Site Visit Saturday: Fort Harrison

 

   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 17^th 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.