FORT AND FORTITUDE
On July 6, 1864, a large contingent of Union soldiers, many hefting picks and shovels, marched to a point just west of Jerusalem Plank Road, a mile south of the Confederate earthworks protecting Petersburg, Virginia. Army engineers had been busy laying out what an observer described modestly as “a fortification of some strength.” Now the infantrymen took on a task as familiar to them as marching, camping, and rifle practice: They began to dig. Major General Gouverneur K. Warren, whose V Corps occupied the area, welcomed the chance to apply his considerable engineering skills to the project, happily proclaiming himself “general of trenches.” His near constant presence during the construction of the redoubt led to its informal, if brief, designation as Fort Warren. The fort’s namesake was already a certified hero for his role in defending Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg almost exactly a year earlier.
The squarish fort, built from scratch, was large enough for a 550-man garrison.
A native of Cold Spring, New York, Warren had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1850 and served in the peacetime army on the Trans-Mississippi frontier before returning to West Point as a mathematics instructor. After mounting a regiment of New York volunteers at the beginning of the Civil War, he had risen steadily through the ranks of the Army of the Potomac. His quick action in occupying previously undefended Little Round Top on the second day of the battle at Gettysburg had saved the Union army from disastrous defeat and brought Warren a promotion to major general. After further distinguishing himself at the Battle of Bristoe Station in Virginia on October 14, 1863, he was appointed head of V Corps in the Army of the Potomac.
The squarish fort that Warren was helping to construct was large enough for a 550-man garrison—400 feet on three of its sides and a little more on the fourth, with parapets 10 feet thick and eight feet tall—and girded by a trench 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep. It was the only fort at Petersburg whose interior was bisected by a large diagonal parados
