April 2, 1865: The Bloody Assault on Fort Mahone (“Fort Damnation”)
Through the damp, cold Virginia night of April 1, 1865, the Union 9th Corps of Major General John G. Parke crouched in their battered trenches east of Petersburg.
They were in the same earthworks they’d seized the previous June, grim and familiar ground, their faces set toward a bristling Confederate line that had defied them for ten long months.
Ahead loomed the Jerusalem Plank Road, and beyond it, a bastion that Union soldiers had come to hate and fear in equal measure: Fort Mahone.
Once merely Battery 29, it had been expanded and fortified by Major General William Mahone, earning the grim nickname “Fort Damnation”. Heavy guns bristled along its parapets. Redoubts and batteries protected its flanks, and a strong secondary line a quarter mile to the rear offered the Confederates a fallback position.
Between the lines lay a killing ground of tangled abatis, shell craters, and picket posts manned by seasoned veterans under Major General John B. Gordon.
April 1, 11:00 PM: A First Clash in the Dark
As midnight approached, the Union lines stirred. At 11:00 p.m., Brigadier General Simon G. Griffin’s brigade from Robert B. Potter’s division surged forward from Fort Sedgwick—their own notorious “Fort Hell.”
Their objective: seize the Confederate picket line in front of Grimes’s brigade.
Fighting by the glimmer of muzzle flashes and the glow of star-shells, they crashed into the Southern line. Screams and musketry cracked through the darkness. When it was over, they had taken 249 prisoners, nearly half of Colonel Edwin L. Hobson’s brigade.
But the surprise was gone. The entire Confederate line was now awake, bristling with rifles and artillery, the men in the trenches cursing and loading.
Parke recognized the danger. He sent an urgent plea: cancel the main assault.
No answer came.
April 2, 4:00 AM: Into the Mist
Denied permission to call it off, Parke grimly assembled 18 regiments.
Potter’s division deployed west of the Plank Road. On the east side, John F. Hartranft’s division formed up, with Orlando Willcox’s men in support.
A gray dawn mist hung over the field. The ground was slick with dew and churned by months of trench warfare.
At 4:00 a.m., they went forward.
Bitter Fighting in the Trenches
Out front, Captain Thomas P. Beals led three companies of the 31st Maine straight into Battery No. 28 under heavy artillery fire from the Confederate secondary line. They fought hand-to-hand, driving the defenders back, then advanced along the trenches toward Fort Mahone.
To their right, Hartranft’s division hit Battery No. 27 and carried it in a savage rush.
Farther east, three regiments under Colonel Harriman from Willcox’s division overran Battery No. 25, taking five gunsand 68 prisoners.
Confederate soldiers fell back through traverses and bombproofs, re-forming to fight from trench to trench.
The Assault on Fort Mahone
On the western side, Potter’s men pressed toward Fort Mahone itself.
Inside, Colonel Edwin A. Nash and his Georgia Brigade braced for impact. Smoke and shouts filled the air.
Brevet Brigadier General John I. Curtin’s brigade stormed the ditch and scaled the parapet, fighting their way into the fort from the rear. They seized three guns and captured prisoners in brutal close-quarter fighting with bayonet and clubbed musket.
But Confederate artillery on the secondary line opened up, flanking the attackers with grape and canister. Blood pooled in the mud.
Stalemate in the Trenches
By dawn’s full light, 9th Corps had captured four batteries, including much of Fort Mahone itself, and about 500 yardsof the Confederate front line.
But the cost was awful.
Confederate counterattacks surged back, yelling, hurling grenades and shells down the traverses. Men fought hand-to-hand in bombproofs and trench angles.
Major General Bryan Grimes hurled his Confederates forward at 1:00 p.m. and again at 3:00 p.m., retaking part of Fort Mahone and trenches east of the Jerusalem Plank Road.
Union Brigadier General Simon G. Griffin, taking command after Potter fell wounded, tried desperately to hold the gains.
Brevet Brigadier General Charles H. T. Collis’s Independent Brigade charged in, determined to reestablish the line east of Fort Mahone, fighting traverse to traverse in smoky confusion.
“Fort Damnation” Earns Its Name
By late afternoon, the assault had ground to a halt in horror and exhaustion.
The 9th Corps had lost 1,500 men in a single morning.
Parke claimed 800 prisoners, 12 guns, and several flags, but the Confederate line—though battered—had not broken.
Lee’s Evacuation Begins
As the sun set behind the smoking ruins of Petersburg’s defenses, a Confederate staff officer rode to General Gordon with grim news:
“The army will likely evacuate tonight.”
No further counterattack was possible.
At 9:00 p.m., following Robert E. Lee’s carefully laid plans, Gordon’s exhausted troops began to slip away from the trenches they had held for nearly ten months.
By dawn on April 3rd, Petersburg would be in Union hands, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in full retreat to the west—and the war’s final act about to begin.
