Preface
PrefaCe Petersburg was the longest, the most complex, and perhaps the most important campaign of the Civil War. Gen. Robert E. Lee staked the fate of his Army of Northern Virginia on the outcome of this campaign, which lasted from June 15, 1864, to April 2, 1865. He had lost the strategic initiative to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Overland campaign that preceded the confrontation at Petersburg and was fighting to save both his army and the Confederate capital. Even with the important triumphs achieved by Federal troops in the West, the Confederates were still holed up in what a recent historian has called their “last citadel,” the lines that defended Richmond and Petersburg. In fact, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s grand march from Atlanta to the sea and through the Carolinas was primarilya movement to bring 60,000 western veterans to help Grant reduce that last Rebel stronghold. Field fortifications played a pivotal role in the operations of both armies at Petersburg. In fact, no other campaign of the Civil War saw such heavy reliance on earthworks to promote the grand tactical goals of opposing field armies. After 292 days of continuous contact, the trenches stretched for some thirty-five miles from a point southeast of Richmond to the area west of Petersburg, crossing two rivers, two rail lines, and several major roads. At several points along those lines, engineers had designed defenses in depth, and all along the front of the trenches were extensive fields of obstructions to trip up and delay an attacker. The obstructions included a minefield that stretched 2,266 yards before a section of the Confederate works. Dams across creeks created water barriers, and exten- { xiv } Preface sive countermines guarded against an underground approach by the enemy. Aboveground, thousands of soldiers manned the works, enduring months of broiling sunshine, drenching rain, snow, and wind.Union and Confederate soldiers spent many days in uncomfortable but usually safe underground shelters and learned how to endure hours on fortified picket lines, exposed to a sudden rush by the enemy. The grim fighting of the Overland campaign preceded the confrontation at Petersburg. From May 4 to June 12, 1864, Grant tried to use the Army of the Potomac to smash the Army of Northern Virginia or to drive it to Richmond. Although Lee’s Confederate army remained unbroken, the Federals succeeded in pushing it sixty miles in fiveweeks of heavy fighting, from the Rapidan River to a point only nine miles east of Richmond near Cold Harbor. Along the way, both armies developed the habit of digging in whenever opportunity presented itself. Union and Confederate troops had used field fortifications from the start of the conflict in 1861; now, however, both armies remained within striking distance of each other for weeks on end. Lee’s men quickly learned thevalue of fieldworks in repelling massed attacks and in offering protection against sharpshooters, harassing artillery fire, and skirmishing between assaults. The Federals were forced to dig in also, although Lee rarely sallied forth to strike at Grant. Northern commanders relied on fieldworks to hold their position within striking range of the enemy before launching another flanking maneuver. But at Cold Harbor, after the failure of the June 3 attack, the Unionists changed that pattern by digging in only a few yards from the Rebels and beginning parallels and a mine. Grant experimented with siege approaches for only a few days, however, before opting for a sweeping move that would take his forces across the James River. Until then, the Federals remained locked in complex trench systems opposite their equally well fortified enemy for nearly two weeks at Cold Harbor, where the tactical situation resembled what was soon to come at Petersburg. desPiTe The iMPorTanCe of what happened at Petersburg, there is no book that covers the use of field fortifications during the campaign, even though historians and readers alike are aware that fieldworks played a key role in it. This book is an attempt to fill the need fora detailed studyof field fortifications, and engineering in general, during the Petersburg campaign. It is the third volume in my series of books on the use of fieldworks by the major armies of the East and follows through with the themes, research, and goals established for the series. While the first volume (Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861–1864) covered the eastern campaigns from the beginning of the war to April 1864, the...
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