The attack was successfully repulsed by approximately 1,100 troops under General Wild, aided by naval gunfire from the USS Dawn.

According Ed Besch's research, a Virginia military historian who is credited with much of the rediscovery of the "lost" site of the fort, Fitzhugh Lee was humiliated by defeat at the hands of black Union soldiers at a time when he was a candidate to replace J.E.B.

After completion, Fort Pocahontas served as a refuge for escaped slaves and was used to hold suspected Confederate sympathizers during the Siege of Petersburg until hostilities ended in April 1865.

The remote site had been largely forgotten and untouched by development for 130 years when, following Besch's research, it was purchased in 1996 by Harrison Ruffin Tyler.

In 2005, many scenes of the motion picture The New World were filmed on-location at Fort Pocahontas, as well at other places nearby along the James and Chickahominy Rivers.