Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Early on March 29, the horsemen broke camp and headed out for the right flank of the Confederate army.... Smith's blue-coated cavalry moved cross-country through woods and fields, following rough back roads when possible. The troopers reigned up at Rowanty Creek... swam their horses across the muddy, rain-swollen stream, chased off the Rebel pickets... felled two large trees... fashioned a temporary bridge by lashing the trees together and laying down hay-covered fence rails as footboards.... The Federal advance guard arrived at Dinwiddie Court House around sunset after a 25-mile march.... A chilling rain began to fall, and the saturated woods and fields soon took on the appearance of a swamp. Major General George Armstrong Custer's 3rd Division had followed behind the advance, escorting the wagon train, and became hopelessly bogged down in the red Virginia mud....

The following morning, March 30, found the bulk of Crook's division in camp around Dinwiddie Court House while scattered detachments picketed the roads and stream crossings leading to the area from the west and north. The rain continued to pelt the Federals. 'The ground soon became so wet,' remembered Carlos MacDonald of the 6th Ohio:

that it was impossible to sleep on it, so we got up and stood around our camp fires…. Boots and saddles sounded and we prepared to move, but did not, on account of the rain, which fell steadily all day.

Custer's troopers found the going especially rough on March 30. Foot by foot, mile by agonizing mile, the mud-covered men pushed the wagons forward. They had worked 24 hours the previous day, and the 30th was no different, except the rain fell even harder. To make progress, Custer's men had to corduroy the road.... Working all day and night, the train advanced another 10 miles, but was still five miles from Dinwiddie Court House....

10,000 troops commanded by Maj. Gen. George Pickett and hidden behind entrenchments dug near Five Forks.... After another cold and wet night, the rains ceased at dawn on March 31 and sunny skies prevailed by 10 a.m.... The Southern troops, equally energized by the sun's warming rays, were on the move by 9 a.m. Pickett hoped to smash his opponents and regain some of the luster his reputation had lost after his division's debacle at Gettysburg.... Chamberlain's Run was normally a narrow, sluggish Virginia stream, but after two days of downpours it had turned into a raging torrent nearly 100 yards wide. The first Confederates to arrive gazed uneasily at the roiling, muddy water....

Colonel William H. Cheek, commander of the 1st North Carolina, recalled that:

the stream was very swollen by recent heavy rains, and at places was impassable by reason of briars and swamp undergrowth. In my immediate front it was over one hundred yards wide and as deep as the men's waists.

The Southern men advanced into the cold, fast-moving water and took their turn at facing a galling fire from a larger enemy force. Bullets from the repeating rifles of the 13th Ohio and 1st Maine peppered the water, and several Tarheels were shot down in the ford or swept away by the raging current to drown. The high water rendered the Confederates defenseless, for the men had to carry their weapons and cartridge boxes above their heads as they advanced and could not return fire....

As the cavalry was fighting desperately at Fitzgerald Ford, Pickett succeeded in crossing his infantry over Chamberlain's Run about a mile upstream. The Southern infantrymen drove toward Sheridan's center and right, assisted by Munford's cavalry moving down from Five Forks. Heavy Federal gunfire and spirited countercharges slowed the Confederate advance, but Pickett succeeded in isolating Sheridan's right flank, held by cavalry under the command of Brig. Gen. Thomas Devin. The hard-pressed Federal position began to crumble. A New Yorker remembered that 'the woods were alive with Johnnies, and we were all mixed up in hand-to-hand encounters.' Union horses, soldiers, bands and separated regiments all clogged the woods in confused retreat. Determined to press his advantage, Pickett wheeled his men to the south in order to concentrate his attack on Sheridan's center, which was falling back steadily toward Dinwiddie Court House.Sheridan was in desperate trouble. His forces were scattered, his right wing was falling back in confusion and a much larger infantry force was assailing his center. One ray of hope remained for Sheridan — the dogged resistance of Smith's men at Fitzgerald Ford had stabilized the Union left flank, their stand buying time for Custer to come up and for the Federals to construct a defensive line in front of Dinwiddie Court House. The... Southerners had suffered appalling losses... at Fitzgerald Ford, Barringer ruefully reported that 'in this short conflict…twenty officers [were] killed and over one hundred men killed and wounded' — a testament to the effectiveness of the Union's breechloading carbines. The bloody fighting in this sector was not finished, however. In the afternoon, Pickett once again ordered the cavalry to take Fitzgerald Ford and join the advance on the fragile Union line. One of Barringer's staff officers expressed shock that the 'bloody work had to be done all over again.'...

Sheridan searched for a point on which his scattered brigades could make a defensive stand. He found a suitable location in a slight rise of ground northwest of Dinwiddie Court House. Sheridan wrote that 'it was now about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and we were in a critical situation.' As the tired troopers straggled to the summit of the rise, Sheridan ordered them to entrench. The horsemen checked and loaded their weapons, nervously eyeing the enemy-held ground to the north while they awaited Custer's arrival. Custer was, in fact, making haste to join his beleaguered comrades, and after two days of fussing with mud and sinking wagons, the flamboyant general was ready for a fight.... Upon reaching the ridge, Custer had his men quickly dismount and take up positions in the center of the Union line, where they built, said one Federal, the 'most miserable apology for breastworks [that] ever was seen, consisting of rotten fence rails [and] brushwood, with a little earth.' To make matters worse, wrote another Union soldier, Custer's men 'could see their comrades retreating before long lines of Confederate infantry, and 'knew that there was work ahead.'...

From his vantage point on the east bank of Chamberlain's Run, a Federal horse-soldier noted that 'the enemy advanced within 15 or 20 steps of us, while we mowed them down like grain before a reaper. Their line wavered, but their officers urged them on.' The Rebels gave as good as they got.... As the sun began to set, and long shadows crossed the fields and woodlots near Chamberlain's Run, the troops of Smith's brigade began to fall back before the Southern attack with a 'dogged obstinacy,' said one North Carolinian. The Federals 'would rally and re-form, only to be broken and dispersed,' wrote another Confederate. A.D. Rockwell of the 13th Ohio remembered it more frankly as 'a pell mell retreat....

On the ridge, the Union cavalry crouched behind their meager barricades and waited until Pickett's troops were within close range before they opened fire. With a blinding flash, Custer's fresh soldiers used their repeating rifles to pour out what was described as 'such a shower of lead that nothing could stand up against it.' Somehow the Confederates weathered this storm of shot and were able to return fire. A witness recalled: 'I saw volleys fired at Copeland's and Pennington's brigades of such extent as to make a perfect sheet of lead. It seemed as if no man within the range could escape….[I was] expecting to see the ground covered with killed and wounded. Fortunately most of the volleys were fired too high.' The weapons of both sides spat flame for the next few minutes, until it became too dark to see....

Pickett's force camped on the damp battlefield about a hundred yards from the Union works, built fires and began the grim work of tallying their dead and wounded. Barringer's North Carolina brigade had suffered nearly 50 percent casualties, and only two field officers were left in his three regiments. Company H of the 5th North Carolina Cavalry was particularly hard hit; every man except the captain had been killed or wounded. One Confederate counted 27 bullet holes in his clothing and equipment. Total Confederate losses were estimated at between 800 and 1,000 men, while Sheridan had lost about 400 men killed, wounded or missing....

By morning, the once weak earthworks 'were now fit to resist horse, foot, or dragoons,' recalled another Union trooper. Although the day had gone generally in favor of the Confederates, Sheridan remained in control of Dinwiddie Court House, and he was therefore still in a position to launch another threat toward Five Forks and the Southside Railroad. Furthermore, Pickett's men were on their own, separated from the main Rebel fortifications encircling Petersburg. The enemy's 'force is in more danger than I am in [for] it is cut off from Lee's army, and not a man in it should ever be allowed to get back to Lee,' determined Sheridan, who also vowed to hold on to Dinwiddie Court House at all costs. Early the next morning, Pickett learned that Federal infantry — soldiers of the V Corps — were coming up on his left flank to reinforce Sheridan. Reading the situation and the danger it portended, he ordered his troops to fall back to their breastworks at Five Forks....

Satisfied that the Rebels had fled, Sheridan mobilized his men for another advance that approached the Confederate works at Five Forks in midafternoon. Reinforced by heavy columns of infantry, the Union troops rushed the Rebel position, spilling over the log-and-earth defenses at twilight and swallowing the outnumbered Southerners in a blue tide. The fighting was furious, brutal and hand to hand. The Confederates broke and retreated with heavy casualties. Amazingly, Pickett and several of his generals were satisfying their appetites at an ill-advised shad bake when the fight began. By the time the well-supped officers arrived on the scene, their tardy efforts at direction could do little to stop the Northern advance.

The Battle of Five Forks sealed the fate of the Army of Northern Virginia. The skeletal remains of this once-potent fighting force struggled westward out of Petersburg in a losing race with the Federal army that would end at another courthouse town — Appomattox — on April 9, 1865.... Far more than just another bloody fight, the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House was the linchpin that led to final Union victory in the east.