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Supporting Victory
Supply Depot at City Point, Virginia March 24, 1865
An obscure river village located at the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers, City Point, Virginia, changed overnight from backwater bluff-town to one of the busiest ports in the land. The reason: the coming of Ulysses S. Grant and the Federal Army.
Grant chose City Point because of the rivers and the accessibility to the vast resources of the industrialized North. Unlike cross-country railroads or supply trains that were susceptible to enemy cavalry, once the rivers were secured by Union gunboats -- such as the powerful, double-turreted Onondaga in the James below -- they provided an endless flood of food, weapons and ammunition, and a safe, gentle passage home for the sick and wounded.
The figures were astounding: fifteen hundred tons of supplies a day off-loaded from transports that steamed continually to the half-mile long wharf below the bluff; twenty-five locomotives pulled 275 boxcars filled to capacity on a regular schedule to the front siege-lines around Petersburg eight miles away. There were nine million soldier's meals, twelve thousand tons of fodder, and one hundred thousand rations of bread available on any day at City Point.
Mastermind of all this was Brigadier Rufus Ingalls, Chief Quartermaster on Grant's staff. When Lincoln visited City Point in March of 1865, he appreciated Grant's decision to make his headquarters in a log cabin and leave the large mansion house as headquarters for the Quartermaster Corps. Grant knew exactly what keeps armies in the field -- Quartermasters.
Along with Grant, Lincoln, and Ingalls on the bluff at City Point are shown Colonel Richard N. Batchelder of the Quartermaster Corps and Brigadier General Henry W. Benham of the Engineers. Below, on the James, is Lincoln's transportation vessel, the famous River Queen. |