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RIVER CROSSING

PICKET GUARDS UNSUNG HEROES

The double track, wooden covered bridge completed across the river presumably in 1858, was carried by eight stone piers. This bridge was directly in line with Virginia Avenue, which was called First Street, then Bridge Street, and finally Virginia A venue. The bridge fell victim to the strategic defense demands of the Confederate Army. Attempting to prevent the invasion of the Confederacy, Gen. Robert E. Lee, on May 1, 1861, ordered the then Colonel Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, commander of the Virginia militia at Harpers Ferry, to burn the bridge spanning the Potomac at that point. On May 28, 1861, Colonel R. S. Garnett reported that preparation had been made to break the bridges at Berlin and Point of Rocks. Before dawn, Sunday June 9, 1861, Drake's cavalry saturated the bridge with kerosene and placed powder at various spots on it. The torch was applied, and flames leaped high, lighting the surrounding hills and village of Berlin. The bridge collapsed into the river, leaving nothing but blackened embers and the stone piers. Military necessity made it imperative to construct a pontoon bridge at Berlin. On October 25, 1862, following the battle of Antietam, the Army of the Potomac under Major General McClellan constructed an 1100-foot pontoon bridge. The Confederates used the pontoon bridge when the bridge there was burned. The Union forces also passed through the town, as after the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg, Generals McClellan and Meade each camped their armies here before advancing into Virginia. Following the Battle of Gettysburg, General Meade's victorious Army of the Potomac pursued the Army of Northern Virginia in leisurely fashion. In late July a major portion of the Union forces crossed into Virginia via the pontoon bridge. The pontoons were removed in November 1862 for forwarding to Fredericksburg, Va., for use by Federal forces in spanning the Rappahannock.

The Civil War picket guards are among the unsung heroes of Berlin's past. The years when McClellan and Meade were sending telegraph messages headed "Berlin" to President Lincoln, when the armies of the north were encamped at the pontoon bridges at Berlin, and when the lonely but ever faithful picket guards kept watch against invasions from the south toward the strategic utilities of the C&O Canal and the B&O Railroad were highly important years of the Civil War. FIELD HOSPITAL

The Wenner farmhouse, now owned by the James Bells, is significant for its use as a field hospital during the War. The following is from a letter from Evelyn C. Wenner (Mrs. C. M. Wenner, Jr.) to Connie Koenig, September 26, 1974: "Berlin was on two occasions, and for periods of a week or more, the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, the first time after Antietam when General George B. McClellan was pursuing General Lee's forces back into Virginia and the second time afterGesttysburg when General Mead was leading his victorious soldiers into regions of the Confederacy. The records gave prominence to Berlin as an invasion frontier for both the North and the South. "Berlin's economic usefulness in the War was paramount and its military involvement was significant and recurrent. These official records have citations of skirmishes in the town on September 18-29, 1861, and apparently more serious conflicts there on September 3-5, 1862. Lieutenant Henry M. Binney, aide to the commander of the illfated garrison at Harpers Ferry, has left a diary saying that the fighting in and around Berlin was severe, with many dead and wounded ... . an elderly woman, once a resident of Berlin, on a nosta~gic visit to the Wenner farmhouse told the present owners that she helped in the house when it was a hospital in the Civil War. Cannon balls have been found in the fields around the farmhouse. One of these is now in the Harper's Ferry Museum."

CANAL VULNERABLE

The town was dependent principally for support upon the business of the C&O Canal, so during the war, it necessarily suffered much hardship from the interruption to navigation. The bivouac of the Army of the Potomac in the vicinity of Berlin in 1862 first introduced the town's name to the country, but it fell again into partial oblivion.

RAILROAD FIGHTS BACK

Gilbert Gude treats the role of the railroad during this conflict in his book Small Town Destiny.

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