On 15 June 1864, after slipping his army away from Cold Harbor and across the James River, Ulysses S. Grant sent the Union XVIII Corps under Major General William F. "Baldy" Smith against Petersburg, the railroad hub that supplied Richmond. Only about 2,200 Confederates held the city's eastern defenses, the Dimmock Line. Attacking at seven in the evening, Smith's men, among them a division of US Colored Troops, captured a long stretch of the line in two hours. Then Smith halted for the night, Confederate reinforcements arrived, and the campaign turned into a siege.
Grant turns to Petersburg
After the bloody failure at Cold Harbor, Grant gave up attacking Robert E. Lee's entrenched army head on and turned toward Petersburg, the transportation center south of Richmond whose capture would isolate the Confederate capital. His army crossed the James by boat and pontoon bridge without Lee realizing at first where it was going. Lee kept most of his army near Richmond, leaving General P. G. T. Beauregard with a small force to man Petersburg's ring of earthworks, the Dimmock Line.1
The American Battlefield Trust describes these defenses as ringing the city on three sides for nearly ten miles; on 15 June a scratch force of only 2,200 men held the eastern sector from Battery 1 on the Appomattox River to Battery 16 nearly three miles south. Smith's XVIII Corps, which the National Park Service puts at 14,000 men, crossed the Appomattox from City Point and moved west.2
The long wait and the evening attack
The day began with a fight at Baylor's Farm, where Union cavalry and Brigadier General Edward Hinks's division of US Colored Troops ran into Confederate cavalry; according to the Park Service, the 4th USCT lost some 120 killed and wounded, and the 5th and 22nd USCT captured a Confederate gun. By early afternoon Smith's corps faced the Dimmock Line. Impressed by the earthworks and expecting Winfield Scott Hancock's II Corps at any moment, Smith spent hours scouting and delayed his assault until 7 p.m..3
When it came, the attack went quickly. Union troops used a ravine to get into the rear of Battery 5, and its defenders from the 26th Virginia surrendered; Batteries 3 through 8 soon fell. The Park Service credits Hinks's Black regiments with a large part of the success: the 1st USCT helped take Battery 6, the 22nd USCT stormed Batteries 7 and 8 until it ran out of ammunition, and the 4th USCT and part of the 1st pushed on to Batteries 9 and 10, which the Confederates abandoned. In about two hours the Union had opened a gap some two miles wide in the Dimmock Line.4
A chance lost
The fighting ended around 9 p.m.. Hancock's corps had come up, but Smith decided to wait for daylight, and the American Battlefield Trust concludes that he thereby rejected the opportunity to capture Petersburg that night. Years later Smith explained that he did not know the ground in front of him and that his white troops were exhausted, while his Black troops, flushed with success, could hardly be kept in order, as the Park Service quotes him.5
Beauregard had been telegraphing Lee for days asking for help, and once Lee was convinced of Grant's real aim he rushed reinforcements to Petersburg. Poorly coordinated Union attacks on 16 to 18 June failed, and on the night of the 17th the Confederates fell back to a new line about half a mile closer to the city. The armies settled into trench warfare. As the Trust notes, it would be 291 days before the Union flag flew over Petersburg. The whole siege is told in The Siege of Petersburg, 1864 to 1865: trenches, the Crater and the fall of Richmond.6
