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6 : Second Manassas, Antietam, and the Maryland Campaign T he Seven Days battles saved the Confederate capital for the time being, but McClellan’s large army was still entrenched only twenty miles from the city. Lee refused to accept that his own army had to remain inert in the outskirts of Richmond to guard against another Union thrust. He intended to take the war northward, to enlarge the area of operations , and to confront another Union force, the newly created Army of Virginia under Maj. Gen. John Pope, which was hovering north of the Rappahannock River. This move would shift the focus of the war away from Richmond for some time to come. Defenses of Richmond Lee had to arrange for the city’s defense while he was away. He ordered increased work on its growing ring of fortifications. The southern approaches were strengthened, more guns were ordered for Drewry’s Bluff, and works at Petersburg, an important rail junction thirty miles south of the capital, were also pushed forward.∞ Lee’s newly appointed chief engineer, Col. Jeremy Francis Gilmer, began to inspect the lines and suggest improvements. ‘‘The greater anxiety is felt for pressing forward defensive works now,’’ Gilmer wrote his wife, ‘‘because a large part of our forces in & about Richmond have been sent northward to whip Pope, leaving the reduced forces here in need of aid from the much abused pick and shovel.’’ When Lee shifted his army to the Rappahannock River, he left all of his engineer officers behind to see to the defenses of the capital. Only one officer returned to field duty by August 25, on the eve of the campaign against Pope.≤ Much work was done at Chaffin’s Bluff that summer and fall as Lee ordered improvements on the Outer Line of the city defenses. Two brigades and all of A. P. Hill’s division worked on the fortifications there in late July and early August until those troops were shifted to field duty elsewhere. Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith took charge of the Richmond defenses on August 30, while Lt. Col. William Proctor Smith took over from William Elzey Harrison as engineer in charge of the works at Chaffin’s Bluff. Re- Second Manassas, Antietam, and Maryland 131 sponding to recommendations by Gilmer, Smith used Henry A. Wise’s Virginia brigade to improve the defenses. These troops would spend the next several months digging earthworks near Richmond. Smith connected Batteries 2 through 5 of Harrison’s line with an infantry trench, completed gun emplacements all along the line to Williamsburg Road, and slashed timber to create fields of fire. He also laid out a secondary line that branched off from a point on Harrison ’s line between Battery 9 and 10 to cover the area between Battery 11 and New Market Road. W. P. Smith’s line was built in October and November 1862 and had two artillery redans. One, Smith’s Battery, was a redoubt with five faces. The other, overlooking the valley of Coles Run, was constructed the same way and had four gun platforms. If the enemy broke through the left wing of Harrison’s line, Smith’s new position would still protect the bluff batteries at Chaffin’s. Brig. Gen. Junius Daniel’s North Carolina brigade did the work on Smith’s line.≥ As troops were sent to reinforce Lee or left for garrison duty in North Carolina and South Carolina, less labor was available to work on the Richmond fortifications. Noting that Lee was ‘‘excessively anxious to push rapidly to completion’’ the defenses around Richmond, Alfred L. Rives received authority from the War Department to impress one-fourth of all male slaves in several Virginia counties as laborers. Their masters were to be paid twenty dollars per month for each slave, and the government was to provide rations. Rives also enlisted the aid of the Richmond and Danville Railroad to transport the workers. He rounded up shovels, picks, and axes and even impressed 30,000 feet of three-inch lumber from a privately owned company and a grove of 100 pine trees from a family farm to make revetments. In October, Jefferson Davis called on Governor John Letcher of Virginia for 4,500 additional black laborers. Gilmer, now head of the Engineer Bureau, worked out a system to mobilize this labor force, fixing quotas for nearby counties and assigning agents of the county governments the responsibility of organizing the...

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