Battle of Sailor's Creek
| Battle of Sailor's Creek (Battle of Sayler's Creek) |
|
|---|---|
| Part of the American Civil War | |
.jpg) A view of the battlefield as it appeared in 2010 |
|
| Belligerents | |
 United States (Union) |
 CSA (Confederacy)
|
| Commanders and leaders | |
| Philip H. Sheridan |
Richard S. Ewell (POW) John B. Gordon |
| Units involved | |
| Army of Northern Virginia | |
| Strength | |
| 25,000–26,000 | 18,500 |
| Casualties and losses | |
| 1,148 | 7,700 captured; killed/wounded unknown |
The Battle of Sailor's Creek (also known in whole or in part as Sayler's Creek, Little Sailor's Creek, Harper's Farm, Marshall's Cross Roads, Hillsman Farm, Double Bridges, or Lockett's Farm) was fought on April 6, 1865, near Farmville, Virginia, as part of the Appomattox Campaign, near the end of the American Civil War. It was the largest battle of the Appomattox Campaign and the last major engagement between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and local Richmond area defense forces commanded by General Robert E. Lee and the Union Army (Army of the Shenandoah, Army of the Potomac and Army of the James) under the overall direction of Union General-in-Chief Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant before Lee's surrender of his army to Grant at Appomattox Court House three days later.
The battle actually was a series of at least three large separate actions, including a running battle, fought mostly simultaneously but over varying periods of time on the same day. The battleground was a wide rural area of several miles in both width and length with creeks and bluffs at its western edge. Large units of the Union Army had pursued the Confederates after the fall of Petersburg, Virginia and Richmond, Virginia and the flight of the Confederate forces after the Third Battle of Petersburg. The Confederates were trying to get past the Union pursuers and head south to North Carolina in order to combine with the Confederate army under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston. On April 6, 1865 at Sailor's Creek, some of the pursuing Union units caught up with elements of the Confederate army. Not every unit of both armies fought in all of the engagements at Sailor's Creek because of the timing of the engagements and the large area in which they were fought, and some units of the two armies were too far from the battlefield to participate at all. Except for the archaic and superseded spelling "Sayler's Creek," the alternate names for the battle are names for the separate actions rather than the entire day's action.
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