In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat (Civil War America) [Hardcover]

Earl J. Hess (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807832820 | ISBN-13: 978-0807832820 | Publication Date: June 22, 2009 | Edition: 1St Edition

The Petersburg campaign began June 15, 1864, with Union attempts to break an improvised line of Confederate field fortifications. By the time the campaign ended on April 2, 1865, two opposing lines of sophisticated and complex earthworks stretched for thirty-five miles, covering not only Petersburg but also the southeastern approaches to Richmond. This book, the third volume in Earl Hess's trilogy on the war in the eastern theater, recounts the strategic and tactical operations in Virginia during the last ten months of the Civil War, when field fortifications dominated military planning and the landscape of battle.

Hess extracts evidence from maps and earthworks systems, historic photographs of the entrenchments, extensive research in published and archival accounts by men engaged in the campaign, official engineering reports, modern sound imaging to detect mine galleries, and firsthand examination of the remnants of fortifications on the Petersburg battlefield today. The book covers all aspects of the campaign, especially military engineering, including mining and countermining, the fashioning of wire entanglements, the laying of torpedo fields, and the construction of underground shelters to protect the men who manned the works. It also humanizes the experience of the soldiers working in the fortifications, revealing their attitudes toward attacking and defending earthworks and the human cost of trench warfare in the waning days of the war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hess has crafted an exceedingly well researched and well argued book. . . .At the moment, there is no better scholarly or popular guide to the campaign."
-The Journal of Southern History

"The best single study of the grand tactics and strategy of the campaign. . . . An outstanding conclusion to a trilogy of books that belong on the shelf of any serious student of the Civil War's Eastern Theater."
-Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

"Hess disputes much of what we have come to know about the Petersburg siege in this crisply written and thoroughly researched volume. . . . A splendid book that successfully places the campaign in a larger military context . . . should serve as the standard single-volume history for decades to come."
-Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"Even without the incredibly detailed analysis of field fortifications, [this book] would stand alone as campaign history. . . . A testament to the author's years of study on the topic."
-H-Civil War

"Hess has a well-deserved reputation as the master on American Civil War field fortifications. . . . [Makes] a coherent whole of the months-long contest by placing the series of offensives and counteroffensives like beads on a string of digging, tunneling, and mining. . . . Hess fans and students of field fortifications will be pleased, and others will find a work of first class military history."
-Journal of America's Military Past

"The only book on Petersburg to focus on the significance of its fortifications. . . . A well-documented study. . . . Concludes a series that expertly charts the significance of field fortifications in the Eastern Theater."
-West Virginia History

"The [book is the] result of Hess's indefatigable research in a wide range of sources and his imaginative field study of extant battlefields. . . . This volume and its companions, even more innovative and important than his previous outstanding studies, should give Earl J. Hess his rightful place among the best Civil War historians of our time."
-Civil War History

"Humanizes the experience of the soldiers working in the fortifications."
-McCormick Messenger

"Wonderfully written, well researched and easy to read. . . . Highly recommend[ed] to any serious student of the American Civil War. . . Entertaining and enlightening."
-The Mighty Scourge

"Provides extensive details to illuminate the subject. . . . An outstanding source for anyone researching Civil War trench warfare at Petersburg and Richmond."
-Virginia Libraries

"Takes an in-depth look at the war's final evolution of field fortifications and countermeasures, and explores the central role they played in the various Union offensives conducted during the ten-month Petersburg campaign. . . . Impressive."
-Civil War Books and Authors Blog

"Contains the fine scholarship and clear prose we have come to expect from Hess. . . [It] will stand as a definitive study on the Petersburg Campaign."
-On Point

"[Hess's three-volume] set unquestionably deserves recognition as groundbreaking work on an important topic. It will be the standard for years."
-Robert Krick, America's Civil War

About the Author

Earl J. Hess is associate professor and chair in the Department of History at Lincoln Memorial University. Previous books in his series on field fortifications are Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864and Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1St Edition edition (June 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807832820
• ISBN-13: 978-0807832820
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #787,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Required for Petersburg, October 25, 2009

By 

David M. Dougherty (Arkansas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat (Civil War America) (Hardcover)

I agree whole-heartedly with the other three reviewers in giving this work five stars. It is scholarly and breaks new ground on the battles around Petersburg or siege if you prefer. The author takes a rather unorthodox approach to the siege -- one stressing the fortifications and engineering on both sides during the siege. This approach explains a great deal as to why the siege progressed the way it did, and that after Meade's initial failure to seize Petersburg in Grant's surprise move from north of the James River, Lee's army was only going to be beaten by attrition and stretching them beyond their ability to defend their works.

Grant always possessed a superiority in numbers, but overall did not reach that point whereby the Confederates could not effectively man all their fortifications until April 2nd, immediately after the battle of Five Forks. At that point the Sixth Corps carried the Confederate works from West to East, effectively forcing Lee to abandon Petersburg.

One of the most interesting points made in this work is that the Federals were forced to extend their fortifications to the West with protection facing South as well as facing North against the Confederate lines defending Petersburg. The Union Army was constantly threatened by raids from the South and West, and each time Grant sent forces to the West to extend his lines, a battle ensued -- one that generally cost the Federals more casualties than the Confederates, but also forced the Confederates to progressively weaken their lines to meet the extended Federal threat of turning their western (right) flank.

The importance of fortifications came into being due to the armies remaining in close contact with each other. That was a new feature in the Virginia: after Grant attacked South in the Wilderness, from that point forward Grant remained in contact with Lee's army and forced Lee to react to his moves. Attacks were seldom successful against well-developed fortifications, and both sides attempted such attacks although Meade's attacks were larger and more costly. Towards the end, the soldiers on both sides refused to attack fortifications they felt were too strong, and even in his movements to lengthen his lines, Meade could not always depend on his soldiers. This contrasted markedly with the army's performance during Lee's retreat to Appomattox when both armies were in the open. Casualties were incurred and accepted without question by Federal soldiers while chasing Lee and attempting to bring the war to a close.

The only negative I have for this book concerns the maps. The work lacks a good overall map, and in spite of good efforts by the author to dovetail maps with his narrative, I found myself wanting more, and in some cases, more detailed maps showing troop movements in addition to just fortifications. For example, I was not able to see exactly how Mahone approached Warren in his counterattack during the 4th offensive.

I believe this work is destined to become a military classic, and it certainly belongs on the shelf of everyone interested in the military history of the Civil War. It presents information and action analysis not contained in the Official Record, and as such is a very great contribution to understanding how the Petersburg campaign went the way it did.

Highly recommended.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate Military Scholarship, July 30, 2009

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat (Civil War America) (Hardcover)

Earl J. Hess's "In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications & Confederate Defeat" completes a trilogy begun with "Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864" and continued with "Trench Warfare under Grant & Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign". Together with his "The Rifle-Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth", these books certainly place Hess in the forefront of military scholars who look at the "how" of battle and not just the traditional "what" and "who". The popular view of Civil War battle is more or less that everybody stood in long lines opposite one another and blazed away until there was no one left standing; Hess's work reveals a far more complex activity.

In the preface to his new book, Earl Hess remarks that "Petersburg was less of a siege than it was a traditional field campaign with some limited aspects of siege warfare." And he amply demonstrates thereafter that although field fortifications played a vital role (or multiple vital roles) in the Petersburg fighting, the campaign was much more than static trench warfare. In the past hundred years there have been only two general studies of the Petersburg Campaign published, Noah Andre Trudeau's "The Last Citadel" and John Horn's "The Petersburg Campaign", both works somewhat limited in their depth of scholarship, plus various separate works dealing with specific events during the overall campaign (most notably Richard J. Sommers's "Richmond Redeemed" and A. Wilson Greene's "Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion"). Therefore, in the present volume Hess has undertaken to provide "a general history of the campaign to set the proper context for understanding fortifications and engineering operations". He has done an admirable job of crafting a one-volume general history of the Petersburg Campaign, although of course special attention is paid to the use of field fortifications within that campaign. Hess contends that such fortifications were not merely of defensive importance, allowing Lee to long hold out against superior numbers, but also that the rapid construction of field works served a vital offensive purpose as well, allowing Union troops to secure newly-won positions against threatened counterattacks. Although Grant's weary army stumbled badly in its initial efforts to seize Petersburg in June, 1864, in large part due to Confederate use of fortifications, within a couple months Union forces had begun to demonstrate a grasp of a strategy (Hess calls it "bite-and-hold") of making short movements to the left to extend the line in short stages, consolidating those advances by means of field fortifications, that would eventually lead to Lee's defeat and the destruction of the South's per-eminent field army. Hess presents a picture of the lengthy Petersburg Campaign as not being so much a long sequence of Confederate successes and Union failures as instead a series of steps that inexorably led to a great victory by the Union forces.

Against this background of describing the overall campaign, Hess presents the details of how both Confederate and Union field fortifications were designed and built and their preservation into the modern era, and describes the practicalities of living and fighting in those entrenchments.

This is a first-rate work of military scholarship, worthy of a place on the bookshelves of almost any Civil War enthusiast, one of those too-rare books that provide a genuinely new understanding of the past.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book on Petersburg, July 10, 2009

By 

James W. Durney (Tampa Bay area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat (Civil War America) (Hardcover)

Joined with "Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns" and "Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign", this book completes an extensive discussion of fortifications in the East. The series traces both the development and acceptance of "digging in" during the war. While these books are specific to the East, all armies shared many of the techniques and attitudes.
The Petersburg Campaign has very few general studies and only this book concentrates on fortifications. The author has created a first rate history of the campaign with the fortifications central to the story. In doing so, he has added a valuable and much needed book to our library. This book works on several levels: it completes the study of fortifications, it is a comprehensive history of the Petersburg Campaign and it is an excellent read. Earl J. Hess is one of our best authors, writing with a sure ability and full knowledge of the subject. He can make complex technical issues understandable without having to "dumb down" the discussion. His books are a joy to read as well as a source of information.
We start by covering the engineering abilities of the two armies and their approach to fortifications, cross the James River encounter the Confederates and stalemate. These fifty pages are a solid foundation for the balance of the book. Each decision comes after a decision of the events leading up to it, allowing the reader to fully understand the issues, options and reasons for this course of action. This approach makes the campaign both understandable and logical. Interspersed between these chapters are chapters on the fortifications. These chapters cover the building and maintaining of earthen forts. The strongest part is living conditions and how the armies tried to cope. This is some of the strongest writing on the Petersburg Campaign I have seen. The author is not inserting a couple of required chapters but making this part of the story. The result is a very strong dual history of military operations and fortifications.
Maps are very good, plentiful and illustrative of the text. As we get deeper into the military operations, the maps are closer together. I never had problems finding a map nor finding what I need on a map. The illustrations are excellent. For the most part, they are Nineteenth Century photographs of the fortifications taken shortly after the war. The well-placed illustrations have text telling us what we are looking at and what to look for. The footnotes are helpful, use excellent sources and correctly formatted.
Appendix 1 is a look at how the fortifications fared after the war, a short history of preservation or exploitation that resulted in the present parks. Appendix 2 is a technical discussion on the fortifications.
This is an excellent readable history of the Petersburg Campaign and a technical discussion of the fortifications. You should consider this when building or maintaining your Civil War library.