Program Information

On a hot, sultry August afternoon in 1864, a huge explosion wracked Union supplies on the wharves at City Point, Virginia. At first it was thought to be an accident.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: For 400 years service men and women have fought to carve out and defend freedom and the civilization we know as America. This series on A Moment in Time is devoted to the memory of those warriors, whose sacrifice represents, in the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, the last full measure.

Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: On a hot, sultry August afternoon in 1864, a huge explosion wracked Union supplies on the wharves at City Point, Virginia. At first it was thought to be an accident. City Point was a quiet and peaceful village roughly ten miles northeast of Petersburg. Today it is a part of Hopewell, Virginia; but for a brief period in 1864 and 1865, it seemed the center of the American universe. Determined to break the supply line between the rest of the Confederacy and its capital at Richmond, General Ulysses S. Grant had besieged Petersburg, which lay at the head of that vital web of railroads spreading south and west. City Point became Grant's headquarters and its wharves, old and improvised, soon filled with Union food, medicines and supplies and, dangerously, as it would develop, munitions, guns, armament, and gunpowder in huge quantities.

Grant and his staff had their headquarters in a "U" row of tents in City Point's high bluff overlooking the junction of the Appomattox and James Rivers, as well as the whirlwind of activity below. On August 9th, the ordinance barge, J.E. Kendrick, anchored on the quay below, exploded with a horrendous detonation. Bullets, shells, saddles, the pilot house of the Kendrick, and numerous severed bodies all began to rain down on the camp. A huge chain whistled right over the tent in front of which Grant was sitting. His shocked staff ran to the bluff to check out the carnage below, but the general just sat there, calmly dictating a Washington dispatch describing the event. Miraculously Grant himself was unharmed, but 43 were killed, 126 were injured and damaged property was assessed in the millions. A board of inquiry ruled the explosion an accident, but the cause was not immediately determined. After the war the truth emerged.

John Maxwell had a reputation as a bold operator. He was a member of an elite unit of the Confederate Secret Service formed in February 1864 to engage in covert activity against Union forces in Virginia. On the day of the explosion, he walked down the wharf toward the Kendrick with a package containing what he called a "horological torpedo," a time bomb of his own design. He handed it to a crew member saying the captain wanted it placed on board, turned and briskly walked to a place of safety. Soon after, the Kendrick and everything in range were vaporized in a massive explosion.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Virginia Standards