August 9, 1864---The Explosion At City Point; Lincoln's Lucky Hat

AUGUST 9, 1864: 

The Explosion At City Point: 

General Ulysses S. Grant U.S.A. is headquartered at City Point (today Hopewell), Virginia. City Point, at the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers, is the main disembarkation point for fresh troops and supplies in the Virginia Theatre, as well as being the major railhead.

Around midday, City Point is rocked by a huge blast when a lighter carrying munitions explodes during offloading at wharfside. The roar can be heard across the Virginia countryside, and observers 40 miles away see a plume of black smoke ascend into the heavens. Most observers assume that another Union detonation similar to the one at The Crater has destroyed either Petersburg or Richmond.

30,000 artillery shells detonate along with 75,000 rounds of small arms ammunition that begin popping off like deadly firecrackers all through the day. The wharf is utterly destroyed.

According to The New York Times every frame house in town is jarred, and the plasterwork drops from the ceilings and walls. The explosion sinks several light ships and destroys a number of wharfside buildings. 

The death toll is put at 300: “Several barrels of human remains were sifted from the wreckage.” 

The damage is estimated at U.S. (1864) $4,000,000.

Grant writes:

Every part of the yard used as my headquarters is filled with splinters and fragments of shell . . .”

According to another report, “Such a rain of shot, shell, bullets, pieces of wood, iron bars and bolts, chains and missiles of every kind was never before witnessed.”

After the war, documents discovered and entered into the Official Records uncover the fact that the explosion had been an act of sabotage. Confederate Secret Service agent John Maxwell had smuggled a time bomb, which he called a “horological torpedo” aboard the ammunition barge, inside a box marked "candles."

The attempt to end the Union’s war effort does not end there. One night this month (the exact date is not known) President Lincoln is riding alone down the road to Soldiers Home when a shot rings out. His horse bucks and runs in fear, and Lincoln loses his plug hat in the road.  When he finds it the next morning in the road it has bullet holes in the crown. Lincoln makes light of it, blaming it on a careless hunter. He tells his friend and bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon:

Last night about eleven o'clock, I went to the Soldiers' Home alone, riding Old Abe, as you call him, and when I arrived at the foot of the hill on the road leading to the entrance to the Home grounds, I was jogging along at a slow gait, immersed in deep thought, contemplating what was next to happen in the unsettled state of affairs, when suddenly I was aroused --- I may say the arousement lifted me out of my saddle as well as out of my wits --- by the report of a rifle, and seemingly the gunner was not fifty yards from where my contemplations ended and my accelerated transit began. My erratic namesake, with little warning, gave proof of decided dissatisfaction at the racket, and with one reckless bound he unceremoniously separated me from my eight-dollar plug hat, with which I parted company without any assent, express or implied, upon my part. At a break-neck speed we soon arrived in a haven of safety. Meanwhile I was left in doubt whether death was more desirable from being thrown from a runaway federal horse, or as the tragic result of a rifle-ball fired by a disloyal bushwhacker in the middle of the night . . . Now, in the face of this testimony in favor of your theory of danger to me, personally, I can't bring myself to believe that any one has shot or will deliberately shoot at me with the purpose of killing me; although I must acknowledge that I heard this fellow's bullet whistle at an uncomfortably short distance from these headquarters of mine. I have about concluded that the shot was the result of accident. It may be that some one on his return from a day's hunt, regardless of the course of his discharge, fired off his gun as a precautionary measure of safety to his family after reaching his house . . . I tell you there is no time on record equal to that made by the two Old Abes on that occasion. The historic ride of John Gilpin, and Henry Wilson's memorable display of bareback equestrianship on the stray army mule from the scenes of the battle of Bull Run, a year ago, are nothing in comparison to mine, either in point of time made or in ludicrous pageantry." My only advantage over these worthies was in having no observers. I can truthfully say that one of the Abes was frightened on this occasion, but modesty forbids my mentioning which of us is entitled to that distinguished honor. This whole thing seems farcical. No good can result at this time from giving it publicity. It does seem to me that I am in more danger from the augmentation of an imaginary peril than from a judicious silence, be the danger ever so great; and, moreover, I do not want it understood that I share your apprehensions. I never have.