A Pleasant Evening at the Sarasota, Florida Civil War Round Table

Last Wednesday night, February 9, 2022, a pleasant time was had by all at the Sarasota, Florida Civil War Round Table.  We discussed Grant's fourth offensive at Petersburg described in my book, The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015), which is the second edition of The Destruction of the Weldon Railroad: Deep Bottom, Globe Tavern and Reams Station, August 14-25, 1864 (H. E. Howard, 1991).  

Some of us gathered after the meeting in front of the flags of the VFW post where we met.

The August battle at Globe Tavern, about six miles south of Petersburg (Globe Tavern was also called "Six Mile House") is also known as The Second Battle of the Weldon Railroad.  The late June fighting called the battle of Jerusalem Plank Road, which I'm writing about and mapping now, is also known as The First Battle of the Weldon Railroad.

What I remember most vividly about last night's talk was the relation between the late June and August fighting.  Brig. Gen. Francis Barlow and Maj. Gen. David Bell Birney never really got over the ambush sprung on the on June 22, 1864 by then Brig. Gen. William Mahone, whose Confederates employed a ravine and thick woods to outflank Barlow precipitating "Barlow's Skedaddle." Birney was Barlow's corps commander that day, and the Southerners rolled up the other two divisions of Birney's corps like a scroll.  As a result, on August 14 at Deep Bottom, when Barlow was ordered to leave uncovered the flank he exposed to the Confederates, he disobeyed orders and posted half his men on that flank and as a result had insufficient force to capture his objective; on August 15, Birney, then commanding X Corps, worried so much about fire off to his unprotected right that he failed to seize incomplete Confederate trenches guarding the Southern left.

Map by Hampton Newsome in The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1864 (Savas Beatie, 2019), Winner of the 2019 Distinguished Writing Award in Unit History from the Army Historical Foundation

Sarasota is where I went to college from 1969 to 1973, but because of so much new construction I scarcely recognized the school when I took a spin up to it prior to the round table's meeting.

Sarasota, Florida Civil War Round Table 7 p.m., February 9, 2022: "The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864"

At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, February 9, 2022, I'll be at the Sarasota, Florida Civil War Round Table at VFW Post 3233 at 141 S. Tuttle in Sarasota for an in-person presentation about one of my books, The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

The title of my talk will be, "The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864."

The Weldon Railroad ran from Petersburg, Virginia to Weldon, North Carolina, where it connected with the port at Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Deep South.  Lee regarded it as indefensible but defended it successfully from the beginning of the Siege of Petersburg in June 1864 until the Federals severed it in August 1864.  The railroad is America's Railroad of Death not because of the deaths in battle in the fighting for the railroad, but because of the deaths among the approximately 9,000 Federal prisoners taken in the fighting.  More than half of them may have died of malnutrition and disease in Confederate prison camps. As many as 25 percent of the relatively few Confederate prisoners may have died in captivity at such places as "Hellmira" (Elmira, New York).

The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 covers one of Grant's most important offensives during the siege.  It forced Lee to recall forces on their way to Northern Virginia in an attempt to lift the siege by threatening Washington.

The late Edwin C. Bearss, former Chief Historian of the National Park Service, called my book The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015) "a superior piece of Civil War scholarship."  The dust jacket is based on a Keith Rocco painting depicting the 39th Illinois' charge at Fussell's Mill on August 16, 1864, in which its color bearer won a Medal of Honor and a battlefield commission.  The color bearer belonged to the 39th's Company G, the Preacher's Company, raised in part in Tinley Park, Illinois, where I have my law office.  I attended college in Sarasota, Florida from 1969 to 1973.

Map by Hampton Newsome

The Weldon Railroad: America's Railway of Death

In The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of the Salekhard-Igarka Railroad, which Stalin planned to run for about 1,000 miles above the Arctic Circle.  It came to be known as "the railroad of death," or the "dead road," and it was said that "beneath each tie two lie."  Political prisoners worked on the railroad in frigid winters and steamy summers.  A third of the prisoners are thought to have perished, between 40,000 and 100,000 dead.  The railroad was poorly constructed and never completed.

Destruction of Genl. Lee's Lines of Communication in Virginia (Library of Congress)

The closest thing to a railroad of death America has is the Weldon Railroad, officially the Petersburg Railroad, which ran from Petersburg, Virginia to Weldon, North Carolina, where it connected with lines leading to Wilmington, North Carolina as well as to the Deep South.  Lee wrote the Weldon Railroad off as indefensible as soon as the Federals arrived at Petersburg because the railway lay only a few miles beyond Northern lines.  Nonetheless, he successfully defended it for almost two months.

Deaths related to the Weldon Railroad stemmed from the fighting during the Siege of Petersburg during the summer of 1864.  The siege was the longest and bloodiest in American history, lasting 292 days.  Most of the casualties along the Weldon Railroad occurred during Grant's second offensive of the siege, June 20-July 1, 1864, and during his fourth offensive, August 18-21, 1864.  (He would launch nine offensives during the siege.)

The second offensive numbered among the widest-ranging and most ambitious of Grant’s offensives around Petersburg, ranging more than from White House Landing in the northeast to Staunton River Bridge in the southwest.  It ranked among the longest of his offensives around Petersburg, though not among the bloodiest.  The principal battles of Grant's second offensive were Jerusalem Plank Road (June 21-23) and Sappony Church/First Reams Station (June 28-29).  Including casualties from sharpshooting, skirmishing and shelling, the Federals in late June 1864 lost nearly 5,000 soldiers, including about 400 killed or mortally wounded and around 3,400 prisoners, and Confederate casualties approached 1,500 with approximately 200 killed or mortally wounded and 400 prisoners.

Map by Hampton Newsome

Losses during Grant’s fourth offensive, the deadliest of his nine offensives in proportion to the number of troops involved, were about 10,999 killed, wounded or missing among the Federals, and approximately 5,400 of about 56,795 Southerners present.  The fourth offensive's principal fights were (north of the James) Deep Bottom/Fussell's Mill (August 14-18) and (southside) Globe Tavern (August 18-21) and Second Reams Station (August 25).  Union killed, mortally wounded or prisoners in August for the campaign of 1864 were around 7,700, Confederate about 2,900. See Horn, The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864, 317-318.

Second Battle of Reams Station (Harper's Weekly)

Fighting along the Weldon Railroad was so lethal because so many of the casualties were prisoners.  More than half the approximately 9,400 Federal prisoners taken in late June and August may have perished.  See Cross, A Melancholy Affair on the Weldon Railroad, 177 (25 Vermonters killed or mortally wounded on June 23 and 407 captured of whom 226 died as prisoners).  The approximately 2,000 Confederate prisoners taken during late June and August probably did not fare too much better during their extended stay in beginning in late June and August due to Grant's policy of not exchanging prisoners during the 1864 campaign; Northern prison camps such as Elmira, New York ("Hellmira") may have had fatality rates of up to 25 percent. 

Thus the fighting for the Weldon Railroad may have resulted in the deaths of up to about 6,000 Federals and 2,000 Confederates.  Not many by Soviet standards, and we should be glad for that, but still the deadliest railroad in American history.  

Brief Bibliography

Cross, David Faris.  A Melancholy Affair on the Weldon Railroad: The Vermont Brigade, June 23, 1864.  Shippensburg, PA; White Mane, 2003.

Eanes, Greg.  Destroy the Junction: The Wilson-Kautz Raid and the Battle for the Staunton River Bridge.  Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, Inc., 1999.

Horn, John.  The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.  El Dorado, CA: Savas Beatie, 2015.  

Help Preserve Acreage on the May 1864 Todd's Tavern, June 1864 Jerusalem Plank Road and August 1864 Globe Tavern Battlefields.

You can help preserve the May 1864 Todd's Tavern battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust.  The trust's map is of the cavalry fighting on May 7, 1864, but infantry took up the fighting at Bradshaw's farm just west of Todd's Tavern on May 8.  On May 8, the Petersburg Riflemen, Company E of the 12th Virginia Infantry, the Petersburg Regiment, and the sharpshooter battalion of Weisiger's Virginia Brigade, Mahone's division, Hill's Corps engaged Miles' brigade, Barlow's division, Hancock's corps.  The Federals captured one of Company E's leading writers, Sgt. Leroy Summerfield Edwards, and almost seized the Petersburg Regiment's first historian, Pvt. George S. Bernard, also of Company E.  Edwards and Bernard had belonged to the same Bible study ground the previous winter.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865 (Savas Beatie, 2019) (winner of the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History).

You can help preserve the June 1864 Jerusalem Plank Road battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust or the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.  Another prolific writer from the Petersburg Regiment, First Sgt. James Edward "Eddie" Whitehorne described how on June 22, 1864, Barlow's division of Hancock's corps "melted away like ice in the sun" under the onlslaught of the Alabama, Georgia and Virginia brigades of Mahone's division, who then rolled up Mott's division "like a sheet of paper." Mahone's men then routed much of Gibbon's division and seized the four guns of the 12th New York Battery.  Afterward, assisted by the Mississippi Brigade of Mahone's division, the Alabamians, Georgians and Virginians repulsed two counterattacks by Gibbon's troops. 

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment.... (Savas Beatie, 2019).

You can help preserve the August 1864 Globe Tavern battlefield through the American Battlefield Trust or the Petersburg Battlefields Foundation.  On August 19 at Globe Tavern, troops of the Federal IX Corps almost surrounded the Petersburg Regiment and its brigade, Weisiger's.  A man next to Private Bernard too seriously wounded to beat the hasty retreat that became necessary and perished in a Union hospital.  It was "no time to swap jack-knives," wrote Pvt. Henry Van Leuvenigh Bird of the 12th Virginia's Company C, the Petersburg New Grays, one of only two members of the Petersburg Regiment's color guard to emerge from the battle unscathed.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Petersburg Regiment... (Savas Beatie, 2019).

On August 21 at Globe Tavern, while the Petersburg Regiment and its brigade occupied the Petersburg trenches, the rest of their reinforced division suffered a stiff repulse at the hands of the Federal V Corps (including the Iron Brigade) and IX Corps.  Hagood's South Carolina Brigade got surrounded as Weisiger's Virginia Brigade almost had two days earlier, and before the South Carolinians fought their way out of the trap they lost almost two thirds of their strength.

Map by Hampton Newsome for The Siege of Petersburg: The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 (Savas Beatie, 2015).

The Petersburg Regiment and The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864 from Savas Beatie would make good Christmas presents, too!

Petersburg at Gettysburg

Here's the link to the August 14, 2021 talk that my friend Charlie Knight and I gave about the night move of Mahone's brigade on July 2, 1863.

Map by Hal Jespersen for John Horn, "The Myth that Mahone's Brigade Did Not Move on July 2, 1863," Gettysburg Magazine No. 65, July 2021

Pleasant Reception at Petersburg Civil War Table December 2, 2021

Last night at the Petersburg Civil War Round Table I had a pleasant reception.  We discussed The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865, my latest book.  It received the 2019 Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical Foundation for Unit History.  The soldiers did most of the distinguished writing.

Before arriving at Pamplin Park, the site of the round table meeting, I drove around the June 1864 and August 1864 battlefields, revisiting among other places that of Hagood's South Carolina brigade, which lost about 2/3 of its strength on August 21, 2021.  (See The Battles for the Weldon Railroad, August 1864.)

A Good Time at Pender Civil War Round Table at Rocky Mount, North Carolina

 We had a pleasant time at the Pender Civil War Round Table in Rocky Mount, North Carolina December 1, 2021.  I presented on and we discussed upon my most recent book, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown's Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865.  The book won the 2019 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for Unit History.  The regiment's soldiers did most of the distinguished writing.

On the way down from Richmond I stopped at Petersburg National Battlefield Park to pick up postcards for my grandchildren.