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18641776 Club

Mahone hits the gap; Barlow's division collapses in minutes near Petersburg

A ravine hides Mahone's men from both Union corps, and the Weldon Railroad stays Confederate as Grant's siege enters its first week.

Grant's siege of Petersburg was only days old when he ordered two Union corps to sever the Weldon Railroad — the supply line keeping Petersburg and Richmond alive. On June 21–23, 1864, the II Corps under Maj. Gen. David B. Birney and the VI Corps under Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright pushed southwest toward the tracks near Petersburg, Virginia. Swamps and thickets split the two corps apart, and Brig. Gen. William Mahone — a former railroad engineer who knew exactly how to use a ravine — hit the gap at 3 p.m. on June 22 and collapsed Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow's division in minutes. The railroad stayed Confederate for now, though Grant simply extended his siege lines west and kept reaching…

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More from June 21
1768

Otis stands before the General Court and charges King and Parliament with tyranny

The Boston lawyer who called taxation without representation unlawful delivers his sharpest attack yet; word is already moving toward London.
1788

New Hampshire ratifies; the Constitution crosses the nine-state threshold

Eight states had approved it and it meant nothing; the Granite State's vote today makes the Philadelphia document the law of a real nation.
1942

Japanese submarine shells Fort Stevens; Doney orders blackout, holds his guns

Commander Tagami surfaces I-25 at the Columbia River mouth after dark, fires seventeen rounds, and slips away undamaged, leaving cut telephone lines on the Oregon coast.
20041776 Club
SpaceShipOne, built by Burt Rutan for roughly $25 million of Paul Allen's money, breaks a 43-year government monopoly on crewed spaceflight.
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More from Civil War & Reconstruction
1862

Seward and Lyons sign a treaty giving both navies the right to search and seize slave ships

The Senate ratifies unanimously the same day, ending half a century of U.S. resistance to British calls for mutual search rights on African and Cuban waters.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
1863

Pleasonton crosses the Rappahannock at dawn; Stuart's cavalry fights all day to hold Fleetwood Hill

Eleven thousand Union horsemen hit the Confederate camps from two directions at once, and though the Federals withdraw by nightfall, the aura of easy Southern dominance on horseback does not survive the day.
1865

Meade stands down the Army of the Potomac; it ceases to exist, two years to the day after he took command

The army that bled at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness is disbanded before summer is out.
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