Core Work: Preserving the Center of the Ream's Station Battlefield

The railroad war

By the summer of 1864, Union victories at Vicksburg and Chattanooga had given the Federals control of much of the South and brought the fighting dangerously close to the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia. To cut the city off from the rest of the Confederacy, Union troops went after the railroads and stations that served Richmond and Virginia's industry.

Ream's Station, near Petersburg, was the northern end of the Weldon Railroad, which linked central Virginia to the port of Wilmington, North Carolina.

• June 1864: Union cavalry under August Kautz and James Wilson advanced on Ream's Station to destroy the rail junction and cut the supply line from Wilmington. Reaching it on June 29, they destroyed 60 miles of railroad, briefly severing a vital supply route, before Confederate troops surrounded them and forced them back.
• August 25, 1864: the Confederates had repaired the line within months, and the 7,000-strong Union II Corps came to destroy it for good. It took the station with little resistance, but while it was digging in, General Henry Heth's Confederate infantry overran it.

With Ream's Station not destroyed, the Siege of Petersburg dragged on through six more months of trench warfare, until Robert E. Lee abandoned Richmond and Petersburg on the road to his final surrender.

Protecting the core

With help from the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and the American Battlefield Trust will protect 101 acres at the heart of the battlefield: the ground of both Union attacks, and wetlands and streams important to the health of people and nature alike.

The grant programmes

Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants from the American Battlefield Protection Program help preservation partners across the country buy and protect threatened battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The programme also runs Preservation Planning Grants, open to any site of armed conflict on American soil, and Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation grants.

Sources

• National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program, "Core Work: Preserving the Center at the Ream's Station Battlefield." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/preserving-the-center-at-the-ream-s-station-battlefield.htm
• A photograph of the battlefield by the American Battlefield Trust is not reproduced here.
• Left out: the original's month for Lee's abandonment of Richmond and Petersburg, March 1865, which is mistaken.