One of the goals of my Petersburg Campaign project at Beyond the Crater is to go beyond the public domain maps freely available to everyone when and where I can. One way to do this is to contact authors and publishers of Petersburg Campaign material to see if I can gain permission to post their maps with proper attributes, or failing that, to gain permission to “sketch” these maps and post the sketches.
I’m glad to announce I’ve managed to complete a small first step in that direction when I recently gained permission from author and lawyer John E. Horn to post sketches of maps he had created depicting the June 22, 1864 fight at Jerusalem Plank Road and the July 30, 1864 struggle over the Crater. John is the author of several books on the Petersburg Campaign, including The Petersburg Campaign: June 1864-April 1865 and The Petersburg Campaign: The Destruction of The Weldon Railroad: Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern, and Reams Station: August 14-25, 1864. The two new maps are part of an as yet unpublished manuscript John is working on, part of which involves the Petersburg Campaign and the two battles depicted in the maps.
I want to personally thank Mr. Horn for graciously allowing me to reproduce this material at Beyond the Crater. The map depicting the devastating flank attack Mahone’s Division inflicted on the Union II Corps, for instance, is the best I’ve ever seen. I’m hoping this first small victory opens the doors for other authors and publishers to allow me to reproduce their work in some form. I realize many are not comfortable doing this, so any victories along the way will be greatly appreciated.
You can access the two new maps at the links provided in the second paragraph, but I also wanted to reproduce them here in slightly smaller form:
Map of Jerusalem Plank Road fighting on June 22, 1864
Removed at the request of John Horn. See the comment below.
Map of The Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864
Please remove that map of June 22! It’s my earliest effort and deficient in several respects. First, it has Wilcox where elements of Bushrod Johnson’s division dug in a couple hours later as well as on the following day; Wilcox’s division was a couple miles south facing VI Corps. Second, the map doesn’t put enough Federal troops back on the second Federal line with, and extending northward from, Miles’ brigade of Barlow’s division. Madill’s and Brewster’s brigades of Mott’s division and Smyth’s and Blaisdell’s brigades of Gibbon’s division were back in line there from south to north.