Military
3
In June 1864, Gen. U.S. Grant moved to confine Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia within the Richmond and Petersburg defenses and sought to cut the South Side R.R. and the Richmond and Danville R.R., which supplied Lee’s men and joined at Burkesville. To deny Lee their use, Grant ordered Gen. James H. Wilson’s 3,000-man cavalry division and Gen. August V. Kautz’s division of 2,500 cavalrymen, supported by three batteries of regular U.S. artillery, to destroy both railroads as extensively as possible until enemy attacks could no longer be resisted. The detachment left Mt. Sinai Church in Prince George County at 2 a.m. on June 22 with 30 to 40 supply wagons and two to four mountain howitzers in Kautz’s command, while Federal II and VI Corps attempts to seize the Weldon Railroad in the Battle of Jerusalem Plank Road helped cover the raiders’ departure. Trooper George L. Cruikshank of Company A, 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry recalled leaving camp at daybreak with five days’ rations after nearly a sleepless night of preparations, being told those rations must last ten days, officers receiving wagonloads of provisions, several men pooling money to buy coffee and sugar, and a sergeant’s warning that they would have a “skedaddle” before returning seeming prophetic afterward. The present Prince George County courthouse, completed in 1884 and later given its 1929 arcade, replaced the 1810 courthouse that Federal troops burned in 1864; the older building was restored after the war but later demolished and had stood about a quarter-mile west.
Hear stories like this as you drive
ExploreHere reads historical markers out loud as you pass them: over 325,000 stories across the US. No account needed.
4.7 · 800+ ratings · Free
FIND IT
Prince George, Virginia · United States
