The battlefield is inside two parks – Petersburg National Battlefield, which has a large crater and several important forts, and Pamplin Park, the site of the Union breakthrough.
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The positions of the troops are easy to see, since they built elaborate earthworks, many of which are preserved. It was during the Siege of Petersburg, from 1864 to 1865, that the rebel army under Robert E. Hunley, the Confederate vessel that was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship. The town of Charleston itself is one of the prettiest historic towns in the south, and home to the H.L. Three main forts survive to this day, Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and Castle Pickney, which is closed for visitors. The 1860 Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter signaled the start of the war, and later in the war the United States troops fought several battles to capture the city. The harbor of Charleston, South Carolina saw several seminal events. You can see Pittsburg Landing on the Tennesse River, where the Federal troops landed, Shiloh Church, around which the fighting raged, the Sunken Road, the subject of many Confederate assaults and the site near which Johnson was killed, and where Grant made his last stand. Although much of the battlefield is wooded, making it hard to trace the progress of the combat, there are several highlights. Grant beat off a surprise attack from Albert Sydney Johnson and P. The Battle of Shiloh in 1862 was one of the first major battles in the Western Theater, when Ulysses S. For the more adventerous, try a climb up Maryland Heights for a great view overlooking the town. It is one of the most beautiful of Civil War sights – dozens of historic houses sitting in a picturesque setting right in the middle of the Appalacian Mountains. It changed hands fourteen times during the war, most memorably when Stonewall Jackson laid siege to it in 1862 during the Sharpsburg campaign. The town’s engine house, in which his raid came to a bloody end, is still extant. Its importance began before the Civil War, when John Brown chose it to launch his attempt to start a slave rebellion. The small town of Harpers’ Ferry, West Virginia sits at one of the Civil War’s vital crossroads, the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers at the base of the Shenandoah Valley.
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The progress of the battle can be roughly determined by the area’s roads, the Brotherton Farm, and the dramatic slopes of Horseshoe Ridge. The site’s woods and fields in northern Georgia, not far from Chattanooga, Tennessee, is well preserved by the National Park Service. While the landscape is not necessarily dramatic, you can trace the progress of the fighting across the rolling fields and woods, and see several iconic sights, like the Henry House from the first battle, or the Railroad Cut from the second.īraxton Bragg’s defeat of William Rosecrans in 1863 was one of very few major Confederate victories in the west. It has the site of both the catastrophic Union defeat in the first battle of the war as well as one of Stonewall Jackson’s grandest flank attacks of the war. Manassas National Battlefield Park just outside of Washington, DC, preserves the site of two important Civil War battles. They are ranked according to a few criteria – the importance of the battle, how well the battlefield is preserved, how interesting it is to visit, and how easy it is to understand the battlefield based on its terrain.Ī Reenactment of the First Battle of Bull Run In this post we present out top ten favorite battlefields.
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Over the past few years, while filming our Battles of the Civil War series, we have visited most of the major battlefields of the American Civil War.