the
Federals were not the first to use a gun mounted on railway trucks.
In the defense of
Richmond during the seven days and at the attack on Savage's Station the
Confederates had mounted a field-piece on a flat-car and it did severe damage to the
Federal camps.
But they possessed no such formidable armored truck as this.
Propelled by man-power, no puffing locomotive betrayed its whereabouts; and as it rolled along the tracks, firing a shot from time to time, it must have puzzled the
Confederate outposts.
This was no clumsy experimental toy, but a land gunboat on wheels, armored with iron-plating, backed by massive beams.
at the
Globe Tavern General Warren made his headquarters after the successful advance of August 18th, and from here he directed the maneuvers by which the
Federal lines to the westward of
Petersburg were drawn closer and closer to cut off the last of Confederate communications.
The country hereabout was the theater of constant activities on both sides during the autumn, and skirmishing between the hostile forces was kept up far into November.
The old Tavern was the very center of war's alarms.
Yet the
junior officers of the staff were not wholly deprived of amenities, since the
Aiken house near by domiciled no less than seven young ladies, a fact that guaranteed full protection to the family during the siege.
A strong safeguard was encamped within the garden railing to protect the house from intrusion by stragglers.
 | |
The safe end of the moving battery |
|  | |
The globe tavern, Weldon railroad |
|
