At the request of Theodore P. Savas of Savas Beatie, I have prepared this Introduction for readers to understand the circumstances that brought about the research and writing behind these Five Forks chapters. They originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in Volume 2 of The Petersburg Campaign: The Western Front Battles, September 1864-April 1865. The first volume of this publication, as readers recall, was subtitled The Eastern Front Battles, June – August, 1864 (2012).
Good fortune smiled on my future when I entered on duty with the National Park Service (NPS) on September 28, 1955. It was then I began my forty-year career in the NPS as an historian at Vicksburg National Military Park. It was one of the then 179 significant natural, historical, and recreational areas administered by the NPS, a bureau created by Congress on August 25, 1916.
A short four years before, in December 1951, Conrad L. Wirth had become the service’s fifth director. On doing so he found the NPS units and their facilities overwhelmed by its “admiring public.” Rising personal incomes, the 40-hour week, and the family car “had fueled a postwar travel boom for families young and old, and the national parks, it seemed, bore the brunt” of the surge. Visits to the parks soared from six million in 1942 to thirty-three million in 1950, and to seventy-two million in 1960. Park facilities and roads were overwhelmed.
Wirth’s response was the MISSION-66 initiative, “a 10-year program to upgrade facilities, staffing, and resource management throughout the system by the 50th anniversary of the NPS.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower endorsed the program while Congress was likewise enthused, appropriating more than a billion dollars over the next ten years for MISSION-66 improvements.
Coincident with MISSION-66 planning, the NPS was confronted by the approach of the Centennial of the Civil War. Since President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Orders of 1933, the NPS had become responsible for the parks and monuments administered by the War Department. These included thirteen Civil War battlefields, forts, and sites.
Encouraged by the burgeoning visitation during the mid-1950s to its flagship Civil War parks, Director Wirth worked with citizen-action groups that successfully lobbied for passage of a federally funded Civil War Centennial Commission (CWCC). This paid off on September 7, 1957, when President Eisenhower signed such a bill into law. In both the legislation and discussions between the CWCC staff headed by Maj. Gen. U. S. Grant III, President Grant’s grandson, and Director Wirth, the NPS was “authorized to undertake as part of its MISSION-66 program” the further preservation and development of such battlefields and sites, at such times and in such manners as will insure that a fitting observation may be held at such battlefields or sites on the centennial of the event commemorated. A linkage between the MISSION-66 planning, implementation, and projects was thus established.
At this time, all the services for Civil War battlefield parks, except Antietam and Gettysburg, were located in the Southeast Region headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. To schedule and implement planning to insure that the SE Region could meet Director Wirth’s commitment, a meeting of the Washington and Regional managers, planners, and affected park superintendents and historians was held in Rossville, Georgia, at the headquarters of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. The meeting took place in the first week of September 1958. These superintendents brought with them the approved MISSION-66 documents to support approved construction, staffing, goals, etc., at their respective parks and to have them in place by the respective centennial dates. Among the key documents needed to guide planners were missing items in the parks’ Master Plans, i.e., Historical Base Maps, Troop Movement Maps, etc. and supporting documented narratives.
It was agreed that I would prepare drafts of Historical Base Maps and Troop Movement Maps in those SE Region parks that did not have them and forward drafts to the Eastern Office of Design and Construction (EODC), then located in Philadelphia, to finalize and include in the subject park’s Master Plans. To accomplish this assignment, my supervisors transferred me to the SE Regional Office, but I continued working out of the Vicksburg park.
The reason I was promoted and given this plum assignment was an earlier detail I accomplished for the Washington Office. In early December 1956, I had joined a high-profile park service planning team representing the Washington and SE Regional Offices and EODC in determining the boundaries of Pea Ridge National Military Park. This Arkansas park had been authorized by Congress on July 20, 1956. The act, signed by President Eisenhower, provided that the NPS would study the area and designate the boundaries, and the state would acquire the land. My work on this study team was commended by my associates, most of whom had joined the NPS in the mid-1930s.
As Regional Research Historian (RRH), in 1959, I completed drafts for Fort Donelson, Stones River, Vicksburg, and the units of Richmond National Battlefield Park associated with the Seven Days’ Battles. The surveyed TMM and Historical Base Maps, drawn by EODC’s cartographers, were approved and incorporated in the subject parks’ Master Plans. Documented materials in support of the Master Plan drawings were also prepared. Some of these have been published (Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Richmond).
In late June of 1960, my horizons expanded. On April 22 of that year, President Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing the establishment of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield Park. Like the earlier Pea Ridge legislation, it mandated that Missouri must first acquire the necessary lands that would be defined by a boundary set by an NPS study team. The Washington Office assigned me to the team study group, which would be carried out by the NPS’s Midwest Region headquartered in Omaha.
I spent a week at the battlefield and returned to Vicksburg to prepare the key planning documents and Historical Base Maps, draft TMM, and a documented history of the battles. With these in hand I met on-site with a park planner from the Omaha office. During the next several days we walked the battlefield, met with local committees and landowners, and came up with a recommended boundary map that was reduced by several hundred acres by Regional Director Howard Baker.
The state moved ahead with land purchases and by the centennial date of the battle, August 10, 1961, before a large audience Wilson’s Creek became a unit of the NPS. The decade and a half following the successful implementation of MISSION-66 saw much progress on the development of the new park in southwest Missouri. A tour road and trails were built, the Ray House restored and opened for visitation, and a Visitor Center constructed. To enhance the story of the park’s interpretive programs, cooperative and friends’ associations were formed.
In 1975, one of these decided to publish a documented narrative history I had prepared for in-house use fifteen years before. Re-titled The Battle of Wilson’s Creek and edited by Park Ranger David Whitman, it included the six Troop Movement Maps along with period drawings selected by the editor. For the next quarter century until the publication by the University of North Carolina Press of William Garrett Piston’s and Richard W. Hatcher’s critically acclaimed Wilson’s Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It, my The Battle of Wilson’s Creek remained a popular title at the Wilson’s Creek Visitor’s Center.
My connection with Petersburg National Battlefield as Regional Research Historian began in the early 1960s. The park staff at that time, as a centennial project, believed that the Gilliams’ (Joe Pete and his wife) might be interested in the preservation by the NPS of their large family farm that had been in the Gilliam family since well before the Revolutionary War. The family farm, house, and outbuildings, known as “Burnt Quarters,” were intimately associated with 1781 Revolutionary War actions in and around Petersburg and Dinwiddie County and the Civil War battle of Five Forks, frequently referred to as the Waterloo of the Confederacy.
Senior NPS management in Washington and the Richmond Regional Offices familiar with my intimate involvement with the Pea Ridge and Wilson’s Creek boundary study teams once again called on me. I was tasked to prepare a documented narrative history of the Five Forks battle and supporting Troop Movement Maps. Again working under a tight deadline, I prepared the subject documents. Although Congress passed supporting legislation signed by President John F. Kennedy on August 24, 1962, no further actions to include a Five Forks unit in Petersburg National Battlefield came because the Gilliams had a change of heart and decided not to sell Burnt Quarters. The narrative history and the draft Troop Movement Maps went back into the files.
Some two years later in 1964, with MISSION-66 projects being implemented at Petersburg with construction of a Visitor Center and a new tour road on schedule, I returned to the park still wearing my hat as Regional Research Historian. I was directed to prepare a comprehensive series of Troop Movement Maps and supporting documentation for the June 1864 assaults on Petersburg and the major battles associated with the nine and one-half month siege. Draft TMM overlays were completed and keyed to period large-scale maps prepared by Union engineers during the postwar years, and documented narrative reports were prepared for the major Petersburg battles. Unfortunately, salient centennial dates for Petersburg actions passed, and insofar as that park’s projects were concerned, they no longer commanded high priority. The draft Troop Movement Map overlays were not forwarded to the EODC to be finalized and were consigned to the park files, where they remain to this day. The narrative histories suffered the fate common to all in-house reports through the mid-1960s: they were typed with one hard copy and five tissue copies, the hard copy being filed at the park and the tissues distributed to appropriate offices. The Five Forks narrative history and Troop Movement Maps, however, enjoyed a better fate.
In 1971, Christopher Calkins, a young and dynamic historian, joined the NPS, first as a volunteer and then seasonally at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. Six years later he transferred to the Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania National Military Park, where he served a four-year stint under the supervision of Robert K. Krick, who possessed a well-deserved talent as mentor to a number of young historians who have made their mark in the NPS. Chris’ next stop was in 1981 at Petersburg National
Battlefield, where he began a brilliant and productive 28-year career that saw him rise in the hierarchy to the park’s Chief of Interpretation.
Chris had not been at Petersburg long when, in cooperation with Harold E. Howard, he rescued my 1962 Five Forks manuscript from the park’s files. After clearing it with me, Chris updated the report, used the draft Troop Movement Maps to prepare supplementary maps, and selected illustrations. The manuscript was made available to a larger audience in 1985 when it was published by H. E. Howard, Inc. as The Battle of Five Forks, part of the Virginia Battles and Leaders Series. Both Chris and I were listed as co-authors.
By the late 1980s, Joe Pete Gilliam and his wife had died, and battlefield preservation had become a major public policy issue. Chris Calkins and his wife had become close friends with the Gilliam heirs. In their conversations, in which The Conservation Fund became involved, an agreement was reached for the heirs to convey more than 900 acres of their property to The Conservation Fund, while granting a preservation easement on much of the remainder. In a fitting ceremony held onsite on March 29, 1991, at which representatives from the NPS, Conservation Fund, the heirs, and the Secretary of the Interior participated, the 900-acre tract consisting of most of the historic battlefield was conveyed to the United States as part of Petersburg National Battlefield.
The in-house Petersburg draft overlays of the subject Troop Movement Maps and the hard copies of supporting narratives, meanwhile, remained in the park files from the mid-1960s to the present day. During this four-decade period the park staff used these major reports to support planning and interpretive missions and made them available as a library resource to serious students and researchers.
It was in these park files that my original narrative reports on the major battles of the Petersburg Campaign were discovered by Bryce A. Suderow, Civil War historian, bibliophile, and avid researcher. I met Bryce in the mid-1980s when I spoke to a gathering of Civil War Roundtable members of Montgomery County, Maryland. After the meeting a group of us rendezvoused at the Zullo and Van Sickles bookstore. Because of a common interest in Civil War sites, research, and pertinent National Archives Record Groups, in subsequent years I got to know and respect Bryce’s skills with excellent credentials as a Civil War researcher. Therefore I was more than a little surprised some five years later when Bryce contacted me following a recent visit he had made to the Petersburg park and its library. There, he had discovered the hard copies and draft overlays of my aforementioned 1960s Petersburg reports, including my lengthy work on the Five Forks Campaign, and supporting Troop Movement Maps. Familiar with the Petersburg Campaign, Bryce suggested a cooperative venture. He would update my original histories and get them published to satisfy readers interested in the Civil War, especially with the Civil War Sesquicentennial approaching. I told him that was a good idea, but with my battlefield tours and speaking engagements I had “a full platter.” But, I added, if he wanted to undertake the project, which I saw as a major challenge updating and editing the whole into a well organized and cohesive publication, I wished him well. And then there was still the issue of finding a good publisher.
As readers will discover, Suderow met his initial challenge in a masterful, thoughtful, and timely fashion. The second hurdle was more time consuming and difficult, but he finally found a perfect match when he contacted Savas Beatie, a specialty history press whose forte is military history books spanning the nation’s wars from the American Revolution through the present-day. More important, Savas Beatie had previously edited and published a pair of NPS in-house reports as full-length books. Both were originally prepared as in-house Historic Resource Studies to support archaeological and interpretive projects being undertaken at two Revolutionary War sites for the Bicentennial. The first, authored byJerome A. Greene, was The Guns oflndependence: The Siege ofYorktown, 1781, which rolled off the Savas Beatie press in 2005. The second was by John F. Luzader entitled Saratoga: A Military History of the Decisive Campaign of the American Revolution, which hit the market in 2008. Both are handsome hardbacks well-illustrated with excellent maps and illustrations. Better yet, they were widely applauded by reviewers and national book club selections.
My association with Theodore P. “Ted” Savas, managing director of Savas Beatie, dates to the early 1980s with his attendance at Jerry Russell’s Annual Congress of Civil Roundtables. Inspired by what he saw and learned at the Congresses, Savas joined David B. Woodbury, a fellow Californian, to found Regimental Studies, Inc., a non-partisan, non-profit corporation with two goals: First, to encourage further research of Civil War unit histories, and second, to raise funds for preservation and the protection of neglected Civil War sites. The first copy of their quarterly journal Civil War Regiments: A Journal of the American Civil War came off the press in 1990. Besides authoring the Introductions for both the special Vicksburg issue (Vol. 2, No. 1) and the Red River Campaign issue (Vol. 4, No. 1), I also wrote a 25,000-word definitive study of Jeb Stuart’s “Ride Around McClellan” for inclusion in a 1993 book of scholarly essays called The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: Yorktown to the Seven Days, part of the Savas Woodbury “Campaign Chronicles” series. The Stuart monograph was an expanded version of an in-house study I had prepared for Richmond NBP decades ago in 1959 as a regional research historian.
When Savas and Woodbury amicably ended their partnership in the mid- 1990s, Savas continued expanding the operation as Savas Publishing Company and sold the publishing house in 2001. By this time the publishing bug had bitten Ted hard, and after a couple years off writing his own books and coaching his son’s little league baseball teams, he was contacted by Russell H. “Cap” Beatie, a successful New York City trial lawyer and Civil War aficionado, to re-enter the world of independent historical publishing. Together, Savas and Beatie—who had authored Road to Manassas (Cooper Square, 1961) and was himself a first-rate scholar and writer before his untimely death in 2013— formed Savas Beatie LLC in late 2003. Beatie, who had originally been under contract to produce a multi-volume series on the Army of the Potomac for Savas Publishing before that company was sold, published a wide-ranging study of the army’s leaders and their decisions in The Army of the Potomac: Birth of Command, November 1860 — September 1861, Vol. 1 (DaCapo, 2002), followed by McClellan Takes Command, September 1861 — February 1862, Vol. 2 (DaCapo, 2004). The third volume appeared in 2007, this time under the Savas Beatie imprint, entitled McClellan’s First Campaign, March — May 1862. After reading an advance copy of Beatie’s work I noted in a blurb that he had researched and authored “a tour-de-force.”
I want to take this opportunity to thank research extraordinaire Bryce Suderow and our publisher Savas Beatie for undertaking what I deemed to be an impossible mission: editing, designing, and publishing in a handsome book format the series of NPS reports I had prepared so long ago for internal use by NPS managers and planners to help meet their goals at Petersburg National Battlefield.
Christopher Calkins, who until his retirement from the staff of Petersburg National Battlefield is deserving of special acknowledgment. As noted above, Chris was behind the publication in 1985 of The Battle of Five Forks (a different version of my in-house Petersburg report than the one that appears here or in The Petersburg Campaign, volume 2). More important, Chris played a vital role in March 1991 bringing closer Superintendent Brooks’ early 1960s dream of adding a Five Forks unit to Petersburg National Battlefield.
Savas Beatie arranged to edit, design, add photos, and original maps to enhance the text and provide context for readers. Extracting and preparing the Five Forks portion, together with the VI Corps followup breakthrough chapter, as a digital option makes this important aspect of the dramas closing out the Petersburg Campaign even more widely available. The lengthy chapters covering the Five Forks “Campaign” as it should be known, were reviewed by Five Forks expert Mike McCarthy, who made a number of observations large and small based upon sources discovered after Ed prepared his original study. Mike has recently finished his own full-length study of this important campaign, which I am pleased to learn will also be published by Savas Beatie.
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During the last six months of the Petersburg Campaign, General Grant launched five offensives. Two of them—Peebles’ Farm and Burgess Mill—were attempts to seize the South Side Railroad. One, the fighting at Hatcher’s Run, was an attempt to capture the supply wagons traversing the Boydton Plank road and delivering supplies from the broken Weldon Railroad north to Petersburg. The other two offensives consisted of Federal assaults against entrenched Confederates. The Eighth Offensive also included a Federal assault, but was in reality a mixed bag of four separate battles that should collectively be known as the Five Forks Campaign.
Grant ordered General Phil Sheridan to Five Forks, an important road junction a short distance below the South Side Railroad, with the hope that threatening the railroad would induce the Confederates to come out of their entrenchments so he could defeat them in the open. General Robert E. Lee assembled a force under George Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee to defeat Sheridan and end the threat to the railroad. Sheridan was still at Dinwiddie Court House when the Confederates struck him. They came close to defeating him on March 31 at Dinwiddie Court House, after which Pickett fell back to Five Forks when Warren’s V Corps moved to reinforce Sheridan. The next day, April 1, Sheridan and Warren attacked and defeated Pickett at Five Forks. In the other two battles on March 29 and 31, Lee attacked Warren at the Lewis Farm and White Oak Road, respectively, when the Federals threatened R. H. Anderson’s line along the White Oak Road.
After the fall of Richmond and Petersburg on April 2, the Confederates withdrew west to get around and south of Grant’s pursuing Federals with an eye toward joining Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s command in North Carolina. The effort was unsuccessful for a number of reasons, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House.
And now, it is on to Five Forks!
Edwin C. Bearss
Historian Emeritus
National Park Service