The area around Yorktown is best-known for the Revolutionary War siege that defeated Cornwallis. But lesser-known is the Civil War history of the area.
For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and am traveling around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I have visited. :)
By April 1862, General George McClellan finally decided that his Army of the Potomac was once again ready for combat, and laid out a plan to advance towards Richmond, hoping to end the war. The Federal strategy was pretty simple: the Union still held Fort Monroe in Virginia, at the tip of the James Peninsula between the James and York Rivers. McClellan would transport his troops to the Fort by ship, then advance up the Peninsula, past the Revolutionary War battlefield at Yorktown and the old colonial state capitol at Williamsburg, and move on towards Richmond. With luck, the war would be over in a matter of weeks.
But the “Peninsula Campaign” did not go as planned. By the time McClellan's 100,000 troops had gathered at Fort Monroe, the Confederates under General John Magruder had expanded from 12,000 to almost 60,000 and had built two lines of defenses from river to river, consisting of breastworks, rifle pits, cannon redoubts and, in some places, earthen dams with flooded ditches. The Federals would have to get through them to make it to Richmond.
McClellan reached the first Confederate line on April 4. This stretched twelve miles, from the ruins of the old Jamestown settlement on the James River (where it was anchored by a group of cannon positions known as “Fort Pocahontas”) across to the Warwick River, and then over to the old battlefield at Yorktown (in some areas reinforcing and utilizing some of the siege trenches built in 1781 by the British). As McClellan approached and the southerners realized how outnumbered they were, Magruder was ordered by Confederate commander Joseph Johnston to conserve his forces at Yorktown, but to delay the Federals, then withdraw to the better-prepared line at Williamsburg.
Union engineers, meanwhile, began laying siege to Yorktown, gradually moving over 100 cannons and mortars into position. It would have been the most heavily-concentrated artillery fire ever seen up to that time. After four weeks, however, as Union gunboats moved into position for a bombardment, Johnston, who had now taken field command from Magruder, decided it was time to withdraw. On the night of May 3, he pulled his troops back to Williamsburg. As a parting gift, he sowed the ground around his positions with buried “torpedoes”, artillery shells with pressure fuses which acted like land mines. The next morning, the Federals found the Confederate breastworks silent, empty, and full of surprise explosions.
The southerners now occupied a second belt of defenses stretching out from Williamsburg. The lynchpin of this line was a group of earthen breastworks and cannon redoubts dubbed “Fort Magruder” which sat at the intersection of two roads. McClellan's advance force, General Joseph Hooker’s division, reached it early on the afternoon of May 5 and immediately attacked, but was unable to break the walls. A counterattack by Confederate General James Longstreet pushed Hooker’s men back.
There were attacks and counterattacks for the rest of the day. At one point, troops under Union General Winfield Hancock managed to occupy two Confederate redoubts and direct fire onto the southern lines, then fight off a charge by General Jubal Early’s infantry.
Johnston, however, concluding that his position was too weak, once again withdrew during the night, pulling back towards the much stronger defensive works surrounding Richmond. His actions on the Peninsula had delayed the Federals by over a month; the Federals had lost around 2300 casualties and the Confederates 1600.
Today, while a large portion of the Revolutionary War siege line of Yorktown is preserved as a National Battlefield, nearly all of the Civil War era earthworks are gone. The badly-eroded remains of a portion of “Fort Pocahontas” are visible in the Jamestown National Historic Site, while the fairly intact remains of two Confederate cannon batteries from Fort Magruder can be seen at Redoubt Park in Williamsburg.
Some photos from a visit.
