Appalachian History Series – Saltville 1864: Battle for the Saltworks and a Massacre that Followed
Saltville sits in the mountains of southwest Virginia, in a place where geology shaped history long before armies marched through the valley. Brine wells, furnaces, kettles, railroad connections, and mountain roads made the town one of the most important industrial places in the Confederacy. By the last year of the Civil War, Saltville was not just a local works in Smyth County. It was a target.
Salt mattered because armies and civilians needed it to preserve meat. Before refrigeration, salt helped keep food usable for soldiers in the field and families at home. It also played a role in curing leather and supporting other wartime needs. The Confederate war effort depended on places that could keep producing, moving, and protecting basic supplies. Saltville became one of those places.
The town’s importance came from both its natural resources and its location. The salt deposits and brine wells gave the Confederacy a major source of supply, while the surrounding mountains made the place difficult to reach and difficult to capture. The roads into the area were hard, and Confederate defenders had time to fortify the ridges and approaches. The same mountains that made Saltville remote also helped make it defensible.
By 1864, Union commanders understood that destroying Confederate supply lines could do as much damage as winning a battlefield victory. Railroads, mines, mills, saltworks, and lead mines became military targets. In southwest Virginia, those targets were tied together by geography. Saltville, the Wythe County lead mines, the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, and the mountain corridors between Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia all belonged to the same wartime landscape.
That is what brought Union forces toward Saltville in the fall of 1864.
Burbridge’s Raid from Kentucky
In late September 1864, Brigadier General Stephen G. Burbridge led a Union expedition out of Kentucky toward the Confederate saltworks. Burbridge commanded the District of Kentucky, and his force included white cavalry and mounted infantry units, along with soldiers of the 5th United States Colored Cavalry.
The presence of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry gives the Saltville campaign a deeper meaning. The regiment was tied to Camp Nelson in central Kentucky, one of the most important recruiting and training centers for African American soldiers during the Civil War. Many of the men in the 5th were formerly enslaved. Some had only recently entered military service. The regiment was still new, still being organized, and not yet a fully seasoned cavalry command when it was sent into southwest Virginia.
Their service challenged the racial assumptions of both enemies and allies. Black soldiers in Union uniform faced danger from Confederate troops who often refused to treat them as lawful soldiers. They also faced insults and mistreatment from some white Union soldiers. Colonel James S. Brisbin, one of the officers associated with the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry, later reported that the Black troops endured taunts and abuse on the march, including claims that they would not fight.
Saltville would answer that claim.
Burbridge’s expedition moved through difficult country. Confederate forces delayed the Union advance at places such as Clinch Mountain and Laurel Gap, buying time for defenders to gather around Saltville. The delay mattered. Saltville was too important to leave lightly defended. Confederate officers pulled together regular troops, cavalry, militia, reserves, and local defense forces. Brigadier General Alfred E. Jackson, known as “Mudwall” Jackson, helped organize the defense, while other Confederate commands moved toward the threatened town.
By the time Union forces reached the Saltville area, the defenders had taken advantage of the ridges, earthworks, and high ground around the saltworks. The Union army had come to destroy a major Confederate supply source, but it had arrived in a place prepared for defense.
The Battle of October 2, 1864
The main fighting at Saltville took place on October 2, 1864. Union troops attacked Confederate positions near the saltworks, but the ground favored the defenders. Artillery and small arms fire swept the approaches. The ridges and fortifications made progress slow and costly.
The battle was not a simple clash between two neat lines. It was a fight shaped by terrain. The Union soldiers had to move through a mountain landscape of slopes, fields, roads, streams, and defensive works. Confederate reinforcements arrived during the day, strengthening a position that was already hard to break.
Burbridge’s attacks were not coordinated well enough to overwhelm the Confederate defense. Union troops made advances in places, but they could not hold enough ground or break through decisively. Ammunition ran low. The day wore on. The objective remained out of reach.
One of the most important moments came from the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry. After earlier assaults failed, Black cavalrymen from the regiment charged Confederate works and helped carry a portion of the enemy line. Brisbin later praised their conduct, stating that he had seen white troops fight in many battles and had never seen any fight better. Other Union witnesses also recognized that the men had proved themselves under fire.
Their success came at a terrible cost. Roughly 400 men of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry were engaged, and the regiment suffered heavy casualties. Many were killed or wounded in the fight. Others were left in danger when Burbridge decided to withdraw.
The Union attack had failed. The saltworks were not destroyed. As darkness came and the Federal command prepared to retreat, wounded men remained scattered across the battlefield and in temporary medical care. Some were white Union soldiers. Many were Black soldiers of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry.
What happened next is why Saltville is remembered not only as a battle, but as a massacre.
The Wounded Left Behind
Civil War battles often left wounded men in terrible conditions. Armies retreated. Field hospitals filled. Surgeons worked with limited supplies. Prisoners depended on the enemy for mercy. At Saltville, that mercy was denied to some of the wounded Black soldiers.
Primary sources from the period describe Confederate soldiers killing wounded African American Union troops after the battle. Brisbin reported that Black soldiers who fell into Confederate hands were murdered. Surgeon William H. Gardner of the 30th Kentucky Infantry, who had stayed behind with wounded men, gave one of the clearest accounts. Gardner reported that armed men came to a field hospital on October 3 and removed wounded Black privates, then shot them.
The violence did not end with the first day after the battle. Gardner also reported killings at Emory and Henry College Hospital, where wounded Union soldiers had been taken. According to his account, armed men entered the hospital at night and killed wounded Black soldiers in their beds. He also described the killing of a wounded white Union officer.
Confederate Captain Edward O. Guerrant, writing from the Confederate side, recorded language that supports the grim reality of the killings. He wrote of the sound of rifles after the battle and noted that Confederates were taking no Black prisoners. His words matter because they were not written as Union propaganda. They came from a Confederate witness who understood that wounded Black soldiers were being killed.
The exact number murdered has been debated by historians. Some accounts place the number around forty-five to fifty. Other historians argue for a lower number, while still recognizing the killings as an atrocity. The careful way to tell the story is to say that wounded African American soldiers were murdered after the Battle of Saltville, that the massacre is supported by primary testimony, and that the precise number remains disputed.
That caution should not soften the event. Even the lower estimates describe the killing of wounded prisoners. Saltville belongs with the Civil War’s other racial atrocities against Black troops, including Fort Pillow, Poison Spring, and the Crater. It shows the danger African American soldiers faced when they wore the United States uniform, especially in a war where emancipation and Black enlistment had made the conflict a direct challenge to slavery.
Champ Ferguson and the War-Crimes Shadow
One of the names most often connected to the Saltville killings is Champ Ferguson, a Confederate guerrilla leader from the Appalachian borderlands. Ferguson was already notorious for violence in Kentucky and Tennessee. After the war, he was tried by a military commission in Nashville and executed in 1865.
Ferguson’s trial belongs to the larger story of irregular warfare in Appalachia. The mountains of eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee saw more than formal battles. They saw raids, ambushes, personal revenge, divided communities, and local violence that did not always fit neatly into regular military command. Ferguson became one of the most infamous figures from that world.
Saltville should not be reduced to Ferguson alone. The massacre was part of a wider racial violence directed at Black troops, and the documentary record includes more than one witness and more than one location. Still, Ferguson’s presence in the postwar legal record shows how the battle entered the history of Civil War atrocities and war crimes.
The Saltville massacre also complicates the memory of the Appalachian Civil War. This was not only a story of mountain men fighting for one side or the other. It was a story of slavery, emancipation, military necessity, Confederate supply lines, Black enlistment, and the refusal of some Confederates to treat African American soldiers as legitimate combatants.
Stoneman Returns in December
The October raid failed in its main military goal. Saltville remained in Confederate hands, and the saltworks continued to matter. Burbridge’s failure helped lead to a change in Union command, and in December 1864, Major General George Stoneman led another raid into southwest Virginia.
This second movement came after other fighting in the region, including the Battle of Marion. Stoneman’s forces reached Saltville on December 20, 1864. This time, the Union attack succeeded. Confederate defenders were outnumbered and forced back, and Union soldiers damaged the saltworks.
The destruction was significant, though not permanent. Union troops damaged buildings, kettles, and other parts of the production system. The works eventually resumed some operation, but the December raid accomplished what Burbridge had failed to do in October. It struck directly at a Confederate resource that had helped sustain the war effort.
The two Saltville battles should be remembered together, but not confused. The October battle is remembered for Burbridge’s failed attack and the massacre of wounded Black soldiers afterward. The December battle is remembered for Stoneman’s successful raid and the damage done to the saltworks. Together, they show how important Saltville remained in the final months of the war.
Saltville in Appalachian Memory
Saltville’s Civil War story is an Appalachian story because it joins mountain geography, industrial resources, divided borderlands, and military violence. The town was not Richmond, Atlanta, or Washington. It was a small mountain community built around a resource the Confederacy could not easily replace. That made it important enough for Union troops to cross difficult country in hopes of destroying it.
The battle also connects Kentucky to southwest Virginia. Men from Camp Nelson marched into the Virginia mountains as part of Burbridge’s command. Formerly enslaved Black soldiers, many of them new to military life, fought in one of the most difficult and dangerous settings of the war. Their service tied central Kentucky, eastern Kentucky, and southwest Virginia into the same story.
The massacre gives that story its moral weight. The men of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry did what soldiers are asked to do. They marched, endured abuse, went into battle, took casualties, and proved their courage under fire. Some of the wounded who survived the battle did not survive capture.
Today, the Saltville battlefield landscape still holds pieces of that history. The National Register listing for the Saltville Battlefields Historic District includes battlefield areas, fortifications, saltworks-related sites, and buildings associated with the 1864 fighting. The ridges, roads, and surviving earthworks help explain why the place mattered and why it was so difficult to take.
Saltville is remembered because of what was fought over, and because of what happened after the fighting stopped. The saltworks made the town a strategic prize. The 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry made the battle a test of Black military service in the Appalachian theater. The killing of wounded prisoners made Saltville one of the Civil War’s darkest episodes.
In the mountains of southwest Virginia, a place built on salt became a battlefield. Then it became a warning about what racial hatred could do when the smoke of battle cleared.
Sources & Further Reading
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XXXIX, Part I, Reports. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100569595
United States War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. XLV, Part I, Reports, Union and Confederate Correspondence, Etc. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1894. https://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/waro.html
National Park Service. “Saltville Battle and Massacre.” Camp Nelson National Monument. Last updated December 17, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/cane/battle-of-saltville-and-massacre.htm
National Park Service. “Southwest Virginia Raid.” Camp Nelson National Monument. Last updated December 17, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/cane/southwest-virginia-raid.htm
National Archives and Records Administration. “Military Service in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) during the Civil War, 1863–1866.” Reference Report. https://www.archives.gov/files/research/military/civil-war/us-colored-troops.pdf
National Archives and Records Administration. “Black Soldiers in the Civil War.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/article.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Civil War Records: Basic Research Sources.” National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/resources
American Battlefield Trust. “Saltville Battle Facts and Summary.” American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/saltville
American Battlefield Trust. “The Battle of Saltville Lesson Plan.” American Battlefield Trust. https://www.battlefields.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/the-battle-of-saltville.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Saltville Battlefields Historic District.” Virginia Landmarks Register and National Register of Historic Places. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/295-5001/
Lewes, David W. “Saltville Battlefields Historic District.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2009. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/295-5001_Saltville_Battlefields_2009_NR_FINAL.pdf
Dietzen, Elizabeth. “Saltville during the Civil War.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, December 7, 2020. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/saltville-during-the-civil-war/
Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. “Saltville.” Civil War Driving Tour of Southwest Virginia. Virginia Tech. https://civilwar.vt.edu/programs/drivingtour/saltville.html
Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. “Civil War Driving Tour of Southwest Virginia.” Virginia Tech. https://civilwar.vt.edu/programs/drivingtour.html
Whisonant, Robert C. “Geology and the Civil War in Southwestern Virginia: The Smyth County Salt Works.” Virginia Minerals 42, no. 3 (August 1996): 21–30. https://energy.virginia.gov/commercedocs/VAMIN_VOL42_NO03.pdf
Mays, Thomas D. The Price of Freedom: The Battle of Saltville and the Massacre of the Fifth United States Colored Cavalry. Master’s thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/109918
Mays, Thomas D. The Saltville Massacre. Plano, TX: State House Press, 1998. https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781886661059/the-saltville-massacre/
Marvel, William. The Battles for Saltville: Southwest Virginia in the Civil War. Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1992. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008997302
McKnight, Brian D. Contested Borderland: The Civil War in Appalachian Kentucky and Virginia. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813123899/contested-borderland/
McKnight, Brian D. Confederate Outlaw: Champ Ferguson and the Civil War in Appalachia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. https://lsupress.org/9780807178201/confederate-outlaw/
Duke, Basil W. A History of Morgan’s Cavalry. Cincinnati: Miami Printing and Publishing Company, 1867. https://archive.org/details/historyofmorgans00duke
Mosgrove, George Dallas. Kentucky Cavaliers in Dixie; or, The Reminiscences of a Confederate Cavalryman. Louisville: Courier-Journal Job Printing Company, 1895. https://archive.org/details/kentuckycavaliers00mosg
Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885–1886. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4367
Harper’s Weekly. “General Burbridge’s Raid in Southwestern Virginia.” January 14, 1865. https://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1865/january/saltville-virginia.htm
“Harper’s Weekly Archives.” The Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=harpersweekly
Virginia Places. “Salt in Virginia.” http://www.virginiaplaces.org/geology/salt.html
Visit Smyth County. “Saltville Civil War Sites.” https://visitsmythcountyva.com/directory/saltville-civil-war-sites/
Virginia Tech VTechWorks. “Civil War Battles for Southwestern Virginia’s Lead and Salt.” https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/items/37f20fee-e816-45e4-80f3-36262cdcbece
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Historic Registers.” https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/programs/historic-registers/
Author Note: Saltville is one of those Civil War places where mountain geography, industry, race, and military necessity all meet in one hard story. I wanted to handle it carefully because the saltworks mattered strategically, but the wounded men of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry are the reason the battle still carries such weight.