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

    Petersburg

    National Battlefield Virginia

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Pictionary: D

Depot

Earthworks Around Petersburg
Library of Congress

A depot was a place to store and ship supplies for the armies. A large supply depot was established at City Point, where General Ulysses S. Grant located his headquarters during the siege of Petersburg. From City Point, the Union army took advantage of the railroads to ship supplies to the Union soldiers fighting in Petersburg several miles away.


Dictator

Dictator
Library of Congress

The 13-inch seacoast mortar used by Union soldiers in the siege of Petersburg. The largest of the mortars, the Dictator could fire a two hundred pound shell a maximum range of two and a half miles. The Dictator was used mainly by Union soldiers in the summer of 1864. Soldiers of both armies preferred the smaller coehorn mortar which proved much more effective on the Petersburg lines.


Division

A division is a unit of the army. A division is a military unit composed of three brigades led by a major general.

Did You Know?

Richard Eppes, 1890s

Richard Eppes, owner of Appomattox Plantation, which is currently part of the Grant's HQ Unit of Petersburg National Battlefield, noted that it took 8,320 pounds of bacon each year to feed his 127 enslaved people in 1860.