Battle on the Skirmish Line

Battle on the Skirmish Line. May 24, 1864 2:00 - 4:00pm. Grant misinterpreted Lee’s withdrawal on May 23 and 24 as Confederate weakness and ordered the Army of the Potomac to brush aside any scattered Rebel resistance and advance to Richmond. Major General Ambrose E. Burnside received orders to move his Ninth Corps across the North Anna at Ox Ford and connect the two wings of the army as they advanced. Burnside quickly found the ford so strongly held that a crossing was impossible. Shortly after noon, attempting to flank the Southern defenders, he dispatched Ledlie’s brigade upstream to take the ford from the south bank., Units of the Fifth Corps led by Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford, supported Burnside’s advance but ran directly into the sharpshooter battalions of Weisiger’s Virginia and Colonel John C.C. Sanders’ Alabama brigades. The opposing forces clashed about 400 yards in front of these trenches and just beyond the tree line indicated on the map. Weisiger’s and Sanders’ 300 sharpshooters held the Union advance for two hours, giving their comrades time to complete the Confederate line., “...we were attacked by the returning Yankee sharpshooters supported by a heavy line of battle...they had underestimated the character of the men before them, and were in turn cut down and driven back, some having been killed within thirty feet of our posts....” Captain John E. Laughton, Jr., Weisiger’s Sharpshooter Battalion, (sidebar) , Presented to the people of the United States by the General Crushed Stone Company. They preserved this battlefield, built the park, and donated it for public use., (captions) , Major General Ambrose E. Burnside , The view from this trench line is similar to what Lee's Confederates saw here in May 1864.