After the Second Battle of the Weldon Railroad, Federal forces extended their siege line to the south of Petersburg, Virginia. Troops of the Fifth Corps and other elements of the Army of the Potomac under Major-General Gouverneur Warren held a key section of the Weldon line, which connected Petersburg to the North Carolina coast. The Federals destroyed track on the Weldon so it could no longer be used to supply the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia defending Petersburg and Richmond.
General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant, the overall Federal commander, looked to make the Federal hold on the railroad permanent. He wrote Major-General George G. Meade, commanding the Army of the Potomac, “If we can retain hold of the railroad it will be a great advantage.”
To do this, Grant looked to seize Ream’s Station, which was five miles south of Warren’s Federals at Globe Tavern and seven miles south of Petersburg. Grant selected Major-General Winfield Scott Hancock’s Second Corps for this mission. The men of the Second Corps had seen some of the hardest fighting of the war since the Virginia campaign began in May, and they had just finished their grueling operation at Deep Bottom Run, north of the James River.
Hancock’s force consisted of two infantry divisions under Major-General John Gibbon and Brigadier-General Nelson A. Miles, along with Brigadier-General David M. Gregg’s cavalry division. Miles’s troops marched past Warren’s men and arrived at Ream’s on August 23, exhausted from constant marching and fighting. They occupied the fortifications that had been built during the first battle at Ream’s Station in June, and Gregg’s cavalry guarded the infantry as they began wrecking the track.
On the 24th, Gibbon’s division arrived on the scene and relieved Miles’s division on the railroad. Miles’s men had wrecked about three miles of track, and Miles reported to Hancock that his Federals “were fagged out.” Hancock passed this on to Meade and warned that the troops had not “recovered from the fatigue of their late marches.” Miles’s Federals fell back to their fortifications at Ream’s Station, thereby separating themselves from Gibbon’s command by about three miles. The distance between Miles and Warren’s command was another five miles.
Major-General Wade Hampton’s Confederate cavalry skirmished with Gregg’s troopers and learned that Federals were isolated at Ream’s. Not being strong enough to attack them himself, Hampton notified General Robert E. Lee, commanding the Confederate army. Lee initially did not feel the need to attack the Federals at Ream’s because he had already set up a supply line via wagon train from Stony Creek, farther down on the Weldon, to Petersburg via the Boydton Plank Road. But the Federal presence at Ream’s threatened Dinwiddie Court House, a possible point of retreat for Lee if he had to abandon Petersburg. Lee therefore resolved to drive the Federals off; but unlike the piecemeal assault at Globe Tavern, Lee would organize a much stronger attack force.
Meanwhile, the Federals continued destroying the railroad between Globe Tavern and Ream’s, and by the end of the 24th, Hancock reported that “the road is destroyed for about three miles and a half beyond Reams’.” That night, both Hancock and Warren received word of “large bodies” of enemy “infantry passing south from their entrenchments” toward them. Hancock was warned that these troops were “probably destined to operate against General Warren or yourself–most probably against your operations. The commanding general cautions you to look out for them.”
The approaching Confederates comprised an attack force of about 8,000 men led by Lieutenant-General A.P. Hill. As they advanced, Hampton’s cavalry forced Gregg’s Federals back. This prompted Hancock to suspend railroad operations and deploy his two infantry divisions to meet the threat. But Hancock remained isolated, as Meade had failed to order either Hancock to fall back and join Warren or Warren to move up and reinforce Hancock.
The Federal line resembled a “U” on its side, with Miles’s division on the right facing west and north, and Gibbon’s on the left facing west and south. Hancock reported to Meade, “The enemy have been feeling all around me and are now cheering in my front, advancing and driving my skirmishers. I think they will next move across the road between Warren and myself as they press my lines. Two prisoners taken at different times say that all of Hampton’s cavalry and a part of Hill’s corps, or all of it, are in my front…”
The next day, Confederate infantry crossed Rowanty Creek and moved along the road running northeast to Hancock’s line. Fighting began when Major-General Cadmus M. Wilcox’s division attacked Miles’s troops around 2 p.m., but the Federals held their ground. Similar Confederate assaults on other sectors of the line were also repulsed. Hancock reported, “There is no great necessity of my remaining here, but it is more important that I should join Warren; but I do not think, closely engaged as I am at present, I can withdraw safely at this time. I think it will be well to withdraw tonight, if I am not forced to do so before.”
Meade told Hancock that he would send him reinforcements and added, “I hope you will be able to give the enemy a good thrashing.” When Meade received word that Hancock had stopped the Confederate advance, he authorized him to “withdraw tonight if you deem it best for the security of your command.”
However, a Confederate artillery barrage around 5 p.m. preceded a massive attack, which threatened Gibbon’s left. The Federals stood their ground until two regiments in Gibbon’s center suddenly fled in panic. The Confederates, surprised by the ease at which they broke the enemy line, exploited the gap while another force attacked the Federal left.
Hancock desperately tried reforming his fleeing men, shouting, “We can beat them yet. Don’t leave me, for God’s sake!” The Federals fell back nonetheless, with many of Gibbon’s green New Yorkers surrendering. One of Miles’s reserve brigades sent in to close the gap in the center “could neither be made to go forward nor fire.” Two Federal divisions were sent to reinforce Hancock, but he withdrew in disgust that night to the Jerusalem Plank Road.
This was the most demoralizing defeat ever suffered by the famed Second Corps. Of the 2,742 Federal casualties, 2,073 surrendered or went missing. Hancock also lost nine guns, 12 battle flags, and over 3,000 small arms. He called this “one of the severest and most obstinate battles the corps has ever fought.” Hancock’s chief of staff, Colonel Charles H. Morgan, later said, “The agony of that day never died from that proud soldier (Hancock), who, for the first time, saw his lines broken and his guns taken.” Gibbon explained that his men fled because they had lost nine brigade and 40 regimental commanders in four months, but Hancock would have none of it. Gibbon, the former commander of the feared Iron Brigade, ultimately resigned.
Meade tried to bolster Hancock’s shattered spirits:
“I am satisfied you and your command have done all in your power, and though you have met with a reverse, the honor and escutcheons of the old Second are as bright as ever, and will on some future occasion prove it is only when enormous odds are brought against them that they can be moved. Don’t let this matter worry you because you have given me every satisfaction.”
The next day, Hancock provided more detail to headquarters by declaring that this battle was “one of the most determined and desperate fights of the war, resembling Spotsylvania in its character, though the number of engaged gives it less importance.” Hancock believed that had he been reinforced, he might have scored “a victory of considerable importance.”
In contrast, the Confederates lost just 720 men. A.P. Hill decided against pursuing the Federals as he declared, “The sabre and the bayonet have shaken hands on the enemy’s captured breastworks.” This second engagement near Ream’s Station ended in Confederate victory just like the first, which helped depress northern morale even further and increase the chances that northerners might elect a president in November who would end the war and accept Confederate independence.
On the other hand, these engagements were, in small degrees, pushing Grant closer to his ultimate goal of defeating Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia by attrition. The Federals were slowly extending their lines westward below Petersburg, and Lee lacked the manpower to stop them. Hill’s Confederates could only return to the Petersburg trenches while Warren’s Federals continued to destroy the Weldon Railroad, which was now permanently in Federal hands.
Military success was beginning to prove more costly than it was worth for Lee. On the 29th, he reported to President Jefferson Davis that the Confederate army had sustained some sort of combat loss in 100 consecutive days.
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