Ware Bottom Church Battlefield

Ware Bottom Church Battlefield occupies a quiet patch of ground that once anchored a critical moment in the 1864 Bermuda Hundred campaign. On May 20, 1864, Union forces under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler collided here with Confederates commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard. The Confederate victory helped confine Butler’s Army of the James to its entrenchments, limiting Federal pressure on Richmond and Petersburg at a crucial stage of Grant’s coordinated offensive. The church that gave the field its name—among the older congregations in Virginia—did not survive the campaign; used by Federal sharpshooters, it was deliberately destroyed in June 1864 after becoming a problem for nearby Confederate artillery. The terrain, now bordered by modern development near Colonial Heights, still hints at the tactical realities that shaped the fight and the subsequent construction of the Howlett Line, the Confederate earthwork system that locked Butler in place. Preservation groups, including the American Battlefield Trust and local partners, have secured portions of the site, allowing the battlefield’s fragmented remnants to continue documenting this lesser-known but strategically revealing action.