The Petersburg Project
  • Home
    • About Us
  • Blog and Updates
  • Postwar Visit to the Battlefields 1866
  • Civil War Combat Trenching
  • Views of the City of Petersburg
    • Petersburg Panorama 1865
    • Steeples of Petersburg
    • Petersburg Mill Photographs
  • The Mine Explosion and its Crater
  • Petersburg in Pencil and Ink
    • Alfred R. Waud, Special Artist at Petersburg >
      • Waud Drawing of 5th Corps Fortifications
    • William Waud, Special Artist
    • Charles H. Chapin, Special Artist
    • Joseph Becker, Special Artist at Petersburg
    • Edwin Forbes, Special Artist at Petersburg
    • Winslow Homer, Special Artist
    • Edward Mullen, Special Artist at Petersburg
    • Andrew W. Warren, Special Artist
    • Enlisted Artists >
      • Charles Wellington Reed
      • Andrew McCallum
      • Francis Knowles
      • James William Pattison
      • Herbert Valentine
      • Howard A. Camp
  • Petersburg Photographs --So Many!
    • Dimmock Battery 5 Photographs >
      • Working with Photographs
    • City Point
    • City Point Wharf Explosion, Aug. 9, 1864
    • Fort Rice?? We don't think so!
    • Federal Picket Line, Jerusalem Plank Road
    • Egbert Guy Fowx, Photographer at Petersburg
    • Timothy O'Sullivan, Photographer at Petersburg >
      • Harrison's Creek USCT Camps
      • Fort Morton and Baxter Road Group
      • Fort Haskell Panorama and Bomb Proofs
      • Fort Stedman Group
      • Gracie's Salient Group
      • Camp of the 50th N. Y. Engineers
    • David Knox, Photographer at Petersburg
    • William Redish Pywell, Photographer at Petersburg
    • John Reekie, Photographer at Petersburg
    • Thomas C. Roche, Photographer at Petersburg
    • Andrew J. Russell, Photographer at Petersburg >
      • "Fort Mahone" CS Batteries 25 & 27
  • U. S. Military Railroad
    • Terminus of Military R. R. at City Point
    • City Point to Clark's Station
    • Pitkin's Station to Shooting Hill
    • Hancock's Junction/Jerusalem Plank Road
    • Parke's Station
    • Warren's Station
    • Patrick's Station
  • Topographical Engineers -- Our Heroes
    • Grand Medicine Pow-wow
    • Michler's Reports from Topographical Department
    • John E. Weyss, Cartographer
    • William H. Paine, Cartographer
    • Gilbert Thompson
    • Albert Hanry Campbell, C.S.A. Cartographer
  • Confederate Maps
    • Confederate Defenses 1862
    • Gilmer-Campbell Maps, 1864
    • Stevens Map July 1864
    • Fields of Fire
    • Campbell Dinwiddie County 1864
    • Coit's map of the Crater Battlefield
  • Federal Maps
    • Army of the Potomac, Routes of the Corps to Petersburg
    • June 9 1864, Kautz Attack
    • June 18, 1864-Federal Engineers Maps
    • June 18, 1864, 18th Corps
    • June 19, 1864, Engineers Map
    • June 21, 1864, Federal Engineers Maps
    • June 22, 1864. Second Corps at Jerusalem Plank Road
    • June 29, 1864. Dept of VA and NC
    • June 30, 1864 -- XVIII Corps Map
    • June-July, Undated Federal Engineers Map-
    • July 29, 1864, Engineers Map, Annotated
    • July 1864 Map of XVIII Corps Lines
    • Crater, Native American Perspective of the Crater
    • August 1864, Michie Map - Bermuda 100
    • August 28, 1864, Michler Map
    • Aug.-Nov. 1864 Two Base Maps
    • September 13, 1864, Recon Map
    • Sept. 13-Oct.25 versions. Redoubts and Batteries
    • September 30, 1864, Warren Map
    • October 1864, Two IX Corps Maps
    • October 20, 1864. Benham's map of defenses of City Point
    • Nov. 2, 1864, Army of the Potomac
    • 1864, Coast Survey Map of Petersburg
    • Michler Map Series 1865-1867
    • 1864-1867, Michler-Weyss, Siege of Petersburg
    • 1865-1867, Manuscript Survey Maps
    • 1871, Map of Recapture of Ft. Stedman
    • 1881, Boydton Plank Road
  • Confederate Forts and Batteries
    • Dimmock Line >
      • Priest Cap
      • French Rifle Pits
    • Fort Clifton
    • "Fort Mahone" CS Batteries 25 & 27
    • Confederate 8-inch Columbiad
    • Leadworks
  • Federal Forts and Batteries
    • Union Battery Ten (X)
    • Fort Alexander Hayes
    • Fort Avery
    • Fort Conahey
    • Fort Davis & Battery XXII
    • Fort Fisher
    • Fort Meikel --Photographic Views
    • Fort Morton
    • Fort Patrick Kelly
    • Fort Sedgwick, better known as Fort Hell,
    • Fort Wadsworth -- the Evolution
    • Fort Willcox or Battery XVI
  • Battlefield Features
    • Aiken House
    • Armstrong's Mill
    • Avery House
    • Bailey/Johnston Farm
    • Blandford Church
    • Broadway Landing, Appomattox River
    • The Crater
    • Cummings House
    • Dams and Inundations
    • WW Davis Farm
    • Dunn House
    • Friend House >
      • View from Friend House toward Gibben complex and Petersburg
    • Gibbons Properties
    • Globe Tavern / Weldon Railroad
    • Gregory House
    • Griffith Farm
    • Gurley House
    • Hare House Hill
    • The "Horseshoe"
    • Jerusalem Plank Road
    • Jones House
    • Jordan House
    • Newmarket Racecourse
    • Pegram's Farm
    • Peebles Farm, Pegrams Farm, Poplar Springs Church
    • Shands House
    • Taylor Farm >
      • The Ice House
      • Surviving Taylor Barn
    • Williams House
  • Signal Towers and Trees
    • Some Operations of the Signal Corps at Petersburg
  • Archeology
    • Geology of the Crater
    • Fieldwork -- Petersburg
    • Civil War Sinks
    • Deserted Confederate Camp
    • Gracie's Countermine
    • LIDAR Forts and Batteries
  • Articles, Papers, Presentations
    • Shiman: A Note on Maps
    • The Siege Landscape: Through Fire and Ice at Petersburg
    • "The Rebel in the Road"
    • "A Strange Sort of Warfare Underground"
    • Lost Trenches of Petersburg: June 17
    • Between the Lines
    • Combat Trenching: An Introduction
    • Lowe -- Post-War Topographical Survey
    • Civil War Maps and Landscapes -- Observations
  • Kittens, Puppies & Ponies
  • Executions!
  • Notes on Leveled Earthworks
  • Depot Hospital at City Point
  • Pontoon Bridges
  • The Great Pontoon Bridge Across James River
  • Captain Robert Davis CSA

Some Observations on Civil War Maps and Landscapes -- Lowe

Viewing Historic Landscapes

In many places, the 19th century lies close to the surface with merely a veneer of changes. The land is farmed much as it was a hundred years ago. Old houses, mills, and churches survive, or their foundations may be located. The new road network is in many places congruent with the old, except that old turnpikes have been straightened to become major highways. Paved county roads follow the winding courses of old farm roads. Small villages have grown into larger towns, yet preserve their core as a historic district.
 
Elsewhere, however, the 19th century has been obliterated by large-scale recontouring of land, high density development, quarrying, highway construction, or some other drastic change in land use. Civil war battles were often fought for possession of crucial transportation crossroads‑‑a fact that continues today to spur the necessities of modern growth and development. Only where modern highways and railroads have bypassed a once important settlement, such as Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, does the 19th century landscape stand fully revealed to modern eyes. At the battlefield level, an understanding of the agrarian landscape, enables an assessment of what has been lost and what remains.
 
In addition to looking at the agrarian context of the war, some effort must be made to understand the landscape as the participants understood it. Many Civil War officers operated with a deficient understanding of regional topography, particularly in the first years of the war when reliable maps were almost non-existent. Columns were sent down the wrong roads, told to bivouac at villages that were impossibly distant, ordered to use fords that could not be located, and so on. Main roads were identified by the next major town, and farm roads by the name of a church, hamlet, or prominent resident along the route. Directions were given in terms of local residents (take the left fork at the Walker House), local watercourses (after crossing Plum Run), or local landmarks (just before you get to Widow's Peak at Keller's Mill). For an outsider, the local landscape could be hopelessly confusing, and often residents conspired to keep it that way.
 
Intelligence and Mapping

In the absence of reliable maps, military officers relied on the intelligence that could be gathered by scouts and topographical engineers.  This information, in turn, was often compiled into more reliable maps.
 
Because much of the Civil War was fought on Southern soil, Confederate officers typically had a better mental picture of the landscape. There were invariably soldiers in the ranks who were born and raised in an area and knew every back road and mule path. These men served as guides and assisted the preparation of more accurate maps. But many uncertainties remained. Although these guides knew their backyard intimately, many had never been ten miles from home and were unfamiliar with what was over the next ridge. It was up to the headquarters staff to piece together this mosaic of details to generate a useful picture of the region. A map produced during the war is important not only for the information it contains but for the information it leaves out, providing a clue to the user's ``mental topography.''
 
How did officers and individual soldiers orient themselves and locate their position within the landscape? Battle reports of both sides usually include place names for crossroads, farms, churches, hills and ridges, small streams, that could only have been learned on-site. Reports of brief actions on previously unknown ground sometimes include these details, presupposing an informal intelligence gathering effort on the part of officers and individual soldiers. ``So where are we?'' must have been one of the most asked question in the ranks, spurring someone familiar with an area to step forward with the answer or someone else to go to the nearest house or mill, find an inhabitant and ask the names of local residents and terrain features. This information was then disseminated by word of mouth to headquarters and through the ranks. Besides simply satisfying curiosity, one motivating factor would have been the desire to relocate at some future time, the bodies of comrades who might end up buried on the field. These details of location and terrain are what enable us today to match up the action with the landscape.
 
The most detailed military maps of both sides include names of some residents and streams, but very little terrain information except for the grossest elevation features. Sometimes rivers and streams were completely misplaced. This built-in uncertainty forced a commander to rely on scouts or pursue a first-hand reconnaissance to get a truer picture of the region through which he advanced.
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