For nine months Grant and Lee faced each other across 30 miles of trenches in a grinding siege that foreshadowed World War I and ended the Confederacy.
Petersburg was the railroad hub that kept both Lee's army and the Confederate capital of Richmond alive — without it, neither could survive. Grant understood this and spent nine months tightening a noose of trenches around the city rather than throwing men into costly frontal assaults.
In one of the war's most spectacular moments, Union engineers tunneled 500 feet under Confederate lines and detonated four tons of gunpowder on July 30, 1864. The explosion created an enormous crater — and then, through catastrophic mismanagement, Union troops charged into the hole instead of around it, turning a brilliant plan into a slaughter.
Grant called the Battle of the Crater 'the saddest affair I have witnessed in the war.' Specially trained Black Union troops were supposed to lead the assault but were held back at the last minute out of political concerns — then sent in after the attack had already failed, suffering devastating losses.
The siege grew into an enormous operation: 30-plus miles of trenches, 125,000 Union soldiers against roughly 60,000 Confederates who were slowly starving as Grant stretched and cut their supply lines one by one over nine grinding months.
The campaign featured the war's largest concentration of African American soldiers, including the XXV Corps. Black troops earned 15 of the 25 Medals of Honor awarded to African American soldiers during the entire Civil War, fighting with particular valor knowing capture could mean death or re-enslavement.
When Lee finally evacuated Petersburg and Richmond on April 2, 1865, the entire Confederacy collapsed within days. The nine-month siege had accomplished exactly what Grant intended — and the patterns of trench warfare, barbed wire, and artillery bombardment would be echoed fifty years later across the fields of France.