Appomattox River where the armies' lines were only about 200 yards apart. Lee approved the planned attack. March 24, 1865: Grant's orders On March 24, 1865, Grant issued orders for an offensive to begin on March 29, 1865. Grant planned for Major General Philip H. Sheridan's cavalry to cut the remaining open Confederate railroads, the Southside Railroad to Petersburg and the Richmond and Danville Railroad to Richmond, and for two infantry corps to protect Sheridan's move and to turn the Confederates out of the western end of their line. Grant's top priority was to force an engagement in order to defeat the Confederate army with the railroad raid as a secondary objective. Grant also intended that his forces block a Confederate retreat to the west. Grant ordered the Army of the Potomac's V Corps under Major General Gouverneur K. Warren and II Corps under Major General Andrew A. Humphreys to support Sheridan, mainly by outflanking the Confederates to prevent them from interfering with Sheridan's mission. Grant also initially ordered Warren's corps to seize Dinwiddie Court House, where they also could capture a segment of the Boydton Plank Road, a task later given to Sheridan. Grant ordered Major General Edward Ord, to quietly move units from the Army of the James to fill in the portion of the Petersburg line that the II Corps then occupied. Battle of Fort Stedman After Gordon's surprise attack on Fort Stedman in the pre-dawn hours of March 25, 1865, captured the fort, three adjacent batteries and over 500 men while killing and wounding about 500 more, Union forces of the IX Corps under Major General John G. Parke promptly counterattacked. They recaptured the fort and batteries, forced the Confederates to return to their lines and to give up their advance picket line and inflicted about 4,000 casualties, including about 1,000 captured, which the Confederates could ill afford. The United States National Park Service and some historians consider the Battle of Fort Stedman to have been the concluding battle of the siege of Petersburg. In response to the Confederate attack on Fort Stedman, 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