In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat

CHAPTER FIVE: Digging In

{ 50 } ChaPTer five Digging In While Grant and his subordinates debated grand tactics, their men secured the Union position from the Appomattox to Jerusalem Plank Road with heavy earthworks. Despite fatigue and worsening heat, the Federals dug steadily.One Ninth Corps soldier marveled as the fortifications “sprung into existence as if by magic.”1 federal works The men typically piled logs and rails in a line up to four feet tall and then dug a trench behind it, throwing the dirt on top. They made a parapet that often was eight feet thick at the base and three feet wide at the top, tall enough so that their heads were safely covered. Seventy-five yards in front of their earthwork, Sixth Corps troops positioned abatis consisting of “tree tops with the butts sunk in the ground and the limbs cut off a distance from the main trunk and all sharpened.”2 On the Eighteenth Corps sector, Farquhar directed the construction of traverses for artillery and infantry and a covered way to link battery emplacements .The infantrymen improvised loopholes on top of the parapet with layers of sandbags and old shelter tents converted into bags. Confederate artillery fire from the north side of the Appomattox prompted an Eighteenth Corps officer to construct a roof over his deep trench, making a bombproof shelter rather than a fighting position. As staff officer Thomas L. Livermore put it, “The trench was only attacked by ridicule.” Accustomed to digging, an Indiana soldier in Smith’s corps humorously wrote that “if ever I get home I will run a line of breastworks around the yard.”3 Hancock’s men literally ran their line across the yard of Otway P. Hare’s beautiful house. McAllister’s brigade dug a trench through the flowerbeds and among the trees. His troops also dug covered ways six feet deep and twelve feet wide up to the homestead. The gunners of the 10th Massachusetts Battery dug Digging In { 51 } in near the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad cut, placing mantlets across their deep embrasures.4 Farther to the left, other Second Corps troops advanced their line to more advantageous ground east of Jerusalem Plank Road under cover of darkness. Erasmus C. Gilreath, an officer of the 20th Indiana, led his men forward in single file and placed them on the new position three feet apart. Every fifth man held a pick, while the rest used shovels. The detail finished by dawn. “I found on my next visit that I got it fairly straight,” Gilreath proudly recalled. “The irregularities were easily corrected.”5 Grant instructed Meade to tear down most of the Dimmock Line that was in Union hands to prevent the enemy from using it in case they recaptured lost ground. Grant exempted any portions that had already been reversed for use by Federal batteries and any portions in full view of Confederate artillery. Details from the U.S. Engineer Battalion had surveyed these works on June 23 to prepare for this work. Federal opinions on the quality of the Dimmock Line differed widely. Gilbert Thompson of the Engineer Battalion noted that the guns were mounted en barbette, exposing crews behind a three-foot-tall parapet. Some of the connecting infantry lines had no revetment to support the parapet. Nathaniel Michler, however, thought Dimmock’s work “beautifully planned and constructed,” while the site “was a most magnificent and commanding one, the natural lay of the open fields in front forming a most perfect glacis.”6 Meade ordered Hancock’s men to demolish the Confederate works, which had been hardened by months of settling. Barlow’s and Birney’s divisions began working on the night of July 14 with 10,000 men, probably the largest detail ever mustered on a fortification project in the war. Quartermasters used eighteen wagons to haul enough tools for the men. Mott’s division reinforced the laborers as nearly the entire Second Corps worked feverishly for several days, discovering it was harder to tear down an earthwork than to build one.7 Ninth Corps troops dug in securely because they were very close to the enemy.The 56th Massachusetts constructed a banquette, or firing step, to allow the trench bottom to be low enough so they could walk through it without exposure . Officers located their quarters in holes to the rear of the line, covered with roofs made of logs and earth. The rank and file placed traverses every twenty feet, forming bays with protection on three sides...