Students of the Civil War know April 9, 1865. On that date—Palm Sunday—at Appomattox Court House, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate States Army of the Northern Virginia. The Civil War was for all intents over.
Fewer know the crucial events of just three days before. April 6, known as “Black Thursday” among Confederates, saw four separate engagements fought along or around Sailor’s Creek, Virginia. Three Confederate corps, including CSA marines and orphaned naval forces, engaged two U.S. infantry corps plus powerful Union cavalry forces. In a desperate struggle that involved over 40,000 soldiers, Lee lost about a fifth of his army—somewhere between 8-10 thousand—many of them captured. In addition to the killed and wounded, the Federals claimed some 8,000 prisoners that day, including eleven generals (plus a naval commodore), among them Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell and Robert E. Lee’s eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee. That Thursday, Lee lost thousands of men who might soon have helped him punch through the U.S. lines that on Sunday blocked his westward escape route from Appomattox Court House. Instead, Lee was forced to surrender.
How did that earlier disaster happen? And why is it so little-known today?…