Where North Meets South

In April 1861, as Virginia joined the Confederacy and its leaders moved to defend the Chesapeake tidewater, a major war again came to Gloucester Point, eighty years after the decisive events at Yorktown. Within days, Union gunboats fired the first shots of the war in Virginia at Gloucester Point. General Robert E. Lee sent naval Captain William S. Whittle and Gloucester native Commander Thomas Jefferson Page to secure the entrances to both the York and James Rivers, while engineer Captain Charles H. Dimmock strengthened the defenses there. By early 1862, Dimmock, using slave labor, had built an enormous earthwork to protect the land side from attack. Nearby at the Point, a one hundred yard long and seventy-five yard wide earthen water battery mounted twelve large guns aimed at passing ships, and a covered way linked the two forts.

Gloucester Point, Virginia · United States