There's construction on Crater Road and this detour will be necessary to negotiate it on my December 26 tour of the three Petersburg battlefields of the Crater (July 30, 1864), Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21, 1864) and Globe Tavern (August 18-21, 1864). George Fickett has volunteered to lead us through this maze.
Map courtesy of George Fickett
On December 26, 2022, I'll lead a free tour of three Petersburg battlefields. The tour will start from the parking lot outside the main visitor center at 10:00 a.m. that day. The park will be open. Maps should be available at the visitor center. My hat will identify me.
John Horn
We'll go first to the Crater, the nearest battlefield. I'll focus on the role in this bloody fight (July 30, 1864) of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment. I depicted that role in 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), which won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History. Both sides called for no quarter in that battle.
Map by Hampton Newsome
Next, we'll drive down Crater Road to Flank Road, turn right and follow Birdsong Road to its junction with the old Johnson Road, where Brig. Gen. Rufus Clay "Aunt Nancy" Barringer and his North Carolina Brigade of Cavalry ambushed and defeated Brig. Gen. Francis Channing Barlow's Red Club Division of II Corps, one of the toughest divisions in the United States Army on June 21, 1864, the first day of the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road. I've written of that fight in my virtually completed Grant Besieges Lee at Petersburg: The Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road and the Wilson-Kautz Raid, June 20-July 1, 1864. The Petersburg Regiment became involved in the battle on June 22 and June 23 as the Federal attempt to invest Petersburg from Jerusalem Plank Road to the Appomattox River above the City went from one disaster to another.
Map of Birney's Advance, June 21, 1864, by Hal Jespersen
The battle of Globe Tavern took place in the same area August 18-21, 1864. We'll discuss that battle, which I covered in The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015) (sesquicentennial edition originally published as The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad (H. E. Howard, Inc., 1991). The focus will be on the Petersburg Regiment, which on August 19 narrowly avoided on the calamity which befell Hagood's brigade on August 21.
Afterward we'll head back to the visitor center where anyone who wants to buy a book should be able to do so. I'll hang around to inscribe books and answer questions before I return to Richmond for dinner with relatives.
