Bradley, George W.

The Army of the Potomac's supply depot at City Point, Virginia, was located at the confluence of the Appomattox and James River, twenty miles southwest of the Confederate capitol at Richmond. The enormous complex of nearly three hundred buildings, eight wharves, and miles of attendant rail lines rose up in less than a month after General Ulysses S. Grant issued his June 18, 1864, order to create a local base of support for Union troops involved in the siege of the strategically important city of Petersburg. Consisting of repair shops, warehouses, rations commissaries, barracks, and hospitals, the City Point installation was critical to Grant's success in capturing Petersburg on April 2, 1865, and, days later, forcing the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.

The depot provided daily rations for a half-million soldiers and tens of thousands of their horses, ammunition for their rifles (stored on a special and isolated ordnance wharf), and repair of everything that they used, from wagons and ambulances to saddles and horseshoes. The Union Army's military railroad division built a network of rail lines that eventually surrounded Petersburg, eight miles to the southwest. The system, compete with turntables for quick redirection of locomotives, connected the City Point wharves directly with the front lines, ensuring efficient delivery of the fresh food and supplies that arrived daily from northern ports on nearly four hundred transport steamers and supply boats. On their return from the battlefront, the train cars carried sick and wounded soldiers out to the hospitals at City Point.

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