McGowan’s South Carolina Brigade

Brigadier General Samuel McGowan, a 43-year-old lawyer and politician from Abbeville, South Carolina, commanded the five South Carolina regiments of McGowan’s Brigade, about 1,400 men, who maintained these fortifications from October 1864 through March 1865. Although the original fortifications have eroded relatively little since 1865, their appearance has changed significantly. Around Petersburg, most fieldworks contained large amounts of wood for strength and durability, with soldiers erecting a row of vertical logs called a revetment, digging a ditch or moat about twelve feet in front of it, and piling the excavated dirt against the revetment to form an embankment, or parapet. A firing step, or banquette, behind the revetment allowed riflemen to step up behind the fortification and place their rifle barrels over the superior slope, or top of the parapet. McGowan’s men worked on these fortifications continually, improving them and repairing damage caused by the elements. Every brigade along General Lee’s line had similar responsibility for the works protecting its own front, so the Confederate line did not have a strictly uniform appearance, but instead reflected the construction techniques, craftsmanship, and diligence of the soldiers defending it. Lieutenant James Fitz James Caldwell wrote that the works were built according to rule with a ditch six feet deep and eight feet wide, an embankment six feet high with a twelve-foot base and four-foot terreption, a strong nest revetment, and banquette tread, and that they provided strong protection while demanding hard labor over muddy, frozen, and waterlogged ground.

Virginia · United States