Railroads, Warehouses, Hospitals

Railroads, Warehouses, Hospitals. Staunton, Confederate Transportation Center. , You are surrounded by Staunton's 19th-century commercial heart. The warehouses and factories around you bustled with activity. Smoke belched from trains that departed from this location to Richmond and other points east with soldiers, equipment, and Shenandoah Valley foodstuffs., In return, trains puffed into the station with the sad cargo of wounded troops from bloody battlefields. Injured soldiers recuperated in buildings converted to hospitals like the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind., All that activity made Staunton a target, and in June 1864, Union Gen. David H. Hunter's U.S. troops came calling. They destroyed this station, warehouses, and other buildings of military significance. Hunter issued orders to leave civilian property alone, but rampant pillaging occurred nonetheless. The Staunton Vindicator newspaper survived by hiding its presses, and pronounced Hunter's men "vile Yankees" in a post-raid edition., [Sidebar:] , Staunton's Relationship with General Grant , Staunton developed a fondness for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant due to the local legend that he allowed the Stonewall Brigade Band to keep their instruments after Appomattox. In June 1874, the band serenaded President Grant and his wife, Julia, with "My Country Tis of Thee" and "Dixie," when their train passed through Staunton. The band also performed at Grant's 1885 funeral and were at the dedication of his New York City tomb in 1897. The day before that dedication, the band performed "Dixie" and other songs for President William McKinley, also a Union veteran, at the Windsor hotel., [Caption:] , View of Staunton, 1856, with railroad station and the American Hotel (behind you) in the foreground. Built in 1854 by the Virginia Central Railroad, the hotel hosted Francis Harrison Pierpont, the Reconstruction governor of Virginia, in July 1866, and former Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard in 1874. , Courtesy Library of Congress