April 1, 1865—Robert E. Lee called on Major General George Pickett to save the Army of Northern Virginia, just as he had assigned him the task of breaking the center of the Union line at Gettysburg. But at the Battle of Five Forks, Pickett’s failure was more catastrophic—and more personally embarrassing—for it left Richmond vulnerable to Northern troops. Pickett may have reached “the high-water mark of the Confederacy” on July 3, 1863, but on April Fools’ Day nearly two years later he produced its Waterloo.
What actually happened at Five Forks—and the larger relationship of Lee and Pickett—was only rumored until after Pickett’s death 10 years after the disaster. Subsequent accounts from Civil War veterans and historians chipped away at the romantic cavalier image of Pickett, revealing a commander unprepared when the Union broke the back of Lee’s resistance.
As the winter of 1864-5 drew to a close, Ulysses S. Grant saw in the declining manpower of the Confederate Army a golden opportunity to end the siege of Petersburg, capture the rebel capital, Richmond, and bring the war to a conclusion. He instructed General Philip Sheridan to move south and west of Petersburg, falling on Lee’s right flank while cutting the rebels’ access to a key supply line to the city, the Southside Railroad.
Typically, Lee tried an aggressive maneuver—an attack on the Union at Fort Stedman—but when Grant’s vise remained as strong as ever, the Southern commander-in-chief ordered Pickett to halt the advance of the Army of the Potomac. After a day’s marching, Pickett repulsed Sheridan’s cavalry at the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House. But, with still more Northern troops on the way, Pickett retreated back to Five Forks, waiting in the rainy predawn darkness to see what would transpire next.
The next day, Sheridan’s hopes of striking at Pickett before he had a chance to breathe were set back when Major General Gouverneur Warren couldn’t get his men positioned soon enough to attack. “Little Phil” was so hotheaded that he had even gotten into an argument with a superior, George Meade, the year before, so he certainly wasn’t going to accept Warren’s plausible excuses (bad maps, muddy roads) for the delay. He relieved Warren, effectively short-circuiting the career of a hero of Gettysburg.
If only Sheridan could have seen how this momentary lapse actually worked to his advantage! Maybe Pickett was too exhausted to think straight after the last several furious days of marching and fighting. Whatever the case, when Pickett didn’t see action developing early on April Fools Day, he decided it was just fine to accept an invitation to a wonderful Virginia tradition: a shad bake.
There were several problems with this:
* Pickett, General Thomas Rosser, and cavalry commander General Fitzhugh Lee (Robert’s nephew) took off without telling anyone where they were going.
What actually happened at Five Forks—and the larger relationship of Lee and Pickett—was only rumored until after Pickett’s death 10 years after the disaster. Subsequent accounts from Civil War veterans and historians chipped away at the romantic cavalier image of Pickett, revealing a commander unprepared when the Union broke the back of Lee’s resistance.
As the winter of 1864-5 drew to a close, Ulysses S. Grant saw in the declining manpower of the Confederate Army a golden opportunity to end the siege of Petersburg, capture the rebel capital, Richmond, and bring the war to a conclusion. He instructed General Philip Sheridan to move south and west of Petersburg, falling on Lee’s right flank while cutting the rebels’ access to a key supply line to the city, the Southside Railroad.
Typically, Lee tried an aggressive maneuver—an attack on the Union at Fort Stedman—but when Grant’s vise remained as strong as ever, the Southern commander-in-chief ordered Pickett to halt the advance of the Army of the Potomac. After a day’s marching, Pickett repulsed Sheridan’s cavalry at the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House. But, with still more Northern troops on the way, Pickett retreated back to Five Forks, waiting in the rainy predawn darkness to see what would transpire next.
The next day, Sheridan’s hopes of striking at Pickett before he had a chance to breathe were set back when Major General Gouverneur Warren couldn’t get his men positioned soon enough to attack. “Little Phil” was so hotheaded that he had even gotten into an argument with a superior, George Meade, the year before, so he certainly wasn’t going to accept Warren’s plausible excuses (bad maps, muddy roads) for the delay. He relieved Warren, effectively short-circuiting the career of a hero of Gettysburg.
If only Sheridan could have seen how this momentary lapse actually worked to his advantage! Maybe Pickett was too exhausted to think straight after the last several furious days of marching and fighting. Whatever the case, when Pickett didn’t see action developing early on April Fools Day, he decided it was just fine to accept an invitation to a wonderful Virginia tradition: a shad bake.
There were several problems with this:
* Pickett, General Thomas Rosser, and cavalry commander General Fitzhugh Lee (Robert’s nephew) took off without telling anyone where they were going.
* The shad bake took place in Hatcher’s Run, which was surrounded by so much woodland that it muffled the sounds of gunfire and cannon from any nearby battlefield. (Rumors circulated that whiskey at the celebration didn’t keep the generals' senses alert, either--but that's impossible to verify.)
* The morning of April 1, Pickett had received a note from Lee that, in contrast to the Confederate commander’s sometimes ambiguous orders to subordinates earlier in the war, this time could hardly have been more explicit: “Hold Five Forks at all hazards. Protect road to Ford’s Depot and prevent Union forces from striking the Southside Railroad.” In other words, this was the worst possible time for Pickett to be away from his troops, and he should have known better.
* No matter how adept the junior commanders were in placing troops, they could not coordinate their actions without guidance from above.
The Federals didn’t attack until 4 pm, but by the time Pickett made it back the fighting was already halfway over. Sheridan’s total of killed and wounded—800—exceeded Pickett’s (600), but the real story lay in the prisoner count—2,400 men that Pickett and Lee could ill afford to lose.
The loss at Five Forks meant that Lee had to abandon the defense of Petersburg and Richmond. His last desperate hope—to flee west—ended a little more than a week later, in the surrender at Appomatox Courthouse.
After Lee’s movement had been cut off at Sayler’s Creek, he relieved Pickett—now down to only 60 men under his command—and two other generals from further duty. The two other generals received their notices, but not Pickett. Lee, not happy to see Pickett still around headquarters, reacted with an asperity rarely seen in a general known for courtliness: “I thought that man was no longer with the army.”
Though Pickett would serve as a pallbearer at Lee’s funeral five years after the war, Five Forks capped a relationship that had been quietly, steadily deteriorating since Gettysburg. Lee had deep-sixed Pickett’s post-battle report on Gettysburg, troubled that it blamed everyone but himself (including other generals who’d fallen on the field of battle) for the losses sustained by his division. In contrast, Pickett was angered that Lee had ordered a charge so futile that he was left with no division afterward. The last, awkward meeting of the two men, after the war, was followed by a typical Pickett remark to an associate that the “old man” had gotten his troops killed at Gettysburg.
George Pickett had cut quite the picture during the war with his tailored uniform, gold spurs, and long brown hair that curled at the shoulders. One person taken by this image was LaSalle (Sally) Corbell, who ended up marrying him.
Sally Pickett was the Southern counterpart to the widow of another soldier involved in Five Forks, the Union’s George Armstrong Custer. Both Libby Custer and Sally Pickett would see their husbands die within a year of each other—Pickett in 1875 from scarlet fever, Custer in 1876 at Little Big Horn. Both commanders, known for their impetuousness as well as their tonsorial styles, were fools for love, and their wives repaid their love—all the way until their own deaths in the 1930s, a half century after their husbands'--by writings that fiercely defended their men.
In one respect, however, Sally had her Northern counterpart beat: Her memoirs, swallowed whole at the time, now bear, in spots, the strong whiff of fiction. Consider the following:
* In an attempt to stake out her claim as the “Child Bride of the Confederacy”—supposedly marrying Pickett at age 15—Sally sliced five years off her age.
* She presented her husband as a largely simple, pure man, but he was known to imbibe, at least some--and, years after the fact, a rumor took hold that he could did even more than that.
* She claimed that none other than Abraham Lincoln had helped her husband get admitted into West Point, not bothering to explain how Lincoln—an Illinois Congressman at the time—would become interested in a Virginian with no connection to his district.
* She published a book of letters supposedly written by her husband, but they are so filled with facts that the general could not have known at the time that, historians have concluded, Sally herself must have written them instead.
Now that, folks, is love.
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