3381) "The General - The Great Locomotive Chase", United States of America (USA): A Military Raid in 1862 during the American Civil War (1861-1865):
The commandeering of the Train/locomotive "The General" waa part of the Andrews' Raid or the Mitchel Raid which took place on April 12, 1862, in Northern Georgia during the American Civil War.
Volunteers from the Union Army, led by civilian scout James J. Andrews, commandeered a train "The General", and took it northward toward Chattanooga, Tennessee, doing as much damage as possible to the vital Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A) line from Atlanta to Chattanooga as they went.
They were pursued by Confederate forces at first on foot, and later on a succession of locomotives, including "The Texas", for 87 miles (140 km).
Because the Union men had cut the telegraph wires, the Confederates could not send warnings ahead to forces along the railway.
Confederates eventually captured the raiders and quickly executed some as spies, including Andrews while some others were able to flee.
The surviving raiders were the first to be awarded the newly created Medal of Honour by the US Congress for their actions. As a civilian, Andrews was not eligible.
Legislation now proposes to offer Congressional Gold Medals for the heroic actions of 1862.
A Congressional Gold Medal is sought as H.R. 9386 to honour “James J. Andrews and William H. Campbell” in recognition of their extraordinary bravery and steadfast devotion to the Nation during the [American] Civil War as the only civilian members of Andrews’ Raiders, who launched a daring military raid that became known as the ‘Great Locomotive Chase.’ ”
It was introduced in the House Aug. 20 by Rep. Charles J. Fleischman, R-Tennessee.
A photograph of the locomotive - "The General".
The Raid:
Volunteers from the Union Army, led by civilian scout James J. Andrews, commandeered a steam-powered locomotive train – “The General”, and powered it northward toward Chattanooga, Tennessee, inflicting as much damage as possible to the vital Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A) line from Atlanta to Chattanooga as they went.
Confederate forces were on the heels of the train, first on foot, and afterward in a succession of locomotives, including "The Texas", for some 87 miles.
Built in 1855 by the Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey for the Western & Atlantic Railroad, "The General" is today preserved on display at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia, and is listed on the "National Register of Historic Places".
James J. Andrews was a Kentucky-born civilian serving as a secret agent and scout in Tennessee, for Major General Don Carlos Buell in the spring of 1862.
Sometime before Buell departed Nashville in late March, Andrews presented him with a plan to take eight men to steal a train in Georgia, and drive it north. Buell later confirmed in August 1863 that he authorised this expedition.
According to Andrews, a train engineer in Atlanta was willing to defect to the Union with his train, if Andrews could supply a volunteer train crew to assist running the train, tearing up track, and burning bridges.
The main target was the railway bridge at Bridgeport, Alabama, although future Andrews Raider William Pittenger believed Andrews also intended to target several other bridges in Georgia and Tennessee.
The volunteers for this first raid all came from General Mitchel's division, which was encamped at Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Moving south forty miles on foot to the Confederate railhead at Tullahoma, the raiders were then able to travel by train down to Marietta, Georgia.
There, Andrews discovered the engineer had been pressed into service elsewhere. Andrews asked if any of the raiders knew how to operate a locomotive; when none did, he called the raid off.
Two raiders were also confronted by Confederate soldiers while trying to cut the telegraph lines, but successfully pretended to be overworked wiremen.
The raiders then returned north to Union lines, arriving about a week after they had departed.
Andrews spent several additional days conducting reconnaissance on the Western and Atlantic Railroad before also departing back north to federal lines.
None of the original raiders would volunteer for the second raid. One added that "he felt all the time he was in the enemy’s country as though he had a rope around his neck."
Major General Ormsby M. Mitchel, commanding Federal troops in middle Tennessee, sought a way to contract or shrink the extent of the northern and western borders of the Confederacy by pushing them permanently away from and out of contact with the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.
This could be done by first a southward and then an eastward penetration from the Union base at Nashville, which would seize and sever the Memphis & Charleston Railroad between Memphis and Chattanooga (at the time there were no other railway links between the Mississippi river and the east) and then capture the water and railway junction of Chattanooga, Tennessee, thereby severing the Western Confederacy's contact with both the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys.
The plan was to steal a train on its run north towards Chattanooga, stopping to damage or destroy track, bridges, telegraph wires, and track switches behind them, so as to prevent the Confederate Army from being able to move troops and supplies from Atlanta to Chattanooga. The raiders planned to cross through the Federal siege lines on the outskirts of Chattanooga and rejoin Mitchel's army.
Because railway dining cars were not yet in common use, railroad timetables included water, rest, and meal stops.
They planned to steal a train just north of Atlanta at Big Shanty, Georgia (now Kennesaw). They chose Big Shanty because they thought Big Shanty did not have a telegraph office and the stop would also be used to refuel and take on water for the steep grade further north.
Trials and executions:
Confederate forces charged all the raiders with "acts of unlawful belligerency"; the civilians were charged as unlawful combatants and spies. All the prisoners were tried in military courts, or courts-martial.
Tried in Chattanooga, Andrews was found guilty. He was executed by hanging on June 7 in Atlanta.
On June 18, seven others who had been transported to Knoxville and convicted as spies were returned to Atlanta and also hanged; their bodies were buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave. They were later reburied in Chattanooga National Cemetery.
Escape and exchange:
Writing about the exploit, Corporal William Pittenger said that the remaining raiders worried about also being executed.
They attempted to escape and eight succeeded.
Travelling for hundreds of miles in pairs, the eight made it back safely to Union lines, including two who were aided by slaves and Union sympathisers and two who floated down the Chattahoochee River until they were rescued by the Union blockade vessel USS Somerset in the Gulf of Mexico. The remaining six were held as prisoners of war and exchanged for Confederate prisoners on March 17, 1863.
Medal of Honour:
Medal of Honour was awarded posthumously in 1866 to raider John Morehead Scott.
On March 20, the recently released raiders arrived in Washington DC, and the following day Pittenger wrote a letter to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton detailing their mission to Georgia.
On March 24, they were interviewed by Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, who was able to corroborate details of their mission with testimony from the raiders who had escaped in 1862.
On March 25, they were invited to Stanton's office at the Department of War. After a brief conversation, Stanton announced that the raiders would receive the newly approved Medal of Honour.
Private Jacob Parrott, who had been physically abused as a prisoner, was awarded the first. The others were Sergeant Elihu H. Mason, Corporals William Pittenger and William H. H. Reddick, and Privates William Bensinger, Wilson Wright Brown, and Robert Buffum. Stanton also offered them all commissions as First Lieutenant.
After the ceremony the six raiders were taken to the White House to meet President Abraham Lincoln, which became a tradition for all Medal of Honor recipients.
Later, all but three of the other soldiers who had participated in the raid also received the Medal of Honor, with posthumous awards to families for those who had been executed. As civilians, Andrews and Campbell were not eligible.
In 2008, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would retroactively award the Medal of Honor to two of the three remaining raiders, Charles Perry Shadrack and George Davenport Wilson.
On July 3, 2024, the President posthumously presented the medal to descendants of both Shadrack and Wilson.
All the Medals of Honor presented to the Andrews Raiders used identical text.
Legacy:
Both "The General" and "The Texas" survived the war and have been preserved in museums.
The General is located at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, in Kennesaw, Georgia, close to where the chase began.
The Texas is at the Atlanta History Center.
One marker indicates where the chase began, near the Big Shanty Museum (now known as Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History) in Kennesaw, while another shows where the chase ended at Milepost 116.3, north of Ringgold – not far from the recently restored depot at Milepost 114.5.
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