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SUMMARY The Dimmock Line was a series of fifty-five artillery batteries and connected infantry earthworks that were constructed between 1862 and 1864 in a ten-mile arc around Petersburg during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The earthen fortifications were built using Confederate soldiers and enslaved laborers and covered lands east, south, and west of Petersburg. They were constructed to protect the city’s industry and railroads in the event that Petersburg was attacked. Union troops finally attacked Petersburg directly and elements of the Dimmock Line fell to them in mid-June 1864, which began the Petersburg Campaign. Building the Dimmock Line Early in the spring of 1862, Petersburg’s Common Council created a committee to investigate the need for defenses to be constructed around the city. Little came of this measure, however. Work on a defense line began that summer when Major General Daniel H. Hill used troops from North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia t ....
Petersburg lies at the head of navigation on the Appomattox River, twenty-three miles south of the Confederate capital at Richmond. Its role as a port contributed to its growth in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries. Railroads arrived in Petersburg in the 1830s, and by 1860 five lines converged in the city, making it one of the South’s leading transportation hubs. Petersburg also developed a vibrant manufacturing economy, with twenty tobacco factories, four cotton mills, and a number of iron foundries and flour mills. Petersburg’s 18,266 residents in 1860 were divided almost equally between blacks and whites. No Southern city on the eve of the Civil War (Petersburg would be the seventh-largest municipality in the Confederacy) boasted a higher percentage of African Americans among its free population. Voters in Petersburg cast their ballots for the Constitutional Union candidate in the 1860 presidential election, John Bell of Tennessee, and sent a conditio ....