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.
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| 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 1st, 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.
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