Embattled Shrine : Jamestown In The Civil War

Jamestown is more than a place; it is a symbol. It is remembered as the first permanent English settlement in America where our present form of representative government was born. Yet its 1860s earthworks are reminders of the Civil War, that tumultuous period that endangered the continuance of the United States as one nation. Jamestown was significant in both the colonial and Civil War era because of its strategic location. Sensitive to this heritage and history, David F. Riggs, curator of the Jamestown museum collection, has written the first account of Jamestown’s role in the Civil War.

Jamestown’s initial Civil War defenses, provided by the volunteer Brandon Artillery, were but the beginning. Under the Confederates, Jamestown became a fortress guarding the James River, a site for naval ordnance research, and a logistics center. After the Union captured it, Jamestown’s importance continued as a naval hub and, as the war moved south of Richmond, it became an army outpost and communications center. Riggs has skillfully interwoven these functions of combat support, logistics, and administration into one story.

Embattled Shrine is a narrative of the Civil War at one of America’s earliest national symbols, recounting how both sides conducted that war behind the Richmond-Petersburg front. Here is the most recent scholarship on one of the Civil War’s forgotten places.