-fearsome Army of Northern Virginia. Federals who remembered the Battle of the Crater now had the satisfaction of having turned the tables on the Confederates.
A Virginia lieutenant, taken prisoner in the morning's fighting, was taken to the rear of Union lines. There he saw troops passing in review of President Lincoln and General Grant, "seemingly not in the least concerned and as if nothing had happened." The lieutenant and his colleagues agreed that "our cause was lost." In fact, the pre-dawn bombardment had awakened Lincoln, and he thought there was a terrible battle in progress. When he was joined by his son, now Captain Robert Todd Lincoln of the US Army, for breakfast, all had gone more or less quiet again. Robert described it as a "little rumpus up the line this morning, ending about where it began."
There were limits to such casualness. Lincoln asked Grant if he could go up to the line and see what had happened, but Grant replied that it was too dangerous. The review was delayed for three hours, but went ahead anyway, and then Grant decided that the battle area had gone quiet enough for the President to visit, at least in the rear area. It didn't prove to be a vacation outing; Lincoln was treated to a display of the dead and wounded being carted out on stretchers. The dead were sometimes hideously mangled, and the wounded moaned or screamed in pain. An officer said Lincoln looked "worn and haggard", and the President said he hoped there would be "no more bloodshed".
He had trials of a different sort when he returned, since Mary Lincoln was on the warpath and proving a menace to everyone. On hearing that the wife of an officer had visited Lincoln to get a permit to stay at the front, Mary Lincoln had thrown a jealous tantrum, repeating the performance when she saw another officer's wife ride near the President during a review.
Julia Dent Grant was there; General Grant always had his wife near him whenever he could manage it. Mrs. Lincoln accused her from out of the blue of wanting to be First Lady herself, and later angrily tongue-lashed her for daring to sit down in her presence without permission. That evening, Mrs. Lincoln turned on her husband, bitterly scolding and accusing him without a letup, and nothing he could do would calm her in the least. The next morning, Lincoln told a visitor that Mary Lincoln "was not at all well", and suggested that the violent environment had got the better of her.
* As Grant built up his plans for the big push, other war leaders began to arrive. Sheridan rode in, with Lincoln meeting him that Sunday morning, taking a boatride together down the James. The President told him: "General Sheridan, when this peculiar war began I thought a cavalryman should be at least six feet four inches high, but I have changed my mind. Five feet four will do in a pinch."
Sherman arrived the next day, Monday 27 March, walking onto the dock to meet his old friend Grant, both men shaking hands and laughing. Sherman told Grant of his adventures in the Carolinas, and then Grant invited him to meet with the President that evening. Sherman agreed reluctantly, having little use for politicians and not having been impressed by Lincoln in their previous encounters, four years ago. However, the meeting went very well. Lincoln went out of his way to be hospitable to Sherman and was extremely curious about the general's adventures. David Porter arrived as well, and on 28 March Grant, Sherman, and Porter had a discussion with the President on board the RIVER QUEEN. It was not really a strategy conference, more a review by the President for their plans for the final big push, and a wish to see if he and his chief generals were all on the same wavelength.
It was a very pleasant conversation, since the President had great confidence in all three men. Lincoln worried about Sherman's absence from command, but Sherman reassured him that Schofield was perfectly competent to handle things, and that his army could take care of itself. The President, having learned the hard way to worry about false confidence, had trouble accepting the real thing and kept bringing the issue up. General Sherman said that Porter had a fast steamer standing by to take him back to his army once the meeting was over.
Since it was clear that Confederacy would soon be crushed, Lincoln said that he wished that a final battle that would kill many soldiers but not change the outcome could be avoided: "Must more blood be shed? Cannot this last bloody battle be avoided?" The answer was of course NO: Lee wasn't going to give up until he was clearly beaten. The President went on: "My God, my God, can't you spare more effusions of blood? We have had so much of it."
Lincoln knew this was a pointless question, and to break the awkward pause in the conversation, Sherman asked the President what his thoughts were on what to do with the defeated Confederacy. Lincoln replied that he wanted the rebel soldiers to go home and get back to their peacetime work, and that existing Confederate state governments would be recognized as legitimate until Congress decided otherwise. The President also emphasized that he did not want a punitive peace; there would be no reprisals, no hangings. It would be best, he hinted, for Jefferson Davis and other prominent Confederates to simply flee the country, going to some foreign land where they could live unharmed and out of circulation. Lincoln wanted the Union restored as quickly as possible.
* The meeting ended and Sherman went back to his troops that same day, his
opinion of the President completely turned from suspicion to near-idolatry.
Grant set his big push in motion. President Lincoln had planned to return to
Washington, and in fact, the Washington STAR announced that the President
would attend an opera at Ford's Theater on 29 March. John Wilkes Booth saw
the notice, and restarted the wheels of his schemes. However, Secretary of
War Stanton telegraphed Lincoln:
THERE IS IN FACT NOTHING TO BE DONE HERE BUT
PETTY PRIVATE ENDS THAT YOU SHOULD NOT BE
ANNOYED WITH. A PAUSE BY THE ARMY NOW WOULD
DO HARM; BUT IF YOU ARE ON THE GROUND THERE
WILL BE NO PAUSE.
It is unlikely that with Grant in charge there was going to be a pause
whether Lincoln was there or not, but staying away from Washington and the
various annoyances of office seekers and the like was a relief, and besides,
the President was the Commander in Chief, this was his army, and it would
be satisfying to watch it in action for what might be hoped one last great
time.
* By this time, Grant's final push was almost ready to roll. The southern end of Lee's lines were now positioned on a marshy stream named Hatcher's Run, about eight miles (13 kilometers) south of the city. Not too far behind these lines was Five Forks, the terminal point of the Southside Railroad. This line ran west to Lynchburg, where it connected with the Richmond & Danville line, which went south. This was the last unbroken rail link from Petersburg to points south that the Army of Northern Virginia had. Cutting the Richmond & Danville line would break communications between Lee and Joe Johnston to the south. Grant hoped that a flanking movement around Hatcher's Run would either force Lee to fight the Yankees in the open, where the chances were good the rebels would be defeated, or stretch his lines to the snapping point.
General Ord, in command of the Army of the James in the permanent absence of Ben Butler, had two corps, one consisting of three divisions of white troops and the other consisting of three divisions of black troops. One evening, Ord quietly pulled two divisions of white troops and one of black out of his lines and sent them 36 miles (58 kilometers) south, to take up positions in the lines in front of Petersburg along with IX Corps and VI Corps.
This freed Humphreys' II Corps and Warren's V Corps for action. Grant also intended to commit three divisions of cavalry under Phil Sheridan to the fight, and in fact Sheridan would be the tactical commander in the field. Sheridan was to swing down toward Dinwiddie Court House, about six miles (ten kilometers) south of Confederate lines, while II Corps and V Corps threatened Confederate lines at Hatcher's Run.
The operation was basically opportunistic. Sheridan was to swing north and break the Southside Railroad, maybe penetrate west and cut the Richmond & Danville line. Grant had made noises about Sheridan even going south to link up with Sherman, a notion that Sheridan didn't like then any more than he had before, but Grant privately reassured him that was merely a fallback plan in case everything went to hell.
* The troops started to move in the dark hours of the morning on 29 March. There was a general feeling of anticipation, that the last campaign of the war was now getting underway, though some old-timers who had felt this before were skeptical. One Union private wrote: "Four years of war, while it made the men brave and valorous, had entirely cured them of imagining that each campaign would be the last."
Federal and Confederate infantry skirmished with each other while Sheridan and his troopers went south, to make camp at Dinwiddie Court House. Robert E. Lee ordered General Pickett to Five Forks with five brigades and most of Lee's cavalry to block Federal moves, with instructions to hold "at all hazards". All Lee could do if the Yankees did seize Five Forks would be to retreat west and hope the Federals made some blunder that allowed him to escape. This was a faint hope since the Federals were experienced, rested, well-equipped, and much better motivated than they had been the summer and fall before; intensive drilling along with harsh punishments had done much to restore discipline to the ranks.
Lee was not confident of Pickett's ability to hold out, and suggested to Jefferson Davis that the Army of Northern Virginia might be forced to retreat from its present positions to a new line of defense. Davis was already preparing to evacuate Richmond.
That evening, it began to rain. It rained all night and continued to rain the next day, 30 March, one trooper describing conditions as "rations all soaked and blankets all wet, and spongy beds under leaky shelters." Jokers in the ranks asked when the gunboats would be coming up in support. The area around Hatcher's Run and Dinwiddie Court House turned into a swamp, roads turned into quicksand. Sheridan seemed undeterred, ordering Custer to put his division to corduroying roads so that supply wagons could pass.
Grant had moved his headquarters from City Point to Gravelly Run, near the southern end of Union defenses in front of Petersburg. The terrain was so damp that Grant recalled horses or mules that stood too long in one place would start to sink into the ground and have to be laboriously pulled out by soldiers. Still the rains fell. Many senior officers who had participated in Burnside's wretched Mud March two years earlier suggested that things be postponed for a week or so until the countryside dried out, and Grant sent a message to Sheridan to hold on until the weather improved.
Sheridan was in a fighting mood and didn't give a damn about the rain. He rode over to Grant's headquarters, to find that Grant was in a conference. Sheridan spoke to staff officers who suggested that it might be difficult to get forage under current conditions, but he shot back: "Forage? I'll get all the forage I want! I'll haul it out if I have to set every man in the command to corduroying roads, and corduroy every mile of them from the railroad to Dinwiddie. I tell you I'm ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things." The officers found this inspiring. So did Grant when Sheridan got the opportunity to give his boss the same pitch. Grant liked this sort of talk, and he was also worried that if the current movement were postponed, it would seem like another defeat to the Northern public. He told Sheridan to go ahead.
* One of Sheridan's cavalry divisions, 4,000 strong under General Thomas C. Devin, was advancing on Five Forks at noon the next day, 31 March, when they ran into 12,000 rebels of Pickett's command. The Confederates had been sent by Lee to break up the Yankee movement, and they succeeded, at least for a while. Devin had been a favorite of the late John Buford and was held in high regard by Sheridan for his aggressiveness, but he was simply outnumbered; he was forced to fall back towards Dinwiddie Court House, losing hundreds of his troopers in the process.
Pickett was determined to drive the Yankee cavalry back to where they had come from, but Sheridan was just as determined to stand his ground. That afternoon, as the rains finally broke, Sheridan lined up his other divisions. Devin's division fell back to line up with them and the Federals fought stubbornly, with regimental bands blaring out stirring music from the front lines to encourage them and mock the Confederates.
Sheridan rode up and down the lines to inspire his men. At sundown, he was so encouraged by events that he ordered Custer to countercharge the Confederates. Custer tried, but his cavalry bogged down in the mud and got nowhere. Sheridan remained upbeat, even though Pickett outnumbered him. Sheridan knew that Pickett had only a local superiority, and that the rebel general was both exposed and isolated from the rest of Lee's army. Sheridan told a colonel from Grant's staff: "This force is in more danger than I am. If I am cut off from the Army of the Potomac, it is cut off from Lee's army, and not a man of it should ever be allowed to get back to Lee. We at last have drawn the enemy's infantry out of its fortifications, and this is our chance to attack it."
If Sheridan could bring in other Union forces in the area, Pickett could be swallowed up whole. Sheridan wanted Wright and his VI Corps to help, since Sheridan had been impressed with both in the Valley, but they were too far away to help. Although Sheridan didn't think much of Warren, he and his V Corps were only a few miles away, and Sheridan ordered Warren to get his men over to Dinwiddie Court house as quickly as possible. Sheridan and his troops then settled down for the night to begin fighting again the next morning, April Fool's Day.
* V Corps was somewhat in disarray, however, since as it turned out Pickett's troops weren't the only rebel force taking action in the area. During the day, Warren had sent one of his three divisions out to perform a reconnaissance, and they had run dead into aggressive Confederates, a scratch force put together from several available divisions and under the direct command of Robert E. Lee himself. The Federals were taken by surprise and sent back in confusion, their flight taking them through one of their brother divisions, where the soldiers were busy trying to dry out their clothes and weren't expecting a fight. This compounded the chaos. Warren had to throw in his other division and ask II Corps for help, and the line wasn't stabilized until sundown.
The Federals lost about 1,800 men to about 800 Confederates, but Sheridan saw the enemy in front of him much more as a target than a threat. V Corps was tending to their wounds and hoping to get a little rest when the order came for them to move out. The men picked up their things, no doubt bitterly damning the army and everything it stood for, and got ready for a night march.
