The
results of the Wilson-Kautz Raid would disabuse Grant of the notion that
cavalry could damage the railroads connecting Richmond with the Deep South to
the point that Lee would have to abandon the Southern capitol for lack of
supplies. The Secessionists had to send
away some of the surplus population, but full rations were issued
throughout period the railroads remained inoperable except for half rations of
corn for the cavalry provided by wagon trains from Stony Creek.[1] The South Side Railroad may have been running from Burkeville to Petersburg as early as July 3. Railroad trains could pass from Danville to
Petersburg via Burkeville as early as July 5, a mere two weeks after the raid’s
beginning.[2] The Richmond & Danville Railroad had resumed
operations through to Richmond by July 16, Confederate crews having replaced
the slabtrack with heavy rail in fewer than four weeks—thus leaving the
railroad in better condition than before the raid.[3] When Grant set out to sever the Weldon
Railroad in August, he employed not cavalry who merely wrecked rails and ties
in passing but infantrymen who dug in across the roadbed.
Wilson
and Kautz accomplished their basic mission, destroying the Burkeville junction. The Union infantry failed to complete the
investment of Petersburg from the river below to the river above on which the
cavalry raid was premised. This rendered
largely ineffective the success of the bluecoat horsemen.
That
Wilson chose to retreat from Sappony Church by way of Reams Station rather than
Jarratt’s Depot resulted from confusion caused by many hours without sleep.[4] For the rest of his life, he felt defensive
about the drubbing his troops received at First Reams Station, though much of
the responsibility for the rout rested with Meade and Sheridan.[5]
After the war, Brig. Gen. Isaac M. St. John of the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau may have been humoring Wilson by telling him that the raid inflicted, “the heaviest blow of the kind that ever befell the Confederacy till Appomattox wiped it out forever,” as Wilson recalled. “[St. John] added that with all the resources at his command it was nine weeks, or sixty-three days, before a train from the south ran into Petersburg on either road.”[6]
In fact, trains were reaching the Cockade
City from Danville via Burkeville by July 5, less than two weeks after the
raid’s beginning, and the Confederates were rapidly repairing the Weldon
Railroad.[7] The Richmond & Danville Railroad reopened for
business all the way to the Confederate capital on July 16.[8] Perhaps St. John did not know how quickly the
damage was repaired, or maybe he was referring to when the first Nitre and
Mining Bureau train arrived in Petersburg.
Lead ore would at this point have been transported to Petersburg via the
Richmond & Danville and the South Side railroads to be made into ingots and
then shipped to Richmond on the Richmond & Petersburg. In any event, Wilson had no need to
exaggerate. St. John may have been
another victim of Lee’s campaign to deceive the enemy about the quick recovery
of the South Side and Richmond & Danville railroads.
The Wilson-Kautz Raid may have cured Grant of his readiness to dispatch his cavalry on raids. While the general-in-chief may have finally grasped that cavalry did not adequately destroy railroads, Sherman did not learn from Grant’s experience. Uncle Billy initially employed cavalry against the Macon & Western Railroad in August without success before his final offensive of the Atlanta campaign finished the job with infantry.
Despite
the ephemeral damage inflicted by the Wilson-Kautz Raid, the Confederates
remained sensitive to any threat to the Richmond & Danville. Lee reacted violently to the presence of II
Corps and a division of cavalry at Reams Station in August 1864. He sent out eight brigades of infantry for
the strike on the Federals at Reams because he feared that their presence at
the station presaged another raid on the critical Richmond & Danville or
that the occupation of Dinwiddie Court House would threaten the Army of
Northern Virginia’s line of retreat southward from Petersburg and Richmond.[9]
[1] OR 40, 2:496. Lieutenant
Hubard of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry remembered matters differently. “Wilson’s raiders so damaged the Danville
& Southside Railroads that lee’s army was for several weeks destitute of
rations and our commands were subsisted on the coarsest corn-meal I ever saw,”
he recalled. {The rations were so short
that when the meal was sifted it furnished only one repast for 24 hours.” Nanzig, ed., The Civil War Memoirs of a
Virginia Cavalryman, 184. The
letters of the 3rd’s Captain Watkins from July 1 through July 15, 1864 do not
include the same complaints. Toalson,
ed., Send Me a Pair of Old Boots & Kiss My Little Girls, 298-305.
Contemporaneous sources such as letters contradict the Hubard memoir.
“We get plenty of cornbread, bacon and coffee and some
sugar,” Sergeant Major Marion Hill Fitzgerald of the 45th Georgia in Thomas’
brigade on Bermuda Hundred wrote home on July 3. “I am getting biscuit hungry.” Jeffrey C. Lowe and Sam Hodges, eds., Letters to Amanda,
The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern Virginia
(Macon, GA, 1998), 157. On July 10,
he wrote, “Our rations are a little light at times but we do very well on
them. This morning we got half in
biscuits and half in cornbread and half in bacon and half beef, which suits
might well. We get plenty of coffee yet
and some sugar.” Ibid., 159. On July 18, he wrote, “our rations are a
little better now….” Ibid., 160. “We draw good rations and I catch a mess of
fish nearly every day,” he wrote on August 5.
Ibid., 163. On August 13, he
wrote that, “our beef rations have stopped which hurts pretty bad.” Ibid., 164.
“We draw two days rations at a time[,] half in bacon and cornbread and
the other in biscuit and beef.” Ibid.,
163.
On July 13, Private Spencer of the 3rd Georgia
Infantry in the Dimmock Line wrote, “In the way of commissary stores we are
getting along pretty well, except we do not get quite as much as we could
eat. We can make out, tho’. Grant can’t starve us out certain. There are now enough provisions in Richmond
& Petersburg to last the army for 12 months or more. There is now doubt of that.” Wiggins, ed., My Dear Friend,
133. On August 6 Private Spencer
expressed his disgust with “cornbread and blockade bacon” because he had
received a box of luxuries from Georgia and had “drawn a little, very little,
beef captured by Early in Pennsylvania.”
Ibid., 140. On August 28, he
thought his rations skimpy but sufficient.
Ibid., 147.
Soldiers in the 16th Mississippi were receiving
letters from home as soon as July 19. Robert G. Evans, ed., The 16th Mississippi
Infantry: Civil War Letters and
Reminiscences (Jackson, MS, 2002), 275.
Private Jefferson J. Wilson of Company C, the Crystal Springs Southern
Rights, wrote home on July 24, “At this time, we are getting tolerable good
rations of flour, bacon, tea, rice, sugar and coffee.” Ibid., 278.
Private Jerome Bonaparte Yates of Company C wrote home on August 2,
“Well, let me tell you what I had for my differ yesterday. First, sweet cakes and apples. Next, blackberry dumplings….We are living
very well at present…on cornbread, bacon, coffee, sugar, peas, and
some…rice….We drew lots of good food four days ago when seven trains of cars
come into Petersburg loaded with blockade goods….” Ibid., 281.
[2]
Eanes, Destroy the Junction, 166, 168 n. 22; OR 40, 3:38. On
July 13, Private Spencer of the 3rd Georgia Infantry in the Dimmock Line wrote
that, “the railroad communication is now about established….” Wiggins, ed., My Dear Friend,
132. Soldiers in the 16th Mississippi in
the Dimmock Line were receiving letters from home as soon as July 19. Evans, ed., The 16th Mississippi Infantry,
275. Private Yates of Company C wrote
home on August 2, “We drew lots of good food four days ago when seven trains of
cars come into Petersburg loaded with blockade goods….” Ibid., 281.
[3]
Eanes, Destroy the Junction, 165.
Cf. Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 1:463, where Wilson mistakenly claims
no Confederate train from the south ran into Petersburg for 63 days (about
August 25).
[4] Ibid.,
479-480.
[5] Ibid.,
484-522.
[6] Ibid., 462-463.
[7] OR
40, 3:38.
[8]
Eanes, Destroy the Junction, 165.
[9] Horn, The Battles for the
Weldon Railroad, August 1864, 223-224, 285-268. I mistakenly accepted Wilson’s account of the
time the Richmond & Danville Railroad was inoperable. Ibid., 309.
