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| Railway bridge over the Catawba River.1 |
April, 1865. |
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and medicine, with ten thousand small-arms, four cotton factories, and seven thousand bales of cotton.
These were all destroyed, with the railway tracks in each direction from Salisbury.
The Union prisoners had been removed.
The prison-pens where they had suffered were destroyed.
On the 17th of April, Stoneman started, with a part of his command, for East Tennessee, taking with him the prisoners, captured artillery, and thousands of negroes.
On the following day, General Palmer, whose command was at Lincolnton, sent Major E. C. Moderwell, with two hundred and fifty men of the Twelfth Ohio Cavalry, to destroy the bridge of the Charlotte and South Carolina railroad,over the Catawba River.
At that time, Jefferson Davis, having fled from Richmondi was at Charlotte with a very considerable force; and the mounted men of Vaughn and Duke, who had come down from the borders of Virginia, were on the Catawba.
On that account it was necessary to move with great
caution.
At Dallas Moderwell had a skirmish with these cavalry leaders, but evaded a battle with them; and at daybreak on the 19th,
the Union force arrived at the doomed bridge, where they captured the picket and surprised the guard.
The bridge, delineated in the engraving, was a splendid structure, eleven hundred and fifty feet in length, and fifty feet above the water.
Moderwell's men set it on fire at one end, and in thirty minutes it was completely destroyed.
After skirmishing with Ferguson's Confederate cavalry (which came up on the north side of the bridge) for two hours, the raiders turned back, and, by marching all night, rejoined the brigade at Dallas, with three hundred and twenty-five prisoners, two hundred horses, and two pieces of artillery.
This was one of the most gallant little exploits of the war.
During the raid just recorded, the National cavalry captured six thousand prisoners, twenty-five pieces of artillery taken in action, and twenty-one abandoned by the foe, and a large number of small-arms; and they destroyed an immense amount of public property.
1 the writer is indebted to Major Moderwell for the above picture of the bridge.
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