Redoubt, Hill 210, Nashville

Civil War Field Fortifications

Magazines

Attached Magazines

Redoubt on Hill 210, Nashville

This redoubt, which was designed but never actually constructed, is offered as an example to emphasize the idea that these works were all the product of more or less time consuming planning and design processes, they did not happen by accident and the materials used in their construction did not magically appear at the appointed time and place and in the correct portions. Magazines in particular had to be well designed in order for the completed structure to meet the performance requirements for storing gunpowder safely and in good condition. Brigadier General Zealous B. Tower designed this work in October, 1864 to cover a high point on the southeast perimeter of Nashville that commanded both Fort Sill to the east and storehouses on the Northwest Railroad to the the northeast. Material and labor for construction had not been provided when Hood's invasion forced its replacement by a battery constructed with a bastioned front when the Federal works around Nashville were hastily completed and connected in anticipation of Hood's appearance before the city.

The redoubt was designed for an artillery armament of light guns and howitzers firing through embrasures. As with most Federal redoubts constructed in the Western theater, this work included a central blockhouse that supposed to provide the garrison with the means to resist the enemy even after being driven from the parapet. The blockhouse was flanked by two fully framed magazines constructed under traverses. To save space the slopes of the traverses were to be revetted with vertical posts. Each chamber was 17 feet long and six feet wide with head clearance at the center of about 5 and one-half feet. The roof was given a slight angle (1 in 6) to help carry off rainwater absorbed into the covering mass. The covering mass itself was eight feet thick over the center of the chamber and 30 feet wide; the chamber was off set from the center line of the covering mass so that one side was seven feet thick and other was 10 feet thick. As can be seen in the illustration, the covering mass was several feet higher than and attached to the interior crest of the parapet. The galleries were three feet wide and turned once under the covering mass to open onto the terre-plein facing toward the gorge.

Although the magazines were well protected from light artillery fire, attaching them directly to the parapet as traverses tended to create a dead spot along the crest of the counterscarp that the defenders could not reach with fire delivered from the parapet. Once an enemy mounted the superior slope the attached traverses provided easy access to the interior of the work and a position which commanded both the terre-plein and extended gun platforms. Had this type of redoubt, which was typical of the other works constructed for the defense of Nashville, been tested by a successful assault, one has to wonder how a garrison holding out in the central blockhouse would have reacted to the threat of exploding magazines on either side them.

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