Bruce and Debbie's Travels & Adventures: The Seige of Petersburg, Virginia

Monday, July 5, 2021

We visited the battlefield site of Petersburg. Petersburg was under siege for 9 1/2 months from June 1864 to April 1865. We did a driving tour of two of the three designated sites of the siege. The Eastern Front and the site of Grants Headquarters at City Point in Hopewell, VA. We will have to do the Western Front the next time we are in the area.

We started out getting a bite to eat and an iced coffee at McDonald's. The damn truck started clicking the locks again after being quiet all day yesterday. I think it is haunted. We had to pull the fuse again and now wait for it to lock up the ignition again. I hope Chris can fix it when we get home.

It was pretty hot today, but we did our best to walk each of the stops along the driving tour.

Behind the Visitor's Center

Stop #1. Confederate Battery 5, the Dimmock Line. Federal troops captured it on June 15, 1864.

The Dictator

Stop #2. Confederate Battery 8. Captured by black Union troops, this battery was renamed Fort Friend for the Friend House located nearby.

Stop #3. Confederate Battery 9. Black troops captured this position during the first day's fighting.

Some examples of fortifications and related structures.

Stop #4. Harrison Creek. Confederates dug in along the west bank of this stream for two days.

Stop #5. Fort Stedman. Lee attacked the Union stronghold on March 25, 1865. On June 18, 1864, the 1st Marine Heavy Artillery, assaulted Colquitt's Salient and sustained the greatest regimental loss in a single action of the Civil War.

Stop #6. Fort Hakell. Here Union artillery, along with heavy infantry fire, stopped the Confederates' southward advance during the Battle of Fort Stedman.

Stop #7. Fort Morton. From here, Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, commander of the attacking Union force, witnessed the Battle of the Crater unfold.

Stop #8. The Crater.. On July 30, 1864, the Union forces exploded a mine in Major General Burnside's IX Corps sector, blowing a gap in the Confederate defenses of Petersburg, VA. The Union forces were not properly trained and many facets of this attack turned it into a Confederate win with the casualties for the Union troops far outnumbering those of the Confederates. Grant considered this failed assault as "the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war." Burnside was relieved of command and never again returned to command. He, along with Brig. Gens. Ledlie, Ferrero, Wilcox, and Col. Bliss were censured by a court of Inquiry. Meade was eventually condemned for changing the plan of attack.