City Point

[USS ALASKA]

I've heard that City Point became the second or third busiest port in the entire world. It's ironic that it doesn't exist anymore as a city.

City Point was a town in Prince George County, Virginia that was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923. It served as headquarters of the Union Army during the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War.

During the American Civil War, City Point was the headquarters of General Ulysses S. Grant during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864 and 1865. To serve the Union army, two huge military installations were built—a supply depot and the Depot Field Hospital. During that siege, City Point was one of the busiest ports in the world.

On March 27 or 28, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln met at City Point with Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman along with Admiral David Porter aboard the River Queen, as depicted by G.P.A Healy's 1868 painting The Peacemakers.

The City Point Railroad, built in 1838 between City Point and Petersburg, became part of the South Side Railroad in 1854, and played an important role in the Civil War. It later became the oldest portion of the Norfolk and Western Railway, itself now a part of Norfolk Southern.

Grant's Headquarters at Appomattox Manor form part of the National Park Service's Petersburg National Battlefield Park. The adjacent City Point Historical District is a registered National Historical Landmark.

Confederate sabotage
On August 9, 1864, a tremendous explosion shook the city. General Grant reported, "Every part of the yard used as my headquarters is filled with splinters and fragments of shell," and a staff officer wrote, "Such a rain of shot, shell, bullets, pieces of wood, iron bars and bolts, chains and missiles of every kind was never before witnessed."

Examination of the wreckage revealed that a barge loaded with ammunition had exploded, detonating 30,000 artillery shells and 75,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. 43 people were killed instantly[1] and 126 were wounded (some accounts put the death toll at 300). The wharf was almost entirely destroyed and the damage was put at $2 million.

After the war it was discovered that the explosion had been an act of sabotage. Confederate Secret Service agent John Maxwell had smuggled a bomb aboard the ammunition barge. Maxwell used a clockwork mechanism to ignite 12 pounds of gunpowder packed into a box marked "candles." He called it his "horological torpedo." (Horological referring to time keeping; torpedo was a term used in the Civil War for a wide variety of bombs and booby traps.) Here is a portion of Maxwell's report, taken from the Official Records.

"Sir:

I have the honor to report that in obedience to your order, and with the means and equipment furnished me by you, I left this city on the 26th of July last, for the line of the James River, to operate with the Horological Torpedo against the enemy's vessels navigating that river. I had with me Mr. R. K. Dillard, who was well acquainted with the localities, and whose service I engaged for the expedition. On arriving in Isle of Wright County, on the 2nd of August, we learned of immense supplies of stores being landed at City Point, and for the purpose, by stratagem, of introducing our machine upon the vessels there discharging stores, started for that point. We reached there before daybreak on the 9th of August last, with a small amount of provisions, having traveled mostly by night and crawled upon our knees to pass the East picket line. Requesting my companion to remain behind about half a mile, I approached cautiously the wharf with my machine and powder covered by a small box.

Finding the captain had come ashore from a barge then at the wharf, I seized the occasion to hurry forward with my box. Being halted by one of the wharf sentinels, I succeeded in passing him by representing that captain had ordered me to convey the box on board. Hailing a man from the barge, I put the machine in motion and gave it in his charge. He carried it aboard. The magazine contained about twelve pounds of powder. Rejoining my companion, we retired to a safe distance to witness the effect of our effort. In about an hour the explosion occurred. Its effect was communicated to another barge beyond the one operated upon and also to a large wharf building containing their stores (enemy's), which was totally destroyed. The scene was terrific, and the effect deafened my companion to an extent from which he has not recovered. My own person was severely shocked, but I am thankful to Providence that we have both escaped without lasting injury. We obtained and refer you to the enclosed slips from the enemy's newspapers, which afford their testimony of the terrible effects of this blow. The enemy estimates the loss of life at 58 killed and 126 wounded, but we have reason to believe it greatly exceeded that. The pecuniary damage we heard estimated at $4,000,000 but, of course, we can give you no account of the extent of it exactly."

The explosion didn't much hinder the Union war effort. The City Point supply depot was back in full operation in nine days. Although sabotage was not yet affirmed, the ammunition supply wharf was rebuilt to a much higher degree of security.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Point,_Virginia

The City Point Railroad was an eight plus mile railroad in eastern Virginia established in 1836 which ran from City Point (now part of the independent City of Hopewell) on the navigable portion of the James River to Petersburg, Virginia. It was surveyed in 1836 to not need more than around 20 ft of grade every mile and only gentle curves. John Couty, the chief engineer, had previously improved the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System in 1830. The debt needed to build the railroad was made greater by the Panic of 1837. The City point Railroad began to operate on September 7, 1938. The railroad started at City Point, where the Appomattox River runs into the James River because the Appomattox River was not as deep and wide as would allow large ships to dock closer to Petersburg.

By 1841, millions of dollars of tobacco were shipped, through City Point and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth in flour were shipped. Tobacco accounted for almost half of the value of goods shipped. The City Point Railroad Company was also involved in other transportation businesses than rail. The company also operated small boats on the Lower Appomattox from City Point to Petersburg. But even with this horizontal integration the company could not cover the debt from the development of the railroad.


City Point railroad was purchased by the city of Petersburg and reorganized as the Appomattox Railroad in 1847. The City of Petersburg was allowed, by the Virginia General Assembly in 1848, to sell up to one hundred thousand dollars of bonds to finance repairing the Appomattox Railroad. In 1849, Albert Stein made the port deep enough for ships with a 7 foot draft. A.G. McIlwaine, who would later found the Life Insurance Company of Virginia, complained that the port needed a 10 or 12 foot draft to hold the 200 ton carrying ships that commonly carrying tobacco and flour. Smaller ships meant higher freight charges and limited ships would service the port meaning less cargo for the renamed Railroad to ship. The line was later purchased by the Southside Railroad in 1854 to connect much further inland.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Point_Railroad

The Southside Railroad from Petersburg west was a vital resource for the Confederacy as a supply line for Richmond and Petersburg during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Beyond the lines of battle until the war's last year, the principal damage it suffered was the financial weakness caused by Confederate compensation policies and currency. The Confederate States Army destroyed most of the rail around Petersburg. Half of the eight mile City Point Railroad, was completely removed and another two miles was beyond repair. Only two and a half miles from Petersburg was the track even salvageable.

The United States Army rebuilt it. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant requested a railroad to help with supplies for the Siege of Petersburg, knowing from past experience that it would be needed. Grant empowered Mr. C. L. McAlpine, engineer of construction and repairs, to rebuild the City Point to Petersburg Railroad, as soon as the fighting moved elsewhere. McAlpine commenced operations when he arrived on June 18, 1864.

The City Point Railroad portion of the Southside Railroad was of great value to the Union forces during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. General Grant used and extended it to move supplies and troops from the port at City Point to the area south and east of Petersburg, operating it as a U.S. Military Railroad. In the last year of the Civil War, the U.S. Government rebuilt ten miles of tracks, a hospital and a bakery on the Southside Railroad and rebuilt trestle bridges.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southside_Railroad_(Virginia)

And as always, please see @DaveBrt 's http://www.csa-railroads.com/

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[mofederal]

I have been to City Point more than a few times. I used to live very near there, and I lived in Hopewell for a time. I think about the only things there are Grant's rebuilt cabin and the Eppe's home, Appomattox Manor. It is too bad none of the docks remain.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

City Point was a town in Prince George County, Virginia that was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923. It served as headquarters of the Union Army during the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War.

During the American Civil War, City Point was the headquarters of General Ulysses S. Grant during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864 and 1865. To serve the Union army, two huge military installations were built—a supply depot and the Depot Field Hospital. During that siege, City Point was one of the busiest ports in the world.

On March 27 or 28, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln met at City Point with Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman along with Admiral David Porter aboard the River Queen, as depicted by G.P.A Healy's 1868 painting The Peacemakers.

The City Point Railroad, built in 1838 between City Point and Petersburg, became part of the South Side Railroad in 1854, and played an important role in the Civil War. It later became the oldest portion of the Norfolk and Western Railway, itself now a part of Norfolk Southern.

Grant's Headquarters at Appomattox Manor form part of the National Park Service's Petersburg National Battlefield Park. The adjacent City Point Historical District is a registered National Historical Landmark.

Confederate sabotage
On August 9, 1864, a tremendous explosion shook the city. General Grant reported, "Every part of the yard used as my headquarters is filled with splinters and fragments of shell," and a staff officer wrote, "Such a rain of shot, shell, bullets, pieces of wood, iron bars and bolts, chains and missiles of every kind was never before witnessed."

Examination of the wreckage revealed that a barge loaded with ammunition had exploded, detonating 30,000 artillery shells and 75,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. 43 people were killed instantly[1] and 126 were wounded (some accounts put the death toll at 300). The wharf was almost entirely destroyed and the damage was put at $2 million.

After the war it was discovered that the explosion had been an act of sabotage. Confederate Secret Service agent John Maxwell had smuggled a bomb aboard the ammunition barge. Maxwell used a clockwork mechanism to ignite 12 pounds of gunpowder packed into a box marked "candles." He called it his "horological torpedo." (Horological referring to time keeping; torpedo was a term used in the Civil War for a wide variety of bombs and booby traps.) Here is a portion of Maxwell's report, taken from the Official Records.

"Sir:

I have the honor to report that in obedience to your order, and with the means and equipment furnished me by you, I left this city on the 26th of July last, for the line of the James River, to operate with the Horological Torpedo against the enemy's vessels navigating that river. I had with me Mr. R. K. Dillard, who was well acquainted with the localities, and whose service I engaged for the expedition. On arriving in Isle of Wright County, on the 2nd of August, we learned of immense supplies of stores being landed at City Point, and for the purpose, by stratagem, of introducing our machine upon the vessels there discharging stores, started for that point. We reached there before daybreak on the 9th of August last, with a small amount of provisions, having traveled mostly by night and crawled upon our knees to pass the East picket line. Requesting my companion to remain behind about half a mile, I approached cautiously the wharf with my machine and powder covered by a small box.

Finding the captain had come ashore from a barge then at the wharf, I seized the occasion to hurry forward with my box. Being halted by one of the wharf sentinels, I succeeded in passing him by representing that captain had ordered me to convey the box on board. Hailing a man from the barge, I put the machine in motion and gave it in his charge. He carried it aboard. The magazine contained about twelve pounds of powder. Rejoining my companion, we retired to a safe distance to witness the effect of our effort. In about an hour the explosion occurred. Its effect was communicated to another barge beyond the one operated upon and also to a large wharf building containing their stores (enemy's), which was totally destroyed. The scene was terrific, and the effect deafened my companion to an extent from which he has not recovered. My own person was severely shocked, but I am thankful to Providence that we have both escaped without lasting injury. We obtained and refer you to the enclosed slips from the enemy's newspapers, which afford their testimony of the terrible effects of this blow. The enemy estimates the loss of life at 58 killed and 126 wounded, but we have reason to believe it greatly exceeded that. The pecuniary damage we heard estimated at $4,000,000 but, of course, we can give you no account of the extent of it exactly."

The explosion didn't much hinder the Union war effort. The City Point supply depot was back in full operation in nine days. Although sabotage was not yet affirmed, the ammunition supply wharf was rebuilt to a much higher degree of security.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Point,_Virginia

The City Point Railroad was an eight plus mile railroad in eastern Virginia established in 1836 which ran from City Point (now part of the independent City of Hopewell) on the navigable portion of the James River to Petersburg, Virginia. It was surveyed in 1836 to not need more than around 20 ft of grade every mile and only gentle curves. John Couty, the chief engineer, had previously improved the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System in 1830. The debt needed to build the railroad was made greater by the Panic of 1837. The City point Railroad began to operate on September 7, 1938. The railroad started at City Point, where the Appomattox River runs into the James River because the Appomattox River was not as deep and wide as would allow large ships to dock closer to Petersburg.

By 1841, millions of dollars of tobacco were shipped, through City Point and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth in flour were shipped. Tobacco accounted for almost half of the value of goods shipped. The City Point Railroad Company was also involved in other transportation businesses than rail. The company also operated small boats on the Lower Appomattox from City Point to Petersburg. But even with this horizontal integration the company could not cover the debt from the development of the railroad.


City Point railroad was purchased by the city of Petersburg and reorganized as the Appomattox Railroad in 1847. The City of Petersburg was allowed, by the Virginia General Assembly in 1848, to sell up to one hundred thousand dollars of bonds to finance repairing the Appomattox Railroad. In 1849, Albert Stein made the port deep enough for ships with a 7 foot draft. A.G. McIlwaine, who would later found the Life Insurance Company of Virginia, complained that the port needed a 10 or 12 foot draft to hold the 200 ton carrying ships that commonly carrying tobacco and flour. Smaller ships meant higher freight charges and limited ships would service the port meaning less cargo for the renamed Railroad to ship. The line was later purchased by the Southside Railroad in 1854 to connect much further inland.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Point_Railroad

The Southside Railroad from Petersburg west was a vital resource for the Confederacy as a supply line for Richmond and Petersburg during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Beyond the lines of battle until the war's last year, the principal damage it suffered was the financial weakness caused by Confederate compensation policies and currency. The Confederate States Army destroyed most of the rail around Petersburg. Half of the eight mile City Point Railroad, was completely removed and another two miles was beyond repair. Only two and a half miles from Petersburg was the track even salvageable.

The United States Army rebuilt it. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant requested a railroad to help with supplies for the Siege of Petersburg, knowing from past experience that it would be needed. Grant empowered Mr. C. L. McAlpine, engineer of construction and repairs, to rebuild the City Point to Petersburg Railroad, as soon as the fighting moved elsewhere. McAlpine commenced operations when he arrived on June 18, 1864.

The City Point Railroad portion of the Southside Railroad was of great value to the Union forces during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. General Grant used and extended it to move supplies and troops from the port at City Point to the area south and east of Petersburg, operating it as a U.S. Military Railroad. In the last year of the Civil War, the U.S. Government rebuilt ten miles of tracks, a hospital and a bakery on the Southside Railroad and rebuilt trestle bridges.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southside_Railroad_(Virginia)

And as always, please see @DaveBrt 's http://www.csa-railroads.com/

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

I wonder how long after the war was it until the Federal government found out that Maxwell was the saboteur?

 

[Copperhead-mi]

I wonder how long after the war was it until the Federal government found out that Maxwell was the saboteur?

To answer my own question, the U.S. Government knew about Maxwell and his sabotage at City Point well before the official end of the war:

 

[Copperhead-mi]

Here is some more interesting info about John Maxwell from an excerpt of an interview in Style Weekly Magazine with Jimmy Blankenship, the NPS historian and curator at the City Point Museum:

Was Maxwell's act terrorism? Visitors to City Point often debate that point, Blankenship says. "Some people would say this is a terrorist act, but it's still a legitimate military target, you know? It's not the norm, it's not acceptable. But then again, with Sherman destroying what he did down south, that was not the norm as far as military fighting either."

By 1864, the Civil War had become a total war, Blankenship says. Union Gen. William T. Sherman laid waste to a broad swath of the Georgia and South Carolina countryside in the course of his "March to the Sea." Union Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan scorched the Shenandoah Valley so thoroughly that people said a crow would have to carry its own rations to fly across the valley.

Yet when a group of Confederates was caught plotting to burn down New York City, the Union hanged one as a terrorist, Blankenship says. "Well, it's fine for the Union to come down here and do it, but it's not fine for the Confederacy to go up there and do it, you know? But who wins the war?"

After Appomattox, the Union seized stacks of Confederate military documents. One was Maxwell's report on the events at City Point, which revealed the true cause of the explosion. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton immediately issued an order for his arrest and placed a bounty on his head. Some suspected the Confederate Secret Service had been involved in Lincoln's assassination.

"He knew if he'd been caught, they'd have hung him in a heartbeat as a spy," Blankenship says. But the gallows frightened Maxwell not at all, it seemed. Instead of lying low in Richmond, he went to New York. There he had a most unusual portrait taken.

Some weeks afterward, an envelope arrived at Stanton's office. Inside was a photograph of Capt. John Maxwell, nattily dressed in waistcoat, gold watch chain and tie, cradling his own severed head in his right arm. Blood trickles from the stump of his neck, staining his white collar. The message, according to great-great-grandson Alan Kinker: "Here's my head."

An inscription on a copy of the photograph, written when Maxwell was 80 years old, says it "was made from life + then decapitated + colored in order to answer the bloody demands and satisfy the morbid wishes of Secty Stanton and Genl Halleck who offered a reward for the arrest of said John Maxwell after the war. ... This photograph was taken in New York City by a photographer whose name I John Maxwell cannot in April 1912 recall, but he was a Southern Sympathizer."

The War Department, after receiving the photo, declared Maxwell officially dead, according a Richmond News-Leader article from June 21, 1940, when the headless photograph was rediscovered in a deceased judge's papers. Perhaps this was a joke in kind, or simply an example of mindless bureaucracy.

Maxwell became a blacksmith working in wrought iron and had a shop at 1006 E. Cary St. In 1865 Maxwell married Elizabeth "Lizzie" Cance, a Scottish woman who was also from Paisley. They had three children: John Stuart, who died in childhood, Wilbert (or Wilbur — people then weren't always too particular about spelling, says Janet Kinker, Alan's mother) and Janet, who was Janet Kinker's grandmother.

Lizzie died in 1898. Ten years later, Maxwell went to live in the Robert E. Lee Camp Confederate Soldiers' Home, which was at Grove Avenue and the Boulevard. In 1916, at the age of 84, Maxwell contracted pneumonia. His daughter, Janet, had died in 1908, but her husband's new wife took the old man home to care for him.

Janet Kinker's mother, Alice (nicknamed Attie), Maxwell's granddaughter, was 16 years old at the time. She remembered little of her grandfather besides his Scottish accent and the mischievous sparkle in his eyes. "At the time, you know, when you're 14, 15, 16, right around in there, you're not all that interested in grandparents," Janet Kinker says, not unkindly. "So she said she wished she had listened more to his stories." Attie died last year, at the age of 103.

With help from Blankenship, the Kinkers — Janet and her sons, Dale, Alan and Wade — have pieced together the story of Maxwell's life from old newspaper clippings, firsthand accounts and history books. Some things have been lost, like the original headless photograph. But the Kinkers feel they know their saboteur ancestor better now.

"Pretty gutsy," Alan Kinker says. "To walk into probably the biggest Union depot in that region, just calmly walk in with a bomb under your arm, and look for a target of opportunity, and then figure a way to get it on board a ship. He's either very lucky or really good."

Maxwell's long life was to hold one great disappointment. He was proud of his horological torpedo, which he also called the "infernal machine." In 1872 he tried to patent it. When he failed to receive a response from the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office, he went to the White House to try to cut through the red tape. There he met with then-President Grant's executive secretary, Horace Porter.

"Horace Porter is very interested in this device," Blankenship says. "So Porter asked him how it worked, he asked him to give an example of how it was used. Maxwell made the mistake of bringing up the ordnance wharf explosion."

Porter had been Grant's aide-de-camp in 1864, and he well remembered what had happened at City Point that day. He would make sure the rebel never made a dime off his deadly invention. "The Patent Office to this date," Blankenship says, "has absolutely no record of John Maxwell's name."

Complete article:
https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/the-souths-headless-hero-terrorist/Content?oid=1361218

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

One of the nurses- rats, which one, sitting on her horse, at City Point was slightly wounded by the explosion. Mrs. RH Spencer? I think the Sanitary Commission barge was there at the time? Must have been dreadful.

Unsure where this was, from where the device went off

 

[1950lemans]

City Point was a town in Prince George County, Virginia that was annexed by the independent city of Hopewell in 1923. It served as headquarters of the Union Army during the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War.

During the American Civil War, City Point was the headquarters of General Ulysses S. Grant during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864 and 1865. To serve the Union army, two huge military installations were built—a supply depot and the Depot Field Hospital. During that siege, City Point was one of the busiest ports in the world.

On March 27 or 28, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln met at City Point with Generals Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman along with Admiral David Porter aboard the River Queen, as depicted by G.P.A Healy's 1868 painting The Peacemakers.

The City Point Railroad, built in 1838 between City Point and Petersburg, became part of the South Side Railroad in 1854, and played an important role in the Civil War. It later became the oldest portion of the Norfolk and Western Railway, itself now a part of Norfolk Southern.

Grant's Headquarters at Appomattox Manor form part of the National Park Service's Petersburg National Battlefield Park. The adjacent City Point Historical District is a registered National Historical Landmark.

Confederate sabotage
On August 9, 1864, a tremendous explosion shook the city. General Grant reported, "Every part of the yard used as my headquarters is filled with splinters and fragments of shell," and a staff officer wrote, "Such a rain of shot, shell, bullets, pieces of wood, iron bars and bolts, chains and missiles of every kind was never before witnessed."

Examination of the wreckage revealed that a barge loaded with ammunition had exploded, detonating 30,000 artillery shells and 75,000 rounds of small arms ammunition. 43 people were killed instantly[1] and 126 were wounded (some accounts put the death toll at 300). The wharf was almost entirely destroyed and the damage was put at $2 million.

After the war it was discovered that the explosion had been an act of sabotage. Confederate Secret Service agent John Maxwell had smuggled a bomb aboard the ammunition barge. Maxwell used a clockwork mechanism to ignite 12 pounds of gunpowder packed into a box marked "candles." He called it his "horological torpedo." (Horological referring to time keeping; torpedo was a term used in the Civil War for a wide variety of bombs and booby traps.) Here is a portion of Maxwell's report, taken from the Official Records.

"Sir:

I have the honor to report that in obedience to your order, and with the means and equipment furnished me by you, I left this city on the 26th of July last, for the line of the James River, to operate with the Horological Torpedo against the enemy's vessels navigating that river. I had with me Mr. R. K. Dillard, who was well acquainted with the localities, and whose service I engaged for the expedition. On arriving in Isle of Wright County, on the 2nd of August, we learned of immense supplies of stores being landed at City Point, and for the purpose, by stratagem, of introducing our machine upon the vessels there discharging stores, started for that point. We reached there before daybreak on the 9th of August last, with a small amount of provisions, having traveled mostly by night and crawled upon our knees to pass the East picket line. Requesting my companion to remain behind about half a mile, I approached cautiously the wharf with my machine and powder covered by a small box.

Finding the captain had come ashore from a barge then at the wharf, I seized the occasion to hurry forward with my box. Being halted by one of the wharf sentinels, I succeeded in passing him by representing that captain had ordered me to convey the box on board. Hailing a man from the barge, I put the machine in motion and gave it in his charge. He carried it aboard. The magazine contained about twelve pounds of powder. Rejoining my companion, we retired to a safe distance to witness the effect of our effort. In about an hour the explosion occurred. Its effect was communicated to another barge beyond the one operated upon and also to a large wharf building containing their stores (enemy's), which was totally destroyed. The scene was terrific, and the effect deafened my companion to an extent from which he has not recovered. My own person was severely shocked, but I am thankful to Providence that we have both escaped without lasting injury. We obtained and refer you to the enclosed slips from the enemy's newspapers, which afford their testimony of the terrible effects of this blow. The enemy estimates the loss of life at 58 killed and 126 wounded, but we have reason to believe it greatly exceeded that. The pecuniary damage we heard estimated at $4,000,000 but, of course, we can give you no account of the extent of it exactly."

The explosion didn't much hinder the Union war effort. The City Point supply depot was back in full operation in nine days. Although sabotage was not yet affirmed, the ammunition supply wharf was rebuilt to a much higher degree of security.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Point,_Virginia

The City Point Railroad was an eight plus mile railroad in eastern Virginia established in 1836 which ran from City Point (now part of the independent City of Hopewell) on the navigable portion of the James River to Petersburg, Virginia. It was surveyed in 1836 to not need more than around 20 ft of grade every mile and only gentle curves. John Couty, the chief engineer, had previously improved the Upper Appomattox Canal Navigation System in 1830. The debt needed to build the railroad was made greater by the Panic of 1837. The City point Railroad began to operate on September 7, 1938. The railroad started at City Point, where the Appomattox River runs into the James River because the Appomattox River was not as deep and wide as would allow large ships to dock closer to Petersburg.

By 1841, millions of dollars of tobacco were shipped, through City Point and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth in flour were shipped. Tobacco accounted for almost half of the value of goods shipped. The City Point Railroad Company was also involved in other transportation businesses than rail. The company also operated small boats on the Lower Appomattox from City Point to Petersburg. But even with this horizontal integration the company could not cover the debt from the development of the railroad.


City Point railroad was purchased by the city of Petersburg and reorganized as the Appomattox Railroad in 1847. The City of Petersburg was allowed, by the Virginia General Assembly in 1848, to sell up to one hundred thousand dollars of bonds to finance repairing the Appomattox Railroad. In 1849, Albert Stein made the port deep enough for ships with a 7 foot draft. A.G. McIlwaine, who would later found the Life Insurance Company of Virginia, complained that the port needed a 10 or 12 foot draft to hold the 200 ton carrying ships that commonly carrying tobacco and flour. Smaller ships meant higher freight charges and limited ships would service the port meaning less cargo for the renamed Railroad to ship. The line was later purchased by the Southside Railroad in 1854 to connect much further inland.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Point_Railroad

The Southside Railroad from Petersburg west was a vital resource for the Confederacy as a supply line for Richmond and Petersburg during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Beyond the lines of battle until the war's last year, the principal damage it suffered was the financial weakness caused by Confederate compensation policies and currency. The Confederate States Army destroyed most of the rail around Petersburg. Half of the eight mile City Point Railroad, was completely removed and another two miles was beyond repair. Only two and a half miles from Petersburg was the track even salvageable.

The United States Army rebuilt it. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant requested a railroad to help with supplies for the Siege of Petersburg, knowing from past experience that it would be needed. Grant empowered Mr. C. L. McAlpine, engineer of construction and repairs, to rebuild the City Point to Petersburg Railroad, as soon as the fighting moved elsewhere. McAlpine commenced operations when he arrived on June 18, 1864.

The City Point Railroad portion of the Southside Railroad was of great value to the Union forces during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-65. General Grant used and extended it to move supplies and troops from the port at City Point to the area south and east of Petersburg, operating it as a U.S. Military Railroad. In the last year of the Civil War, the U.S. Government rebuilt ten miles of tracks, a hospital and a bakery on the Southside Railroad and rebuilt trestle bridges.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southside_Railroad_(Virginia)

And as always, please see @DaveBrt 's http://www.csa-railroads.com/

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

Just so I understand this correctly, the Confederates themselves destroyed the Southside RR. that ran west of Richmond?

 

[USS ALASKA]

Just so I understand this correctly, the Confederates themselves destroyed the Southside RR. that ran west of Richmond?

Sir, to the best of my knowledge, the Confederates destroyed some of the City Point RR (that was by then part of the Southside) that ran WEST from City Point to Petersburg. As far as the Southside running west of Richmond, I think that was one of the last rail supply lines to Lee in operation.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 

[John Hartwell]

"Terminus of the USMRR at City Point"

[https://archive.org/details/mma_city_point_virginia_terminus_of_us_military_railroad_268263]
​

For more photos see recent thread: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/camp-of-usmrr-construction-corps-city-point.145005/

 

[John Hartwell]

Morris Schaff was an 1862 graduate of West Point, and received his commission as 2nd Lt. of ordnance on June 17, and assigned to the Arsenal at Ft. Monroe. The following March, as 1st Lt., he became Assistant Chief of Ordnance of the Army of the Potomac. By the opening of the Wilderness Campaign, he had been breveted Captain, and was serving as Acting Aide-de-Camp to Gen.Gouverneur Warren. By the end of June, he had been placed in charge of the great Ordnance Depot at City Point.

[Alfred Waud's rendition of the explosion at City Point]
​

I have put Gen. Schaff's vivid eyewitness account of "The Explosion at City Point" online at:

https://sites.google.com/view/no31/home​

 

[John Hartwell]

An incident of the explosion:

"The boat or barge, on the deck of which the torpedo was placed, had on board some twenty or thirty thousand rounds of artillery ammunition and in the vicinity of seventy-five or one hundred thousand rounds of small-arms ammunition. Between it and the wharf was a canal boat filled with cavalry saddles and equipments turned in by Sheridan's cavalry a few days before on embarking for Washington, which was then threatened by General Early. The explosion sent those old cavalry saddles flying in every direction like so many big-winged bats. One of them struck and killed the lemonade man, the only authorized vendor of pop-syrups and lemonade at the depots. He had been with us some time, and was doing a thriving business under a tent-fly, surrounded by mule drivers, white and black, soldiers, civilians, and swarms of flies, when the saddle dashed through the crowd and hit him in the stomach. These details of his death were told me by Captain Randall, now General Randall, who was near by and saw the old saddle going through the crowd." [from Schaff's memoir]​