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Andrews Raid showed
importance of railroads
By Todd DeFeo
James J. Andrews
walked precisely as he made his way to the locomotive. Few, if any,
noticed him or the raiders following close behind.
Andrews, a spy,
and 19 other men managed to make their way deep into the heart of the
Confederacy and board a northbound train in Marietta. Once stopped in
Big Shanty (present day Kennesaw) for a 20-minute breakfast break,
Andrews and his men had a devious plan - to steal a locomotive and
destroy the Western and Atlantic Railroad.
The day was April 12, 1862 - the one year
anniversary of the start of the Civil War. As part of a greater
coordinated military effort, Andrews was to raid the railroad while
Gen. Ormsby Mitchel moved into Huntsville, Ala., and later into
Chattanooga, Tenn. The Western and Atlantic Railroad, connecting
Atlanta and Chattanooga, was a vital lifeline for the Confederacy and
destroying the road might have led to an earlier conclusion to the War
Between the States.
But the raiders didn't count on the drive and
determination of William A. Fuller, the train's conductor who was
eating breakfast when the raiders made off with the locomotive - the
now famous General - and three boxcars. On foot, on a "pole car" and
in three different locomotives, Fuller led the 87-mile pursuit of the
raiders. In Kingston, a busy rail yard during the Civil War, Fuller
missed the raiders by a matter of minutes. They had been delayed an
agonizing 64 minutes waiting for traffic on the line to clear.
Between Kingston and Ringgold, the chase was a
close one; the parties were often within sight of each other and the
Andrews Raid became a race for life. But just north of Ringgold, the
General ran out of steam and the raiders abandoned their locomotive
and scattered into the woods. Over the next 12 days, all of the
raiders were captured. Eight were eventually hanged - including
Andrews at the present day corner of Juniper and Third streets in
Atlanta - and 19 were awarded the Medal of Honor, the first time the
decoration was bestowed.
In his book "Daring and Suffering," Cpl.
William Pittenger, a member of the raiding party, argues four causes
led to the raid's failure: delaying the raid by one day because of
rain, rain on the day of the raid, Andrews' "reluctance to fight" the
pursuers and the pursuit of Fuller and Anthony Murphy, a foreman of
machinery and motive power for the Western and Atlantic Railroad, who
coincidentally was riding on the train on the day of the raid.
The raid, Pittenger writes, "was not a mere
hair-brained and reckless raid which could scarcely hope for success
and could have achieved no solid result. On the contrary Š it promised
much, and came very near success."
The Andrews Raid - also known at The Great
Locomotive Chase - was "the most extraordinary and astounding
adventure of the war," the Southern Confederacy newspaper proclaimed
days after the episode. But more than an "astounding adventure," the
raid was near genius; had it succeeded, it would have been genius.
Andrews devised not only a daring plan, but also a complicated one,
involving his deceit and destruction coupled with the coordinated
movement of Mitchel and his troops.
Had the weather been clear and the raid taken
place on April 11, 1862, when the railroad was less congested, the
Civil War would have no doubt progressed differently. Regardless, the
raid raised the general awareness about the importance of railroads
and also their vulnerability. Following the raid, the Confederacy
guarded its lines closer and a year later stopped a second attempted
raid against the Western and Atlantic Railroad - troops riding mules
were stopped near Rome.
In 1864, two years after the Andrews Raid, Gen.
William T. Sherman led his "March to the Sea," to Savannah via
Atlanta. As he made his way into Georgia, he followed the Western and
Atlantic Railroad and unlike Andrews before him, he was able to stop
the Confederacy from using the important railroad.
"The value of railways is also fully recognized
in war quite as much as, if not more so than, in peace," Sherman wrote
in his memoirs. "The Atlanta campaign would simply have been
impossible without the use of the railroads."
Published Dec. 1,
2004, in the Daily Herald of McDonough, Ga.
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