Engagement at Sutherland Station

On the morning of 2 Apr. 1865, Union forces arrived here by way of Claiborne Road and found Maj. Gen. Henry Heth's Confederate division entrenched on Cox Road. During the day, Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles's division made three distinct assaults against the half-mile-long Confederate line, which stretched from Ocran Church to Sutherland's Tavern. The third charge forced Heth's division out of its works and west on the Namozine Road, thereby severing Gen. Robert E. Lee's final supply line, the South Side Railroad. Lee ordered the Army of Northern Virginia to evacuate both Petersburg and Richmond that night.