More Hard Fighting and Many More Lives Must Be Lost

This chapter describes the combat on June 16 and 17, 1864 around Petersburg. As fresh Union units arrived, they launched a series of uncoordinated assaults against the new Confederate defenses prepared overnight. The Rebels lost ground but managed in all cases to prevent the Yankees from achieving a decisive breakthrough. Meanwhile north of the Appomattox River on the Bermuda Hundred Peninsula, Benjamin Butler’s army breached the vital transportation links between Richmond and Petersburg. Reinforcements dispatched by Robert E. Lee caused Butler to withdraw his victorious troops and adopt a defensive position, thus squandering the chance to block fresh Southern brigades from reinforcing P.G.T. Beauregard’s beleaguered forces at Petersburg. The chapter also analyzes General Lee’s evolving decision to transfer his army from the Richmond defenses to Petersburg.