Strategic Context: Battle of Ream's Station

Strategic Context: Battle of Ream's Station

The forces in play that led to the capture of Solomon Crist in August 1864 from the Union lines around the Bermuda Hundred.

In August 1864, Grant captured the Weldon Railroad, one of the key supply lines into Richmond, VA. He sent the Army of Potomac’s Second Corps to tear up the Weldon Railroad track heading south. An understrength and overused Second Corps was operating outside of Union lines in an exposed position. On August 24, 1864, Confederate General Robert E. Lee decided to attack the Union Second Corps while it was outside the Union lines around Petersburg. Lee sent a Confederate Corps south to attack the Union force from the flank, and to disguise his intentions and divert Grant and the Union Command’s attention, he launched a feint on the Union lines around Richmond on the Bermuda Hundred. Private Solomon Crist and Company K, 55th Pennsylvania Infantry, part of the Union Tenth Corps, had just relieved the Eighteenth Corps on the Bermuda Hundred Line.

Graphic: Dennis Kelly, May 2020.

Base map: US Coast Survey, Military map of Southeastern Virginia, 1864.

Dennis Kelly

1864-8-24

Dennis Kelly HIS390 Spring 2025

Open Source.

pdf

English

Petersburg and Richmond, VA

Annotated map.