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carrying anthracite coal through Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, from Mauch Chunk (since renamed Jim Thorpe), through Allentown and Bethlehem to Easton. At Easton, the Lehigh Canal connected with the Delaware Canal, and the coal was carried southeastward to Trenton, and then north and east on the Raritan Canal to New Brunswick, bound for New York City. His regular stops at the canal locks near the towns and cities along the route no doubt allowed him to develop contacts and relationships with many of the local citizens. Michael Kirby enlisted in the Pennsylvania state forces at Mauch Chunk, on 5 September 1861. Kirby enlisted in a volunteer company raised by Captain Amos Stroh, someone he had probably made friends with while driving the towpaths. The unit was designated as Company G of the 81st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The regiment participated in the failed Peninsular Campaign, the object of which was to capture the city of Richmond via the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. It was also fiercely engaged at the Battle of Antietam. The 81st was in the Second Army Corps under Major General Edwin V. Sumner, and in that same corps was the Fourth United States Artillery. A casualty in Battery C led Kirby to enlist in the US Army at Bolivar, Virginia, on 19 October 1862 to fill the vacancy. He was discharged from the Eighty-first Pennsylvania and would serve out the remainder of his original enlistment in the artillery. Having never been on the sick or injured rolls, he participated in every battle that Battery C was engaged in—including the great battle at Gettysburg in July 1863—until he was captured. In June 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant determined that Petersburg, Virginia, was the back door to Richmond and the key to the capture of the Confederate capital. As Union efforts to take the city by direct assault had failed, General Grant decided to implement a siege. As part of his strategy, he planned an operation to cut the railroads around the vital Confederate rail supply center at Petersburg. On 22 June, Generals James H. Wilson and August V. Kautz set out with orders to destroy the Petersburg and Weldon, Southside,
Destruction of Confederate lines of communication in Virginia by US Army Generals James H. Wilson and August V. Kautz. Private Michael Kirby of the US Army participated in this mission and was subsequently captured by Confederate forces. Sketch drawn by Alfred R. Waud and published in Harper’s Weekly, 30 July 1864. and Richmond & Danville rail lines that fed Richmond and Petersburg from the south and west. The Wilson-Kautz Raid was composed of about 3,300 cavalrymen and Batteries C and E of the Fourth US Artillery. The two six-gun batteries were converted into “flying batteries,” or horse artillery, which meant that the artillerymen were mounted and the horses were connected to the ammunition limber and cannon so that they could travel at the same speed as the cavalry. A long line of ambulances and supply wagons accompanied the force. Under the guard of the artillery, the cavalrymen did much damage to the rail tracks, although the raid did not achieve the expected results. In the days following the beginning of the expedition, miles of track, depot buildings, telegraph wire, line shacks and water towers fell to the crowbar and the torch. On 25 June, however, their efforts were foiled at the Staunton River Bridge on the Richmond & Danville, which was defended on either side by 900 rebel militia and civilian sharpshooters. In a series of maneuvers, Confederate cavalry and infantry under Generals William Fitzhugh Lee and Wade Hampton eventually surrounded the raiders at Reams Station on the Petersburg and Weldon. The raiders established a rear-guard defensive action,
then made a mad dash back to the Union lines. General Wilson’s men got the worst of it, having to spike their guns and burn their supply wagons in an effort to travel as fast as possible, while losing a large number of men to casualties and capture. Private Michael Kirby was captured at Stony Creek Station, on the Petersburg and Weldon line, on 27 June 1864. He was dispatched to the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, on 2 July. Kirby was imprisoned at Andersonville from July until September. He had not been there long before he joined a conspiracy of tunnel diggers and escaped. He found his liberty would last only a short time, however, for he was pursued, overtaken, and recaptured. He was put in a chain gang and served at hard labor for eight days. A subsequent attempt to escape through a second tunnel was frustrated by a breach of confidence on the part of some of his comrades. As General William T. Sherman’s forces began advancing closer to the stockade after the fall of Atlanta in September, Confederate authorities began moving prisoners farther out of the reach of the Union Army for fear they would be liberated by Sherman’s troops. Among the first five hundred men to be transferred, Michael Kirby answered the roll call with the impression he and the others were to be
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