Hilltop fortress connects Petersburg with its Civil War past
PETERSBURG - It took Union soldiers five months to build Fort Mulligan, but troops under Confederate Gen. Jubal Early captured and ransacked it in a day, leaving it to languish for a century under a thicket of brush in a cow pasture overlooking this Grant County town.
PETERSBURG - It took Union soldiers five months to build Fort Mulligan, but troops under Confederate Gen. Jubal Early captured and ransacked it in a day, leaving it to languish for a century under a thicket of brush in a cow pasture overlooking this Grant County town.
But the hilltop Civil War fortress - perhaps the state's best preserved - is once again a part of Petersburg's landscape. It provides a tangible connection with the area's past and is beginning to attract visitors who will help shape its future.
The fort is named in honor of Col. James A. Mulligan, commanding officer of the 23rd Illinois Volunteers, better known as the Chicago Irish Brigade because of the high percentage of Irish immigrants who served among its ranks. Joining the Irish Brigade in building the fort were cavalry and artillery units from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
A flag stand and information booth greet visitors preparing to embark on an interpretive hike through the six-acre site of Fort Mulligan. .
From August to December of 1863, Union soldiers built earthen walls 700 feet long and 400 feet wide and covered them on the outside with an abatis - a bristly layer of sharpened logs and branches to fend off attackers.
The inner walls of the fort were lined with logs. Inside the fort were a series of four bombproofs - log-supported bunkers topped with timbers and covered with a thick layer of dirt in order to withstand artillery fire. The bombproofs were used to store munitions, weapons and food.
Arrayed around the perimeter walls, overlooking the South Branch of the Potomac and roads leading to Moorefield, Franklin and Keyser, were seven artillery pieces.
A total of 68 officers and 1,532 enlisted men were assigned to duty at the fort, and lived in cabins they built on the slopes of Fort Hill.
There was ample Confederate activity taking place in the valley to keep them busy. McNeill's Rangers and other Confederate raiders frequently attacked federal supply wagon trains passing through the South Branch Valley, and sabotaged nearby sections of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
The year before the fort was built, Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont and 20,000 Union troops camped at the hilltop site in response to the Confederate threat.
Despite the work that went into building Fort Mulligan and maintaining a garrison here, the structure was never really tested in battle.
In early January of 1864, a large Confederate force led by Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, Robert E. Lee's nephew, moved into the South Branch Valley with intentions of capturing the fort, but was stalled by mud and rain. At
the end of January, the Confederates captured an 80-wagon supply train destined for the fort, and a force of 4,700 southerners led by Gen. Jubal Early approached the outskirts of Petersburg and set up artillery to lay siege to the fort.
PETERSBURG - It took Union soldiers five months to build Fort Mulligan, but troops under Confederate Gen. Jubal Early captured and ransacked it in a day, leaving it to languish for a century under a thicket of brush in a cow pasture overlooking this Grant County town.
But the hilltop Civil War fortress - perhaps the state's best preserved - is once again a part of Petersburg's landscape. It provides a tangible connection with the area's past and is beginning to attract visitors who will help shape its future.
The fort is named in honor of Col. James A. Mulligan, commanding officer of the 23rd Illinois Volunteers, better known as the Chicago Irish Brigade because of the high percentage of Irish immigrants who served among its ranks. Joining the Irish Brigade in building the fort were cavalry and artillery units from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
From August to December of 1863, Union soldiers built earthen walls 700 feet long and 400 feet wide and covered them on the outside with an abatis - a bristly layer of sharpened logs and branches to fend off attackers.
The inner walls of the fort were lined with logs. Inside the fort were a series of four bombproofs - log-supported bunkers topped with timbers and covered with a thick layer of dirt in order to withstand artillery fire. The bombproofs were used to store munitions, weapons and food.
Arrayed around the perimeter walls, overlooking the South Branch of the Potomac and roads leading to Moorefield, Franklin and Keyser, were seven artillery pieces.
A total of 68 officers and 1,532 enlisted men were assigned to duty at the fort, and lived in cabins they built on the slopes of Fort Hill.
There was ample Confederate activity taking place in the valley to keep them busy. McNeill's Rangers and other Confederate raiders frequently attacked federal supply wagon trains passing through the South Branch Valley, and sabotaged nearby sections of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
The year before the fort was built, Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont and 20,000 Union troops camped at the hilltop site in response to the Confederate threat.
Despite the work that went into building Fort Mulligan and maintaining a garrison here, the structure was never really tested in battle.
In early January of 1864, a large Confederate force led by Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, Robert E. Lee's nephew, moved into the South Branch Valley with intentions of capturing the fort, but was stalled by mud and rain. At
the end of January, the Confederates captured an 80-wagon supply train destined for the fort, and a force of 4,700 southerners led by Gen. Jubal Early approached the outskirts of Petersburg and set up artillery to lay siege to the fort.
Low on supplies and outnumbered three to one, the 1,785-man federal force on hand at the time of Early's approach vacated the fort and fell back under cover of darkness.
"In modern slang, they bugged out," said Kenneth Shobe of Petersburg, a member of McNeill's Rangers Camp 582 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of three area Civil War historical groups assisting the Civil War Preservation Trust in restoring and maintaining Fort Mulligan.
On the morning of Jan. 31, 1864, Early's artillerymen shelled the fort for some time before realizing that no fire was being returned. They marched to the fort and began dismantling it by hand.
Before collapsing one of the bombproofs, Early's men seized a cache of 13,000 rounds of rifle ammunition found inside.
In 1993, the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, which later became part of the Civil War Preservation Trust, acquired the six-acre fort site through a donation by the property owner, the late William G. VanMeter.
In cooperation with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the 7th W.Va. Infantry Camp of Sons of Union Veterans and the South Branch Valley Civil War Society, the CWPT cleared the fort site and installed trails and interpretive signs.
Several of the signs carry descriptive passages of life at the fort written in diary entries and letters home by Union Pvt. Joshua Winters of Marshall County, a member of the 1st W.Va. Volunteers, who served here in 1862 and 1863.
"The fort was in a cow pasture, completely covered in multiflora rose and brush when we started to clear it," said Shobe. "We do our best to keep it mowed and keep the walking trails maintained. ...What we'd like to do next is have an old water tower that was built along one wall of the fort in the 1950s, when there wasn't that much interest in protecting Civil War, torn down. It's obsolete and the city wants to replace it with a tower at another site."
Each May, the organizations cooperating in maintaining the fort host Fort Mulligan Day, with Union and Confederate encampments, art and craft demonstrations and period music, to raise funds.
The fort is adjacent to Grant County Hospital, just off W.Va. 28 at the south end of Petersburg.
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