The Battle That Doomed the Confederacy: Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant Reports the Confederate Losses in the Battle of Fort Stedman to Army of the Potomac Commander George G. Meade

"The enemy's loss in front of the Corps, I estimate at 3000 all told killed, wounded & captured…"
 

In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln commander of the Union Armies. His headquarters would be with the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Gen. George G. Meade. Grant developed a strategy to defeat the Confederacy by placing his army between the rebel capital of Richmond and Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. In his Spring offensive in 1864, Grant confronted Lee's army a number of times in very bloody engagements in which both sides suffered great losses. The Battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania proved Grant's fearless tenacity, but both were essentially draws. After each battle Grant moved southeast to try to create a wedge between Lee and Richmond, but Lee's army successfully followed up the engagements by foiling that maneuver. Then Grant's assaults at Cold Harbor, his most mistaken plan of the war, and the one he most regretted, resulted in a sharp defeat. Grant thus found that he was unable to take Richmond directly.

Next Grant focused on Petersburg, due south of Richmond. Three railroads met there, and they were the capital's chief source of supply. If Grant could take Petersburg, then the Confederates would have to abandon Richmond. Grant's attempt to take it quickly failed, so by mid-June 1864 Lee ended up in Petersburg with the Appomattox River protecting his back, and surrounding the city below the river he built two lines of works that covered the entire area. Grant ended up besieging the city, and his Army of the Potomac built works from the river northeast of Petersburg down to south of the city, as far as they could go. The Confederates controlled all the ground from Grant’s southern tip west up to the river. Grant’s main objective during the ten-month Siege of Petersburg was to extend his lines south and west to cut Lee’s railroad links and encircle him at the same time. Lee’s problem was that he was stuck in Petersburg and every Union successful extension west forced him to extend his lines. And every time he had to extend, those lines became thinner.

By the end of January 1865, Lee's army had been besieged in Petersburg for some eight months. Although some supplies continued to reach his embattled army, Union forces had cut off most of the supply routes to that city. The last major Confederate port capable of aiding the army, at Wilmington, North Carolina, had been closed by Union arms in mid-January. As a result, Lee's army suffered from inadequate clothing and supplies, as well as hunger. Though it was winter, Grant kept a constant pressure upon Lee's forces in order to cut the remaining two open supply routes, or at the least to force Lee to further stretch and thin his already-thin lines to protect those routes. On February 5, 1865, Grant ordered his troops out of their lines and toward the Boynton Plank Road, which was one of the two still open. At Hatcher's Run the armies battled for three days; and ultimately the Union line was extended, and Lee's line correspondingly thinned. March began with President Lincoln's second inauguration, which put an end to any lingering Southern hopes that the North would tire of the war and sue for peace. At the same time, Lee could only watch as Union armies defeated Confederate forces elsewhere; in the Shenandoah Valley, Gen. P.H. Sheridan's army scored important victories, while Gen. William T. Sherman's army had taken Savannah and was moving north successfully through the Carolinas, with the aim of ultimately joining up with Grant. Any junctures of these forces would spell catastrophe for the Confederacy. The military and political fortunes of the Confederacy were degrading.

So Lee determined that a change of strategy was necessary. He must find a way out of Petersburg before additional armies joined Grant, or Grant could cut off all supply routes and starve the Confederate army into submission. He decided that the best course was to go on the offensive, and he asked Gen. John B. Gordon to formulate a plan that, at the very least, would enable the Army of Northern Virginia to pull out of Petersburg unmolested, and perhaps give it a chance to directly link up with Gen. Joseph Johnston's Confederate army in North Carolina. Gordon planned a surprise attack that would force Grant to shorten his lines or even set his lines back, allowing for a clean pullout for Lee. Gordon planned a pre-dawn surprise attack on a Union fort, Fort Stedman, that was on the eastern portion of the Union line. It was one of the closest spots on the Confederate line, there were fewer wooden obstructions at its front, and a supply depot on the U.S. military railroad was less than a mile behind it. Lee approved the plan. It was to prove his final offensive of the war.

Lee amassed nearly half of his army, ready to move. Before sunrise on March 25, directed by Gordon, Confederate forces overpowered the garrisons of Fort Stedman and took three artillery batteries. However, before long the Confederates were brought under a killing crossfire, and counterattacks led by Union Generals Parke and Hartranft first contained the breakthrough, then cut off and captured more than 1,900 of the attackers. Then, during the day, elements of two Union corps assaulted and captured the entrenched picket lines in their respective fronts, which had been weakened by the loss of men drawn off for the assault on Fort Stedman. Casualties of the battle: Union 950, Confederates 2,900. The loss of the Battle of Fort Stedman was a devastating blow for Lee’s army, and led directly to the end of the war.

Grant had provided a preliminary estimate of casualties to the newspapers on March 26, but these proved to be incomplete. The next day, he set the record straight, giving Meade reliable casualty figures for the crucial engagement. Autograph letter signed, City Point, Va., to Meade, reporting to him the losses of the Confederates in the attack on Fort Stedman. "The Chronicle of yesterday gives my dispatches differently from what they were written. At the time they were written I had no estimate of our losses except in the 9th Corps and placed our loss then at about 800, probably less. The enemy's loss in front of the Corps, I estimate at 3000 all told killed, wounded & captured. I was not aware at the time the published dispatches were written that the 6th Corps had accomplished anything or lost anything. Subsequent dispatches which will probably be published in todays papers, give the latest information, corrected so far as I know it." These figures on Confederate losses proved to be the final ones. We obtained this letter from a descendant of a member of Grant's staff, and it has never before been offered for sale.

Grant then cut Lee’s final supply line into Petersburg on April 1 in the Battle of Five Forks, causing Lee to evacuate Petersburg the next day. Also, on April 2 President Davis, his Cabinet, and the Confederate defenders abandoned Richmond and fled south on the last open railroad line. Lee planned to regroup his army at Amelia Courthouse, about 40 miles west of Richmond and Petersburg, where rations would arrive from Richmond, then intending to head south to effect a link-up with Johnston. Grant decided on a course of pursuit to cut Lee off, surround him, and force a surrender. The tactic was successful, and Lee surrendered on April 9.