The Battle of Marion was an action that occurred on December 17–18, 1864, during the American Civil War. The fight took place in southwestern Virginia's Smyth County near Marion. A Union Army under the command of Major General George Stoneman defeated a smaller Confederate Army under the command of Major General John C. Breckinridge. The fight was mostly a stalemate for about 36 hours as the Confederate troops held better field position. After realizing that his force was nearly surrounded and low on ammunition, Breckinridge stealthily withdrew his troops during the night, escaping to the south before heading east.
The fight at Marion was one of several conflicts that occurred during a Union expedition known as Stoneman's 1864 raid. The objective of the raid was the destruction of Confederate economic and transport infrastructure—salt mines, lead mines, and the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. All three were important to the Confederacy's war effort.
After the victory at Marion, Union forces advanced to the salt mines and defeated a small militia in the Second Battle of Saltville. The lead mines and railroad infrastructure had already been ravaged. The salt mines were damaged, and then Stoneman's force split to begin a difficult return trip to Union strongholds in Tennessee and Kentucky.
During the 1860s, salt was necessary to preserve meat—especially beef. At the beginning of the American Civil War, the Confederate states had only five major producers of salt. Three of those sources were lost to Union Army forces early in the war. Of the two remaining salt works after 1863, Virginia's Saltville salt mine produced as much as two thirds of the salt used by the Confederate states. Saltville was located on the west side of Smyth County, close to the border with Washington County. The remaining major salt works was in Alabama—too far away to supply salt for the Confederacy's largest army—General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
Austinville, in Wythe County, was the home of the Wytheville Union Lead Mine Company. Despite having "Union" in its name, the company mined lead that was used to produce bullets for the Confederate Army. Almost all of the domestically–produced lead used by the Confederacy came from this mine, and it produced at least one third of the lead used by the Confederate Army. In addition to lead and salt, southwestern Virginia was also a producer of iron, niter (the main ingredient for gunpowder), and coal. All of these minerals were needed for the war effort. Wytheville was the headquarters of the Confederate Department of Western Virginia and East Tennessee. It was near the lead mines and railroad, and was a location for supplies used by the Confederate Army. Marion, the county seat of Smyth County, is located between the salt and lead mines.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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