I’ve been calling the Raleigh Civil War earthworks a “wall,” and they were such. But they were probably the kind of earthworks commonly constructed for defense during the Civil War.

I’ve been interested in knowing how we might recognize the Raleigh earthworks on today’s landscape, if any still exist.

Here’s an interesting two-minute walkthrough of the Confederate earthworks from the Battle of Cold Harbor (May 31-June 12, 1864, near Mechanicsburg, Va.). The narrator is Gary Adelman, chief historian of the American Battlefields Trust. From this video, you can see that, even after 150 years, Civil War fortifications could still be clearly visible today.

Roy B. — 8 Nov. 2019