began preparations for the movement and informed Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate States Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge of his conclusions and plan. Battle of Fort Stedman Aware that Sherman's army moving through North Carolina might combine with Grant's army at Petersburg if General Joseph E. Johnston's army could not stop Sherman, and that Lee's own declining army could not hold the Richmond and Petersburg defenses much longer, in March 1865, General Lee accepted a plan by Major General John Brown Gordon to launch an attack on Union Fort Stedman. The objective would be to break the Union lines east of Petersburg, or at least to compel the Union forces to shorten their lines by gaining ground in a substantial attack. This was supposed to permit Lee to shorten the Confederate lines and send a substantial force to help Johnston, or if necessary to give the Confederates a head start in evacuating Richmond and Petersburg and combining Lee's entire force with Johnston's dwindling army. After Gordon's surprise attack on Fort Stedman in the pre-dawn hours of March 25, 1865 resulted in the capture of the fort, three adjacent batteries and over 500 men while killing and wounding about 500 more, the Union IX Corps under Major General John G. Parke promptly counterattacked. The IX Corps recaptured the fort and batteries, forced the Confederates to return to their lines and give up their advance picket line and inflicted about 4,000 casualties, including about 1,000 captured, which the Confederates could ill afford. On the afternoon of March 25, at the Battle of Jones's Farm, Union forces of II Corps and VI Corps captured Confederate picket lines near Armstrong's Mill and extended the left end of the Union line about closer to the Confederate fortifications. This put the VI Corps which was holding this section of the line, within easy striking distance, about , of the Confederate line. After the Confederate defeats at Fort Stedman and Jones's Farm, Lee knew that Grant would soon move against the only remaining Confederate supply lines to Petersburg, the Southside Railroad and the Boydton Plank Road and possibly cut off all routes of retreat from Richmond and Petersburg. March 29 movements Grant's orders On March 24, 1865, the day before the Confederate attack on Fort Stedman, Grant already had planned an offensive for March 29, 1865. The objectives were to draw the Confederates out into