| Battle of North Anna | |
|---|---|
| Campaign | Overland |
| Date | May 23–26, 1864 |
| Location | Spotsylvania Court House to Hanover Junction, central Virginia |
| Combatants | |
| United States | Confederacy |
| Commanders | |
| Ulysses S. Grant | Robert E. Lee |
| Casualties | |
| 1,973 (223 killed, 1460 wounded, 290 captured/missing) | 2,017 (304 killed, 1513 wounded, 200 captured/missing) |
The Battle of North Anna was fought May 23–26, 1864, during the American Civil War (1861–1865). It came three days after the bloody Battle of Spotsylvania Court House during the Overland Campaign of 1864, the spring offensive in which the Union army's new general-in-chief, Ulysses S. Grant, stubbornly pursued Confederate general Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia all the way to the Confederate capital of Richmond. A number of small engagements along the North Anna River in central Virginia rather than a single pitched fight, the battle marked one of many instances when Lee managed to outmaneuver his more powerful foe. Still, the Battle of North Anna highlighted the exhaustion of both armies and led Grant to believe that the Confederates were nearing defeat.
Title: Overland Campaign
Source: Hal Jespersen's Civil War Maps
More informationAfter the heavy fighting at Spotsylvania,
Grant sought to lure the Army of Northern Virginia from its entrenchments and
determined to use the Army of the
Potomac's Second Corps, under Winfield Scott Hancock, as bait. Early on
May 21, Hancock began a march eastward, screened by a slapdash collection of
cavalry under Alfred A. T. Torbert. Around nine o'clock in the morning, Torbert's
men encountered Confederate infantry traveling north, alerting Lee of the
movement. Lee assumed that Grant was attempting to flank him and ordered his own
infantry east with orders to concentrate north of Hanover Junction along the
highly defensible banks of the North Anna River.
Lee's quick reaction put Grant in a bind. He had not expected the entire Army of Northern Virginia to take off after the lone Second Corps, but he had no choice but to react to his Confederate counterpart. (Grant was hardly the first general to lose the initiative to Lee.) By midnight on May 21, both armies were in motion toward the southeast. Most Confederate units had consolidated along the North Anna River by May 22, and Grant's men arrived by May 23.
Fighting began on May 23. Lee had arranged his lines in an inverted V–shaped entrenchment with the apex protecting Ox Ford across the North Anna River. To his left, Union troops could cross at a shallow part of the river near Jericho Mill, while on his right Chesterfield Bridge provided an opportune crossing spot. Nevertheless, Lee's line remained strong because crossing would force Grant to divide his forces, while Lee could shift men efficiently along the interior lines of the V–shape. On the afternoon of May 23, the Union Fifth Corps (commanded by General Gouverneur K. Warren) managed to cross the river at Jericho Mill, while the Union Second Corps brushed aside defenders on the north side of the river at Chesterfield Bridge. The stage was set for the next day's fighting.
Title: Battle of North Anna
Source: Library of Congress Prints &
Photographs Division
More informationOn May 24, Union forces roamed around the
south side of the North Anna River, initially encountering little to no
resistance. Hancock's Second Corps moved across the river at Chesterfield Bridge
and confronted little opposition. Union spirits ran high in hopes that Lee had
left the area. Those spirits fell when, at three o'clock, Hancock's troops ran
into Confederates near Hanover Junction on Lee's right. At first, Union general
John Gibbon thought little of these forces, and kept feeding in men in an attempt
to brush them out of his way. It soon became apparent, however, that these were not
stragglers but members of Lee's army. A similar situation prevailed at Ox Ford,
where Union troops launched a futile assault against Confederate entrenchments.
Confronted by strong Confederate positions, Union forces ceased their attacks. On
May 25, Grant set his troops to work tearing up rail lines and damaging
Confederate infrastructure. After the rather low-intensity fighting, Grant once
again decided to move east on the evening of May 26 and morning of May 27.
Some Confederates maintained after the war that illness had prevented Lee from ordering an attack to annihilate the Union Second Corps. In Lee's Lieutenants (1942–1944), the historian Douglas Southall Freeman wrote of Lee's "intestinal ailment that had the usual effect of sharpening his temper and shaking his control of it." And he dramatized a scene in which Lee strongly rebuked his Third Corps commander, A. P. Hill, for not attacking in the tradition of Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson: "Why," Lee demanded of Hill, "did you not do as Jackson would have done—thrown your whole force upon those people and driven them back?"
Contemporary evidence fails to support the idea that Lee's health affected the battle; however, the Confederate high command clearly was not itself. Lee's most trusted lieutenant, James Longstreet, had been wounded earlier in the month at the Battle of the Wilderness. Like Lee, Hill was ill. And the Second Corps commander, Richard S. Ewell, had lost Lee's trust at Spotsylvania and was about to be transferred to Richmond. Regardless of why Lee seemed content to rest inside his entrenchments, Grant took the fact to mean that the Army of Northern Virginia was on its last legs; his strategy of wearing down the Confederate force had worked. This supposition would bear bitter fruit for the Army of the Potomac a week later at the bloody Battle of Cold Harbor.
First published: February 11, 2009 | Last modified: April 5, 2011
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