Battle of Sutherland ' s Station The Battle of Sutherland ' s Station was an American Civil War conflict fought on April 2 , 1865 , in Dinwiddie , Virginia during the Appomattox Campaign . Union columns converged on Petersburg on April 2 , pushing through a large section of the Confederate defensive entrenchments . As Robert E . Lee desperately sought to buy time to allow his army to withdraw , Ulysses S . Grant launched several other attacks . Stubborn Confederate resistance at Fort Gregg delayed Grant ' s progress . Meanwhile , Maj . Gen . Nelson A . Miles ' s Union division battered Henry Heth ' s Confederates near Sutherland ' s Station and drove them off the field . The Confederate defenders were scattered and driven northwestward . With this victory , the Federals possessed the South Side Railroad , Gen . Robert E . Lee ' s last supply line into Petersburg . However , the lengthy defense of Fort Gregg and Grant ' s hesitation in aggressively following up on his success at Sutherland ' s Station permitted Lee to evacuate his army that night . Battle . Gen . Ulysses S . Grant had besieged Petersburg for ten long months , but as April 1865 opened , the Army of the Potomac under its commander , George G . Meade , was finally in a position to break through the entrenchments of the Army of Northern Virginia . At 4 : 30 on the morning of April 2 on the Confederate earthworks west of Petersburg . Meade sent forward four Union corps , with the VI Corps succeeding in breaking through the thinly manned Confederate lines . Flushed with success , the Union troops poured through the breach and turned the Southern flanks , eventually gaining control of the entrenchments from Hatcher ' s Run to Boydton Plank Road . Robert E . Lee , realizing that the loss of so much of his defensive perimeter had now doomed the city , issued orders to evacuate Petersburg . He sent word to his remaining commanders to hold as long as they could to allow an orderly retreat . Federal troops repeatedly attacked Fort Gregg ( held by only 500 Confederate defenders ) , but failed to quickly seize the vital fort , allowing Lee time to establish an inner defensive line to protect his army ' s rear as it retired . Grant turned his attention to the west , where the South Side Railroad had provided a vital last supply line for Lee ' s beleaguered troops . Maj . Gen . Andrew A . Humphreys ' s II Corps faced the forces of Maj . Gen . Henry Heth running from Hatcher ' s Run to White Oak Road . Heth ' s men constituted the extreme right flank of Lee ' s army . Nelson Miles ' s division had been sent to reinforce Philip Sheridan on the Union flank . Not needing the infantry support , Sheridan sent Miles back . Once the VI Corps had broken through , Humphreys was ordered to attack along his front . When the order came for Humphreys to attack , Heth had already begun to fall back to a secondary line . Humphreys only had one division available to attack . Not far from the battlefield of Battle of Five Forks , his only available division easily pushed forward through light resistance and seized a salient in the Confederate line . When Miles ' division of three brigades returned , it faced abandoned trenches . Humphreys wanted to immediately move against Heth , but Meade had ordered all the Union infantry to turn and face Petersburg . Humphreys responded by turning to the north , but left Miles behind to deal with Heth . Miles pursued the retiring Confederates up the Claiborne Road as far as Sutherland ' s Station ( nineteen miles from Petersburg ) . There , Heth had regrouped four Confederate brigades in an attempt to defend the South Side Railroad , their left flank anchored at Ocran Methodist Church . By now , Heth had learned that Lt . Gen . A . P . Hill had been killed earlier in the day , and now he was in command of the Third Army Corps as its senior division commander . Dodging Federal patrols , he hastened to Petersburg , where he found that Lee had instead decided to disband the corps and give its units to James Longstreet . At 3 : 00 p . m . , Miles struck north from White Oak Road and launched his initial attack under orders from Grant to follow - up on Humphreys ' s initial breakthrough . Heth ' s division repulsed two Federal attacks before Miles sent for reinforcements . As had been the case for the II Corps all morning , Humphreys backtracked to Sutherland Station to reinforce Miles . However , Miles launched a third assault and Heth ' s weary Confederates finally buckled , then broke . John R . Cooke ' s brigade stubbornly held up the Federals as the remainder of Heth ' s troops headed west . Miles ' s victorious men pushed ahead and captured nearly 1 , 000 prisoners and 2 artillery pieces . In the meantime , Grant had delayed the final attack on Fort Gregg while he awaited news regarding Miles ' outcome , another delay that helped Lee evacuate more troops from Petersburg . By the time that the fort finally fell , Lee had bought enough time to successfully extricate the vast majority of his army . In the savage fighting around Sutherland ' s Station , Miles reported 370 casualties , while the Confederates lost approximately 600 men killed or wounded , plus 1 , 000 taken as prisoners of war . Humphreys ' s II Corps had been made to wander back and forth all morning and the general later contended that , had his whole corps been allowed to move against the Confederates , Heth ' s whole command would have been destroyed .