• Poplar Grove National Cemetery Luminary Event (photo courtesy of Joanne Williams)

    Petersburg

    National Battlefield Virginia

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Artillery

Artillery played a significant role in the Civil War, and particulary the trench warfare seen at Petersburg. Artillery would often be used as an auxiliary arm for the infantry soldiers involved in battle. Most of the fighting of the artillery crews would take place behind earthen walls during the siege of Petersburg. If you were a member of an artillery crew, what would your life have been like? What did you do in battle? Where did you live? Soldiers tell you in their own words.

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Did You Know?

Charles Dimmock, Architect of the Petersburg defense line.

From the summer of 1862 until the spring of 1863, Confederate Captain Charles Dimmock appealed to slaveholders to hire their enslaved people, and also hired free black laborers to dig the ten-mile defense line around the City of Petersburg. The defenses became known as the Dimmock Line.