April 5, 1865 — The Battle at Paineville: Lee’s Army Hemmed In
Dawn on April 5 broke cold and grim over central Virginia. Dust and mist clung to the tangled roads around Amelia Court House. Robert E. Lee’s starving army was only now starting to shudder into motion, wagons creaking, hungry men shuffling westward.
But the Union cavalry was already moving like bloodhounds on a scent.
Major General Philip Sheridan sat in his saddle at Jetersville that morning, watching the sun rise red through the haze. He flicked his crop against his boot and turned to his staff. “Send Davies north,” he ordered.
Brigadier General Henry E. Davies, a cavalryman of sharp instincts, led his brigade of George Crook’s division onto muddy roads winding through thickets and half-plowed fields. Their mission: scout beyond Amelia Court House toward Paineville—about five miles north of Amelia Springs. Sheridan wanted eyes on Lee’s retreat.
As Davies’s troopers picked their way north, they found smoke and movement in the distance. About four miles east of Paineville, the bluecoats spotted the long, groaning line of wagons—hundreds of them, creaking like an old ship at sea. These were no ordinary supply wagons. They carried food, ammunition, headquarters baggage—the very lifeblood of Lee’s dwindling army.
The wagons had left Richmond in haste, guarded by Brigadier General Martin Gary’s cavalry brigade. Another train of wagons, burdened with excess artillery abandoned at Amelia Court House, was rumbling up from the south.
Davies didn’t hesitate. He swung his brigade forward at a gallop. Carbines cracked. Horses screamed. The Confederates fell back in disorder, trying to rally among the trees and along the rough roads. Blue-coated troopers slashed at reins and yanked mules from harness, setting wagons ablaze in the rising wind.
In the chaos, headquarters wagons burned with orders, maps, and personal effects. Ammunition carts exploded in sharp pops. Smoke roiled skyward. In that hellish confusion, Union cavalrymen rounded up 630 prisoners, seized artillery pieces, and corralled hundreds of terrified horses and mules. Davies, grim-faced, ordered more wagons put to the torch. The fires lit the muddy road with ghastly orange.
But as the Yankees turned south to bring their prizes back to Jetersville, the gray cavalry came howling in pursuit.
Major General Fitzhugh Lee himself had gathered Confederate horse under Major General Thomas Rosser and Colonel Thomas Munford. Their bugles screamed. They spurred after Davies’s retreating column in a savage running fight that churned the dirt track from Paineville past Amelia Springs.
Union men fired from the saddle or swung carbines like clubs. Confederate troopers lunged with sabers or fired Colt revolvers point-blank. The fight snaked for miles in a blur of smoke, hooves, and shouted curses.
Near Amelia Springs, Davies’s men were close to breaking. But they found salvation in the gathering dusk.
Crook’s other brigades—under J. Irvin Gregg and Charles H. Smith—came pounding up from Jetersville. They fanned out in support, throwing themselves at Fitz Lee’s men with fresh fury. The Confederate pursuit slowed, wavered, and broke apart in the gloom.
When the smoke cleared, Davies’s exhausted column limped back into the Federal lines at Jetersville. They brought with them 320 Confederate prisoners, 310 African-American teamsters pressed into Confederate service, 400 animals, and 11 captured flags. Behind them the road was littered with the charred ruins of 200 destroyed wagons.
But the cost was steep. Crook’s division had lost 13 dead, 81 wounded, and 72 missing—likely taken prisoner in the day’s brutal running fights. Fitzhugh Lee, grimly tallying the aftermath, claimed he saw 30 dead Union cavalrymen along the path of his pursuit.
For Lee’s army, it was another disaster in a week of disasters.
Even as the ashes of burned wagons drifted over Virginia roads, Robert E. Lee at Amelia Court House finally realized the truth. Sheridan’s cavalry was everywhere, fast and hungry. His road south to Danville was cut. He had hoped to break through with Longstreet’s corps in the lead, but now he saw it was impossible. Union infantry were already closing.
There was only one road left to him now—a long, hungry march west toward Lynchburg.
Lee’s weary eyes scanned the horizon. The men were starving. But his Commissary General promised salvation: 80,000 rations waiting at Farmville, 23 miles ahead on the South Side Railroad.
It was a feeble hope, but it was all that remained.
And so Lee ordered his ragged army onto the road once more, as the last Confederate dreams of victory burned like those wagons in the Virginia dusk.
