Civil War
In early 1861, he sold the steam engine from his mill for $12,000 to be used in the Confederate Powderworks at Augusta. He was the civilian transportation agent for all Atlanta railroads, which were critical to supplying the CSA. He contracted with the blockade running Crenshaw Company, supplying cotton by rail in exchange for foodstuffs. During the American Civil War, Peters remained in Atlanta until a few days before the invasion of Union General Sherman's army.
By the time of the Battle of Atlanta, he and his family had moved to Augusta, where they stayed until April 1865. After Sherman left Georgia in December 1864, Peters hired James R. Crew to repair the 24 miles (39 km) of destroyed Atlanta and West Point Rail Road; Lemuel P. Grant worked to repair the nearly 100 miles (160 km) of wrecked Georgia Railroad. By April, the war was over, and rail service was restored to Atlanta.
Read more about this topic: Richard Peters (Atlanta)
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Tanks. In any normal war they’re a beautiful sight, on your side.”
—Richard Blake, and William Cameron Menzies. Col. Fielding (Millburn Stone)