Hess Earl J. Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864
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18 Engineering War
of Engineers until he resigned in 1857 to become chief engineer of the state of
Alabama. He took charge of the bureau on August 3, 1861, but led it for only
three months. An uprising by Unionists in eastern Tennessee led to the burn-
ing of several railroad bridges, and he was sent to oversee their reconstruc-
tion on November 13, 1861.
∂≠
Capt. Alfred L. Rives filled in as temporary head of the bureau for the next
ten months. He was thirty-one years old and had an impeccable resume.
Born in France, he had attended the University of Virginia, Virginia Military
Institute, and the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris when his father served as U.S.
ambassador to France. He later was assistant engineer to Montgomery C.
Meigs in construction work on the U.S. Capitol and entered the Virginia state
engineers at the outbreak of war. There he served as assistant chief and,
later, chief of engineers.
∂∞
As temporary head of the Confederate Engineer Bureau, Rives scrambled
to meet the growing needs of his officers. The bureau contracted with private
firms to manufacture a variety of equipment, especially shovels and other
entrenching tools. It established workshops at Richmond, Charleston, Au-
gusta, Mobile, and Demopolis to make as much of its own equipment as
possible. When necessary, the bureau sent agents through the blockade to
Europe to purchase ‘‘intrenching tools, technical books, and surveying and
drafting equipment.’’ Like many other departments and bureaus in the Con-
federate government, the Engineer Bureau had to be creative in its endeav-
ors to supply the Southern war effort.
∂≤
Rives also was burdened by a number of applications from men who
sought transfer from state engineer forces to the Confederate service. Secre-
tary of War Judah P. Benjamin proposed they be accepted in a Provisional
Corps of Engineers. Their services were too valuable to ignore, yet the gov-
ernment cringed at the thought of enlarging the permanent engineering
establishment. The provisional corps, which was authorized by Congress in
December 1861, was intended to exist only for the duration of the war. It had
room for fifty officers, but at no rank higher than captain. The positions were
filled by March 1862. The next month the number of slots was doubled, and
ranks higher than captain were opened by the end of 1862.
∂≥
Benjamin persuaded the Confederate Congress to authorize the provi-
sional corps by arguing that a number of civil engineers who were working as
hired employees of the government deserved a chance at promotion. These
were men ‘‘educated for scientific pursuits, not military engineers by profes-
sion, but whose services it has been indispensable to secure for engineering
purposes.’’ The Confederates were not so fastidious about utilizing the skills
of civil engineers as the Federals. Lt. Claudius B. Denson praised the ‘‘hardy
Engineering War 19
civil engineers’’ who came into the provisional corps. Their prewar experi-
ence ‘‘in building the railroads, water works, and similar internal improve-
ments’’ had been good preparation for military engineering duties.
∂∂
Rives needed the extra help offered by the enlarged provisional corps, for
the Confederate bureau became fully responsible for all fortifications pre-
viously under the charge of Virginia state engineers in November 1861. The
state authorities in Richmond had created an army, the Virginia Forces, in
April 1861. It included a sizable corps of engineers headed by Col. Andrew
Talcott. Sixty-four years old and a graduate of the West Point class of 1818,
Talcott had extensive military and civil engineering experience before the
war. He laid out the works at Yorktown, Jamestown Island, and Gloucester
Point. He also supervised three topographical survey parties to map the area
around Richmond and began the Inner Line of defenses around that city.
North and South Carolina had also created state engineer corps in 1861 to
work on defenses within their boundaries. State engineers from all three
states obtained commissions as engineers in the Provisional Army, Confeder-
ate States. When the state defenses were handed over to Rives’s bureau, all
paperwork also was shifted to his office.
∂∑
Rives’s tenure was meant to be temporary. His permanent replacement
was Lt. Col. Jeremy F. Gilmer, who would run the bureau for the remainder
of the war. Gilmer was a solid engineer and a keen administrator, but he
came to the bureau in a roundabout way. Forty-four years old when he
assumed his position, he had graduated among the top five of his West Point
class of 1839. He served in the Corps of Engineers and taught at the academy
for a time. Gilmer worked at a variety of posts, was aide to engineer chief
Totten, and served in the Mexican War. He saw service in Virginia in 1861 but
then transferred to the West and was involved in the Fort Henry and Fort
Donelson campaigns. Gilmer was Gen. Albert S. Johnston’s chief engineer at
Shiloh, where he was wounded. After recuperating, he reported for duty in
August 1862. Lee wanted him to head the Engineer Bureau, but Gilmer
persuaded the general to appoint him chief engineer of the Army of North-
ern Virginia, succeeding Maj. Walter H. Stevens.
The appointment never worked out. When Lee launched his Second Ma-
nassas campaign, he left Gilmer behind to supervise the construction of the
Richmond defenses. Poor health frustrated his desire to engage in an active
campaign, but Gilmer insisted on promotion to colonel before he would
consent to head the bureau. President Jefferson Davis agreed, and he was
named the new chief on September 25, 1862.
∂∏
Gilmer threw his energy into the job of revitalizing the engineering estab-
lishment. The bureau had barely managed to fulfill its role in the war effort
20 Engineering War
thus far. Leadbetter and Rives were well-trained engineers but not good
administrators. During his brief tenure, Leadbetter paid attention mostly to
the coastal forts at Mobile. Rives tried very hard to do his job right but was
limited by his own youth and lack of experience, as well as by the scant
resources allocated him by Congress. His advice to engineers regarding field
fortifications tended to be unrealistic; he often advocated detached works,
or simple trenches that were ill suited to the topography of a given area. Also,
as a scion of an old Virginia family, Rives paid almost no attention to any area
outside that state. He made the bureau a regional, not a national, institution.
His outgoing correspondence as temporary bureau head reveals a young
man barely able to cope, scrambling to patch together mediocre solutions to
problems and deflecting complaints about bureau inefficiency.
Gilmer brought much-needed maturity and professional experience to
the job. He set out to increase the budget, selected the best men for available
positions, sent letters filled with sound advice on field fortifications to subor-
dinates, and served effectively as a spokesman for engineering concerns with
the War Department and Congress. He was the indispensable man of the
Rebel engineering establishment, and he transformed the bureau into an
institution of national importance.
∂π
Beefing up the ranks of the Engineer Corps was a high priority for Gilmer.
He pushed for more officers and complained that many of the provisional
engineers were not worth their pay. Twenty-four of the 100 officers were
‘‘worthless sons of broken down Virginia families,’’ and 20 others belonged to
South Carolina families of similar station. The exacting Gilmer found only 20
others who could ‘‘lay any claims to be called engineers.’’ He wanted to
enlarge the number of regular engineers allowed by Congress to compensate
for this weakness, telling his wife that he hoped to recruit ‘‘a few more proper
men who can do something.’’
∂∫
Gilmer was prepared to turn down ineffective applicants and to pursue
men of worth. Capt. George W. C. Lee, Robert E. Lee’s oldest son, did not want
to give up his slot in the engineers even though he sought a field command.
Gilmer refused to go along with this plan. George Gilmer Hull, his brother-in-
law, applied for a commission in the engineers based on his experience as
manager of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad. Gilmer turned him down.
Col. Walter Gwynn applied for a commission as lieutenant colonel in the
corps, ‘‘but we are a little afraid to trust him,’’ Gilmer told his wife; ‘‘he takes
to[o] many drinks each day.’’ Gilmer liked Lemuel P. Grant and George H.
Hazlehurst and offered them captaincies in the corps. ‘‘We want all the intel-
ligent help we can get,’’ Gilmer told Grant. ‘‘The common man of the South is
Engineering War 21
willing to expose his life for our independence, which we will certainly secure,
if the willing efforts of the masses can be guided and assisted by the intellec-
tual & professional men of the land. Intelligence and proud spirit will make
any people free.’’ Both Grant and Hazlehurst accepted.
∂Ω
In addition to staffing the corps, Gilmer managed an increasingly large
budget. The Engineer Bureau was allotted $10.5 million for 1863 and $20
million for 1864. In addition to the 100 officers in the provisional corps, he
persuaded Congress to increase the number of regular engineers to 120
officers. He issued General Orders No. 90 on June 26, 1863, clearly spelling
out the responsibilities of engineers in the field. Gilmer even was given a
chance to engage in field duty. The president authorized him to help Beau-
regard defend Charleston in August 1863 and promoted him to major gen-
eral. For a time he served as second-in-command of the Department of South
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. In his absence, Rives again acted as chief
of the bureau until Maj. Gen. Martin L. Smith became available for duty
and replaced him as acting chief. When Smith took over as chief engineer of
Lee’s army in 1864, Gilmer finally returned to Richmond after an absence of
ten months.
∑≠
The Confederates never had a separate corps of topographers; its work
was done by any available engineer. A map bureau, headed by Capt. Albert
H. Campbell of the provisional engineers, was created in Richmond for the
Army of Northern Virginia. Campbell relied on sketch maps and field notes
supplied by men engaged in survey duty but did not have adequate informa-
tion to provide useful maps for Lee during the Seven Days campaign. He
received several assistants after that and a pile of much-needed tracing pa-
per that Lee’s army had captured in the campaign. By the end of 1862,
Campbell had produced a number of good maps, mostly of Virginia counties.
To resupply his wants, he sent an officer through the blockade to England to
buy India ink, watercolors, drawing paper, pens, and pencils.
∑∞
The Confederate engineer officers struggled against many problems. In
the early months of the war, Rives had to piece together an engineer compo-
nent for the main Confederate army in the East. The young bureaucrat
assured Joseph E. Johnston in February 1862 that his Army of Northern
Virginia had gotten all the engineer officers he could find. Rives listed sixteen
men he had sent to the army in the preceding months. Half were officers in
the Provisional Army, Confederate States, and the rest detailed from artillery
service, ordnance and quartermaster duties, and the staffs of other com-
manders. One even was an artillery private. All of the nonengineers had
some previous engineer experience and could learn quickly on the job.
∑≤
22 Engineering War
Rives admitted to Johnston that he had difficulty finding someone quali-
fied to serve as his chief engineer. He suggested detailing a brigade leader,
such as Robert E. Rodes, to fill that role. Eventually, two men would shoulder
the task of directing Lee’s engineer operations during the first half of the war.
Walter Husted Stevens, born in Penn Yan, New York, in 1827, graduated
fourth in the class of 1848 at West Point. He was commissioned in the U.S.
Engineers and married the sister of future Confederate general Louis Hébert.
Stevens was an engineer officer on Beauregard’s staff at First Manassas and
later served as acting chief engineer for Johnston. When Lee took over the
Army of Northern Virginia, Stevens was put in charge of constructing the
Richmond defenses. He served as Lee’s chief engineer in the summer of 1862
before spending the next two years on the Richmond works. William Proctor
Smith was born in Virginia in 1833 and graduated from West Point in 1857.
He became a lieutenant in the U.S. Topographical Corps. Smith entered
Virginia state service as an engineer officer and then became a Confederate
artillery officer. He saw service in North Carolina before transferring to the
Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant
colonel in the Confederate Corps of Engineers, Smith was working on the
Richmond defenses when Lee named him his chief engineer on April 9, 1863.
He served in that capacity until April 1864.
∑≥
The Confederate Congress allowed for an engineer officer to serve on the
staff of each division in the army, but brigade commanders had to borrow
division officers or work around the regulations by taking on volunteer aides
as engineers or by detailing line officers who had some experience in civil
engineering. A total of seventy-five men served as engineer officers on vari-
ous staffs in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. John B.
Magruder had eleven, more than anyone else, while Lee had only five. Six-
teen percent of the engineer staff officers in the army had attended West
Point; 37 percent had a university education; only .09 percent had attended
state military schools; 24 percent had experience as civil engineers before
the war; and 13 percent had no evidence of training or prewar civil experi-
ence. Engineers represented only .03 percent of the 2,284 staff officers who
served in the Army of Northern Virginia.
∑∂
The Confederates put a great deal of energy into collecting an impressive
number of engineer officers, but they failed to move forward on recruiting
engineer troops until the midpoint of the war. Two companies of sappers and
miners had been authorized for the Virginia Forces, but they were never
organized. At that stage of the war, Lee felt that the duties of engineer troops
were so specialized that recruits with experience in ‘‘ordinary mining &
Engineering War 23
excavation’’ were not qualified. A company of sappers and miners was cre-
ated by the Confederate government in 1861, but this was far too little to
meet the army’s needs. Gilmer initially suggested the creation of a company
to work on roads and bridges for the Army of Northern Virginia in October
1862 and then forwarded a more ambitious proposal in December 1862. He
envisioned four engineer regiments: one to serve the Army of Northern
Virginia, one to operate in middle and eastern Tennessee, one to serve the
Mississippi Valley, and the last to work on the Gulf and Atlantic coast. The
men could be recruited from the ranks of infantry regiments.
∑∑
Congress finally approved on March 29, 1863, and the Adjutant and In-
spector General’s Office issued General Orders No. 66 on May 22 to begin
recruiting. The regiments were to be officered by men already holding com-
missions in the engineer corps or to line officers who had some engineering
experience. Two companies in each regiment were to be trained as pon-
toniers, and there were to be forty artificers and forty-five laborers in the
ranks of all other companies. Artificers were defined as carpenters, brick-
layers, stonemasons, and cabinetmakers. Each company was to be recruited
from a single division.
∑∏
The recruiting process went quickly in some units but met resistance in
others. On July 17, 1863, Lee decided to stop recruiting engineer troops in his
army, following his heavy losses at Gettysburg. He felt he could not spare
men from the ranks. Lee also feared the creation of the engineer regiment
would drain men from his existing pioneer companies. Secretary of War
James A. Seddon refused to give up on the engineer regiments. He proposed
that only fifty men be taken from each of Lee’s divisions, while conscripts
could be used to fill up the remaining positions in the new regiments. Seddon
sweetened the deal by promising to supply more conscripts for Lee’s army as
well. This was an acceptable compromise, and Lee even agreed to promote
Maj. Thomas Mann Randolph Talcott of his staff to colonel so he could
command the regiment. The Adjutant and Inspector General’s Office issued
an order on July 28, 1863, outlining the duties of these new engineer regi-
ments, and recruiting resumed. Talcott’s 1st Engineer Regiment established a
camp of instruction near Richmond that winter and reported to Lee for duty
on April 12, 1864.
∑π
The engineer regiments were never meant to duplicate the work of the
existing pioneer troops. Units of pioneers had been around for some time.
Robert E. Rodes’s Alabama brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia had a
‘‘pioneer party’’ in each regiment as early as May 1862. Rodes was careful to
select men with carpentry or ax skills whenever possible. The detailed men
24 Engineering War
were told to do the normal duties of all men in the ranks whenever they were
not performing pioneer duties. These units apparently were organized infor-
mally by individual brigade leaders. Secretary of War Seddon recommended
to Davis on January 3, 1863, that the practice be institutionalized by creating
a company for each brigade. Their task was to take care of any problems with
roads and bridges to facilitate marching during campaigns. It was a good
idea and was quickly implemented in Lee’s army, where a company was
created for each division rather than each brigade.
∑∫
Just as in the Federal army, most of the work of constructing fortifications
in the Confederacy was done by infantry units. The engineers were responsi-
ble for laying out lines, or at least for selecting where lines should be laid out
if there was little time available. Work on major and complex forts was re-
served for engineer officers and troops. Black laborers were used mostly to
construct semipermanent works around cities or other fixed assets, and even
then they were not a reliable source of labor. Owners were reluctant to pro-
vide them because they had no control over how the slave was treated on the
job. Coming from their isolated lives on the plantation, the blacks often fell
victim to communicable diseases, and the army cared for them with no more
attention than it treated its own soldiers. Owners also did not like to lose the
services of their slaves, especially during planting and harvesting seasons.
The Confederate government tried to utilize this source of labor for work
on fortifications as much as possible. Black men, both slave and free, were
impressed early in the war, but Congress did not create regulations to govern
the process until March 1863. It allowed for slaves to be drafted by the
government for sixty days, with an additional thirty days added as pun-
ishment if the planter delayed in producing the laborers. Owners were al-
lowed to send overseers, but the government had complete authority over
the workers. Planters were paid twenty dollars per month for each slave they
sent. In one of several sporadic attempts to utilize this labor source, Presi-
dent Davis authorized the secretary of war to hire or press as many as 20,000
slaves in February 1864. Owners were to be compensated if the slave was
injured or died. Congress, in fact, appropriated well more than $3 million in
early 1864 for that purpose. Each state was allocated a percentage of the
20,000 workers as its quota. While the Conscript Bureau was responsible for
mobilizing this labor force, the Engineer Bureau was responsible for organiz-
ing the slaves into gangs and putting them to work. The implementation of
this plan brought thousands of black laborers to fortification sites at Rich-
mond and Atlanta, and in a more systematic way than in the past, but it was
very unpopular. The impressment of slaves caused so much resentment that
several state officials refused to cooperate.
∑Ω
Engineering War 25
Geography of the Eastern Campaigns
The theater of operations in the East was mostly confined to the 100-mile
space that separated Richmond from Washington, D.C. On only two occa-
sions did the opposing armies venture out of this box: when Lee invaded
Maryland in September 1862 and Pennsylvania in June 1863. There were a
number of subsidiary campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley, in eastern North
Carolina and southeastern Virginia, and along the coast of South Carolina.
But the heart of the eastern campaigns took place in a relatively small arena,
often traversing the same ground fought over in previous movements.
The theater of operations was divided into three geographic regions. The
Atlantic Coastal Plain, or Tidewater, stretched along the coast. It was flat,
sandy ground that supported the earliest settlements in Southern colonial
history. At the time of the Civil War, the region had long since given up its
economic and political dominance, but it was still the location of numerous
large plantations and fine old mansions. The Coastal Plain constitutes 25 per-
cent of the land mass of Virginia, averaging 100 miles wide. It rises from sea
level to 300 feet in elevation. The soil is a mixture of sand and clay that
supports a forest cover of mostly pine and cedar. The subsurface rock forma-
tions were created by erosional runoff from the Piedmont and other land
areas to the west and then uplifted by the movement of the earth’s crust. The
uplift was uneven, making the Coastal Plain much wider in the southern
states than in New England. In contrast, Chesapeake Bay, the largest embay-
ment on the North American coast, was formed by submergence instead of
uplift. This area had been drained by the Susquehanna River, which flowed
all the way to the ocean near modern-day Norfolk, Virginia. The James,
Potomac, and Rappahannock rivers had all drained into the Susquehanna.
When the large area around the lower part of the river subsided, Chesapeake
Bay was formed, and those three rivers drained into it.
∏≠
The next land area to the west is the Piedmont. The word ‘‘piedmont’’
means ‘‘at the foot of the mountains.’’ The border between the Coastal Plain
and the Piedmont is known in Virginia as the Fall Line, and it stretches from
Washington, D.C. to Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg. The Fall
Line is four to ten miles wide and includes, as the name implies, a number of
waterfalls on the streams that cross it. Settlers planted towns along the Fall
Line because it was a natural line of demarcation. Boats ascending the rivers
from Chesapeake Bay could not proceed farther upstream. The Fall Line also
provided a natural axis for the Virginia campaigns, as it directly linked the
two opposing capitals.
The Piedmont covers about one-third of Virginia and averages elevations
of 300 to 500 feet along the Fall Line. At the western edge elevations are 800
26 Engineering War
to 1,200 feet. That part of the Piedmont lying south of the James River is
called the Southside. The tree cover across the Piedmont tends to be more
oak than pine or cedar. The underlying rock strata are much older than that
of the Coastal Plain and originally were marine sediments. The Piedmont has
been exposed to weathering for more than 200 million years.
∏∞
The Blue Ridge constitutes the border between the Piedmont and the
Appalachian Highlands. It is twelve to fourteen miles wide and has peaks
that reach elevations of 4,000 feet. The ridge tends to get wider and higher
south of Roanoke, Virginia. The ridge apparently was not formed by uplift; it
has a particularly resistant layer of subsurface rocks and thus eroded more
slowly than the land around it.
The same is true of the many ridges that dominate the Great Valley of
Virginia, of which the Shenandoah Valley is a part. The weaker sedimentary
layers that underlay the valleys allowed faster erosion. Limestone and shale
lay under the valleys, and stronger sandstone and conglomerate support the
ridges. The Valley of Virginia starts at the Potomac River and stretches to the
Tennessee border. Some twenty miles wide at its mouth, the valley narrows
to about five miles as one travels south. The Valley of Virginia is subdivided
into six separate valleys. The Shenandoah Valley is the largest and most
important, stretching from Harpers Ferry to Botetourt County south of Lex-
ington. Massanutten Mountain runs through the valley for fifty miles as a
high, dominating ridge. The other five valleys are smaller and are located in
the south, out of the region of most Civil War campaigning. They include Fin-
castle Valley, Roanoke Valley, New River Valley, Holston Valley, and Clinch
Valley. The ground in these regions is mostly fertile grassland produced from
the decayed limestone that underlaid the topsoil.
∏≤
The western border of the Valley of Virginia is the Appalachian Plateau,
which is the beginning of a much more expansive feature called the Appa-
lachian Highlands. The plateau has layers of sedimentary formations under
its surface that tilt toward the west. This means that the eastern edge of the
plateau stands at a sharper angle than the western side. Elevations on the
plateau are as high as 4,000 feet.
∏≥
Military operations in the East from 1861 to 1864 were concentrated in
one or two regions. The Fall Line was the scene of many major battles,
including Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The Coastal Plain also was
traversed by several campaigns and witnessed fighting at Yorktown, Seven
Pines, and the Seven Days. The Piedmont tended to be the scene of fewer
operations because it drew invading Union armies away from Richmond,
while the Shenandoah Valley saw a series of campaigns designed to distract
Federal forces in the spring of 1862. The Confederate invasions of Maryland
Engineering War 27
and Pennsylvania took place in the western reaches of the Piedmont. The
differing soils, tree cover, road conditions, and availability of clean water all
had an effect on the nature of campaigning in the East.
Engineers could not take care of such problems, but they could and gener-
ally did facilitate the movement of field armies and enabled them to operate
more effectively in the eastern theater. There was a strong tendency for both
the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia to draw more
engineering resources than any other field armies, and nowhere else can one
see such a concentration of talent and numbers as in Virginia and surround-
ing areas.