OCTOBER 2, 1864:
The
Battle of Saltville, Virginia. After the Beefsteak Raid, the Confederates had
used up a large portion of their salt stocks in preserving the purloined beef.
Salt was a valuable war commodity for many reasons, and most of Virginia’s
wartime salt came from aptly named Saltville, in the Virginia arrowhead.
Ulysses S. Grant, hoping to strangle the Rebel army just a
little more, decided to destroy Saltville in order to deprive the Confederates
of salt. 8,000 Union troops in Kentucky
are dispatched to Saltville, including the Sixth United States Colored Cavalry.
Unfortunately, the mountainous terrain around Saltville made
charges, cavalry or otherwise, impracticable. The Union troops discovered that
the Saltville garrison (numbered about 3,000) was superbly positioned on the
high ground. The raid began to fall apart.
When the local militia realized that black cavalrymen were
in the town, they redoubled their attack. Largely ignoring the white Union
troops, the Virginians focused most of their fire on the black columns, killing
the black soldiers en masse. All men taken prisoner --- white and black ---
were shot.
Some of the Southerners, driven to hysteria, bayoneted the
corpses. When their own officers tried to get control of the situation the
local men threatened even them, and went on hacking and slashing and stabbing
at the living, the nearly dead, and the dead. At least 500 of the 600 men
assigned to the brand-new United States Colored Cavalry were slain during the
battle, and another fifty at least were killed after they were taken prisoner. “We
killed nearly all the negroes,” reported General Felix Robertson C.S.A.
If nothing else, the deportment of the U.S.C.C. men garnered
adulation from the white soldiers who were in the battle. "I never thought they would fight until I saw them
there. I never saw troops fight like they did. The rebels were firing on them
with grape and canister and were mowing them down by the scores but others kept
straight on. I have seen white troops fight in twenty-seven battles and never
saw any fight any better," wrote a Colonel of (U.S.) Kentucky militiamen.
