These inner fortifications, where he and his staff took refuge from the shells that pursued them on their ride, were the so-far unused western portion of the old Dimmock Line, other parts of whose original half-oval had been put to such good use in June. Beauregard then had been grievously outnumbered, but Lee’s predicament now was even worse. East and south, on the far side of town, Gordon had all he could do to hold off Parke, and Field’s veterans had not yet appeared. The few garrison troops available to man this empty stretch of works extending from Gordon’s hard-pressed right, northward a mile and a half to the Appomattox, were scarcely enough to delay, let alone prevent, a breakthrough by Ord and Wright, whose renewed advance, if undeterred, would end the war in the streets of Petersburg before the midday sun went down.

Lee’s hope, pending Field’s arrival, was in two small earthworks under construction out the Boydton Plank Road, half a mile in front of the main line; Fort Gregg and Battery Whitworth, they were called. Less than a quarter-mile apart and mutually supporting, they were occupied by four slim regiments from Nathaniel Harris’s Mississippi brigade — some 400 men in all, left on line when the rest of Mahone’s division was shifted north — together with about a hundred North Carolinians, fugitives cut off from Wilcox by the collapse of his left center. Harris put just under half his troops into Gregg, along with two of his five guns, and took the rest with him to Whitworth, 300 yards north of the plank road.

A Natchez-born former Vicksburg lawyer, thirty years old, he passed Lee’s orders to Gregg’s defenders when he left. “Men,” he told them, shouting above the uproar of the opening cannonade, “the salvation of the army is in your keep. Don’t surrender this fort. If you can hold out for two hours, Longstreet will be up.” Behind him, as he turned to go, he heard someone call out after him: “Tell them we’ll not give up.” It was noon by now, and presently they showed that they meant what their spokesman said, and more. Given the reduction assignment, Ord passed it along to John Gibbon and the two 6000-man divisions he had brought southside from his XXIV Corps, one against each of the outworks, intending to overrun them in short order.

The attack on Whitworth was delayed by a wait for some huts set afire by the rebels to burn out in its front, but the one on Gregg was launched promptly at 1 o’clock, as soon as the bombardment lifted. A brigade in each, the advance was in three columns, which converged as they drew near the objective. Hit by massed volleys, they fell back in some disorder to reform, and then came on again; only to have the same thing happen. “In these charges,” a defender would recall, “there was no shooting but by us, and we did cruel and savage work with them.”

Between attempts, observers back on the Confederate main line, where Field’s leading elements were at last beginning to file into the trenches, heard faint cheering from the fort, as well as from Battery Whitworth, still not under immediate pressure. Lee watched from a high vantage point: as did Longstreet, who thought he recognized his old friend Gibbon when he studied the close-packed attackers through his glasses. “[I] raised my hat,” he later wrote, “but he was busy and did not see me.”

Gibbon was indeed busy, having learned by now that the only way he was going to reduce the two-gun earthwork was by swamping it. Fortunately he had the men, and the men themselves were willing. He brought down a brigade from the division standing idle in front of Whitworth, thus increasing the assault force to 8000, and sent them forward, no longer in successive waves but in a single flood. Inside the place, wounded graybacks loaded rifles taken from the dead and dying, and passed them up to rapid-firing marksmen perched atop the walls. Still the attackers came on, taking their losses to sweep past the flanks and into the rear of the uncompleted installation.

Near the end, a butternut captain noted, “The battle flags of the enemy made almost a solid line of bunting around the fort. The noise was fearful, frightful, indescribable. The curses and groaning of frenzied men could be heard over the din of our musketry. Savage men, ravenous beasts — we felt there was no hope for us unless we could keep them at bay. We were prepared for the worst, and expected no quarter.” Tumbling over the parapets, sometimes onto the lifted bayonets of the defenders, the Federals gained the interior, and there the struggle continued, hand to hand. One gun was out by then, but the other, trained on the still-advancing bluecoats on the far side of the ditch, was double shotted with canister, its lanyard held taut by a single cannoneer. “Don’t fire that gun! Drop the lanyard or we’ll shoot!” the attackers yelled, their rifles leveled at him. “Shoot and be damned!” he shouted back, leaning on the lanyard. Canister plowed the ranks out front, and the cannoneer, riddled with bullets, sprawled dead across the trail of the smoking gun.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5905074&forum_id=2],#50143429)

Later that afternoon, his desk cleared and his office put in order for tomorrow’s faceless blue-clad occupant — Grant himself, for all he knew, or whoever else would command the occupation force — Davis set out through Capitol Square for the last of his familiar homeward walks to the White House, where he still had to pack for the journey south. More people were abroad today than usual, but they were strangely quiet, shocked by rumors that they and their city were about to be abandoned to the foe. Asked if it was true, he replied that it was, adding however that he hoped to return under better auspices. Some wept at the news, while others replaced false hope with resolution. “If the success of the cause requires you to give up Richmond, we are content,” one matron came out of her house to tell him as he walked by, and he afterwards declared that “the affection and confidence of this noble people in the hour of disaster were more distressing to me than complaint and unjust censure would have been.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5905074&forum_id=2],#50143468)