William Mahone
Confederate Army general
Died when: 68 years 311 days (826 months)Star Sign: Sagittarius
William Mahone (December 1, 1826 – October 8, 1895) was an American civil engineer, railroad executive, Confederate States Army general, and Virginia politician.As a young man, Mahone was prominent in the building of Virginia's roads and railroads.
As chief engineer of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad, he built log-foundations under the routes in the Great Dismal Swamp in southeast tidewater Virginia that are still intact today.
According to local tradition, several new railroad towns were named after the novels of Sir Walter Scott, a favorite British/Scottish author of Mahone's wife Otelia.
In the American Civil War, Mahone was pro-secession and served as a general in the southern Confederate States Army.He was best known for regaining the initiative at the late war siege of Petersburg, Virginia while Southern troops were in shock after a huge mine/load of black powder kegs was exploded beneath them by tunnel-digging former coal miner Union Army troops resulting in the Battle of the Crater in July 1864; his counter-attack turned the engagement into a disastrous Union defeat.
After the war, he returned to railroad building, merging three lines to form the important Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (AM&O), headquartered in Lynchburg.
He also led the Readjuster Party, a state political party with a coalition of freemen blacks, Republicans and populist Democrats, and was elected by the commonwealth General Assembly to the U.S.
Senate in 1881.
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