The Confederate Picket Line

The Confederate Picket Line. Petersburg Battlefields. , "There is every indication that a heavy force is being massed in our front, and if a charge is made, this line cannot possibly be held by these few men." , , Unidentified North Carolina picket, CSA, "Nothing could be seen, nothing could be heard, to show that 14,000 troops in one solid wedge were swiftly moving to the assault of those formidable works ... save the sound of a deep distant rustling." , , Col. Hazard Stevens, Sixth Corps Staff Officer, USA, A thin scattering of sentries waited behind the new Confederate picket line in the pre-dawn gloom of April 2. In some places these men crouched in picket posts, small, half-moon-shaped earthworks, while along other sections of the line, the soldiers knelt behind more conventional linear works. Their job was to delay any serious assault against the main defenses, a task that would prove hopeless that morning., Dawn barely illuminated the desolate landscape when Gen. Horatio G. Wright authorized the attack to commence. Capt. Romeo H. Start, 3rd Vermont Battery, pulled the lanyard on his gun at Fort Fisher, the signal for three divisions of Union troops to arise and move forward. "It was a great relief, a positive lifting of a load of misery to be at last let at them," thought one soldier as the great blue wave enveloped the Confederate pickets. In a few deadly moments the Federals reached the main Confederate earthworks and in forty five minutes it was over. At 5:15 A.M. on April 2, United States flags waved over the Confederate defenses, marking the end of the 292-day stalemate. Richmond and Petersburg were evacuated that night, and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox was but one week away., (Captions), Col. Thomas W. Hyde led the troops that crossed this ground on the morning of April 2, 1865. He commanded a brigade in the Second Division of the Sixth Corps. - Courtesy Library of Congress, Gen. James H. Lane commanded four North Carolina regiments directly in the path of the Sixth Corps attack. Lane survived the assault, but scores of his men were captured and others killed or wounded that fateful morning. , Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, The Sixth Corps attack that rolled over this ground on April 2, 1865, was one of the largest assaults of the Civil War, and, with the resultant fall of the Confederate capital, one of the most consequential as well.