Williams Carter Wickham - Postbellum Activities

Postbellum Activities

After the surrender of the Confederacy, Wickham was active in improving harmony between the states and reorganizing Virginia's economy, which had been ruined by the war. He became a Republican and voted in 1872 for General Ulysses S. Grant as a member of the Electoral College of Virginia.

In November 1865, at the conclusion of the War, he was elected president of the Virginia Central Railroad, which had been one of the most heavily damaged during the War. In 1868, when the Virginia Central merged with the Covington and Ohio Railroad to form the new Chesapeake and Ohio, Wickham was retained as the new company's president. In the new capacity, he was anxious to complete a railroad line to the Ohio River, long a dream of Virginians. However, unlike fellow Confederate officer and railroad leader William Mahone had done, he was unable to secure capital or financing in Virginia, or from Europeans. Turning to New York City, he was successful in attracting an investment group headed by Collis P. Huntington. Fresh from recent completion of the western portion of the U.S. transcontinental railroad as a member of the so-called "Big Four", Huntington joined the effort, became the C&O's new president. His contacts and reputation helped obtain $15 million of funding from New York financiers for the project, which eventually cost $23 million to complete. The final spike ceremony for the 428-mile (689 km) long line from Richmond to the Ohio River was held on January 29, 1873 at Hawk's Nest railroad bridge in the New River Valley, near the town of Ansted in Fayette County, West Virginia. After Huntington assumed the presidency, Wickham served as vice-president of the C&O from 1869 to 1878, when the company went into foreclosure, with Wickham as receiver. In 1878 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was sold under foreclosure and reorganized as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, with Collis P. Huntington assuming the office of President of the reorganized road; Wickham was named second vice-president. Under their leadership, an additional line was extended east from Richmond through the new Church Hill Tunnel and down the Virginia Peninsula through Williamsburg to reach coal piers located on the harbor Hampton Roads, the East Coast of the United States' largest ice-free port at the small unincorporated town of Newport News in Warwick County. During the ten years from 1878 to 1888, C&O's coal resources began to be developed and shipped eastward. Coal became a staple of the C&O's business at that time, and still was over 125 years later under successor CSX Transportation. The man Wickham brought to Virginia, Collis P. Huntington, went on to develop his holdings in Newport News, where he began the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company and helped the small community become one of only two in Virginia to become an independent city without first having been an incorporated town.In modern times, Newport News, whuich merged with the former Warwick County in 1958, has grown to become one of the major cities of Hampton Roads.

Throughout the years after the Civil War, while developing railroads, Wickham also maintained an active political life. He maintained his offices in Richmond and his residence in Hanover County. He was elected chairman of the Hanover County, Virginia Board of Supervisors in 1871 and as a Senator in the upper house of the Virginia General Assembly in 1883. He was an officer of the C&O and held all of these other positions at the time of his death on July 23, 1888 at his office in Richmond.