Appalachian History Series
Why Marion mattered
In the last winter of the war, southwestern Virginia still fed the Confederacy’s armies with salt from Saltville and lead from the mines along the upper New River. Those resources moved over the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad through Wytheville and Marion. Any serious Federal raid into the mountains would try to break that industrial chain. Contemporary government mapping in the Atlas to Accompany the Official Records shows how these rails and roads converged in the Marion–Saltville–Wytheville triangle, a geography that made Marion a natural chokepoint in front of Saltville.
Stoneman’s December raid
In mid December 1864, Maj. Gen. George Stoneman marched out of East Tennessee with a mixed mounted force under Brig. Gen. Stephen G. Burbridge and Brig. Gen. Alvan C. Gillem. Their orders were simple and destructive: wreck the railroad, cripple the lead and salt works, and deny the Confederate highlands their remaining war industries. The National Park Service summary of the expedition places the largest fight of the raid near Marion on December 17–18, when Burbridge’s column collided with the valley’s defenders.
Breckinridge’s small army
Confederate Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge, commanding in Western Virginia and East Tennessee, scraped together what he could to stand between Stoneman and the works at Saltville. The defenders were badly outnumbered. Federal strength approached four thousand effectives while perhaps one thousand Confederates answered Breckinridge’s call. Among the mounted Confederates on the field were veterans who had served with Basil W. Duke’s command.
Day one: into Marion
Fighting flared on Saturday, December 17, as Burbridge pushed up the valley toward Marion. Short, sharp actions developed along the Middle Fork of the Holston as the Federals probed and the Confederates yielded ground deliberately to cover the roads toward the railroad and the approach to Saltville. Stoneman reported steady pressure and skirmishing as his forces concentrated, part of the same correspondence and after-action reporting later printed in Series I, Volume 45 of the Official Records.
Day two: a stubborn stand on the Holston
At first light on Sunday, December 18, Breckinridge’s line held stubbornly near Marion. Charges and countercharges rolled over the frosted bottomlands while Federal artillery searched the Confederate ridges. A battalion of the Sixth United States Colored Cavalry made a bold mounted push against elements identified with Duke’s brigade and took heavy casualties in the attempt, a detail preserved in Stoneman’s report and noted by the Park Service’s expedition narrative. By evening Breckinridge’s men were nearly out of ammunition. Under cover of darkness they fell back toward Saltville to avoid encirclement.
Aftermath: the road to Saltville
Marion opened the road. Stoneman angled on to the works at Saltville and took them on December 20, smashing kettles and vats, burning supplies, and breaking the railroad. The raid severed the last large-scale Confederate salt production and disrupted lead shipments from the upper New River, damage felt across Confederate supply in the closing months of the war. For a concise overview that ties Marion directly to the raid’s industrial targets, see Virginia Tech’s Civil War Center and related summaries of Saltville’s wartime role.
How the participants remembered it
Union troopers who rode with Stoneman left detailed regimental narratives of the December expedition through the Virginia highlands. Veterans of the 13th Tennessee Cavalry recounted the hard marching, the cold, and the determined resistance around Marion before the final drive on Saltville. Their late-nineteenth-century history remains a rich primary window into names, units, and incidents from the two-day fight.
Northern newspapers followed the raid in near real time. By December 31 the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer was printing dispatches touting Federal success in East Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, an early public signal that Stoneman’s column had wrecked key targets after punching through at Marion.
Why this battle belongs in Appalachian history
Marion’s fight was small beside the great set-piece battles of 1864, but its consequences landed squarely on Appalachian communities. The clash took place on farms and in a courthouse town built around the very resources the war demanded. When the fighting moved on, the broken kettles at Saltville and the torn rails around Marion told the strategic story as clearly as any official bulletin. The winter skirmish on the Holston was the hinge on which Stoneman’s destructive raid swung.
Sources and further reading
Primary and contemporary
The War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 45, Parts I and II. Reports and correspondence for the December 1864 operations in Southwest Virginia, including Stoneman, Burbridge, Gillem, and Breckinridge. Digitized access and guide listings via Cornell and HathiTrust. collections.library.cornell.edu+1
Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies 1891–95. High-resolution plates for the Marion–Saltville–Wytheville corridor and the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. PDF and plate browsing available. Internet Archive
Samuel W. Scott and Samuel P. Angel, History of the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A. 1903. Veteran regimental history with participant narratives covering the December 1864 expedition. Internet Archive
Wheeling Daily Intelligencer December 31, 1864. Contemporary dispatches summarizing Stoneman’s expedition in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. virginiachronicle.com
National Park Service, “Southwest Virginia Raid” overview. Useful campaign summary and concise account of the two-day fight near Marion. National Park Service
Virginia Tech, Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, “Saltville” driving-tour entry. Strategic context for the salt works and their defense and capture in December 1864. civilwar.vt.edu