The Battle of Yorktown
Lee's Mill
April 16, 1862
Union forces charged across Dam No.1 to storm Confederate positions on the other side of the Warwick River during the battle of Yorktown in the American Civil War. The attack gained the Confederate position but was not supported and the attack was driven back. After the failure of the attack, new simultaneous attacks were ordered at Dam No. 1 and down stream at Lee's Mill. Both attacks failed.
The Union attack force came across the river from the direction of the buildings in the above picture. There hadn't been a lot of planning for the attack as it was part of a spur of the moment opration ordered by Baldy Smith. The 4th Vermont charged across Dam No.1 while the 6th Vermont attacked here at Lee's Mill. The initial attack at Dam No.1 had caught the Confederates withthier pants down and the 3rd Vermont had taken the Confederate trenches, but the attack had not been supported so the 3rd Vermont fell back to their side of the river. The new attacks were launched at 5pm but now the Confederate were on guard.
Of course The Confederates had constructed their position with good fields of fire, comanding the river. The point of the Warwick Line was to hold off the Union Army as long as possible with as few troops as possible. It was a good position, in the above picture you can see the Confederate command of the river. Remember, at the time of the battle all of the trees had ben cut down and used in construction of the trenches so the river was a killing field where the Union attackers could be shot while struggling through the mud.
In this picture you are looking at the Confederate position from the view of the Union attack. This area of the line was not just a trench but rather a fort with very high steep earthern walls. Any Union soldier who made it across the river still had to scale up the bank and then up the wall in the face of Confederate canister and rifle fire. Remember again that in 1862 there were no trees or other cover to hide behind.
The Confederates had a nice substantial trench to duck down in while they reloaded. The Confederate fort here at Lee's Mill had been constructed by Isaace St. John and Alfred Rives based upon the designs and writings of Dennis Mahan. After graduation from West Point in 1824 Mahan had studied fort construction in France where he had read the works of Marshal Sebastien le Prestre de Vauhan. Vauhan had designed and built thirty plus forts and conducted fifty sieges over the course of his career, giving him a chance to develop some very good ideas on fort building. Mahan, greatly impressed by the writings of Vauhan, returned the the United States, published a book Triest on Field Fortifications and became an engineering professor at West Point where he taught all of the future Civil War engineeers on both sides, including St. John and Rives, how to construct forts. Here at Lee's Mill there were two types of earthworks. The first was a chest high brestworks for the riflemen, the second was redoubt for the artillery. This kind of construction can be best seen in the opening scenes of the movie Cold Mountain.
The higher redoubt walls lie behind and above the infantry trench from the attackers point of view. This way the infantry keeps the attackers away from the cannon while they are reloading and the cannon can fire over the heads of the infantry into the mass of the attackers trying to ford the river.
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