Existing comment:
Changing War:
Earthworks:
As the Civil War increased in size and intensity, soldiers and armies adapted. On early battlefields like Manassas and Antietam, soldiers used only existing features like roads or stone walls for protection. That changed by Chancellorsville in May 1863, when for the first time soldiers started digging wherever they stopped.
Earthworks at Chancellorsville were simple -- often just piles of logs and dirt hastily thrown together by men under fire. They survive today as gentle mounds that lace the battlefield. At the Wilderness and especially at Spotsylvania, the works were far more complex -- deeper and carefully engineered. |