Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864

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Maps

Western Virginia, 1861 48

Confederate Defense Lines on the Peninsula, April 1862 72

Williamsburg Line, May 1862 94

Richmond Defenses, Spring 1862 115

Chafﬁn’s Bluff Defenses, 1862 132

Harpers Ferry Defenses, 1863 151

Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862 156

Confederate Works at Fredericksburg, Built after December 13, 1862 169

Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863 179

Fifth Corps Line, May 2, 1863, Chancellorsville 181

Union Fortiﬁed Bridgehead Covering United States Ford, May 3–5, 1863 191

Chancellorsville, May 2–3, 1863 194

Union Defenses of Washington, N.C., April 1863 207

Chafﬁn’s Bluff Defenses, 1863 238

Charleston Defenses, 1863 249

Reduction of Battery Wagner, July 18–September 7, 1863 260

Beauregard’s New Line on James Island, Built August 1863 287

Confederate Works at Mine Run, Segment of Line Held by Rodes’s

Division, November 30, 1863 295

Union Defenses of Plymouth, N.C., April 1864 304

Union and Confederate Works, East End of Warwick Line, Yorktown,

April 1862 316

Confederate Works at Wynn’s Mill, Warwick Line, Yorktown, April 1862 323

Confederate Works at Dam No. 1, Garrow’s Point, Warwick Line, Yorktown,

April 1862 324

Confederate Works at Lee’s Mill, Warwick Line, Yorktown, April 1862 329

Preface

he ﬁrst shot of the Civil War was ﬁred in an argu-

ment over an unﬁnished coastal fort at the entrance

to Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. During the next

three years, both sides developed a keen realization

that it was better to live behind a parapet, enduring the

dirt, mud, baking sun, and bitter cold, than to die in the open. Fortiﬁcations

of some kind played a role in all campaigns of this immense conﬂict. Civil

War soldiers became experts in the building of ﬁeld fortiﬁcations, and earth-

works came to play a vital role in determining the outcome of the conﬂict.

The Civil War ended in the ditches around Petersburg, where Lee’s Army of

Northern Virginia was pinned to the earth in the most sophisticated system

of ﬁeld fortiﬁcations yet seen in the history of the world.

Surely, the topic of fortiﬁcations is one of the more important yet to be

explored by historians. I did not become aware of this aspect of Civil War

military history until I moved south to take up my ﬁrst full-time academic

appointment, at the University of Georgia, in 1986. Driving back and forth

between Indiana and Georgia took me by many battleﬁelds of the Atlanta

campaign. I was amazed to ﬁnd remnants of earthworks and became fasci-

nated with them, how they came to be there, and who had built them. They

are tangible links, of a quality different from that of letters, diaries, or mem-

oirs, with the Civil War past.

What followed was a massive research project that took me to many

places over the next ﬁfteen years. During that time, I visited a total of 303

battleﬁelds and fortiﬁcation sites of the Civil War and found remnants of

earthworks or masonry forts at 213 of them. Of the 303 sites visited, 136 are

relevant to the eastern campaigns. I found remnants of earthworks or ma-

sonry forts at 94 of the eastern sites. Additional visits to non–Civil War

military sites have helped to set the conﬂict in perspective. I have visited

thirty-three places in the United States, most of which are related to pre–

Civil War military operations. Further perspective was gained by examining

sites outside the United States. I have been fortunate in seeing a large vari-

ety of earthen and masonry fortiﬁcations, as well as battleﬁelds, in nine

countries. Sites in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany,

xii Preface

India, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, and Sweden have proved to me that the

similarities in fortiﬁcation use and style are more important than the dif-

ferences, when seen within a global context. The remnants of prehistoric

earthen forts in England are similar to the remains of Civil War ﬁeldworks,

and the engineers of eighteenth-century India obeyed the same imperatives

as American engineers in laying out their masonry forts to conform to the lay

of the land.

By taking me to so many interesting places across the South, this project

has given me the widest possible exposure to the varied climate, terrain, and

vegetation upon which the drama of the Civil War was played out. Such a

comprehensive view of the landscape of the war is necessary if one is to gain

a full appreciation of its magnitude, the varied problems faced by ﬁeld com-

manders, and the enormous difﬁculties surmounted by ordinary soldiers.

While struggling through the swampy bottomlands of Mississippi, digging

through the coastal sand near Charleston, or climbing up the vertical slopes

of Rocky Face Ridge, the Civil War soldier of both sides mastered a wide

variety of landforms.

There simply is no substitute for ﬁeld visits to military sites. Examining

the remnants of earthworks answered many important questions that are

not addressed in the voluminous primary literature. While many ofﬁcers and

men described earthworks in their letters, diaries, and memoirs, they did

not address all topics relevant to understanding how ﬁeldworks were con-

ﬁgured, how the diggers dealt with rocky outcroppings, and how they ac-

commodated other features in the landscape. Existing maps often fail to

detail the ﬁner points of construction. I have found that, although a mar-

velous and valuable technological aid, even satellite positioning can only

identify the area and general outline of trench systems. Details in a ﬁeldwork

small enough to accommodate a single soldier do not appear on maps or

satellite images. One must walk through the woods, compass and notepad in

hand, in all sorts of weather. Brambles and briars were my worst enemy; an

obscure but interesting conﬁguration of trench, seldom seen by a visitor in

more than 130 years, was my reward. Such a ﬁnd made up for the torn

clothes, scratches, and thousands of miles traveled in search of a tangible

connection with the war.

I do not attempt to cover the entire history of fortiﬁcations in the Civil War;

this study addresses one theme of that history. The complexity of Civil War

fortiﬁcations as a ﬁeld of study can be appreciated by dividing them into six

major categories based on their types and uses. They include coastal de-

fenses, city and town defenses, railroad defenses, river fortiﬁcations, siege

Preface xiii

works, and ﬁeld fortiﬁcations. This classiﬁcation system focuses on the works

themselves and offers a technical approach to the history of fortiﬁcations.

This study, instead, concentrates on the campaigns of the major ﬁeld

armies, North and South. I will fully cover the topic of ﬁeld fortiﬁcations, as

that type played the most central role in the story of the ﬁeld armies and

their campaigns, but I will also touch on all other categories of fortiﬁcations

as needed. Some coastal forts (such as Fort Macon and Fort Sumter) were

attacked by elements of ﬁeld armies. Washington, Richmond, and a host of

lesser cities and towns had to be defended or attacked by contending ﬁeld

armies. Railroad defenses were needed to protect lines of communication,

especially for Federal armies. River defenses came into play in the campaigns

of many commanders, especially Ulysses S. Grant. Siege operations were

conducted by Grant, Nathaniel P. Banks, and the Army of the Potomac,

among others.

This is not a technical study; the focus is on military operations. I intro-

duce technical aspects only to make sense of the fortiﬁcations. To that end, a

glossary of technical terms used throughout this volume is appended.

The purpose of the study is to see how much and why fortiﬁcations played

a role in the success or failure of Civil War ﬁeld armies. This is a unique

approach to the subject, only partially taken by one other historian. Edward

Hagerman’s American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare, pub-

lished in 1988, examines fortiﬁcations, logistics, communications, and army

administration in an effort to see how modernizing trends in military affairs

affected the conduct of Civil War operations. Thus, Hagerman was forced to

make only general points about the use of fortiﬁcations. To date, I am not

aware of any other historian who has taken my approach to the topic in any

conﬂict other than the Civil War.

A handful of army ofﬁcers wrote articles on the use of fortiﬁcations by

Civil War armies. These were published around the turn of the twentieth

century and have remained obscure ever since. These authors based their

conclusions on very limited research and tried to cover the entire war in a

few pages. Also, there are a number of interesting articles and some books on

individual forts used in the Civil War, but they focus mostly on the engineer-

ing perspective.

I hope my efforts will take the study of fortiﬁcations to a new level of

understanding by incorporating the engineering aspects into the operational

perspective. I will attempt to explain why fortiﬁcations are an important

component of understanding how the Civil War was fought.

Even military historians who write detailed tactical studies of major bat-

xiv Preface

tles in which ﬁeld fortiﬁcations played a role simply mention the works in

passing, without explaining how, why, or by whom they were made. This

seems to be largely true of other American and European conﬂicts as well.

For their part, historians of fortiﬁcations tend to focus on permanent or

semipermanent works, writing books and articles on the structures them-

selves, not on military operations designed to attack or defend them. There

is a real disconnection between those who study operations and those who

study fortiﬁcations. This work will attempt to bridge that gap.

Therefore, I address a number of topics in this study. What did the soldiers

and their commanders think about the use of fortiﬁcations? How did ﬁght-

ing behind earthworks affect their morale? How much were fortiﬁcations

used? How were they constructed? How were they designed to conform to

the landscape? Who laid them out and built them? How sophisticated and

strong were they? How and why did the reliance on earthworks evolve?

What role did fortiﬁcations play in altering the tactical outcome of a battle

and the strategic course of a campaign? What were the factors that led to

success or failure when troops attacked earthworks? What role did the pres-

ence of obstructions placed in front of the earthwork play in affecting the

outcome of an attack? Were fortiﬁcations more important as a defensive or

an offensive feature on the battleﬁeld?

It became apparent in the course of my research that fortiﬁcations cannot

be understood without recognizing how they related to the lay of the land

and to the presence of vegetation. Trenches, parapets, and forts were fea-

tures on the landscape of war just as were trees, hills, and ridges. Another

complicating factor is that soldiers often used existing features on the bat-

tleﬁeld for cover. A ridge line, a rocky outcropping, a railroad grade, a barn,

or a sunken road could serve well in this regard. They were often used during

engagements where no fortiﬁcations were built. Pre–Civil War engineering

manuals recognized this use as a legitimate part of the art of fortiﬁcation.

Thus I discuss battles such as Second Bull Run, where no earthworks were

dug, as the Confederate use of the unﬁnished railroad grade made that

engagement a legitimate part of the story of fortiﬁcations in the Civil War.

Another related topic is military engineering. I found it necessary to

understand something of the professional military engineer, both before and

during the Civil War, in order to understand the topic of fortiﬁcations. Thus I

include a certain amount of institutional and professional history in this

study. Engineers were generally well regarded in mid-nineteenth-century

America, but they labored under several handicaps during the war. Too few

to handle all engineering duties and restricted in rank and pay scale, they

often were ignored when credit was doled out for successful campaigns.

Preface xv

Engineer ofﬁcers and enlisted men alike played quiet but essential roles in

the operations of ﬁeld armies, and they deserve their due.

During the past twenty years, a revolution in public attitudes toward bat-

tleﬁeld preservation in the United States has occurred. There is a growing

realization that, with further development and the passage of time, whatever

remains of our Civil War landscape is threatened if not doomed to be elimi-

nated in the coming decades. Preservation of the remnants of Civil War

fortiﬁcations has been greatly advanced as a result of this new awareness.

I hope that my efforts aid this worthy cause. To that end, I make full use of the

insights gained from my ﬁeld visits in describing various earthworks. Also,

I give some indication of what remnants were found at various sites. Earth-

works were being destroyed at several places when I visited them, and I know

that remnants have been demolished since my visit to other sites as well. The

joy of ﬁnding a well-preserved work at one site was often counterbalanced by

neglect or destruction at other places. A precious relic callously denuded of

its protective cover by tramping feet, or in some cases, being driven over by

heavy logging equipment that left terrible gashes in the parapet, was a sad

discovery that proved that we need to save everything possible.

The study of fortiﬁcations has been advanced by a number of dedicated

scholars in the past twenty-ﬁve years. In his unpublished thesis on Civil War

ﬁeld fortiﬁcations, which mostly focused on Fortress Rosecrans at Murfrees-

boro, David Russell Wright made good points about the state of scholarship

in 1982. ‘‘The study of ﬁeld fortiﬁcations of the Civil War is a relatively un-

broken ground,’’ he wrote, ‘‘with most extant earthworks being overlooked

by the scholar and amateur alike. Both ﬁeld and library research and docu-

mentation have yet to be initiated on a large scale.’’ Wright also noted the

importance of on-site study of fortiﬁcation remnants as an important way to

rectify this situation, a point I discovered when those Atlanta campaign

earthworks ﬁrst attracted my attention in 1986. ‘‘Most Civil War writers

neglect to mention or describe fortiﬁcations,’’ Wright continued, ‘‘while oth-

ers do so in passing and only then with great apprehension. The lack of

justiﬁed recognition stems from the fact that most students of the Civil War

do not understand nor have sufﬁcient reference material concerning the

study of fortiﬁcations.’’

∞

I would not say that the same is true today, for the study of earthworks has

blossomed since Wright completed his thesis. Most of it has been done by

talented and dedicated historians working for the National Park Service,

using global positioning as well as intensive on-site examination of rem-

nants. The results appear in reports that are seldom, if ever, published. I

have used this material whenever possible, along with papers and reports

xvi Preface

written by historic archaeologists who also have devoted a growing amount

of attention to Civil War earthworks. The publication of Clarence R. Geier Jr.

and Susan E. Winter, eds., Look to the Earth: Historical Archaeology and

the American Civil War (1994), highlighted the promise of this approach to

understanding the history of Civil War fortiﬁcations. In addition, George G.

Kundahl, Confederate Engineer: Training and Campaigning with John Morris

Wampler (2000), sheds a great deal of new light on the professional military

engineer in the Civil War.

Finally, the visual documentation of Civil War fortiﬁcations has been an

important source of information for my study. There are hundreds of photo-

graphs of forts, trenches, obstructions, and siege works easily available to

the scholar, and I have pored over them to gain insight into how earthworks

were constructed and how they ﬁt into the landscape of the battleﬁelds.

In short, everything from a soldier’s letter to an ofﬁcial report, a photo-

graph, a conversation with a park ranger, or an obscure and lonely remnant

of an earthwork has informed this study. All inquiries have been focused on

the fortiﬁcations and the role they played in the operations of the major ﬁeld

armies, North and South, during the four years of war.

After ﬁfteen years of research, I wound up with more than two ﬁling

cabinets crammed with material. The question then was how to organize

and make maximum use of it. A multivolume series seemed the best ap-

proach. This initial volume will cover the eastern campaigns from Big Bethel

in June 1861 to the Confederate capture of Plymouth, North Carolina, in

April 1864. This period saw a transition to the habitual use of ﬁeld fortiﬁca-

tions in the Overland campaign, and thus one purpose of this initial volume

is to explain how the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army

of Northern Virginia came to rely on cover whenever possible by the time of

the Spotsylvania phase of Grant’s drive toward Richmond.

But this initial three-year period in the eastern campaigns is not impor-

tant simply as a prelude to the Overland campaign. There is a widespread

assumption that ﬁeldworks were signiﬁcant from the Wilderness on, but not

before. A three-year period of open, ﬂuid warfare, it is thought, was sud-

denly replaced by static, even stalemated operations. That is a mispercep-

tion. There was no such sharp break between the Virginia operations of

1861–63 and those of 1864–65. This volume will show that the use of some

kind of ﬁeld fortiﬁcation was common throughout the eastern campaigns

and was not conﬁned to a speciﬁc time period. The difference is one of

degree. Fieldworks were less used in battles such as Second Manassas and

Antietam but were heavily implemented during the Peninsula campaign,

after Fredericksburg, and at Chancellorsville. They were also widely used at

Preface xvii

Gettysburg. There was a trend toward more heavy reliance on ﬁeld fortiﬁca-

tions on both the Union and Confederate sides, but it was not inevitable or

uniform. In ﬁts and starts, by 1864 the armies in the East had intensiﬁed their

use of quickly constructed fortiﬁcations, building on a long period of experi-

ence in their construction.

Two subsequent volumes will follow this story to its conclusion in the

East. One will detail the use of fortiﬁcations in the Overland campaign, and

the other will cover the Petersburg campaign.

In addition to detailing the use of fortiﬁcations in the major campaigns of

the East, I follow several lines of interpretation in this book. First, as already

mentioned, the campaigns from 1861 to the early months of 1864 saw the

widespread use of fortiﬁcations. There is no clearly deﬁned break between

this period and that of the Overland campaign. Second, there has been some

discussion about who initiated the construction of ﬁeld fortiﬁcations. I ar-

gue that ﬁeldworks were started by a wide range of people. Middle-level

ofﬁcers—regimental, brigade, or division commanders—usually initiated

them, but on fewer occasions corps and army commanders ordered their

construction. On still other occasions, the rank and ﬁle took it upon them-

selves to build them. A third line of interpretation identiﬁes who actually did

the digging. While engineer ofﬁcers usually planned and laid out the works,

there is no doubt that the men in the ranks did the vast majority of the labor.

The engineer troops in both armies were far too few in number to do much in

this regard. Slaves and free black laborers were an important part of the

workforce only in constructing semipermanent defenses around Yorktown,

Richmond, Petersburg, and a few other places.

The fourth line of interpretation relates to a slow evolution in the use of

ﬁeldworks and in their growing sophistication. Early in the war, soldiers

usually dug a simple trench with a parapet. More sophisticated features

gradually adorned it, including obstructions placed in front, traverses dug

to offer ﬂank protection, and headlogs. This trend toward more elaborate

trench systems evolved into the sophisticated ﬁeldworks at Spotsylvania,

Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, which cross the line between a ﬁeld fortiﬁca-

tion and the semipermanent earthwork systems that guarded important

cities like Richmond and Washington, D.C. Defense in depth, in which one or

more trench lines were constructed behind each other, was another more

sophisticated design. It was relatively rare in the Civil War, simply because

the number of men available to any ﬁeld army was limited, yet one can see

evidence of it at Cold Harbor.

A ﬁfth line of interpretation identiﬁes why armies had come to rely habit-

ually on ﬁeld fortiﬁcations by the time of the Overland campaign. The pre-

xviii Preface

vailing view has been that the full employment of the riﬂe musket, with its

longer range, by both armies led to this heavy reliance. I strongly argue

against this view, convinced that the shock of combat and continuous con-

tact between the armies, or at least the imminent threat of continued ﬁght-

ing after a pitched battle, were the keys to either army’s willingness to dig in.

This can be seen in several engagements of the eastern campaigns during

1861–64, including First Manassas and Fredericksburg.

Finally, a sixth line of interpretation deals with whether the use of ﬁeld

fortiﬁcations helped or hindered tactical operations. Of course, the answer

depends on which army and which campaign one refers to. Generally, the

armies of the Civil War made effective use of ﬁeldworks. There are only a few

cases where they dug in unnecessarily, such as the Federal construction of an

elaborate defense system to protect Suffolk, Virginia, a town of little strate-

gic value. There are other instances where ﬁeld armies failed to dig in widely

or effectively, as with Lee’s army at Second Manassas and Antietam. In both

battles, more extensive use of ﬁeldworks would have been fully justiﬁed. But

in most other cases, the use of ﬁeld fortiﬁcations was balanced and rational.

Both sides built impressive ﬁeldworks during the Chancellorsville campaign,

deftly aiding their particular tactical needs (the only exception was the fail-

ure of the Eleventh Corps to properly fortify its position on May 2). Gettys-

burg saw the eventual construction of ﬁeldworks that were appropriate to

the terrain along nearly the entire length of each opposing line of battle.

The list of campaigns in which ﬁeldworks played a signiﬁcant role would

include nearly all the campaigns addressed in this volume. Sometimes they

failed to stop a vigorous attack, as at Gaines’s Mill, but on other occasions

they played the decisive role in abruptly deciding the outcome of the cam-

paign, as at Mine Run. Sometimes they were poorly planned and built and

were cracked open by smart attacks, as at Rappahannock Station and Ply-

mouth. They were used both offensively and defensively. By and large, one is

tempted to argue that American ﬁeld armies made more effective use of ﬁeld

fortiﬁcations than did their European counterparts, although this a thesis in

need of study.

Finally, a word about sieges is in order. The strong tendency among Civil

War contemporaries to call any static positioning in a fortiﬁed ﬁeld position a

siege has largely been accepted by modern historians. There were many

different kinds of siege operations; only a few were employed at Yorktown

and Suffolk, while a fuller range was used against Fort Wagner on Morris

Island. The latter is, in fact, one of the classic siege operations in Ameri-

can military history. I refrain from overusing the word ‘‘siege’’ but will deal

Preface xix

with the varied components of siege operations as they were applied to

these campaigns.

These six lines of interpretation will continue throughout the three vol-

umes that are planned to cover the eastern campaigns of the Civil War.

Further elaboration of all six are offered in the conclusion of this volume.

I wish to offer a special note of gratitude to the staff members at all the

archives and libraries I visited or contacted for information. Additionally,

several people have gone beyond the ordinary to offer help or encourage-

ment. They include Christopher Calkins at Petersburg National Battleﬁeld;

Robert E. L. Krick and Joseph Kyle at Richmond National Battleﬁeld; A. Wil-

son Greene at Pamplin Park; Jerry L. Bochek at Newport News Park; Richard

Sommers and Arthur Bergeron at the U.S. Army Military History Institute;

and Jane M. Sundberg at Yorktown Battleﬁeld. The Harrisburg Civil War

Round Table offered me a James F. Haas Fellowship in 1998 to aid in the

completion of research at the U.S. Army Military History Institute. I would

also like to thank William L. Shea for helpful ideas and encouragement.

A special note of gratitude is due the self-proclaimed ‘‘trench nerds’’ of the

Civil War Fortiﬁcations Study Group. Formed in 1992, mostly by dedicated

historians working for the National Park Service, this is the only organization

devoted to the study of Civil War fortiﬁcations. It organizes yearly con-

ferences centered around visits to the remnants of fortiﬁcations. The mem-

bers of this small but vibrant group are the richest storehouse of information

about Civil War fortiﬁcations. They are a sounding board for anyone inter-

ested in learning about the topic or anyone in need of reliable information

regarding identiﬁcation, preservation, and assessment of earthwork rem-

nants. I would like to thank speciﬁcally several members of the study group

who have been particularly helpful in inﬂuencing my thinking on the subject.

They include Dale Floyd, Philip Shiman, Stacy Allen, and Paul Hawke.

I wish to thank Gary W. Gallagher and Robert K. Krick for their careful

readings of the manuscript and their helpful suggestions for improvement.

David W. Lowe of the National Park Service and the Civil War Fortiﬁcations

Study Group read the manuscript as well. He offered many helpful sugges-

tions and saved me from several embarrassing mistakes. His deep and com-

prehensive knowledge of Civil War earthworks, his enthusiasm for the sub-

ject, and his stylistic suggestions improved the manuscript a great deal.

Finally, as always, I am eternally grateful for the support, encouragement,

and love of my wife, Pratibha. It would all be useless without her.