In the Trenches at Petersburg, the final volume of Earl J. Hess's trilogy of works on the fortifications of the Civil War, recounts the strategic and tactical operations around Petersburg during the last ten months of the Civil War. Hess covers all aspects of the Petersburg campaign, from important engagements that punctuated the long months of siege to mining and countermining operations, the fashioning of wire entanglements and the laying of torpedo fields to impede attacks, and the construction of underground shelters to protect the men manning the works. In the Trenches at Petersburg humanizes the experience of the soldiers working in the fortifications and reveals the human cost of trench warfare in the waning days of the struggle.

This three-volume Omnibus e-Book set is a collection of Earl J. Hess's definitive works on trench warfare during the Civil War. The set includes: Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864, covering the eastern campaigns, from Big Bethel and the Peninsula to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Charleston, and Mine Run; Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign, covering Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and Bermuda Hundred; and In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat, recounting the strategic and tactical operations in Virginia during the last ten months of the Civil War, when field fortifications dominated military planning and the landscape of battle. This invaluable trilogy is a must have for anyone interested in the battles, tactics and strategies of both sides during the Civil War.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain earned the sobriquet “Lion of the Round Top” for his tactical brilliance leading his 20th Maine Infantry on the rocky wooded slopes of Little Round Top at on the evening of July 2, 1863. Promoted to brigade command, he was presumed mortally wounded during an assault at Petersburg on June 18, 1864, and bestowed a rare “on the spot” battlefield promotion to brigadier general. He survived, returned to the command in 1865, and participated in the surrender of Lee’s veterans at Appomattox. Chamberlain went to his grave a half-century later believing he was wounded while advancing alone from the future site of “Fort Hell.” His thrust, so he and others believed, was against the permanent fortifications of the Dimmock Line at Rives’ Salient, near the Jerusalem Plank Road, through a murderous flank fire from what was soon to become Confederate-held Fort Mahone. This narrative has been perpetuated by Chamberlain scholars and biographers over the past century. Chamberlain’s wounding and Rives’ Salient are now fused in the modern consciousness. This interpretation was given an additional mantle of authority with the erection of a Medal of Honor Recipient’s placard near South Crater Road by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources on November 8, 2014. In fact, author Dennis A. Rasbach argues, a careful review of the primary evidence left by Chamberlain and his contemporaries suggests that Chamberlain was mistaken regarding the larger context of the engagement in which he fought and fell. An overwhelming body of evidence, much of it derived from Chamberlain himself, demonstrates he actually attacked a different part of the Confederate line in the vicinity of an entirely different road. This part of the Petersburg campaign must now be rewritten to properly understand the important battle of June 18, 1864, and Chamberlain’s role in it. Richly illustrated with photos and original maps, and documented with extensive primary accounts, Rasbach’s Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Petersburg Campaign dispels a well-established Civil War myth, and sets the historical record straight.