Virginia Central Railroad during the Civil War, The – Encyclopedia Virginia
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Gordonsville during the Civil War – Encyclopedia Virginia
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William Richard Carter was born on April 22, 1833, on the Nottoway County farm of his parents, Martha Anderson Craig Gregory Carter and Sharpe Carter, a farmer, sometime schoolmaster, and charter member of the Nottoway Library Society. Carter excelled in his studies at Hampden-Sydney College from 1848 until 1852, when he graduated with high honors in chemistry. Exhibiting talent as an essayist, he served as clerk for the college’s Union Literary Society and in 1850 and 1851 was elected vice president.
Recommendations from his professors led to Carter’s employment in February 1853 at the Flat Rock Female Seminary in Lunenburg County, but after two years he became restless. He inquired about buying a newspaper, but nothing came of it. Carter unsuccessfully sought the mathematics chair at Hampden-Sydney in 1856 and suffered another disappointment when Amelia Trotter ended their engagement. Discouraged and frustrated, he resorted to drink for a time before deciding to seek his fortu
SUMMARY
The Battle of Trevilian Station, fought June 11–12, 1864, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), was a victory for Confederate cavalry under Wade Hampton when they turned back Union raiders under the command of General Philip H. Sheridan. Fought solely by cavalry, this was the largest such battle during the war (the larger Battle of Brandy Station, fought a year earlier during the Gettysburg Campaign, involved some infantry). Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant had hoped that Sheridan’s troopers might destroy the Virginia Central Railroad west to Charlottesville while distracting Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia enough that Grant might sneak across the James River and around to Petersburg. Instead, Hampton’s cavalry blocked the way, and although Sheridan claimed to have decommissioned the railroad, he was unable to fulfill the last part of Grant’s plan: to reinforce Union general David Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley.