Lee at Violet Bank

Lee at Violet Bank. Siege Headquarters. , This house, now so peaceful in its setting, was a bustling headquarters in 1864, surrounded by tents, with couriers, officers, and aides constantly coming and going. Lt. Col. Walter H. Taylor, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's aide, established Lee's headquarters here at Violet Bank on June 17, 1864, when the siege of Petersburg began. A nearby turnpike and a railroad enabled Lee to travel quickly to Richmond to confer with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who visited Lee here on June 30. While at Violet Bank, Lee heard the explosion that began the Battle of The Crater on July 30 and rushed to the front to direct the Confederate counterattack. Lee moved his headquarters north of the James River to Chaffin's Bluff on August 15, and then later to Petersburg rather than here. Union troops occupied Violet Bank briefly after Lee evacuated Petersburg on April 2-3, 1865., Taylor described Lee's typical field headquarters as "an unpretentious arrangement of five or six army-tents." Lee seldom occupied a house because "he is never so uncomfortable as when comfortable." Couriers arrived day and night, and the paperwork was "simply appalling." Despite the workload, Taylor wrote, there was camaraderie between Lee and his staff, often in a "bright and jocular vein." After three months at Violet Bank, Taylor had to find another headquarters site not only because Lee wanted to be closer to the front, but also because U.S. artillerists "had gotten the exact range," and sometimes shelled the yard., [Sidebar:] , Thomas Shore constructed the first house on this site about 1796; it burned in 1810. The present dwelling, which Shore's widow completed in 1815, resembles Richmond houses influenced by noted architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Its refined architectural features include the three-part bays, intricate woodwork, and elaborate plaster ornamentation based on the designs of Asher Benjamin's American Builder's Companion (1806), an architectural pattern book popular with Virginia builders. Colonial Heights Post No. 284 of the American Legion was based here from 1947 until 1959. It is now operated as a house museum.