Breakthrough Battle in Dinwiddie

BY KATHERINE CALOS - Staff Writer
Published: August 26, 2008

Talk about a story of life and death. Two brothers, separated four years by war, meet on the field for the first time in a breakthrough battle of the Civil War. By the time they’re laid side-by-side on stretchers, each has wounds that will prove fatal.

It happened in the final battle of the Petersburg campaign at a site that’s now preserved in Pamplin Historical Park in Dinwiddie County.

Maj. Clifton Prentiss fought for the Union in the 6th Maryland Regiment. His younger brother, Private William Prentiss, fought for the Confederacy in the 2nd Maryland Battalion.

Multimedia show
Pamplin Historical Park and a Civil War Adventure Camp.

The day before their encounter, at Five Forks Battlefield on April 1, 1865, a Union victory had created the possibility of ending the 10-month siege of Petersburg. Gen. U.S. Grant followed up April 2 with a dawn attack on the entire Petersburg line. Success came at a price.

Maj. Prentiss led the assault at the place where the breakthrough occurred. Inside Confederate earthworks, he turned his troops to attack down the line. While sword-fighting a Confederate lieutenant, he was struck in the chest by musket fire. He collapsed near the first gun emplacement – where his brother had been hit by a shell fragment that shattered his leg.

After the battle ended, Union soldiers approached the Confederate private to check on his wounds. He learned that his brother was just yards away and asked to see him. 

No Forgiveness, at First

The major was not as forgiving: “I want to see no man who has fired on my country’s flag.”

Even so, a Union officer ordered the Confederate to be brought over. The major glared until the Confederate smiled. Then he reached out a hand and the brothers were at peace.

Both were taken to a Washington hospital where poet Walt Whitman happened to be the volunteer who comforted the Confederate private. He wrote about the brothers in 1876 in his “Memoranda During the War.”

A new book about their story, “Two Brothers: One North, One South” by David H. Jones, was published early this year and is under consideration for a movie. Jones came to Pamplin Park to talk about it in June during the park’s annual Civil War Weekend of living history, music and lectures.

A. Wilson Greene, park director, also includes the story of the Prentiss brothers in his 2008 book, “The Final Battles of the Petersburg Campaign: Breaking the Backbone of the Rebellion.”

Despite the widely held image of brothers fighting brothers in the Civil War, Greene estimates that less than a thousand of the 3 million soldiers who fought in the Civil War were brothers fighting on opposite sides.

“The fact that two brothers would be fighting on the same battlefield, and two brothers mortally wounded at the same battle,” he said, “if not unique, then it’s darn near unique.” 

History With Innovation

Pamplin Park, a 422-acre campus which opened as a Civil War-related site in 1994, has become one of the most innovative historical places in the nation.

The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier, which opened in 1999, uses technology to immerse visitors. Pick a soldier and follow his path during the war, hearing his comments about why he joined and what happened along the way.

Henry Robinson Berkeley, son of a prominent planter in Hanover County, joined the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in May 1861 at the age of 21, saying “These people cannot take from us our liberty without destroying their own. They pretend to make war on us to save the Union – but is a Union pinned together with bayonets worth saving?”

George Washington Beidelman, a 21-year-old printer in Philadelphia, joined the Union Army of the Potomac in the same month, saying: “This contest is not the North against the South; it is government against anarchy, law against disorder, Union against disunion, and truth and justice against falsehood and intolerance.”

After going through battle with them in one of the exhibits, feeling the ground rumble beneath your feet and feeling bullets fly past your face, you can find out whether your soldier survived the conflict. 

On The Battlefield ...

Outside, if it’s a day when school field trips are in session, you may run across a group playing out the events that led up to the decisive battle. Union soldiers, who outnumbered the Confederates, weren’t able to break through the defensive earthworks, even when they blew up a section in the Battle of the Crater in Petersburg.

Instead, Grant kept trying to get around the end of the line and Lee kept extending the line. Finally, the Confederates were stretched too thin. There was no one to block a new assault.

If you’re a school group lined up in mock battle, that’s the point at which the Union “soldiers” get to run around.

As head educator Al Neale explains the significance, “Lee didn’t abandon Richmond until they broke through here. He didn’t start pulling his forces out and tell [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis that it was completely over until Grant broke through.” 

... And Off

Other parts of the park show the war’s impact on life outside of the battlefield. Tudor Hall plantation house has half of its rooms restored as if a family were living there and the other half as if the house were being used for a Confederate general’s headquarters. Heirloom varieties of chickens and sheep live on the grounds.

Banks House has been restored as Grant’s headquarters.

Reconstructed field cabins and outbuildings interpret slave life on the plantation.

Extensive trails lead through the forest and fields.

Taking it all in requires hours or even days. The average visit is four to six hours, said Patrick Olienyk, museum spokesman. Roger Johnson and Kim Sheppard of Sacramento, Calif., said they spent two days there, much of it following the war through the perspective of different soldiers.

The biggest secret about the park may be all it contains. As Neale said:

“I think some people don’t realize that until they get here.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO PAMPLIN PARK

Getting there: Pamplin Park is about 30 minutes south of Richmond. Drive South on I-95 and I-85 to Exit 63-A (U.S. 1 south). Go a mile to the park entrance on the left.

Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Plan on spending at least a half-day there.

Cost: $15 for adults, $9 for children.

Where to eat: The Hardtack & Coffee Café has good barbecue, which is smoked on site with hickory wood, and a variety of other sandwiches and salads. For $1, you can even buy a piece of hardtack, which tastes like a really hard biscuit.

Details: (804) 861-2408 or http://www.pamplinpark.org