The Siege of Petersburg Grinds On for Nine Months
The longest siege in American military history slowly starves Lee's army and the Confederate capital
Quick facts
- Location
- Petersburg, Virginia
- Union commander
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Confederate commander
- Robert E. Lee
- Duration
- 292 days
What happened
After Cold Harbor, Grant abandoned direct attacks on Richmond and instead moved his army south of the James River to seize Petersburg, Virginia, a rail and road hub whose fall would cut off supplies to the Confederate capital just 23 miles away. An initial Union assault in mid-June 1864 failed to take the lightly defended city before Lee's army arrived to reinforce it, and the two armies settled into trench warfare that lasted 292 days, the longest siege in United States military history. Union forces steadily extended their lines to cut Confederate supply routes one by one, including a failed attempt to breach the lines with an underground mine that produced the disastrous Battle of the Crater in July 1864. By late March 1865, Lee's undersupplied and overextended army could no longer hold the lines; a major Union victory at Five Forks on April 1 forced Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond on April 2-3.
Why it matters
The siege's slow strangulation of Lee's supply lines, rather than any single dramatic battle, is what finally broke the Army of Northern Virginia's ability to fight, forcing the retreat that ended a week later at Appomattox.
How we know
The American Battlefield Trust's Petersburg battle history documents the siege's length and its conclusion from official Union and Confederate reports on the campaign's final phase.
Sources
- American Battlefield Trust. Petersburg Battle Facts and Summary · Reputable sourcebattlefields.org · The domain "battlefields.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Park Service. Virginia: Petersburg National Battlefield · Reputable sourcenps.gov · The domain "nps.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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