Qualla: Battle of Hatcher's Run

Battle of Hatcher's Run: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KepiBrit, CC BY 4.0. The only Civil War battle fought in Virginia during a February happened on a sawdust pile. The mill was long gone, burned or abandoned, only the mound of accumulated sawdust still rising out of a clearing in dense woods near Dabney's Mill. For three days starting February 5, 1865, men of the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia fought back and forth across that clearing, in mud and freezing rain and finally a winter storm with gale-force winds, snow, hail, and sleet that left wounded men to freeze in place where they fell. It was the eighth in a series of Union offensives around Petersburg that winter, designed to stretch Confederate defenses thinner and to cut their dwindling supply lines. By the time the storm broke and the fighting stopped, the Union line had extended four miles further west and General Lee's army had a problem that would not be solvable. Two months later he would surrender at Appomattox.

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Image: KepiBrit | CC BY 4.0

Battle of Hatcher's Run: Grant's Eighth Offensive

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KepiBrit, CC BY 4.0. Ulysses S. Grant had been pinning Robert E. Lee against Petersburg and Richmond since June 1864, slowly extending his lines westward to force the Confederates to spread their dwindling forces. In early February, intelligence reached him that Confederate supply wagons were running...

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Image: KepiBrit | CC BY 4.0

Battle of Hatcher's Run: The Confederates Attack

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Library of Congress, Public domain. Lee learned of the Union movement while attending Sunday church in Petersburg. He rode back to his lines and met with John B. Gordon and A. P. Hill. The threat was Humphreys' Union II Corps entrenching about 1,000 yards south of the main Confederate works near Armstrong's Mill, o...

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Image: Library of Congress | Public domain

Battle of Hatcher's Run: The Sawdust Pile

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KepiBrit, CC BY 4.0. The next day, February 6, Meade ordered Warren's V Corps to advance up Dabney's Mill Road. Pegram's Confederate division had unaccountably split, sending two brigades south while leaving one in the works around the Crow house. Around 1:30 p.m. the Union cavalry under David Gregg ...

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Image: KepiBrit | CC BY 4.0

Battle of Hatcher's Run: The Great Skedaddle

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KepiBrit, CC BY 4.0. What the Union soldiers called the great skedaddle followed. The Federal line buckled, then broke. Panic-stricken men ran back through the woods toward the safety of the Union earthworks at Hatcher's Run, chased by jubilant Confederates for more than a mile. Many of the Union sol...

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Image: KepiBrit | CC BY 4.0

Battle of Hatcher's Run: What It Cost, What It Won

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Library of Congress, Public domain. Union casualties at Hatcher's Run numbered around 1,500. Confederate casualties were approximately 1,000, including a brigadier general, John Pegram, killed at the head of his men. Hetty Cary was a widow at 28, having buried her husband three weeks after their wedding. Pegram was...

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Image: Library of Congress | Public domain