Obstructions

Obstructions played an important role in Civil War field fortifications by breaking the forward momentum of assaulting troops and maximizing attackers’ exposure to defenders’ fire. Soldiers under the direction of engineer officers first cleared the land in front of their earthworks to create fields of fire, sometimes leaving stumps and adding wire to trip advancing enemy soldiers. A carefully arranged tangle of large limbs and trees with their branches pointed toward the enemy was known as abates, a French term borrowed by American armies in the nineteenth century. In 1865, three or four lines of abates lay in front of the earthworks at what is now Pamplin Historic Park. Directly in front of the ditch, engineers placed a line of pointed inclined logs called fraise, which discouraged the use of ladders and planks to cross the ditch and disrupted enemy formations even though soldiers could squeeze through the gaps. Chevaux-de-frise consisted of a ten-foot-long log with sharpened stakes, known as lances, driven through it to present a series of X-shaped spikes toward the enemy, and chains and hooks attached several of these obstacles together to block roads and other interruptions between earthworks. During an attack on April 2, 1865, Pvt. Lorenzo Barnhart of the 110th Ohio Volunteers recalled that while moving through the obstructions, seven comrades were killed in one place, and because it was dark but they were so close to the works, the defenders could shoot them like rabbits.

Virginia · United States