OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 829 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Bio History-- KnowYour Ohio -- ["Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <068b01bf3ec2$4d034260$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History-- KnowYour Ohio -- Ohio InThe Civil War -- Pt 14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley To: Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 1:25 AM Subject: Bio History-- KnowYour Ohio -- Ohio InThe Civil War -- Pt 14 *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio From the diaries of S.L. Kelley Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ********************************************** 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. ********************************************** Ohio in the Civil war to be continued-- ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 20:51:43 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <069301bf3ec3$483f0e20$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio-- Ohio in the Civil War -- Pt 15 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley To: Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 3:33 PM Subject: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio-- Ohio in the Civil War -- Pt 15 *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio From the diaries of S.L. Kelley Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ********************************************** Ohio in the Civil War -- Part 15 Morgan's Raid into Ohio-- Ohio seemed far away from most of the strife of the Civil War. The State had not been forth coming in establishing a militia because it was felt that Ohio just wasn't close to the heart of the war. The young able bodied men had volunteered to fight and had gone to war leaving the old and very young at home. The militia had been established but was not functioning in an organized fashion. In July of 1863, John Hunt Morgan was to show Ohio just how unprepared they were. General John Hunt Morgan, a Kentuckian, was already, at the age of 38, a hero to the South, known for his courage, resourcefulness and his dignity. To the North, who had suffered from his hard hitting Cavalry raids, he was a freebooter- guerrila-horse thief, a " blackbeard" with a bridle. It was in June 1863, that General Morgan conceived his ill-fated plan. He was commanded by General Braxton Bragg to take his men and raid anywhere in Kentucky that he wanted and to make an attempt to capture Louisville. The scheme was to keep General Ambrose Burnside diverted at Cincinnati and to delay his impending invasion of Eastern Tennessee. On July 2, 1863, Morgan's men, numbering 2,460, launched their operation near Burkesville, Kentucky. At Brandenburg, on the Ohio River, they commandeered two steamboats and on July 8th, crossed the River into Indiana. By this time they were well ahead of General Edward H. Hobson and his pursuing Cavalry. Morgan had been ordered not to cross the Ohio. However, he had predetermined to travel into Indiana and Ohio, scouting possible places to ford the Ohio. He and his forces struck out Northeastward across Indiana. General Burnside felt that they would try to recross the Ohio to the south of Cincinnati. With this in mind, he declared martial law in the city and Governor Tod called out the militia in 32 southern Ohio counties. That afternoon, Morgan neared Harrison, a small community west of Cincinnati, but after resting his men, they disappeared into the night. During the night, they skirted the north of Cincinnati, skirmishing with the pickets at Camp Dennison and burning a number of wagons. This was on July 14th, 1863. They rode through Batavia to Williamsburg, 28 miles of Cincinnati, by 4 pm that afternoon. They had covered 90 miles in only 35 hours. The men from Camp Dennison pursued as far as Batavia where they halted and fell trees across the road to prevent Morgan's return that way. The ohioans prepared the best they could for his advance, but they were ill prepared and Morgan and his men found little resistance as they pressed on in search of a place to ford the river. The inexperience untrained militia was no match for Morgan's men, who were seasoned and hardened by the battles of war. Colonel Richard Morgan, the General's brother, in the meantime, led his troops to the south through Georgetown, to Ripley, then back through West Union, to Locust Grove, where he joined the main force. Together, they advanced on through Jasper, Piketon, Jackson, Vinton, Cheshire, Pomeroy, and Chester, plundering and ransaacking stores on the way. It must be said that Morgan and his men kept mainly to the businesses and left personal homes and farmland alone. Reaching Buffington Ford, their previously scouted place to ford the river, about 40 miles south of Marietta, late on Saturday the 18th of July, he found that the ford was guarded by 300 Union men. These men abandoned their earthworks in the night. Morgan still elected to cross the next day and they were quickly ambushed as they began to ford the river. They were overtaken by Hobson's cavalry and were soon pinned down by gunboat fire and overrun by the seventh Michigan Cavalry. Eventually 700 would be captured, including Colonel Richard Morgan and Colonel Basil W. Duke, the General's brother-in-law. The rest narrowly escaped back into Ohio.They attempted to cross again fifteen miles up river but only 300 reached West Virginia before they were again under gunboat fire. They doubled back inland and for the next week were dogged every step on the way. They traveled northeastward thrugh Zaleski, Nelsonville, New Straitsville, Cumberland, Old Washington, Hendrysburg and Wintersville. General J.M. Shakelford's cavalry caught up with them at Salineville on Sunday morning. July 26. Morgan and some men eluded capture for a short time. It is said that he finally surrendered to a local militia Captain in Columbiana county, on the road between Lisbon and West Point, on the condition that he and his men would be paroled. This would not be the case as Major General George W. Rue, of the 9th Cavalry, arrived a short time later and took them into captivity. A telegraph sent by Major General Rue said; " I captured John Morgan today at two o'clock P.M. taking 336 prisoners, 400 horses, and arms." Morgan ad his surviving officers were taken, by order of Major General Henry W. Halleck, to the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus, The men were treated more like criminals than prisoners of war, even undergoing the indignity of having their heads shaved. Four months after his capture, on November 27,1863, Morgan and six companions escaped through a tunnel they had dug through a 4 ft thick stone wall and 20 ft of dirt. They scaled the prison outer walls and made a clean escape into the night. Morgan arrived safely in the south, only to be killed less than a year later on September 4, 1864, at Greenville, Tennessee. The impact on Ohio was that more than 200 northern lives were lost in the two weeks period of Morgan's Raid of Ohio with at least 350 casualties. 4,375 people in twenty-nine counties filed claims for damages and were awrded $428,168. The Union forces were also charged with damages totaling $ 141,855, the militia being held accountable for $ 6,202. Upwards of 2,5000 horses were comandeered and collected by Morgan. There were 49,357 militia men called to duty costing the State $450.000. The cost to the State was more than $ 100,000. The biggest impact on Ohio at the time was the realization that they were truly unprepared for the war to be in their own backyard. They felt secure by the distance from the south and had not put much effort into preparations for defense. The fact that Morgan was able to almost traverse the whole State. ********************************************* Ohio in the Civil War to be continued-- -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #829 *******************************************