Siege of Petersburg

After failing to destroy Robert E. Lee’s army in the Overland Campaign, Ulysses S. Grant crossed the James River and attacked Petersburg, a crucial railway centre south of Richmond. The first assaults failed, and both armies constructed extensive fortified lines.

For more than nine months, Union forces extended their positions westward while Confederate troops defended increasingly fragile supply routes. The breakthrough in April 1865 forced the evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond.

This context supports fiction about trench warfare, the exhaustion of the Army of Northern Virginia and the final pursuit that ended with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.