What Happened to the Food Sent to Amelia Court House?

   It is a fairly well known story about the war. In 1865, Robert E. Lee asked that rations for his army be sent to Amelia Court House. After being forced from the trenches protecting Richmond and Petersburg, Lee found not rations awaiting him, but ammunition.

   Writing in 1875, just ten years after the events, George C. Eggleston recalled an interesting turn of events concerning those provisions. Born in Indiana, Eggleston was living in Amelia County when the war began and joined Lamkin’s Battery on May 9, 1861, serving as a first sergeant and then as sergeant major. At the battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina, in October 1862, Eggleston was wounded by “concussion of shell.”[1] Lamkin’s Battery, Virginia Light Artillery, saw service in the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, until returning to Virginia in October 1863. The rest of their service was connected to the Army of Northern Virginia.

Marker in Amelia (HMdg.org)

   Eggleston accompanied his battery on at least part of the retreat toward Appomattox Court House, although it appears he was not present for the surrender, coming in for his parole at Burkeville on April 21, 1865. Eggleston had a great deal to say about food and rations in a chapter entitled “Red Tape” in his 1875 memoir. Concerning the waiting train of provisions at Amelia Court House, Eggleston wrote:

   When the evacuation of Richmond was begun, a train load of provisions was sent by General Lee’s order from one of the interior depots to Amelia Court House, for the use of the retreating army, which was without food and must march to that point before it could receive a supply. But the president and his followers were in haste to leave the capital and needed the train, wherefore it was not allowed to remain long enough to be unloaded, but was hurried on to Richmond, where its cargo was thrown out to facilitate the flight of the president and his personal followers, while the starving army was left to suffer in an utterly exhausted country, with no source of supply anywhere within its reach.”[2]

   While Lee had been warning those in Richmond that his ability to defend the entrenchments was nearing its end, the breakthrough on April 2, 1865, caught many by surprise. J.H. Averill wrote after the war that he was serving as trainmaster for the Richmond and Danville Railroad at the time. His first telegraph note on April 2 was to hold all trains at Danville. Averill asked for clarification but got no response. He believed that raiders might have cut the line between Burkeville and the Staunton River. The next message over the wire was: “Come to Richmond with all engines and empty passenger and box-cars you can pick up. Bring no freight or passengers.” Averill readied the four engineers and whatever rolling stock he could find. Asking for further instructions, he was told “Too late. Richmond is being evacuated. We will all leave this P.M. Arrange for all track room possible in Danville.” Averill also wrote that in Danville “were large government storehouses…all filled to the ceiling, as well as many loaded cars, awaiting shipment.”[3] It is interesting to note that the telegram told Averill to bring “all engines and empty passenger and box-cars you can pick up.” Since the rations would have been in between Danville and Amelia, they certainly would have fallen under the “all you can pick up” order.

   There appears to be an even older version of this story. Writing in 1866, James D. McCabe, Jr., wrote that the “the trains which had been sent from Danville [to Lee at Appomattox] had been ordered to Richmond to help carry off government property, and that, through inexcusable blundering of the Richmond authorities, the cars had been sent on to the Capital without unloading at the stores at Amelia Courthouse.”[4]

   Lee went as far as to say in his final report to Davis in April 1865 that “Not finding the supplies ordered to be placed there [Amelia] twenty-four hours were lost.” The same was repeated on April 4, when Lee sent his appeal to “the Citizens of Amelia County, Va.” The army had arrived at Amelia Court House “expecting to find plenty of provisions, which had been ordered to be placed here by the railroad several days since…”[5]

   These reports obviously rankled Jefferson Davis in the postwar years. In July 1873, Isaac M. St. John, who had replaced the inept Lucius Northrop as commissary general in the last months of the war, wrote Davis on the resources of the Confederacy. St. John could recall or find “No calls by letter or requisition from the General Commanding [Lee], or from any other source, official or unofficial, had been received, either by the Commissary General or the Assistant Commissary General; nor…was any communication transmitted through the Department channels to the Bureau of Substance—for the collection of supplies at Amelia Courthouse. Had any such requisition or communication been received at the Bureau as late as the morning of April 1^st, it could have been met from the Richmond reserve.”[6]

   Eggleston certainly remembered seeing the discarded rations or hearing this story, as did McCabe. Based upon his appeal to the farmers in Amelia County, and his final report to Davis, Lee expected rations to be waiting for his army in Amelia Court House when he arrived on April 4. Would the rations and the lost twenty-hours have made a difference in Lee’s ability to outpace the Federal army? Maybe the    war might have lasted a little longer.

---

[1] George C. Eggleton, CMSR, Roll 0318, M324, RG109. NA.

[2] Eggleston, A Rebel’s Recollections, 228.

[3] SHSP, 25:267-9. Originally in the Nashville Banner.

[4] quoted in Freeman, R.E. Lee, 4:509.

[5] Confederate Veteran, 7:233.

[6] SHSP 3:101-2.

Getting between the Confederate Capitals

One aspect of the War that has always been of interest to me is the role of transportation. In our world, we can easily travel from place to place, and find ourselves irritated when traffic, weather, mechanical issues, or accidents delay or divert our journeys or cause us to change forms of transport.  However, throughout the nineteenth century, including the four years of the war, travel was often complex and convoluted. Yet, it often came with a surprising variety of choices, and sometimes at greater speed than we would expect of a world without interstates or the internal combustion engine.   Most travel was conducted not from point A to Point B, in a single vehicle, but from one rail station, dock, or coach  stop to another, with multiple changes of transport in between.

This is true when looking at the various cities that served as a Confederate capital. When the delegates arrived in Montgomery, a few undoubtedly rode on horses or arrived by carriages. The majority came by train or by riverboat. When the first session was over, they left by the same means. In May 1861, when Jefferson Davis and a few others set out for Richmond, it was a trip that took only three days. Davis left on May 26, and arrived in Richmond on May 29. Save for the occasions when he rode out to inspect the troops in the defenses around Richmond, Davis resorted to rail travel. This includes when Davis visited the fields of Manassas in July 1861, and when he visited the Army of Tennessee in late 1863.

The Confederate government took to the rails on the night of April 2, 1865. The engine that pulled the train from Richmond to Danville was the Charles Sneddon. When Davis chose to abandon Danville, he set out on one train bound for Greensboro, but that engine broke down, leaving the president and cabinet alone in the darkness while a new engine was retrieved from Danville. When it came time for Davis to move from Greensboro to Charlotte, he was forced to take to the horse once again. Stoneman's raiders had wrecked many of the lines in and around Greensboro.

The image above is of the Charles Sneddon - the train last train out of Richmond. 

War-time Charlotte Rail Roads.

In the last blog, we mentioned railroads. Charlotte was served by three different lines during the war, even though saying it that way is a little misleading.


Completed in 1852, the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad ran south out of the city, and into Columbia South Carolina. According to one local historian, this was the line that most people in the area used to ship goods out of the county and into the port of Charleston. The second line, The North Carolina Railroad, ran north, connecting with Salisbury, High Point, Greensboro, and then east, through Durham and Raleigh. At some point - Goldsboro I think, the line became the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad.

A third line ran out of Charlotte towards the west, into Lincoln County. This was a part of the large line, the Wilmington, Carolina, and Rutherford Rail Road, but the eastern link (see below) was not finished.

A fourth line, entitled the Wilmington, Charlotte, and Rutherford Rail Road was stretching from Wilmington towards the city, but was not much further than Richmond County in the 1860s.

So there are Charlotte’s rail links during the war. Most of these links survived unharmed until the final days (literally) of the war.