Key Facts
- Duration
- March 29 – April 9, 1865 (12 days)
- Confederate losses at Sailor's Creek
- ~7,700 killed or captured
- Richmond–Petersburg front length
- ~40 miles
- Surrender location
- McLean House, Appomattox Court House, Virginia
Strategic Narrative Overview
On March 29, Union forces launched an offensive that shattered Confederate lines. Victories at Five Forks (April 1) and the Breakthrough at Petersburg (April 2) compelled Lee to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond on the night of April 2–3. Lee marched west toward Lynchburg, hoping to resupply and link with Johnston's army in North Carolina. Grant pursued relentlessly, cutting off Confederate supplies and blocking escape routes. A severe defeat at Sailor's Creek on April 6 cost the Confederates roughly 7,700 men.
01 / The Origins
By early 1865, the Richmond–Petersburg campaign had left Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia outnumbered, exhausted, and weakened by months of trench warfare, disease, hunger, and desertion. Grant's Union forces, well-supplied and growing in strength, sought to break Confederate defenses southwest of Petersburg, sever supply lines, and force a decisive conclusion to the war by capturing the Confederate capital at Richmond.
03 / The Outcome
Cornered, outnumbered, and stripped of food and supplies, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House near Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The surrender dissolved the primary Confederate fighting force in the Eastern Theater, effectively ending the Civil War. Confederate government leaders who had fled Richmond scattered, and remaining Southern armies soon capitulated in the weeks that followed.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
1 belligerent
Ulysses S. Grant.
Side B
1 belligerent
Robert E. Lee.
Kinetic Engagement Axis
Scroll horizontally to view full axis. Events plotted relatively.