frustration with the lack of support or concern from Robert E. Lee, writing years after the war, "The Army of Northern Virginia was yet far distant, and I had failed to convince its distinguished commander of the fact that I was then fighting Grant's whole army with less than eleven thousand men." Lee had systematically ignored all of Beauregard's pleas and it was not until his own son, cavalry Major General W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee, had verified Grant's movements across the river, that he acknowledged the current perilous situation at Petersburg. He immediately dispatched two divisions of his men, exhausted from the Overland Campaign, to Petersburg, beginning at 3 a.m. on June 18. June 18 With the arrival of Lee's two divisions, under Major General Joseph B. Kershaw and Charles W. Field, Beauregard had over 20,000 men to defend the city, but Grant's force had been augmented by the arrival of Major General Gouverneur K. Warren's V Corps and 67,000 Federals were present. The first Union attack began at dawn, started by the II and XVIII Corps on the Union right. Hancock began to suffer effects from his lingering Gettysburg wound and he turned over command of the II Corps to Major General David B. Birney. The men of the II Corps were surprised to make rapid progress against the Confederate line, not realizing that Beauregard had moved it back the night before. When they encountered the second line, the attack immediately ground to a halt and the corps suffered under heavy Confederate fire for hours. By noon, the IX and V Corps, which had a longer distance to march to join the attack, came up alongside the II Corps. Major General Orlando B. Willcox's division of the IX Corps led a renewed attack but it suffered significant losses in the marsh and open fields crossed by Taylor's Branch. Willcox's division emerged with only 1,000 men standing. Warren's V Corps was halted by murderous fire from Rives's Salient (also known as Battery 27, the position where the Dimmock Line crossed the Jerusalem Plank Road, present-day U.S. Route 301), an attack in which Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commanding the First Brigade, First Division, V Corps, was severely wounded. His wound was believed to be mortal and Chamberlain was granted a battlefield promotion to brigadier general by General Grant. At 6:30 p.m., Meade ordered a final assault, which also failed with more horrendous