Troops in the Siege of Petersburg faced the usual siege armaments — projectiles of all shapes and sizes and attacks on fortifications — but the Union added underground explosives to the mix.

Appomattox Manor served as Union army headquarters during the siege.

The Siege of Petersburg (June 15, 1864 - April 2,1865) was a 10-month long siege of Petersburg, Virginia during the American Civil War. It foreshadowed the trench warfare that would be common in World War I, earning it a prominent position in military history.

Union General Ulysses S. Grant made his headquarters in a cabin on the lawn of Appomattox Manor, the home of Dr. Richard Eppes and the oldest home (built in 1763) in what was then City Point but is now Hopewell, Virginia.

In an attempt to break the siege, Union troops mined a tunnel under the Confederate lines and on July 30, 1864, detonated the explosives creating a crater some 135 feet in diameter which remains visible to this day. Some 280 to 350 Confederate soldiers were instantly killed in the blast. Despite the ingenuity of the Union's plan (which had been devised by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants, a former miner), the lengthy, bloody Battle of the Crater, as it came to be called, was a decisive Confederate victory. The battle was dramatised in the 2003 motion picture Cold Mountain.