Pamplin Historical Park embraces three distinct themes:
The Breakthrough Battle
April 2, 1865:
Pamplin Historical Park preserves one of the Civil War's most important and
decisive battlefields. On April 2, 1865, Union forces commanded by Ulysses
S. Grant attacked a portion of Robert E. Lee's army southwest of Petersburg.
More than 14,000 Northern troops swarmed ahead in a pre-dawn attack, larger
than "Pickett's Charge" at Gettysburg, and shattered Lee's line beyond
repair.
Known to history as "The Breakthrough," this engagement
forced General Lee to advise the Confederate government in Richmond to evacuate
the capital and ended the Petersburg Campaign, a military stalemate that had
lasted more than nine months. Exactly one week after The Breakthrough, Lee
surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
  The
Common Soldier of the Civil War:
More than three million Americans served in the Union and Confederate armies
during the Civil War. The overwhelming majority of these men (and all of the
women) fought as common soldiers, with ranks well below that of general or
colonel. Their sacrifice is unparalleled in American history. More than 620,000
Civil War soldiers died in service to their cause, on more than 10,000 battlefields,
in uncounted hospitals and camps, and along lonely roadsides.
The armies of North and South were almost entirely volunteer organizations.
Why these Americans joined, how they lived, and what sustained their faith
through the miseries of the long march, the cheerless camp, or the bloody battlefield
provides a compelling look into the American character both of the 19th century
and today.
Life in the Antebellum South:
The American South, the fifteen states that permitted slavery in
the decades before the Civil War, was a predominantly rural region.
Life revolved around agriculture, much of it conducted on large
farms or plantations where enslaved African Americans provided the
majority of the labor.
In Virginia, tobacco had dominated farm production, although by
the 1850s a more diversified agriculture had taken r oot.
Southern farms did more than produce crops. They served as the setting
for a complex system of laws and customs by which whites and blacks
co-existed in a tenuous bi-racial society largely unknown north
of the Mason and Dixon Line. The Civil War disrupted that system
in countless ways and affected the lives of white and black Southern
civilians as much as it did those who served in uniform.
To explore Pamplin Historical Park's attractions and features,
click here.
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