The armies, both
gray and blue, tore up the landscape wherever they went during the war.
Thousands of acres of trees were felled, and in many places, the ground itself was
overturned and reshaped into field fortifications. In many cases, those
fortifications are really the only visual evidence that remains to remind us
the carnage of the 1860s.
Fort Harrison, near
Richmond, Virginia, was a part of field fortifications constructed by
Confederates beginning in June 1862. The fort was named after Lt. William
Harrison, a Confederate engineer, and was the largest fort in a series of works
that stretched from New Market Road to the James River. Parts of the fort and
the abatis in front were constructed by 200 convicts from the state penitentiary,
300 black laborers, and the 17th Georgia Infantry. Fort Harrison and
the corresponding lines were considered a critical link in Richmond’s defenses,
and on September 29, 1864, the Federals launched an attack. Confederate forces
near the Fort numbered just 800 men, with a mere 35 artillerists manning the actual
fort. The artillery appears to be from John Guerrant’s Goochland Artillery.
The Confederate
defenders did not really stand a chance. Over 8,000 Federal soldiers attacked
and carried Fort Harrison and the surrounding works. Seeing a potential threat
to Richmond, Robert E. Lee ordered a counterattack on September 30. The
attacking Confederate force consisted of Anderson’s Georgia brigade, Bowles’s
brigade of Alabamians, and Bratton’s South Carolina’s brigade, under the
command of Maj. Gen. Charles Field. In Hoke’s division were the brigades of
Scales, Colquitt, Kirkland, Hagood, and McKethan. Confederate naval forces and
land artillery shelled the Fort. Around 1:45, the attack commenced. While the
plan of attack designed by Lee looked good, it fell apart from the beginning.
An ill-coordinated attack by 10,000 Confederates failed to dislodge the Federal
defenders. The Confederates fell back and established a new defensive line, while
the Federals re-worked Fort Harrison and renamed it Fort Burnham, a Federal
general killed during the first attack on September 28.
The well-preserved Fort
Harrison is a part of the Richmond National Battlefield Park. I last visited in
March 2018.
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