Petersburg Battlefields

Petersburg Battlefields. The Sixth Corps Poised for Attack, April 2, 1865. , "Gentlemen we are going to have a h, l of a fight at early daylight ... if any of you have anything to say to your folks, wives, or sweethearts make your story short and get what sleep you can.", Col. James Hubbard, 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery, USA, "Sleep was weighing my eyelids down, and I ... rolled myself up in my blanket by a smoldering fire, and slept to the music of shrieking shot and shell from Yankee batteries.", Corp. Joseph S. Kimbrough. 14th Georgia Infantry, CSA, The Union Sixth Corps bore responsibility for making the dawn attack in this sector. Gen. Horatio G. Wright marshaled some 14,000 men in forty-two infantry regiments and ordered them to move silently from their main line of earthworks to the picket line captured on March 25. Careful planning over a period of several days suggests that Wright considered the operation to be perilous and victory by no means certain., Dozens of Federal cannons unleashed a punishing bombardment on the Confederate lines on the night of April 1 that lasted for nearly three hours. When the guns fell silent, Wright's troops moved as quietly as possible to their designated jump-off points. The soldiers deployed across a front nearly one mile in width, poised to make an assault larger in scale than even the Civil War's most famous attack, Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg., (Photo Captions), Union Gen. George W. Getty commanded the Second Division of the Sixth Corps and led the attack in this sector. Getty's troops made the initial breakthrough on the morning of April 2, 1865. , Courtesy Library of Congress, Gen. Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox commanded the Confederate troops that opposed the Union Sixth Corps on April 2. Only ten regiments of Wilcox's Division covered the mile-wide front across which the Federals attacked that morning. - Courtesy Library of Congress, In the hours before the Sixth Corps attack on April 2, 1865, the fields around you were filled with soldiers wondering what their fate would be.