In early June, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee were engaged in the Overland Campaign, facing each other in their trenches after the bloody Battle of Cold Harbor.

He was also aware that Confederate troops had been moving north to reinforce Lee, leaving the defenses of Petersburg in a vulnerable state.

Sensitive to his failure in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, Butler sought to achieve a success to vindicate his generalship.

[5] Butler's plan was formulated on the afternoon of June 8, calling for 3 columns to cross the Appomattox and advance from City Point (now named Hopewell, Virginia) with 4,500 men.

Eventually the infantry crossed by 3:40 a.m. on June 9 and were ordered to move forward against the enemy's picket line at daylight.

Gillmore, an engineering officer with no experience leading troops in combat, hesitated at the sight of the formidable earthworks.

They assaulted the Dimmock Line where it crossed the Jerusalem Plank Road (present-day U.S. Route 301), at Battery 27, also known as Rives's Salient, with 150 militiamen, commanded by Lieut.

Gen. Raleigh E. Colston, who happened to be in the city without assignment at the time, brought forward a 12-pound howitzer to fire at the Union cavalrymen, but found that he had no antipersonnel rounds.

[9] Kautz then launched his main attack by the 11th Pennsylvania against the Home Guard, a group consisting primarily of teenagers, elderly men, and some wounded soldiers from city hospitals.