The Fight for McIlwaine Hill, March 27, 1865
Before the sun had fully risen on March 27th, 1865, a tense stillness gripped the cold morning air near Petersburg. In the eerie predawn darkness, shadows moved silently across the scarred earth—men pressed close together, waiting for the word to strike.
General Robert E. Lee stood with his commanders the night before, studying the map under flickering lantern light. Their hearts weighed heavy. The enemy had crept onto McIlwaine Hill, a small but deadly foothold that overlooked the Confederate lines. From this vantage, Union artillery could rain destruction on Lee’s defenses—a danger too great to ignore.
So, under the cloak of darkness, Lee ordered a daring counterattack. Major General Cadmus Wilcox’s division was chosen to lead the charge. It was a desperate gamble, a strike born of necessity.
At exactly 5 a.m., Captain William Dunlop and Major Thomas Wooten led their sharpshooters forward—four hundred of the finest marksmen, stepping through the night like ghosts. Their muskets were silent, their movements precise. The plan was ingenious: breach the Federal picket line quietly, then fan out like a fisherman’s seine net to trap the enemy.
No one knew how close they came to disaster before the first shot rang out. Just forty yards from the Union sentries, the silence shattered into thunderous gunfire. Rebel yells pierced the dawn as the sharpshooters surged ahead, driving the startled Federals back with bayonets gleaming.
Captain Dunlop later recalled how the hill seemed to erupt in fire, the flashes of musket muzzles lighting the “blackness of darkness” like a thousand furious stars.
On the Union side, Captain Charles Gould found himself overwhelmed as nearly forty of his pickets fell wounded or captured in moments.
Behind the sharpshooters, Brigadier General Edward Thomas’s Georgians and Colonel Joseph Hyman’s North Carolinians surged forward, planting their colors on McIlwaine’s crest. The Confederates had reclaimed the hill.
But victory was far from secure.
Union regiments soon rallied, charging up the slope with desperate fury. The air thickened with smoke and the staccato of rifle fire. Confederate artillery boomed from their main lines, shattering Federal ranks with deadly shells.
Wilcox’s men stood their ground, locked in a brutal struggle, refusing to yield the hard-won heights.
As the morning wore on, fighting waned to scattered skirmishes. At last, a fragile truce was called—a brief, surreal pause where enemies mingled to bury the dead and tend the wounded. Officers from both sides exchanged guarded words beneath the smoke-stained sky.
Lieutenant Robert Pratt of the 5th Vermont Infantry eyed the Rebel commanders with suspicion. Though they spoke confidently, Pratt knew the truth: neither side would emerge unscathed.
When hostilities resumed, sharpshooters picked up their deadly game, but the day’s great battle was done.
By nightfall, the Confederates held McIlwaine Hill once more, shoring up defenses with hastily dug earthworks. For Lee, it was a small but crucial triumph—a delay, a breath of hope amid the tightening siege.
Yet on the Federal side, Sergeant Abraham Brewer saw it differently—a fleeting success destined to be swept away by the coming storm.
Ulysses S. Grant, ever focused on the grand design, barely blinked at the news. His eyes were fixed on March 29th, when he planned to shatter Lee’s lines forever.
The struggle for McIlwaine Hill was fierce, desperate, and costly—a vivid chapter in the final days of a war that neither side wanted to end.
