A Word About Maps

It is difficult to discuss a military action in the absence of good maps, and this is especially true of the siege of Petersburg, since the road network was vital in affecting the operations of both sides.

The best maps of the Petersburg front are those given in the West Point Atlas of the Civil War. Other good maps are found in a number of secondary sources on the siege or even in biographies of some of the generals. Of course, the Official Records Atlas has a number of fine maps of the siege lines on both sides of the river.

Some of the maps given here are based on tracings done by the author, taken from published maps. The original source of the map is credited, of course. The reason for using tracings was to lower the size of the map files and to eliminate, as much as possible, any extraneous information. Some maps were taken, with permission, from the Guild Press CD-ROM of the Official Records Atlas, and are credited as such.

The list below gives the maps that are currently available (active link) or planned for the near future (no link). Eventually I will have the maps and accounts cross-linked, but that is for the future.