Help Preserve Acreage on the May 1864 Todd's Tavern, June 1864 Jerusalem Plank Road and August 1864 Globe Tavern Battlefields.

You can help preserve the May 1864 Todd's Tavern battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust.  The trust's map is of the cavalry fighting on May 7, 1864, but infantry took up the fighting at Bradshaw's farm just west of Todd's Tavern on May 8.  On May 8, the Petersburg Riflemen, Company E of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment, and the sharpshooter battalion of Weisiger's Virginia Brigade, Mahone's division, Hill's Corps engaged Miles' brigade, Barlow's division, Hancock's corps.  The Federals captured one of Company E's leading writers, Sgt. Leroy Summerfield Edwards, and almost seized the Petersburg Regiment's first historian, Pvt. George S. Bernard, also of Company E.  Edwards and Bernard had belonged to the same Bible study ground the previous winter.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019) (winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History).

You can help preserve the June 1864 Jerusalem Plank Road battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust or the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.  Another prolific writer from the Petersburg Regiment, First Sgt. James Edward "Eddie" Whitehorne described how on June 22, 1864, Barlow's division of Hancock's corps "melted away like ice in the sun" under the onlslaught of the Alabama, Georgia and Virginia brigades of Mahone's division, who then rolled up Mott's division "like a sheet of paper." Mahone's men then routed much of Gibbon's division and seized the four guns of the 12th New York Battery.  Afterward, assisted by the Mississippi Brigade of Mahone's division, the Alabamians, Georgians and Virginians repulsed two counterattacks by Gibbon's troops. 

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment.... (Savas Beatie, 2019).

You can help preserve the August 1864 Globe Tavern battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust or the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.  On August 19 at Globe Tavern, troops of the Federal IX Corps almost surrounded the Petersburg Regiment and its brigade, Weisiger's.  A man next to Private Bernard too seriously wounded to beat the hasty retreat that became necessary and perished in a Union hospital.  It was "no time to swap jack-knives," wrote Pvt. Henry Van Leuvenigh Bird of the 12th Virginia's Company C, the Petersburg New Grays, one of only two members of the Petersburg Regiment's color guard to emerge from the battle unscathed.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment... (Savas Beatie, 2019).

On August 21 at Globe Tavern, while the Petersburg Regiment and its brigade occupied the Petersburg trenches, the rest of their reinforced division suffered a stiff repulse at the hands of the Federal V Corps (including the Iron Brigade) and IX Corps.  Hagood's South Carolina Brigade got surrounded as Weisiger's Virginia Brigade almost had two days earlier, and before the South Carolinians fought their way out of the trap they lost almost two thirds of their strength.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

The Petersburg Regiment and The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 from Savas Beatie would make good Christmas presents, too!

Petersburg at Gettysburg

Here's the link to the August 14, 2021 talk that my friend Charlie Knight and I gave about the night move of Mahone's brigade on July 2, 1863.

Map by Hal Jespersen for John Horn, "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863," Gettysburg Magazine No. 65, July 2021

Pleasant Reception at Petersburg Civil War Table December 2, 2021

Last night at the Petersburg Civil War Round Table I had a pleasant reception.  We discussed The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865, my latest book.  It received the 2019 Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical Foundation for Unit History.  The soldiers did most of the distinguished writing.

Before arriving at Pamplin Park, the site of the round table meeting, I drove around the June 1864 and August 1864 battlefields, revisiting among other places that of Hagood's South Carolina brigade, which lost about 2/3 of its strength on August 21, 2021.  (See The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.)

A Good Time at Pender Civil War Round Table at Rocky Mount, North Carolina

 We had a pleasant time at the Pender Civil War Round Table in Rocky Mount, North Carolina December 1, 2021.  I presented on and we discussed upon my most recent book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865.  The book won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.  The regiment's soldiers did most of the distinguished writing.

On the way down from Richmond I stopped at Petersburg National Battlefield Park to pick up postcards for my grandchildren.