MARCH 23, 1865:
Stoneman’s Great Raid begins.
Tasked “to
destroy but not to fight,” Major General George Stoneman U.S.A. leads 6,000
cavalrymen from Mossy Creek, Tennessee across sections of North Carolina and
Virginia, tearing up railroads, burning bridges, obstructing roads, destroying
farms and crops, factories, mills, and trains. The Great Raid lasted a full month,
continuing until the day of Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A.’s surrender on April 26th.
During the Great Raid his men burned the abandoned Salisbury P.O.W. Camp in
Salisbury, North Carolina, and came within moments of capturing a fleeing Jefferson
Davis, who was on board the last train to cross the Reed Fork Creek Bridge,
just before Stoneman destroyed it.
Stoneman covered 630 miles of often rugged
territory, and terrorized the residents of the region. Whether Stoneman’s Great Raid
contributed much to the actual Confederate surrender is very unlikely however.
