Danville Fortifications

In February 1863, Danville residents, fearing enemy attack because their town held vast commissary and quartermaster supplies and a Confederate arsenal, petitioned the town council to build fortifications, but little work was done until November, when the first of more than 7,000 captured Union soldiers arrived from Richmond on their way to six prisons converted from tobacco warehouses. Colonel Robert Enoch Withers, commander of the Danville post, enlisted a Danville professor of music at the Methodist Female College, Charles Chaky de Nordendorf, to engineer the defenses; educated at a military school in his native Prussia but with little engineering background, he laid out a system of earthworks that nearly encircled the town. Manned only during times of alarm by home guard and reserve forces, the earthworks were of little value except for the peace of mind of the townspeople. Serious concern arose in early April 1865 with the expected arrival of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederate government moved to Danville on April 3, and President Jefferson Davis inspected the earthworks the next day and found them lacking. Soldiers, citizens, and numerous slaves then worked to strengthen and expand the fortifications until April 10, when, after learning of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, the government boarded trains for Greensboro, North Carolina.

Danville, Virginia · United States