The Last Stand: The Critical Battle Of Five Forks In The American Civil War, Pickett Eats Shad
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- The Battle of Five Forks fought on April 1, 1865, was a critical engagement near the end of the American Civil War. It represented the last opportunity for the Confederacy to hold its ground against the Union forces. The Confederate Army, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, was in a dire state, with dwindling numbers, limited resources, and the relentless pressure of Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s troops stretching their lines to the breaking point. The battle took place at a crucial junction in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, and its outcome was pivotal, leading to the fall of Petersburg and Richmond and ultimately, to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House just eight days later.
The Confederates, aware that their position was untenable, were desperate to defend Five Forks “at all hazards” as it was key to controlling the South Side Railroad, a vital supply line and potential evacuation route2. The Union victory at Five Forks not only inflicted over 1,000 casualties on the Confederates and resulted in the capture of up to 4,000 prisoners, but it also effectively sealed the fate of the Confederacy by cutting off Lee’s final supply line and escape route out of Petersburg.
This introduction sets the stage for a deeper exploration of the Battle of Five Forks, a battle that symbolized the last stand of the Confederacy and marked the beginning of the end of the Civil War.
00:00 Introduction
02:39 The Battle of Five Forks
05:50 Prelude to Battle, The Federals and Confederates Take Up Positions
09:15 Grant Forms His Lines
17:37 The Battle of White Oaks Road
21:41 The Federals Make Their Move
33:27 Pickett Eats While the Federals Clean Up
38:11 The Consequences of Success and Failure
40:16 The Butcher's Bill
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Overall, a very good presentation, I especially like the maps as they were a great help in following the tide of the battle.
One small error though: at the 32:30 mark you mention Confederate General William Wallace, but show a photo of Union General Lew Wallace instead.
Very good job on the descriptions and the maps. A couple notes. In this and the Saylers Creek video the picture of General Smith is of General C F Smith who died in 1862. I know there were many General Smiths in the war. Also, the reference Grant's staff member Colonel Horace Porter uses a picture of Admiral David Porter.
Thank you for identifying that.
Evdn if the Confederates had won the battle, it would have only delayed the inevitable and eventual Union victory. I always thought that it was on 3 April 1865 that the Conferederate Army abandoned Richmond and began its westward retreat that ended up at Appomattox.
You can say that for pretty much every battle after Vicksburg!
Great video. I will have to watch the rest !! Looking forward to more content!!
Awesome! Thank you!
Good presentation. I appreciate it.
Thanks for watching!
Thanks
No problem
One can argue that the Battle of Five Forks was an ambush attack.
INteresting you would say that, I almost titled this video "Ambush at Five Forks"
@@maddhattalscivilwarhistory2728 I only say ambush because when I saw history channel about this battle and how they spoke about Pickett's follies during the battle sounds like an ambush. Always have your troops on alert.
Five forks and Saylor's Creek were the 2 most pivotal battles of the war. In these back to back victories, the A of P forced Lee's surrender. No other battles had a greater outcome and none but these ended the war. It's not even debatable, it is so.
I agree, to end the war that is. Grant pressed hard during the final months and therefore prevented the two armies from uniting in NC. Otherwise, the war could have drug on for another year.
Could you make a video about the following days Union assault on Petersburg? Particularly centering around Fort Mahone and the subsequent photos taken of fresh confederate KIA’s in their trenches? I believe the photos taken at Fort Mahone are really useful in analyzing confederate equipment at the closing of the war.
I do have a lot of research from Fort Mahone. I can't really push the powers-to-be with my account with those types of pictures though.
@@maddhattalscivilwarhistory2728 yeah that’s understandable, the photos are extremely graphic and are a brutal preview of WW1 trench warfare.
Seems to me as it matters less about the color of their uniforms but the quality of their upper echelons leadership! Lots of incompetence all around!
I feel it was the middle echelon that got the Federals through. That and they finally got a leader that understood that total destruction was the way to break the back of the Confederacy. So much more then leadership was responisble for the ultimate Union victory, and the cold hard truth is the Confederates never had a chance.
Five Forks has often been called The Waterloo of the Confederacy
Sure has...
Great map work. I usually can't follow the battle They just show the map.
Glad you like it
As an English man i have often wondered if the British had intervened on the confederates side due to their reliance on the exporting of cotton would the outcome of the war have been different
That's a dicussion for another day, everything I've read states Europe had no intention of supporting the confederates. Most of the bluster was just that bluster.
@@maddhattalscivilwarhistory2728 there was talk of Britain wanting to secure their interests but decided it was not advisable to get involved in a civil war
It's mainly hypothetical but if the British had sided with the confederates it could have been a very different outcome indeed especially at that time with the strength of the British navy on the confederates side
The UK came closest to intervening in the wake of the Trent Affair, however, the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation after the Union strategic victory at Antietam changed the character of the war to one of ending slavery (even though it did not free slaves in "border states"). By the time a British/French intervention in adequate numbers could.have been mounted, it would have.failed. By 1863, the Union Army was large, professional(thoughnot seen so by European standards), and battle hardened. BY 1863, the US Navy was ironclad, technologically advanced, and capable of defending the US and maintaining the blockade.
@@chrisbaldwin3609 A more costly war, certainly, but the outcome would not have changed. Nothing could possibly have better secured the support of the Northern population than fighting against a foreign power. The US Navy was quite strong - I don't think the British Navy could have sustained a decisive advantage over them. I suspect it would have been more likely for the British to have lost control of Canada than to have affected a victory for the CSA.
@@jacksons1010 it was just an hypothetical question but Britain at that time were the leading super power controlling much of the world the states then were in their infancy not like they are today it never happened I suspect because Britain at that time had so many colonies and. countries they could extract valuable raw materials from plus they had already lost the colonies over in America in 1776
What is Shad?
It's a type of fish, it was once called "the fish that fed the (American) nation's founders"
@@maddhattalscivilwarhistory2728 thanks for the info. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.
01:57 There is a great song that speaks to the destruction of the Danville rail lines and the fall of Richmond. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." th-cam.com/video/6dDbnwQlCek/w-d-xo.html ENJOY!
I never put two and two together! Thanks for sharing that cool fact!
The lyric "back with my wife in Tennessee when one day she called to me "Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee!" has always bugged me. Did Lee ever go to Tennessee after the war?
The McClellan House??? Obviously you meant the McClean house.
mistakes happen.
Overall I like your vids but when you keep overlaying pics of the generals you mention it gets annoying. Just a few times then we get it.
Point taken, thank you for the feedback.
@@maddhattalscivilwarhistory2728 If you do like the pics, and I don't mind them except they're too busy the way you present them, you could make them smaller pics like just head and shoulders an inch by inch size or so (AFTER the first time you show them cause I do like the big pics of generals I've never seen a pic of before, and you have a few of those), and move them to the side. And you could have a dashed line/arrow pointing to wear on the maps you've circled where they are. That would actually be value added. If you want to get a little fancy, the first time you show a general and his location on a map, start with the big pic like you have so we get a good view, then have it shrink down and moved to the side or at least where it doesn't obscure any map info as you talk about his actions. Then subsequently just thumbnails whenever he's mentioned again. Good luck with the channel.
Sheridan did it all He was the nail in the Confederate coffin
He was definitly a different animal! One of my favorites, during the war...post war, not so much.
Seems to me Warren won the battle.
...as was determined after the war, yes he did. Politics and soldiering should never mix!
Years of study convinced me long ago that this war was an unnecessary sacrifice of human life and more.... The only way the Union could lose was if Lincoln lost the election of 1864.... The destruction of the Shenandoah Valley and the March to the Sea were war crimes and led to the undying animosity of the south we still see today..... Lee should have surrendered at Gettysburg, with Vicksburg falling the same day.... After Atlanta the war was essentially over..... The sacrifice of life by both Grant and Lee is a memorial to their stubborn incompetence. 128,000 to 40,000. If Sherman entrained his troops to Richmond instead of marching to the sea it would have been 188,000 massively supplied troops to 40,000 starving besieged Confederates.
I do agree that the war was, as the New Yorkers said in 63, a rich man's war fought by poor men, but I'm not sure it was unnecessary. I feel as though the scourge of slavery would have lingered, and the country would have stayed mired in division for decades more. However, the last two years of the war were absolutely unnecessary. In all actuality, the south never had a chance, say what you want about European intervention, which the south never had a chance at getting, but the North simply had the upper hand in every factor of war fighting. Perhaps one could argue the south had more passion, but even that started to dissolve after Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The war was essentially over for the south when they lost the Mississippi River
The sacrifice of life was due to Lee's failure to surrender. What would you have suggested Grant and the North do when Lee and the rest of Confederate leadership insisted on prolonging a lost war? Lee is villain, not Grant.
It wasn't a critical battle. The CSA had long lost the war and been doomed.
I'm sure if you could ask the men that lost an arm or a leg in these battles, they would say it was critical. For sure Lee and Davis both knew the gig was up. The Union could have sat back and just let them withdraw, but Grant felt it was critical to keep drive the rebels until they surrendered.
Insert neckbeard "acktually" for this dweeb
More like the final nail in the coffin.
The Germans and the Japanese both couldn't win WW2 after 1942, but that didn't stop them.