- Antone Pierucci
- Posted On
This Week in History: The story behind the ‘Great Locomotive Chase’
In retrospect, it was a very brave, if ill-conceived, plan.
Or maybe it was a very ill-conceived, if brave, plan – 150 years later and the jury is still out. But then again, any venture that posterity dubs the “Great Locomotive Chase” has got to have a good deal of bravery and foolhardiness in equal measure.
Don’t let the name fool you, though, the great chase had a lot riding on it – the potential collapse of the Confederate Army in the west to be exact.
It was spring in 1862 and the Civil War was approaching the end of its first long year. In the western theatre, the tide was turning in favor of the Union, with General Curtis scoring a victory at Pea Ridge in Arkansas and General Grant capturing Fort Donelson along the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
On all fronts, the men in blue had the rebels whipped. Following up these victories, the Union commander of the theater ordered his two armies to gather together, the better to fend off a massing of Confederate troops in Corinth, Mississippi.
The subsequent clash between the opposing forces kicked off the bloody battle of Shiloh. That first day of fighting nearly saw the complete collapse of the Union Army, as a tide of gray-clad demons emerged from the predawn fog and caught the Yankees with their pants down.
As the exhausted and bloody-nosed Union troops bedded down for the night at Shiloh, General Ormsby Mitchell considered his predicament.
Mitchell was 200 miles to the east, in command of 8,000 soldiers. Now that the Union army to the west was engaged with a considerable force of rebels at Shiloh, he needed to plan his next move wisely.
Recognizing that in their haste to ambush the enemy, the Confederate army had left the city of Chattanooga loosely defended, General Mitchell began sketching out a plan to deal a deadly blow.
The city of Chattanooga was a vital connection point for the Confederates, located as it was at the intersection of major railway lines leading throughout the south. Capturing that city would open a gateway for the Union to launch campaigns deep into enemy territory, cutting the Confederate Army in the west in two.
But in order to achieve such a victory, Mitchell needed to ensure that the enemy couldn’t reinforce the beleaguered defenders of Chattanooga once his assault was underway. So the general turned to an unlikely source for help: a spy.
James Andrews hailed from Kentucky, and when word of the war reached him, he threw his hat in with the Union. Since he had lived in the area of operations for a few years already, the Union commanders saw fit to take advantage of his local knowledge, and a spy was born.
General Mitchell invited James Andrews into his tent the night of April 6. By the tattered light of a single candle, Andrews and \ Mitchell hatched an audacious plan.
Andrews, dressed in civilian clothes, would lead 23 similarly-disguised soldiers to Atlanta Georgia, the city to the south of Chattanooga where the Confederate reinforcements were likely to come from.
Once there, he and his force of commandos would hijack a train and ride it north to Chattanooga, all the while ripping up track behind them. If their plan succeeded, they would have stolen from the enemy the quickest means of reinforcing Chattanooga.
Mitchell and Andrews planned to coordinate their movements, so that the assault on Chattanooga occurred as Andrews and his men set off on their stolen locomotive. Andrews’ team set out in small groups, to reassemble at Marietta, Georgia on April 10 and steal the train on the morning of the 11.
Rain delayed them one day, but promptly at 6 a.m. on the 12th Andrews and his men boarded a train bound for Chattanooga. The engine of the train was known locally as the General.
Eight miles into the trip, the Union squad jumped the crew and successfully hijacked the locomotive. Now the real challenge began.
Racing down the track, Andrews and his team stopped periodically to cut telegraph lines and tear up track behind them. The latter task took longer than they had anticipated. To make matters worse, the enemy were prompt in their response.
Led by a young conductor, a group of railroad employees rushed pell-mell after Andrews, first on foot, then marginally quicker on a push car. The disassembled track delayed the pursuers, but aboard the General, Andrews and his team were facing their own setbacks.
Mitchell and Andrews had timed the assault too perfectly, and in their haste to save important military supplies from the advancing Union army, the garrison at Chattanooga was sending down boxcars full of munitions – right into the path of the stolen train.
Andrews was able to talk his way out of several close encounters, one time claiming that the General was a rush delivery of munitions for the Confederate army further to the north. These untimely delays alone might not have prevented Andrews from reaching his destination. But then the General went and got finicky on them.
Trains, after all, need fuel.
Pushing full-steam ahead for over 50 miles had depleted the meager supply of wood and coal onboard, and a brief resupply of the stuff was cut short.
As they were frantically hauling wood aboard, the hijackers heard the telltale clunking of a racing locomotive. Looking behind them, to their horror, they saw in hot pursuit that persistent conductor and his loyal train workers.
While Andrews had been conning incoming trainloads fleeing Chattanooga, the pursuing force had made decent headway on their pushcart. When they were flung from the vehicle after hitting a section of track derailed by Andrews and his team, two of the Confederate train workers picked themselves up and continued pursuit on foot.
They soon reached a station where they telegraphed ahead to Chattanooga, telling them of the situation and asking them to send down guards. Not content to let others take the glory, these two persistent men boarded their own locomotive and chased after the General themselves.
Now, faced with a trainload of armed guards barreling down from the north and an unknown number of enemy coming up from the south, Andrews knew the game was up.
Shouting, “Scatter boys.” he and his crew abandoned the engine and split up. Although they tried to disappear into the bush, even in civilian clothes it didn’t take long for Andrews and his men to be recognized as Yankees.
He and his entire crew were caught.
Since they had been wearing civilian clothes, the Confederate government considered them spies. They hanged James Andrews and seven of his comrades. The rest of the Union saboteurs they shipped to prison.
A year later, the entire group of them escaped, two men even rowing several hundred miles up the coast to seek safety north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In March 1863, six of the raiders met with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who explained that Congress had created a new medal to honor valor.
“Your party shall have the first,” he said as he pinned onto Private Jacob Parrott our nation’s first Medal of Honor.
That concluded the saga of the “Great Locomotive Chase” of the Civil War.
Foolhardy or brave? Probably a bit of both. But then again, maybe acts as brave as theirs require a suspension of better judgement. After all, the sacrifice had been great, but the reward would have been greater still.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.