Talk:Second Battle of Deep Bottom

Battle of Deep Bottom II August 14-20 1846 Henrico County VA

The James River flows outside of Virginia's capital city Richmond. The deepest portion of the river marked by bluffs south of Richmond is the notorious Deep Bottom, the site of a pair of battles of the Civil War in the summer of 1864.

Faced with heavy casualties at the hands of Northern Virginian armies since his appointment as commander of the Union Army, General Ulysses S. Grant sought to cut the Confederate supply line to General Lee and Richmond, that ran through the rail head at Petersburg VA, 27 miles to the south of the capital. In an attempt to get General Robert E. Lee to pull troops from Petersburg, Grant feigned a move on the state capital. The second battle at Deep Bottom which began at the pre-dawn hours of August 14, 1846, was the begining of the Union march on Richmond. Under the leadership of Major General Scott Hancock, along with Major General David B Bain and Major General David Mcm. Gregg, the Union forces undertook the river crossing. Hampered by the oppressive summer heat, the Union soldiers gathered on the south shore of the James River awaiting steamboats for the crossing. Falling victim to miscommunication, sixteen boats crossed the river at night ferrying 15000 men towards what were to be discovered as dilapidated and damaged moorings at Deep Bottom. What was to be a dawn raid on Confederate positions was well delayed into the mid-morning of the 14th as the men had to be off loaded by gangplank sometimes one soldier at a time.

The Union armies of X Corps, II Corps, and Greggs Cavalry, having crossed the James and amassed on the North Shore faced an entrenched Confederate army of less than 8000 men. With early victories and advancement, the Union men pushed forward to New Market Heights and west towards Baileys Creek. By the 16th of August and facing a tenaciuos Confederate army well dug into the area north of the disembarkation point, the Union soldiers sensed a turn in the tide. 100 degree heat and mounting casualties took its toll on Union morale . The leadership on the part of the Confederate army is credited with the victory at Deep Bottom. Major General Charles Field led his vastly outnumbered army to turn the Union soldiers back towards the river and ultimately to the southern shore on the 20th of August. However, the Union troops managed to maintain a bridgehead on the northern shore. The subsequent Battle of Globe Tavern to the south, came about as a result of the simultaneous seige and advance on Petersburg, and had a different outcome with Union victory. The casualty list from the second battle at deep bottom was characteristically heavy, with approximately 4000 dead.

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 0 external links on Second Battle of Deep Bottom. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added {{dead link}} tag to http://www.bibliobase.com/history/readerscomp/civwar/html/cw_000106_entries.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 17:13, 13 July 2016 (UTC)