To protect Richmond from a Union attack from Suffolk, Confederate authorities fortified the Blackwater River in 1862, creating intermittent earthworks that stretched fifty miles from north of Zuni to the North Carolina border. Up to 9,000 troops were stationed along the Blackwater Line during the next two years, and despite occasional shelling and skirmishing, Federal forces failed to cross the river. In 1863, Union Gen. John J. Peck at Suffolk sent Col. Samuel P. Spear of the 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry to test the defenses there; near Carrsville at Hebron Church on the morning of March 17, Spear engaged Confederate pickets who fled to new earthworks a mile from Franklin, then charged twice and fought an artillery duel before retiring toward Suffolk. Early in April, three of Gen. James Longstreet’s divisions marched through Franklin to besiege Suffolk while supplies flowed west from there to Richmond. After the siege ended and the Confederates left in May, the Blackwater Line declined in importance, but in 1864 Union Gen. August V. Kautz diverted his planned cavalry raid from Southampton County because earlier expeditions against the Petersburg Railroad had convinced him that the Blackwater River was an impassable barrier. In 1863, Franklin resident Elliott Story wrote that the river had saved local people thousands of dollars' worth of property as well as alarm and distress. As Gen. Ulysses S. Grant besieged Petersburg, some local African Americans liberated themselves from slavery and slipped through the Union lines to join the 38th U.S. Colored Troops, and by 1865 constant foraging and skirmishing had wearied Southampton County citizens, ravaged the economy, and devastated once-prosperous farms.