The Warwick-Yorktown Line

On May 24, 1861, Confederate Col. John Magruder took command of the Peninsula’s defenses and, lacking enough artillery and men to capture Fort Monroe, fortified points along the James and York rivers to block a Union advance toward Richmond. Drawing on local reconnaissance, he planned three defensive lines across the Peninsula. The first ran from Young’s Mill on Deep Creek to Ship’s Point on the Poquoson River. The second extended from Mulberry Island along the swampy Warwick River to within one mile of Yorktown, where it linked with the port’s fortifications. The third consisted of 14 redoubts between College and Queen’s creeks. The Warwick-Yorktown Line was the strongest of these defenses, anchored by batteries at Yorktown and Gloucester Point on the York River and by Fort Crafford and Fort Boykins on the James River. The Confederates reinforced this 12-mile line with three dams on the Warwick, creating an almost impassable barrier in addition to the existing antebellum grist mill dams at Lee’s Mill and Wynne’s Mill. Capt. Isaac St. John and Capt. Alfred Rives, engineers on Magruder’s staff, designed the earthworks at Lee’s Mill, built between the summer of 1861 and the spring of 1862, to command the dam where the Great Warwick Road crossed the Warwick. Confederate soldiers and slaves dug rifle pits and redoubts above the river, while Col. Antoine de Marigny’s 10th Louisiana camped there during the winter. In March 1862, Private Edward Seton observed that the breastworks had been renewed and the timber cut down, reflecting St. John and Rives’s effort to clear the bluffs for a field of fire and prepare this important crossing to repel the expected Union advance.

Newport News, Virginia · United States