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.
