Late on the blisteringly hot morning of June 25, 1864, mounted Union raiders entered Charlotte Court House as residents anxiously waited to see what destruction they would bring. The raiders were part of a Union cavalry force under Gen. James H. Wilson and Gen. August V. Kautz, dispatched to destroy the railroads supplying Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's army near Petersburg. While the main column cut a fiery destructive path along the Richmond & Danville Railroad five miles south, smaller parties rode out to scout, forage, seize horses and mules, and inflict incidental mayhem. One detachment crossed the rich and beautiful country to Charlotte Court House after Union troops had burned buildings, sawmills, and other structures in and around Keysville and Drake's Branch earlier that morning, likely sending columns of smoke into the air. When the raiders arrived, they looted, seized, and vandalized, but they did not burn the town. Lt. Luman Harris Tenney wrote that soldiers broke open stores, released two civil prisoners, and did many things out of the way, but did not rob or burn, while a Richmond newspaper accused the cavalrymen of stealing horses, destroying furniture, breaking open iron safes, and robbing citizens of money, watches, and jewelry, yet also confirmed that they burned no buildings. That afternoon, the raiding party rejoined the main column along the railroad on its way to battle at Staunton River Bridge.