OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio in the Civil War    Pt 14
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Darlene E. Kelley
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Historical Collections of Ohio
Diaries of S. J. Kelly
Plains Dealer
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
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Ohio in the Civil War -- Pt 14
 
The Great Locomotive Chase--

One of the most daring and certainly the most spectacular of raids
undertaken by a group of soldiers in hostile territory was that which
has become known in Civil War history as the great locomotive chase.
This was the exploit by which James J. Andrews, a union spy employed by
Headquarters of the Army of the Ohio. in April, 1862, led twenty men
into Georgia to burn railroad bridges. The adventure has fired the
imagination of young and old alike, and while it has been described in
great detail from the Union point of view, it is no less dramatic when
viewed from the side of the confederate pursuers.

The present account rests principally on the memoir that one
participants, William Pittenger, of the Ohio Second Infantry Regimant
and the accounts of Major General Don Carlos Buell.

Andrews was a tall, bearded man of great self-assurance, well fitted by
his cool nerve to operate in hostile country. His pose was that of a
peddler who sneaked quinine into Confederate lines, a drug needed to
combat malaria and other fevers. He had done some work for General
Buell, but that exacting officer had no high opinion of Andrew's
services. After Buell left Nashville for Savannah in the campaign that
led to Shiloh, Brigadier General Ormsby M. Mitchell had the task of
holding the Union line in Middle Tennessee and establishing
communications along the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Mitchell decided
to occupy Huntsville and possibly advance toward Chattanooga, and for
this purpose the interruption of Confederate rail traffic to Chattanooga
from Georgia would be useful. This is exactly what Andrews proposed to
do, and General Mitchell authorized him to carry out his plan.

Andrews proposed to take twenty-four picked soldiers, and put them in
civilian clothes, and direct them to make their way in parties of three
or four to Marietta, Georgia, where Andrews would take charge. The men
were chosen for secret and dangerous duty from three Ohio regiments
belonging to the brigade of General J. W. Sill. They changed to civilian
clothes, and their only arms wee revolvers. Five of the men failed to
reach the appointed place, but nineteen met Andrews early on the morning
of April 12, 1862, at the hotel in Marietta, having traveled on the
Georgia State Railway out of Chattanooga.

The leader had been in Atlanta and over the railroad a few weeks before
and his study of timetables and stations had convinced him that he could
sieze a locomotive and cars at Big Shanty, Georgia, now called Kennesaw,
run them in the direction of Chattanooga, and have his men set bridges
on fire as as they proceeded. On the way down, however, the men had
encountered numerous soldiers on the trains and had observed that Big
Shanty was now a sizable Confederate camp. To attempt a seizure in the
midst of armed men seemed practically impossible to some of the party,
but Andrews refused to halt. He asserted that he meant to carry through
his scheme or die, and invited any man who wished to withdraw to do so.
No one drew back, however, and the big adventure was on.

The men took a train from Marietta to Big Shanty, a distance of eight
miles. Big Shanty was breakfast stop, and as the passengers went inside
the station to eat, the engineer and firemen joined them, leaving the
train unattended. Andrews' party included two engineers and a fireman;
they uncoupled the locomotive, tender, and three baggage and box cars
from the rest of the train and jumped aboard the engine, which was named
General; the rest of the men boosted and pulled wach other into a
freight car and slammed shut the door. An engineer threw the throttle
and the train started. Before guards and spectators could determine what
was going on, the train was going at top speed down the track and around
the hills.

But the Southern train crew, rushing out of the station, knew that
persons unknown had stolen their train. One of them was the conductor,
William A. Fuller, whose tenacity and resourcefulness were to give him a
brilliant place in Conferate history. With no other locomotive and no
telegraph available Fuller and one other man, Anthony Murphey, foreman
of the railroad machine shops in Atlanta, started out after the captured
train on foot. This would have seemed foolhardy but for the fact that
Fuller knew the line ahead was packed with trains coming South and that
the fugitive train would not go far without meeting them. Fuller and
Murphey found a handcar and started speeding down the track until they
hit a break in the rails that Andrews had made and were thrown off the
track. They righted the handcar and proceeded to the next station,
Etowah.

Andrews had planned his expedition for April 11, to coincide with
General Mitchel's attack on Huntsville, but a series of heavy rains had
impeded the army's progress and Andrews had postponed his raid to the
next day, April 12. He was running the captured train on its original
time schedule, which inicated that he would meet two trains at
designated points, and one local freight. He stopped the train at
intervals to have his men tear up track, cut telegraph wires, take on
water, and load on railroad ties for burning. Andrews was a man of
extaordinary coolness; at stops he explained his hurry by saying he was
rushing a powder train through to Beauregard. Everything worked smoothly
at the start, but at Etowah, Andrews in his haste omitted an important
precaution. An old locomotive. the Yonah, owned by an iron company, was
standing at the station with steam up. It could have been put out of
commission, but Andrews did not want to arouse the place; nor did he
want to lose time. He hurried on to Kingston.

Here a train occupied a siding, in order to give right of way to an
approching local freight. Andrews also took the siding. When the freight
arrived it carried a red flag, which indicated another train was to
follow. According to Pittenger, Andrews stepped up to the conductor and
demanded: " What does it mean when the road is blocked in ths manner,
when I have orders to take this powder to Beauregard, without a minute's
delay?" The reply was : " Mitchel has captured Huntsville and is said to
be coming to Chattanooga and we are getting everything out of there."

There was nothing for Andrews to do but wait until the road was clear.
When the extra arrived it too bore a red flag, indicating that another
train was following. Andrews could only mark time for another hour. He
was the only man in contact with the crews of the other trains; the two
engineers and firemen were in the cab; the rest were cooped up in the
boxcar. listening to outside voices but unable to determine the reason
for the long wait. Eventually the third train reached Kingston and
passed; Andrews train then had the right of way and proceeded at full
speed.

Four hours out of Kingston Andrews had stopped to cut telegraph wires
and tear up a rail, when his men suddenly heard the whistle of a
locomotive in the distance behind them. There was only one explanation
for this-- a Confederate train was on the way and could only have been
sent in pursuit. Andrews was in trouble. He already lost a lot of
valuable time because the road was blocked by trains. Now he had to get
up speed to keep ahead of pursuers. But Andrew's cool, calculating
attitude did not change.

The whistle that had startled the Union raiders came from a locomotive
on which rode William A. Fuller, the conductor whose train had been
stolen. When he and his companion reached Etowah, they discovered the
Yonah, the locomotive Andrews had failed to destroy. Fuller raised an
alarm, collected a group of soldiers, boarded the Yonah, and started
down the track. When he reached Kingston he found three trains blocking
the road, but he did not stop to move them aside. He and the soldiers
took the locomotive and one car of the train at the end of the line and
race anew after Andrews.

In the meantime the Union men had removed a rail and hurried on to
Adairsville. Here they found another train on the sidetrack and an
express expected from Calhoun, nine miles away. Taking a chance on
reaching Calhoun before the express had left there, they hurried on and
arrived at the station just as the express was pulling out. The latter
backed up, but an end of it obstructed the tack, and Andrews had to
argue persuasively before the conductor would pull up his train and let
the captured train through.

When Fuller and the pursuing Confederates reached the point before
Adairsville where Andrew's men had torn up th rail, they reversed the
engine in time to avoid wrecking it. They could not repair the damage,
but their determination to capture the raiders was as strong as ever.
Again they started down the track on foot. Once more they were in luck.
The train that had just pulled out of Adairsville came toward them; they
hailed it and persuaded the conductor to run it back to the station. At
Adairsville they uncoupled the cars; all the soldiers piled on the
locomotive, the Texas, and its tender and once again started off at full
speed. the engine running backwards.

Fuller must have been a pretty angry man when he met the express and
learned that Andrews had bullied another conductor into letting him get
by. Andrews, on the General. was not far ahead, but he was confident
that he had a clear road all the way to Chattanooga, He would pull up
another rail, just to be safe, then head for the bridge over the
Oostanaula and set it on fire.

His men jumped from the cars and started pulling up a rail, and just
when they were hard at it they heard the whistle of a locomotive and saw
an engine billowing smoke in the distance. Not equipped with tools for
taking up rails, they had to leave the task uncompleted and jump back on
board in a hurry,

There were still ways of delaying Fuller, and they worked a number of
devices to do so. They dropped a car on the road; Fuller's engine picked
it up and pushed it ahead. They dropped another and the same thing
happened, and when Fuller reached Resaca he left both cars there.
Andrews had time to cut telegraph wires and take on water, but he was
running short of fuel and the next woodyard was miles away. The General
was giving every bit of power of which it was capable, but the two
locomotives were pretty evenly matched. They raced around hills and
through villages, and all the time the pursuers kept their hands on the
whistle cord, tooting a warning of vengeance to come. At one station
Fuller dropped a man with a message for the Confederates at Chattanooga
announcing the coming of Andrews' raiders and urging their capture. The
first half of the message got through and the people at Chattanooga
became throughly alarmed. 

Here are the maneuvers that followed after passing Resaca:

Andrews dropped a rail on a track at a curve. Fuller's engine hit it
with a jolt and tossed it aside.

Andrews ran through Dalton and stopped to cut wires and obstruct track
within a hundred yards of a Confederate camp.

Andrews' men tore the last boxcar apart, piled up the wood, and started
it burning. Rain was falling and a fire was hard to maintain, but it
finally got under way. The Union men took the car to the center of a
covered bridge, uncoupled it and left it to start the bridge burning.
Fuller's engine arrived before the fire was well begun, picked up the
burning car, pushed it forward, and dropped it at the next sidetrack.

Now Andrews had no fuel left and no time to stop for any. In a shor time
all the steam in the General would be used all up. The men made a number
of suggestions. One was to ambush the pursuers and fight them with
revolvers against guns. Another was to start walking toward the Union
lines in a body. But Andrews did not approve either plan. He ordered the
men to drop off the locomotive and separate, going off to the hills.
THis they did. The engineer reversed the engine and let it run toward
the oncoming Conferderates. But its steam was down and it slowed up.
Fuller's engine backed away, then picked up. The Confederates left their
train and started out after the Union men over the hills in 
the drizzling rain.

The Confederates lost no time in pursuing the raiders. Several were
caught within a few hours and all but two within the week. These two
were caught later. Two men who had reached Marietta too late to take the
train with Andrews were also caught. Since the men had conducted the
raid in civilian clothes, they were technically spies and not entitled
to the consideration shown men in uniform. After a court-martial in
Chattanooga, Andrews and six of his men were hanged in Atlanta, and a
civilian who had joined them suffered the same fate. Fourteen who were
in prison in Atlanta awaiting trial over powered their guard and
escaped. but of these six were recaptured. They were paroled in March,
1863.

The Union survivors received promotions and medals, and the Confederates
became heroes in the South. General Buell sad Andrews was not in the
position to have done permanent damages to the bridges. But the
recklessness and daring of the raiders and the stubborness of the
pursuers stirred great admiration and enthusiasm. The locomotive General
is preserved at Chattanooga and has been exhibited at world fairs and
other special occasions. The Texas is preserved in the Cyclorama
Building in Atlanta.
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Ohio in the Civil war to be continued--