June 25, 1864---The Battle of Staunton River Bridge

JUNE 25, 1864:           

The Battle of Staunton River Bridge. Having been unsuccessful in cutting the Weldon Railroad to the south, General Grant orders an attack on the Richmond and Danville Line to the southwest, hoping to cut that supply line. Union cavalry units numbering about 5,000 dispatched to do the job run into a Confederate force of only 300 State Militia and reservists (mostly old men and young boys) who hold off the Union attack until General Rooney Lee arrives with 3,500 Regular Cavalry troopers. Knowing that the game is up if the line is cut, they fight like wildcats. Although Union troops reach the line in one place they are thrown back before they can do any damage. The Union forces withdraw at day’s end, having suffered 120 casualties. The Confederates suffer 35. 

June 24, 1864---The Battle of St. Mary's Church

JUNE 24, 1864:          

The Battle of St. Mary’s Church. Frustrated in his attempt to link up with the retreating General David Hunter after leaving Trevilian Station, General Philip Sheridan U.S.A. decides to return to the battle front around Petersburg. He and his cavalry make a detour to White House, Virginia, to seize an impressive supply train meant for Petersburg. The diversion to White House allows General Wade Hampton C.S.A.’s cavalry to catch up with Sheridan. For one of the few times in the war, the Confederates enjoy a superiority in numbers on the field --- 2-to-1. Hampton wants very much to destroy Sheridan’s force, but he also desperately needs those supplies. A violent but ultimately inconclusive battle ensues. Both sides take about 300 casualties. The Union force withdraws, some units abandoning their wounded. However, they also withdraw with the supply train intact. Although Wade Hampton is later lionized in Southern memory, as, it seems, are most of their cavalry commanders --- Stuart, Mosby, Morgan, Forrest, Shelby, and Hampton included ---  he seems to stalemate Sheridan more than checkmate him. 

June 23, 1864---The Battle of The Weldon Railroad; Sparing the Greenbrier Hotel

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.

June 22, 1864---Holding Onto the Railroad; The Battle of Kolb's Farm

JUNE 22, 1864:           

Union forces at Petersburg try to cut the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad in order to isolate Petersburg from the rest of the South. Driven by desperation, the Confederates, under General A.P. Hill, strike back furiously. Hill's troops rolled up on the Union flank, inflicting nearly 3,000 casualties and capturing 1,700 prisoners. Hill’s action provided breathing room for Lee's army.

The Battle of Kolb’s Farm:     The Spring rains having dried, action resumes around Atlanta. General Joseph E. Johnston C.S.A. and his men have backed up all the way to Kennesaw Mountain. Although Johnston prefers maneuvering to out-and-out combat, there is no place else left to move without imperiling Atlanta. Today he authorizes General John Bell Hood to carry out a strike on the Union positions outside Marietta. 

Hood is an aggressive fighter. He lost an arm at Gettysburg and the opposite leg at Chickamauga, but this has not blunted his fighting spirit. However, the impulsive Hood would rather fight than switch, and he fails to reconnoiter the Union lines very well. Although his initial dual charges throw back the Union regiments holding those areas of the front, the Federals retreat right back to their battery line, hidden in the woods. The advancing Confederate forces are chopped up by a Federal cannonade. Total Confederate casualties in the engagement, "more a one-sided slaughter than a battle," were approximately 1,500 men of 10,000 engaged, mostly killed. The Union lost 250 men of 20,000 engaged.  Although Hood temporarily stymies Sherman’s forces, it is done “at a price the Confederacy can ill-afford” according to Johnston. This implied criticism causes friction between Hood and Johnston, friction which has long term consequences. 

June 21, 1864---Cutting the Confederacy's lifeline

JUNE 21, 1864:           

General Ulysses S. Grant U.S.A. extends his siege lines further around Petersburg by sending the 2^nd and 6^th Corps around the left flank. He tours the Union emplacements accompanied today by a surprise visitor --- President Lincoln. After the bloodletting of the Overland Campaign, Grant now chooses to be content with starving out The Army of Northern Virginia. Grant’s goal is to cut the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, once the longest railroad in the world at 162 miles, and now Petersburg’s lifeline to the rest of the Confederacy.

June 20, 1864---Speculators

JUNE 20, 1864:         

In Virginia, the Union settles down to the business of besieging Petersburg. Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Spring rains have turned the roads to goo. Sherman’s amazing advance is stuck in red mud up to its shins and its axles. Very little shooting is going on. Wet powder is making all but the most determined men (and men with Spencer repeating rifles) sit out the war until the bad weather clears and the roads dry. In Kentucky, the Union captures one of John Hunt Morgan’s men, a young private by the name of James P. Gold. Gold remains a POW until the end of the war and entirely reconstructed to the end of his days, never agreeing to take the Union’s Loyalty Oath. Gold lives until 1934, one of the oldest Civil War veterans.

This last summer of the war is looking to cost the Confederacy dear. Southerners are scrounging battlefields to find spent bullets that can be melted down and recast. Housewives are saving the contents of chamber pots for nitre. 

The blockade is tightening. Prices are skyrocketing for everything but cotton and tobacco, which are plummeting in the South. The North is growing stronger on the high international price of these commodities. The few Southerners who can manage to sell their cotton and tobacco crops on the world market are becoming obscenely wealthy even as the rest of their nation declines.

In the public mind, “Speculators” are to blame, and these vague and shady “Speculators” are most often described as either Yankees or Jews (and sometimes both). Anti-Semitic diatribes begin to appear with distressing regularity in the “Letters To The Editor” columns of Southern newspapers. Judah P. Benjamin, serving as President Davis’ Secretary of War and (later) Secretary of State is accused of spiriting away millions of dollars in Confederate specie to the West Indies. (Anti-Semitism is also not uncommon in the North --- General Benjamin “Beast” Butler and Vice-President-Elect Johnson are both proud Judeophobes. Butler once writes, “[I] could suck the blood of every Jew, and [I would] detain every Jew as long as [I] can . . . [They are all] traders, merchants, and bankers . . .  supporting the Confederacy with whole heart --- two of them certainly are in the Confederate Cabinet.”  There was actually only one Jew in the Confederate Cabinet, but Butler saw Jews skulking around every corner as other letters of his indicate.)  

Dolly Sumner Lunt Burge, a Yankee-born resident of Atlanta writes in her diary:

"January 1, 1864. … The prices of everything are very high. Corn seven [Confederate] dollars a bushel, calico ten dollars a yard, salt sixty dollars a hundred [pounds], cotton from sixty to eighty cents a pound, everything in like ratio."

 "November 16, 1864. Paid seven dollars a pound for coffee, six dollars an ounce for indigo, twenty dollars for a quire of paper, five dollars for ten cents' worth of flax thread, six dollars for pins, and forty dollars for a bunch of factory thread."  

Much of the runaway inflation is due to poor economic planning on the part of the Confederacy. Manufacturing (of everything but weapons) remains at prewar levels or more often, less. With men at the front, planting is carried on by women, children and slaves (those who have not run off). Crop yields are small. Food stocks are short, and what can be saved is often expropriated for the army. The South is starving. Although worsening shortages have been the rule since 1861, this is no longer a question of shortage, it is a question of lack. And it will only get worse.

Railroad trackage has decreased (due to wartime destruction). It is nearly impossible to get goods to market in places due to deteriorating roads, wartime displacement, and battle lines. Waylaying road agents and nefarious highwaymen are a scourge on the South. The Confederacy, with no international recognition and crushing debt, is merely printing more and more money to cover its expenses. And with every note that gets printed, the value of Confederate money declines. Economics and foreign affairs are the Confederacy’s obscured Achilles tendons, hamstringing the Rebel cause.