Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign’s movement toward Richmond, Virginia, stalled in mid-June when Federal forces failed to take the important railroad city of Petersburg, south of the Confederate capital. Union troops laid siege to Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865, with both sides digging in for a protracted period of trench warfare, punctuated by occasional offenses near the city and an ill-fated attempt by Pennsylvania miners to dig under Confederate lines. Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood of the 4th United States Colored Troops, a Medal of Honor recipient in 1865, recorded his impressions of the initial assault on Petersburg.