Rocky Ford Engagement

— Stoneman's Raid —

(Preface): On March 24, 1865, Union Gen. George Stoneman led 6,000 cavalrymen from Tennessee into southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina to disrupt the Confederate supply line by destroying sections of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, the North Carolina Railroad, and the Piedmont Railroad. He struck at Boone on March 28, headed into Virginia on April 2, and returned to North Carolina a week later. Stoneman's Raid ended at Asheville on April 26, the day that Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union Gen. William T. Sherman near Durham.

Union Gen. Alvan C. Gillem led two cavalry brigades to Asheville through Burke County and Morganton while Gen. George Stoneman escorted most of his command to Tennessee from Lenoir, North Carolina, on April 17, 1865. Two and a half miles east of here, at the Catawba River bridge, the Federals encountered Confederate Gen. John P. McCown on leave, Col. Samuel McDowell Tate recuperating from a wound, and Col. Thomas Walton and 80 members of the Home Guard. According to Gillem, "about 300 men and one piece of artillery" had torn up the bridge and held Rocky Ford. Gillem sent one battalion of the 8th Tennessee Cavalry upriver to flank the Confederates, but soon the other battalion dismounted and charged across the bridge after Federal artillery had knocked out the Confederate piece, killing or capturing more than 50 guardsmen as well as the cannon.

The Confederate account differs. Walton's men occupied small earthworks or rifle pits until word arrived that the Federal detachment had crossed the river at Fleming's Ford. Walton signaled a retreat by firing the cannon four times. The Home Guard reported no casualties but saw dead Union cavalrymen in the river and the woods.

"At Morganton large supplies of corn and bacon were found," Gillem reported blandly, but local residents charged that the Federals plundered private property in retaliation for the Home Guard's resistance. Selina L. Norwood wrote, "They tore everything to pieces at Uncle Avery's, held pistols to the ladies' heads, drove them out of the house and took what they liked." Many of the Federals were said to be Tennessee Unionists taking revenge for depredations on their homes by Confederate supporters.

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Stoneman's Raid
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