Petersburg

Today (Sat. April 13, 2013) we went to the Pamplin Historical Park and it talked about the Petersburg Campaign, which used a lot of trenches and probably was the beginning of trench wars.  Lee's army dug trenches and using wood, built reinforcements ("works").  That meant that all areas surround the battlefields were stripped clean of any standing tree.  It must have been frightening because the Union had to cross barren land to overtake the Confederates.  We saw the one spot that the Union Army (with much loss of life) was able to breech the works and cut Lees army in two.  In 1864. fighting General Lee, Grant was determined to take Richmond and he wasn’t about to have Lee stand in his way. Grant wanted to attack Lee.  Some of the Union troops were from Pennsylvania and came up with a brilliant idea to dig a mine and plant a bomb.  They furiously dug a horizontal mine shaft and blew it up with gunpowder so his troops could attack. We actually saw the mine shaft.  Sadly, the hole/crater it made gave the Confederates the advantage because the Union soldiers fell into it and were caught by enemy fire. Grant then decided to cut off the Confederate’s railroads so they couldn’t get supplies. So, one by one, Grant’s army took control of all the railroads until, all of them were captured. Lee, knowing about this, decided to pull all of his forces out of Petersburg and told the Confederate president to evacuate Richmond. The next day, Grant’s force warily approach the city, only to find it empty of Confederate soldiers. Grant, who desperately wanted to pursue Lee, left some of the soldiers behind to control Richmond. Later, General E. Lee will surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, which signaled the end of the war.[MH]