A report on Siege of Petersburg, Overland Campaign, American Civil War and George Meade

As Commanding General, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as Secretary of War.

For thirteen months, Grant fought Robert E. Lee during the high-casualty Overland Campaign and at Petersburg.

Grant established his headquarters with General George Meade's Army of the Potomac in Culpeper, north-west of Richmond, and met weekly with Lincoln and Stanton in Washington.

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general who served the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War, during which he was appointed the overall commander of the Confederate States Army.

Lee then won two decisive victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before launching a second invasion of the North in the summer of 1863, where he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg by the Army of the Potomac under George Meade.

Grant engaged Lee's army in bloody but inconclusive battles at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania before the lengthy Siege of Petersburg, which was followed in April 1865 by the capture of Richmond and the destruction of most of Lee's army, which he finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House and Cold Harbor.

The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought during the American Civil War near Mechanicsville, Virginia, from May 31 to June 12, 1864, with the most significant fighting occurring on June 3.

It was one of the final battles of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign, and is remembered as one of American history's bloodiest, most lopsided battles.

In the final stage, Lee entrenched his army within besieged Petersburg before finally retreating westward across Virginia.

By late May 1864, only two of these continued to advance: Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign and the Overland Campaign, in which Grant accompanied and directly supervised the Army of the Potomac and its commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade.

General of the Army Philip Henry Sheridan (March 6, 1831 – August 5, 1888) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War.

Sheridan arrived at the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac on April 5, 1864, less than a month before the start of Grant's massive Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee.

In the early battles of the campaign, Sheridan's cavalry was relegated by army commander Maj. Gen. George Meade to its traditional role—screening, reconnaissance, and guarding trains and rear areas—much to Sheridan's frustration.

A contrary view has been published by historian Eric J. Wittenberg, who notes that of four major strategic raids (Richmond, Trevilian, Wilson-Kautz, and First Deep Bottom) and thirteen major cavalry engagements of the Overland and Richmond–Petersburg campaigns, only Yellow Tavern can be considered a Union victory, with Haw's Shop, Trevilian Station, Meadow Bridge, Samaria Church, and Wilson-Kautz defeats in which some of Sheridan's forces barely avoided destruction.

Ambrose Everett Burnside (May 23, 1824 – September 13, 1881) was an American army officer and politician who became a senior Union general in the Civil War and three times Governor of Rhode Island, as well as being a successful inventor and industrialist.

The IX Corps fought in the Overland Campaign of May 1864 as an independent command, reporting initially to Grant; his corps was not assigned to the Army of the Potomac because Burnside outranked its commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, who had been a division commander under Burnside at Fredericksburg.

After North Anna and Cold Harbor, he took his place in the siege lines at Petersburg.

The Western Theater of the American Civil War encompassed major military operations in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee, as well as Louisiana east of the Mississippi River.

It was intended to destroy or fix Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia with three major thrusts (under Meade, Butler, and Sigel) launched in the direction of Richmond and in the Shenandoah Valley; capture Mobile with an army under Nathaniel Banks; and destroy Johnston's army while driving toward Atlanta.

Most of the initiatives failed: Butler became bogged down in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign; Sigel was quickly defeated in the valley; Banks became occupied in the ill-fated Red River Campaign; Meade and Grant experienced many setbacks and much bloodshed in the Overland Campaign before finally settling down to a siege of Petersburg.