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Posted on 04/11/2004 12:15:50 AM PDT by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 During the battle of Gettysburg, General Warren is credited with the discovery of the Confederate troop movements attempting to attack the area known as "Little Round Top". His subsequent action is reported to have saved the entire left flank of the Union Army. Robert E. Lee, with his eerie sense of a battlefield, was hastily assembling a force to attack the Union left, but it would take him the greater part of the day to get his men ready to strike. Meanwhile, Meade also sensed something significant about the two adjacent hills to his left. That afternoon he sent his chief of engineers, Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, to assess the situation.  To his utter chagrin, Warren found Little Round Top completely undefended. He hastily sent messengers to Meade and Sickles, requesting immediate assistance. Sickles, by that time hotly engaged with el-ements of Longstreet's corps, had none to spare. But Colonel Strong Vincent, who commanded the 3rd Brigade of Brig. Gen. Charles Griffin's 1st Division of the V Corps, received word from a harried courier about the threat to Little Round Top and led his men to the hill at the double-quick. Vincent's brigade included the 44th New York, 16th Michigan, 83rd Pennsylvania and the 358-man 20th Maine under Joshua L. Chamberlain.  On the second day at Gettysburg, 2 July 1863, Gouverneur K. Warren, Chief Engineer, Army of the Potomac, noticed that Little Round Top, key to the Union defensive position, was undefended. He ordered troops to the hill in time to blunt Hood’s attack. Almost two years later on 1 April 1865 at the Battle of Five Forks, Major General Philip Sheridan, with Grant’s authority, relieved him from command and sent him to the rear.  When Warren graduated second in the West Point class of 1850 he accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. In the years prior to the Civil War he worked with Andrew Humphreys on the Mississippi River, on transcontinental railroad surveys, and explored, surveyed, and mapped the trans-Mississippi West. At the start of the war he received a commission as a Lieutenant Colonel of Volunteers in the 5th New York Infantry Regiment, and by the fall he was a Colonel and regimental commander. Promoted to Brigadier General in September 1862 he served as Chief Topographical Engineer and then Chief Engineer, Army of the Potomac. Promoted to Major General after Gettysburg, he commanded 2d Corps until March 1864 when Grant made him 5th Corps commander. He led the 5th Corps through the Union offensive from the Wilderness, to Cold Harbor, and into the Petersburg trenches. He must have done well because he was still in command when Grant began the offensive that led to Appomattox. Grant ordered an attack on the Confederates at Five Forks for 1 April with Sheridan in command of both his Cavalry Corps and Warren’s 5th Corps. Grant wanted Sheridan to push the attack and authorized him to relieve Warren if he got in the way. The Battle of Five Forks, April 1, 1865, was the final Confederate offensive in the American Civil War.  Battle Of Five Forks "Hold At All Hazards" April 1, 1865 "I tell you, I'm ready to strike out tomorrow and go to smashing things!" exclaimed Union cavalry Gen. Philip H. Sheridan. It was March 30, 1865, and he was trying to convince Gen. Ulysses S. Grant not to let the heavy rains delay the offensive against the right of the Confederate line defending Petersburg, VA. Sheridan's cavalry, newly arrived from its victorious Shenandoah Valley campaign, had been sent by Grant along with some infantry units to envelop the Confederate flank and to sever the Southside Railroad, Richmond's last supply line to the South.  Philip Sheridan For 10 months Grant had used his superior numbers to keep extending the westward the Union lines confronting Petersburg. Each movement stretched the opposing Confederate lines thinner, and Grant felt the time had come for those Rebel lines to break. Accordingly, he instructed Sheridan to continue the advance with his 30,000-man mixed command of cavalry and infantry to the crossroads southwest of Petersburg called Five Forks, which was five miles down White Oak Road from the existing battle lines and three miles south of the railroad. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, informed of Union activity near Five Forks, anticipated Grant's intention to cut the Southside Railroad. Union troops on the Rebel right flank would block the withdrawal route from Petersburg that Lee was planning for his army. On March 29, Lee ordered one-third of his army- 14,000 infantry commanded by Gen. George E. Pickett and 5,000 cavalry troops under Gen. W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee- to move to Five Forks and drive away the Union force.  When Sheridan's horsemen approached Five Forks around noon on March 31, they were attacked by Pickett's soldiers and pushed back to Dinwiddie Court House. Pickett returned his command to Five Forks and reported his success to General Lee. Lee's returning message said, "Hold Five Forks at all hazards." On April 1, while Sheridan’s cavalry pinned the Confederate force in position, the V Corps under Major General G.K. Warren attacked and overwhelmed the Confederate left flank, taking many prisoners. Sheridan personally directed the attack, which extended Lee’s Petersburg lines to the breaking point. The loss of Five Forks threatened Lee’s last supply line, the South Side Railroad. The next morning, Lee informed President Jefferson Davis that Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia must be evacuated. Union general Frederick Winthrop was killed and Willie Pegram, beloved Confederate artillery officer, was mortally wounded. Dissatisfied with his performance at Five Forks, Sheridan relieved Warren of command of the V Corps.  Spotsylvania Court House, Va., vicinity. Beverly house, headquarters of Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, 5th Corps Although Warren successfully defended his position against the Confederates, Sheridan and Grant thought he did not press the attack fast enough. At the end of the day, as Warren met Sheridan for what he thought was a celebration, Sheridan charged him with neglect during the battle, relieved him from command of 5th Corps “for cause,” and ordered him to report to Grant. Warren asked for a Report of Inquiry, but the end of the war, Lincoln’s assassination, and Johnson’s impeachment all got in the way. Warren reverted to his Regular Army rank of Major, CE, and went back to work on the Mississippi River. In July 1866 he was assigned to serve as the first “Engineer in Charge” of the Corps’ new office in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he served until May 1870. He then was in charge of engineer operations along the New England coast with headquarters at Newport, Rhode Island. It took the Army until 1879, after Grant’s two terms, to grant Warren’s request for a hearing. The board finally published its findings in November 1882 exonerating Warren of any neglect at Five Forks on 1 April 1865.  However, it was too late for Warren. He died three months earlier on 8 August 1882. At his request his family buried him in civilian clothes and without military ceremony at Newport. He felt disgraced by his relief on the field of battle. Ironically, however, in 1888 a bronze statue of him in uniform as Chief Engineer, Army of the Potomac, was placed at Little Round Top, the key position he saved on the second day at Gettysburg.      |
Wateree was carried nearly five-hundred yards inland, where she was deposited relatively intact.
Now that would have been something to see!
Happy Easter Sam.
What does a traditional Polish Easter breakfast consist of?
Great movie! Hey PE, where's our NASA picture?
And I should show up when? ;^)
Don't give an inch - Union Defense.
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