Sailor's Creek 1865: Missing Rations and the Day Lee's Army Dissolved

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On the night of April 2 to 3, 1865, Robert E. Lee pulled the Army of Northern Virginia out of the Petersburg and Richmond trenches it had held for nine months and marched west, hoping to resupply and join Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina. At Amelia Courthouse on April 4 he found trains loaded with ammunition but no food. Foraging in the stripped Virginia countryside cost nearly 24 hours, enough for Philip Sheridan's cavalry and the Union V Corps to block the Richmond and Danville Railroad at Jetersville. Lee turned toward Farmville over muddy roads, his column strung out for miles behind heavy wagons as swollen creeks and failing bridges stretched it apart.

On April 6 Union forces struck three separated pieces at once. At Lockett's Farm, John B. Gordon's rear guard lost its wagons and about 1,700 men as prisoners. At Marshall's Crossroads, cavalry including George Armstrong Custer drove into a gap between William Mahone and Richard Anderson and routed Anderson. Near Hillsman's house, Union VI Corps troops waded a flooded creek to surround Richard Ewell's corps. Watching survivors stream past, Lee asked Mahone whether the army had dissolved. The Confederates lost between 7,700 and 8,000 men, roughly a fifth to a quarter of Lee's remaining force, three days before Appomattox, and Sheridan later noted the battle was overshadowed by the surrender.

• Tom Custer earned his second Medal of Honor in four days here, capturing a battle flag after being shot in the face.
• Commodore John R. Tucker's sailors from the scuttled James River Squadron fought as infantry with cutlasses and bayonets.
• The sailors nearly shot a Union officer who came to accept their surrender until Tucker ordered them to stand down.
• Generals Ewell and Kershaw were captured, along with Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee's eldest son.
• Mahone answered Lee that his intact division stood ready, and Lee asked him to keep the pursuers back.