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Historical tours are always affected by the weather - on this particular day, it threatened to rain, but the skies held off to a manageable drizzle. As for the rest of the environment, the city of Petersburg, Va, is an historic industrial town which has surrounded the original battle sites of the 1781 Battle of Petersburg with buildings, warehouses, city streets, and other commercial edifices - so, to eke out the history of the conflict, you must go deep into the city itself. Luckily, the tour guide, Dr. Jim Ryan, knows Petersburg like the back of his hand (having grown up there), and Revolutionary War history equally as well. This was the battle that pitted the British Commander Maj. Gen. William Phillips and his deputy, Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold, against the Patriot's Maj. Gen. Baron Von Steuben and "the fighting parson", Lutheran minister Brig. Gen. Peter Muhlenberg with a force of Virginia militia at his command. The American forces fought a delaying action but were slowly pushed back to the banks of the Appomattox river and the Pocahontas bridge. When Von Steuben ordered a general retreat, the Americans took up the planks of the bridge so the British couldn't follow.
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