Defending the Peninsula

When Virginia seceded on April 17, 1861, Union and Confederate leaders alike saw the Peninsula as an avenue of attack against Richmond. Federal ships on the James and York rivers could guard an army’s flanks and escort supply vessels upstream, and Fort Monroe on Old Point Comfort overlooking lower Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads could serve as a Union base. Late in April, Lt. Col. Benjamin S. Ewell, an 1832 West Point graduate and former president of the College of William and Mary, took command of Confederate forces on the Peninsula. Although Ewell conceived a fortified line near Williamsburg, Gen. John B. Magruder constructed a defensive system in depth across the Peninsula in 1861-1862 with the assistance of Capt. Alfred Rives, Acting Chief of the Engineering Bureau in Richmond. Magruder’s forward line began at Young’s Mill on Deep Creek, crossed the Peninsula to Howard’s Bridge on the Poquoson River, and followed that river to Ship Point. The second line began at Mulberry Island on the James River and followed the Warwick River to within a mile and a half of Yorktown, which was fortified with a series of redoubts, some built atop British works remaining from the 1781 siege. The final line, the Williamsburg Line, consisted of 14 redoubts between College and Queen’s creeks. Powerful water batteries, including one at Gloucester Point across the York River from Yorktown, defended the system’s flanks, while others covered the James River at Mulberry Island Point, Fort Boykin at Burwell’s Bay, Fort Huger on Hardin’s Bluff, and Jamestown Island.

Williamsburg, Virginia · United States