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| The “about-faced” redoubt three days after its capture by the federals A photograph of June 21, 1864--three days after Cowan's Battery captured this work and turned it against its Confederate builders. When the Eighteenth Army Corps had made its advance on Petersburg, followed by the gallant charges of the Fifteenth, and the fighting of the two following days, all the captured redoubts were occupied and strengthened. Of course, they were made to face the other way. The sand-bag reinforcements were removed and placed on the eastern side, new embrasures and traverses were constructed, and face to face the armies sat down to watch one another, and to begin the huge earth-works and fortifications that became the wonder of the military world. All night long for many months the air was filled with fiery messengers of death. The course of the bomb-shells could be plainly followed by the lighted fuses which described an arc against the sky. The redoubt pictured here is one captured, “about faced,” and occupied on June 18th by Cowan's First New York Independent Battery, in the Artillery Brigade of the Sixth Corps. Thus the Union lines advanced, trench by trench, until Lee's army finally withdrew and left them the works so long and valiantly defended. The view looks northwest to the Appomattox. |
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| Brigadier-General C. H. Tompkins: General Tompkins Starting as captain of a Rhode Island Battery May 2, 1861, Charles Henry Tompkins became a major August 1, 1861, colonel September 13, 1861, and brevet brigadier-general of volunteers August 1, 1864, for gallant and meritorious service, in the campaign before Richmond, and in the Shenandoah Valley. |
