BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Five Forks

VA -- Five Forks:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. 5FORKS_990529_01.JPG: Five roads join at this segment -- "five forks"
2. 5FORKS_990529_02.JPG: The building is an old hunting club house which is now the visitor center for the Five Forks part of the battlefield park.
3. 5FORKS_990529_04.JPG: Death of Pegram Late afternoon, April 1, 1865. Confederate infantrymen waited behind rude, muddy earthworks lining the White Oak Road. Young Colonel William R.J. Pegram tended to his artillery: three guns in this field, three others farther to the west (your right). Then came the Federals. Sheridan's dismounted cavalry attacked frontally. Later, Warren's infantry swept down from the east. After fierce fighting, the Confederate positions around the intersection collapsed. In the melee fell Colonel Pegram, mortally wounded in the side. Just 23 years old, Pegram had survived all of the Army of Northern Virginia's major battles. He died only five miles from his ancestral home and just nine days short of the war's end.
4. 5FORKS_990529_06.JPG: Digging In Just before noon on April 1, 1865, 10,000 Confederates under Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett arrived here at Five Forks. They immediately started digging and by mid-afternoon had constructed a rough earthwork that extended along the White Oak Road for nearly two miles. You are standing at the center of that Confederate line. Weary, wet, and hungry, the Confederates waited – aware that if they yielded, nothing would stand between the Federals and the South Side Railroad, the last supply line into Petersburg. Until 4 p.m. the Confederates waited quietly behind the works. Then they saw them: men in blue, advancing astride the Dinwiddie Road. The rattle of musketry soon signaled the opening of the Battle of Five Forks. Most of the Confederate works built on April 1 have been obliterated. The best and most important surviving section is at the "Angle," on the extreme left of the line – about 3/4 mile to your left.
5. 5FORKS_990529_08.JPG: This house was later removed. It was considered "historic" because it was over 50 years but it had nothing to do with the battle.
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Wikipedia Description: Battle of Five Forks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Five Forks was fought on April 1, 1865, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, in Dinwiddie County, during the Appomattox Campaign of the American Civil War. The battle, sometimes referred to as the " Waterloo of the Confederacy," pitted Union Major General Philip H. Sheridan against Confederate Major General George E. Pickett of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Pickett's loss at Five Forks triggered Lee's decision to abandon his entrenchments around Petersburg and begin the retreat that led to his surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9.

Background:

Following the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House on March 31, Pickett learned of reinforcements arriving from the Federal V Corps and wanted to pull back to a position behind Hatcher's Run. However, Lee ordered Pickett to stop short of Hatcher's Run and hold the crossroads of Five Forks with his infantry division and three cavalry divisions. "Five Forks" referred to the intersection of the White Oak Road, Scott's Road, Ford's (or Church) Road, and the Dinwiddie Court House Road. Lee's dispatch stated:

Hold Five Forks at all hazards. Protect road to Ford's Depot and prevent Union forces from striking the Southside Railroad. Regret exceedingly your forces' withdrawal, and your inability to hold the advantage you had gained.

Pickett's troops built a log and dirt defensive line about 1.75 miles (2.8 km) long on the White Oak Road, guarding the two flanks with cavalry. Sheridan's plan of attack was to pressure the entire line lightly with his cavalry troopers, pinning it in position, while he massed all of the V Corps, under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, on the Confederate left flank. Faulty maps and intelligence led Sheridan to believe that the enemy's left flank was much farther east than it actually was.

Muddy roads and tangled underbrush slowed the Union approach, and Warren was not ready to attack until about 4 p. ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (VA -- Five Forks) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2015_VA_Five_Forks: VA -- Five Forks (3 photos from 2015)
- 2012_VA_Five_Forks: VA -- Five Forks (33 photos from 2012)
- 2009_VA_Five_Forks: VA -- Five Forks (45 photos from 2009)
- 2006_VA_Five_Forks: VA -- Five Forks (26 photos from 2006)
- 2003_VA_Five_Forks: VA -- Five Forks (7 photos from 2003)
- 1998_VA_Five_Forks: VA -- Five Forks (68 photos from 1998)
Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one :
- 2003_VA_CWPT_Peter_030425: CWPT Annual Conference (2003) in Richmond, VA -- Tour group: Petersburg 1865 (38 photos from 2003)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Civil War] [Park (National Park Service)]
1999 photos: Since 1984, I've lived in Silver Spring, Maryland. From 1981 to 2002, photos were taken using a Pentax ME Super camera. From 1989 to 2002, I was doing all pictures as prints (instead of slides which I had grown up on). In 1997, at the age of 40, my photo obsession began and I started taking thousands of photos per year. In September, 2002, I switched to digital cameras and the number of photos exploded. Trips this year: A week at a timeshare in Gordonsville, VA, two weeks in Tennessee, which included attending my first Fan Fair country music festival, and family visits to North Carolina and Florida. Image quality for my pictures is variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints at varying quality/resolutions. The Great Pandemic Digitizing Project: When I was first setting up my website in August, 2000, I had decided to digitize some of my favorite pre-digital slides and prints. The scans were fairly low resolution but they were good enough. With COVID forcing me to stay indoors, I decided to rescan ALL of my pre-digital images from multiple sources (slides, prints, and negatives) at a much higher resolution and quality setting. (I digitized Dad's slides at the same time). Instead of replacing my original scans, I added the new scans to existing pages, figuring I'd select the best ones later. As a result, multiple versions of images appear on most of these early pages. At some point, I'll take the time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates.
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