On 5 February 1865 Union cavalry and two infantry corps marched out of the siege lines around Petersburg, Virginia, to strike at the wagon traffic that kept Robert E. Lee's army supplied. The move set off three days of fighting along Hatcher's Run, in cold winter weather, that cost each side about a thousand men or more. Confederate Brigadier General John Pegram, married less than three weeks earlier, was killed on 6 February. When it was over, Ulysses S. Grant's lines reached further west, a step toward the spring campaign that ended the war in Virginia.
The eighth month of the siege
By February 1865 the siege of Petersburg had entered its eighth month. Grant kept stretching his lines westward to force Lee's shrinking army to stretch its own. In early February he aimed a new blow at the Boydton Plank Road, a route by which supply wagons reached Petersburg. The wider campaign is the subject of our article on the siege of Petersburg.1
On 5 February Brigadier General David Gregg's cavalry division rode toward Dinwiddie Court House to intercept wagon trains, while Major General Gouverneur K. Warren's Fifth Corps crossed Hatcher's Run to cover it on the Vaughan Road and two divisions of the Second Corps under Major General Andrew A. Humphreys moved to Armstrong's Mill to cover Warren's right flank. Gregg's raid on the wagon trains came to little.2
Three days of fighting
Late on 5 February Confederate troops of Major General John B. Gordon's and Lieutenant General A. P. Hill's corps attacked Humphreys near Armstrong's Mill. The Union troops had dug in and beat back three assaults. Overnight the Federals were reinforced with two more divisions.3
On 6 February the fighting moved to the Vaughan Road and to Dabney's Mill, a steam sawmill in the woods. Elements of Pegram's division attacked Gregg's cavalry on the Vaughan Road as it returned from its raid, and when Warren pushed a reconnaissance forward toward Dabney's Mill he was attacked by the divisions of Pegram and Major General William Mahone. Pegram was killed in the action; the National Park Service record says he was struck in the heart by a minié ball. The American Battlefield Trust writes that the Union advance was stopped, while the Petersburg battlefield park describes the Confederate drive as halted by Union reinforcements late in the afternoon. On 7 February Union troops struck back, retook their positions and drove the Confederates back inside their main defenses; after dark they pulled back across Hatcher's Run and began extending their lines once more.4
A short marriage
John Pegram was born in Petersburg in 1832 and had fought at Rich Mountain, Chickamauga and the Wilderness before taking over a division in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864. On 19 January 1865 he married Hetty Cary at St. Paul's Church in Richmond, with Jefferson Davis and his wife among the guests. His funeral was held in the same church, and he was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. His younger brother, the artillery officer William Pegram, was killed at Five Forks two months later.5
Who won?
The sources do not agree. The American Battlefield Trust calls the battle inconclusive. The National Park Service sums it up this way: the Confederates had saved the Boydton Plank Road, but the Union had gained a good staging point for future offensives. The Federals extended their siege works to the Vaughan Road crossing of Hatcher's Run.6
The American Battlefield Trust gives 34,517 Union and 13,835 Confederate troops engaged and estimates the casualties at about 1,539 Union and 1,000 Confederate. The two commanders are portrayed in our article on Ulysses S. Grant and our article on Robert E. Lee.7
