JUNE 23, 1864:
The
Battle of The Weldon Railroad. After being repulsed the day before, Federal
Generals Meade and Grant try again to cut the Weldon Railroad. Today, Blue
troops of the famous First Vermont Brigade actually reach the railroad and
begin tearing up track, but they are surprised by a Confederate force that
falls upon them from their flank. Numerous Vermonters are killed and captured. Although
Meade orders troops to move forward to assist the First Vermont, nothing is
done until the pitched battle is nearly over.
“Your delay has been
fatal,” Meade castigated his subordinate, and later reported to Grant that, “on
this particular occasion General Wright [the recalcitrant commander] showed
himself totally unfit to command a corps.” The First Vermont loses almost 3,000 men
killed, wounded, and missing.
As an aside, the
First Vermont, which fought in the Peninsula Campaign, at Chancellorsville, and
in the fore of the Overland Campaign, suffered the highest mortality count of
any brigade in the history of the United States Army, with some 1,172 killed in
action alone.
In his continuing
retreat into West Virginia, General David Hunter U.S.A. tries to redeem himself
by laying waste to the farms, crops and towns of the Shenandoah Valley by
burning anything his men cannot carry off. Today he reaches Sweet Sulphur
Springs and orders the town to be burned, including the Greenbrier Hotel. Since
the troops have already crossed into West Virginia, his subordinates dissuade
him from burning the place.
Operating since 1778
as a famous resort and casino, The Greenbrier has played host to 26 U.S.
Presidents, and was the site of a supersecret subterranean bunker that was
meant to act as a radiation-proof capital city in the event of nuclear attack
during the Cold War.
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