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[601] hundred and forty-four were taken by the Fifth Corps. Brilliant as the victory was, it was won without great sacrifice of life, the losses of the cavalry being but a few hundred, and those of the infantry six hundred and thirty-four killed and wounded.1 No sooner had the sound of musketry died away at the Five Forks, than from the multitudinous throats of all the guns that studded Grant's lines before Petersburg there opened a prodigious clamor, and the darkness of night was illumined by the lurid light of hundreds of bursting shells and bombs. It was a paean to victory; but still more a prelude of what was yet to come. The action at Five Forks had simplified, not solved the problem. Lee's right, wrenched violently from his centre —the troops captive or rushing wildly westward—would trouble no more. But the Confederate lines encircling Petersburg from the Appomattox to Hatcher's Run, were still intact. This was Lee's centre in the general relations of all the points he aimed to defend, while his left was the front that covered Richmond from the Union force threatening assault on the north side of the James. But as, strangely enough, Longstreet, who commanded on the Richmond side, had not discovered how greatly the enemy in his front had been reduced, still retained two divisions on that side of the James, the force immediately defending Petersburg was reduced to two incomplete divisions. Upon this General Grant, on learning the success at Five Forks, ordered an attack to be made by the corps of Wright, Parke, and Ord, the following morning.
1 After the close of the action, General Sheridan, for some reason as yet unexplained, relieved General Warren from duty, and assigned General Griffin to the command of the Fifth Corps. In saying that this act is ‘as yet unexplained,’ it will hardly be interpreted in the sense that I am unaware of the reasons stated by General Sheridan in his official report, but that these reasons are wholly inadequate to justify that officer's conduct. It is needless here to enter into the discussion of this painful question; for General Warren has exhausted it in a brochure, lately published, under the title of ‘An Account of the Fifth Army Corps at the Battle of Five Forks.’
1866.
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