After four days of unsuccessful fighting to take Petersburg by direct assault, June 15-18, 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant decided to lay siege upon the city and began such operations by ordering his men to dig in. At this initial point his forces, those of the Army of the Potomac, with portions of the Army of the James, now held a line running east of Petersburg and anchored on both flanks by the Appomattox River on the right and the Jerusalem Plank Road on the left. No more than two days later on the 21st, Grant put his men into action by carrying out his new strategy: cutting Gen. Robert E. Lee’s supply lines into the city. The war for the railroads had begun.

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