The Blackwater Line
“That little stream has ... saved us”
To protect Richmond from a Union attack from Suffolk, Confederate authorities fortified the Blackwater River in 1862. You are standing on the Blackwater Line. The intermittent earthworks stretched fifty miles from north of Zuni to the North Carolina border. Up to 9,000 troops were stationed along the Blackwater Line during the next two years. Despite occasional shelling and skirmishing, the Federals failed to cross the river.
In 1863, Union Gen. John J. Peck, in Suffolk, sent Col. Samuel P. Spear of the 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry to test the defenses here. Near Carrsville at Hebron Church on the morning of March 17, Spear engaged Confederate pickets who fled to the new earthworks a mile from Franklin. Spear charged twice, then fought an artillery duel before retiring toward Suffolk.
Early in April, three of Gen. James Longstreet’s divisions marched through Franklin to besiege Suffolk, while supplies flowed west from here to Richmond. Once the siege ended and the Confederates left in May, the Blackwater Line declined in importance. In 1864, however, Union Gen. August V. Kautz diverted his planned cavalry raid from Southampton County because, from the poor results “of two years past of expeditions directed against [the Petersburg Railroad], [he] reasoned that Blackwater River was an impassable barrier.” Elliott Story, a Franklin resident, had written of the river in 1863, “That little stream has thus far saved us thousands of dollars worth of property as well as the alarm and distress that would other wise fallen to our lot.”
As Gen. Ulysses S. Grant besieged Petersburg, some local African Americans liberated themselves from slavery and slipped through the Union lines to join the 38th U.S. Colored Troops. By 1865, constant foraging and skirmishing had wearied Southampton County citizens, ravaged the economy, and devastated once-prosperous farms.
Marker is at the intersection of South Main Street and South Street, on the left when traveling south on South Main Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
