“Federal troops destructing the railroad track."— Frank Leslie, 1896
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. The Richmond & Danville Railroad reopened for
business all the way to the Confederate capital on July 16. 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.
