Pamplin Park • Breakthrough Trail • Tudor Hall • Fortifications • Markers • Timeline
The Fortifications Exhibit at Pamplin Historical Park is just before the beginning of the Breakthrough Trail. There are full sized examples of field fortifications found during the Siege of Petersburg. Timber and earth made very effective field fortifications that could be erected in a short time, and there was plenty of timber available in the dense forests around Petersburg.
Obstructions wayside marker
Text from the marker
Obstructions
Obstructions, like the reproductions displayed here, played an important role in Civil War field fortifications. These obstacles broke the forward momentum of assaulting troops and maximized and attacker’s exposure to the defenders’ fire.
Soldiers, under the direction of engineer officers, first cleared the land in front of their earthworks to create fields of fire. Leaving the stumps, they sometimes added wire to trip enemy soldiers as they tried to advance. The carefully arranged tangle of large limbs and trees with their branches pointed toward the enemy is known as abates, a French term like so many borrowed by American armies in the nineteenth century. In 1865, three or four lines of abates lay in front of the earthworks at what is not Pamplin Historic Park.
Directly in front of the ditch, engineers placed a line of pointed inclined logs called fraise. Though attacking soldiers could squeeze through the gaps in the fraise, they served to discourage the use of ladders and planks to cross the ditch and succeeded in disrupting enemy formations.
Chevaux-de-frise consisted of a ten-foot long log with sharpened stakes, known as lances, driven through to present a series of X-shaped spikes toward the enemy. Chains and hooks attached several of these obstacles together to block roads and other interruptions between earthworks.
Sidebar on the left
“While we were…moving through the obstructions), seven of our…comrades were killed in…one place. It was dark but we were so close to their works that they could shoot us like rabbits.” –Pvt. Lorenzo Barnhart 110th Ohio Volunteers April 2, 1865
Captions to the two photographs
Chevaux-de-frise at Petersburg
Earthworks with fraise at Petersburg
Example of earth and timber fortifications cut by an embrasure for artillery, with fraises in front helping to break up and slow down groups of attackers and a cleared field of of fire with stumps left to trip up attackers.
A deep ditch with steep sides, often muddy and slippery, added additional protection between the fraises and the embankment. The earth excavated from the ditch would be used in the embankment.