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Jackson's operations against the B&O Railroad (1861)

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File:NWDNS-165-SB-26.jpg
Photo of raid base at Harpers Ferry taken later in 1865, looking east (downstream)

The Great Train Raid of 1861 was a Confederate military raid conducted in western Virginia in May 1861 during the early days of the American Civil War. It was aimed at disrupting a critical railroad used by the opposing Union Army as a major supply route.

During this point in the war, the state of Maryland's stance was not yet determined. The B&O Railroad, then owned by the state of Maryland, ran through Maryland and along the Potomac River Valley in its pass through the Appalachian Mountains, but took a crucial turn at Harpers Ferry and passed south, through Virginia and Martinsburg while crossing the Shenandoah Valley. The railroad then continued on through much of present-day West Virginia, which then was still part of Virginia, meaning that the railroad continued for a major portion of its route through a state which later seceded. This portion of the railroad remained exposed throughout the war to raids and capture by Confederate forces operating in both Virginia and Maryland.

Planning of the raid

As the war approached, the president of the B&O Railroad, John W. Garrett, who was sympathetic to the Union, did all he could to placate both sides in order to protect the railroad operations. Colonel Jackson, gathering intelligence on freight passing on the line, determined that coal was being shipped in large quantities from the Ohio Valley to Union naval bases in Baltimore that were fueling U.S. Navy warships attempting to blockade the more southern states. Jackson then devised a covert plan to destroy B&O Railroad operations while simultaneously benefiting Virginia and possibly the Confederacy.

Jackson complained to the B&O Railroad that the trains disturbed the rest of his troops, and notified John Garrett that trains would only be allowed to pass through Harpers Ferry between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. in order to ensure their rest was not disturbed. This timetable bottleneck caused the B&O Railroad to pile up trains in yards on either side of Harpers Ferry in order to maximize their throughput during this new curfew.

The raid

By May 13 political instability began to mount, as martial law was declared in Baltimore, which was a very secession-sympathetic city. Upon notice that the popular-vote to ratify secession in Virginia had overwhelmingly endorsed that course, Jackson was now free and ready to execute his train raid.

On May 23, Col. Jackson executed a raid to cut the B&O Railroad lines at a bridge near Cherry Run on the Potomac River north and west of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg Shops and the signal tower west of Point of Rocks, thereby trapping a large quantity of rolling stock in between, especially in the rail yard at Martinsburg. Jackson sent the 5th Virginia Infantry under Colonel Kenton Harper to Cherry Run, west of Martinsburg, to sever the line in that location, and he sent Colonel John D. Imboden's cavalry to Point of Rocks, east of Harpers Ferry, to sever the line there. From Harpers Ferry, the Winchester and Potomac Railroad ran as a spur off the B&O Railroad mainline south to Winchester, Virginia, allowing Jackson to try and move his captured rail assets quickly to Winchester.

Raid controversy

Historian James I. Robertson Jr. in his positively reviewed biography of Stonewall Jackson[1] calls the entire event "the most intriguing anecdote of the first weeks of the war" while noting that "John. D. Imboden manufactured it, Jackson biographer G. F. R. Henderson gave it credence, and writers over the past century have delighted in recounting it in detail." After reviewing the documentation for the raid, Robertson concludes:

Delightful as the story is, it is totally fictional. Jackson could not have committed these actions on his own, and he had no orders to disrupt the B&O completely. The Confederate government would not have issued such a directive while making overtures of cooperation with Maryland. If such destruction had occurred, the Union government would have screamed in protest and initiated retribution. No such reactions are recorded. For Jackson to have severered the B&O would have been a large and direct act of war against civilian commerce. The struggle between North and South had not yet reached that stage. Jackson was under strict orders not to interrupt civilian life. Further, it is inconceivable that the B&O's brilliant and had-working president, John W. Garrett, or its indefatigable master of transportation, William Prescott Smith, would not have immediately seen through such a transparent ploy... .[2]

Robertson notes that there is no record in the Official Records of this massive capture of railroad stock, although William Prescott Smith's personal records on the war do record a small seizure of a train of cars on May 14 in Harper's Ferry. In analyzing the way the Imboden "fable" has spread, Robertson writes that both railroad historians and later general historians used it as their source in their own works.[3]

Hauling away the bounty

Four locomotives taken to Winchester then Strasburg

Homestead of wagoneer Joseph Keeler off Old Charles Town Road near Stephenson, Virginia

Jackson's forces captured a total of 56 locomotives with tenders and 386 railroad cars, mostly coal cars, of the B&O Railroad, removed them into Virginia State Militia hands, and staged them in the rail yards at Martinsburg. Jackson's plan was to move these assets down the Winchester and Potomac Railroad via Harpers Ferry to Winchester, disassemble them and mount them on special wagons, and move them overland to Strasburg, Virginia, where they were to be reassembled and moved south on the Manassas Gap Railroad. With the assistance of the chief engineer of the Winchester and Potomac Railroad, Thomas R. Sharp, and Joseph Keeler and his son Charles Keeler—wagoneers living near Stephenson's Depot—special carriages and dollies were constructed and used to transport the first four small locomotives[4], south from Winchester along the Valley Turnpike to Strasburg and then to Richmond via the Manassas Gap Railroad. In an incredible and historic feat of engineering, the Virginia militia soldiers pulled the first four locomotives with 40-horse teams, rigged artillery-style, through downtown Winchester south on the Valley Pike to the rail-head at Strasburg. Among the engines captured and moved through Manassas Junction was the thirty ton Engine No. 199.[5]

File:BnO199.jpg
Winans 0-8-0 camel locomotive Engine No. 199 captured by Jackson's forces

On June 2, 1861, due to a combination of miscommunications and over-zealousness, Confederate forces continued destroying B&O Railroad assets, including the B&O Railroad bridge over Opequon Creek two miles east of Martinsburg. Here they lit 50 coal cars on fire and ran them off the destroyed trestle, "where they burned for two months, the intense heat melting axles and wheels."[6][7] The 52 remaining locomotives and various rail cars left in Martinsburg were thus left stranded by this uncoordinated action, and this ended the Great Train Raid.[8]

Remaining locomotives and rolling stock taken to Staunton

B&O Roundhouse and site of Martinsburg Train Raid, Martinsburg, West Virginia (©2001 A.E. Crane, courtesy of byways.org).

Jackson was later ordered to destroy the 800 foot B&O railroad bridge[9] at Harpers Ferry over the Potomac River on June 14, 1861, rip up and take many miles of B&O Railroad track, and then burn the remaining stranded rolling stock and locomotives at Martinsburg in the Martinsburg Train Raid on June 23, 1861 before finally evacuating and abandoning the Harpers Ferry area.[10]

In the weeks following this, Jackson decided to salvage ten of the burnt locomotives at Martinsburg and move them into the Confederate rail system.[11][12] The evacuation of any more locomotives or rail cars by the Manassas Gap Railroad became too risky for potential re-capture by Union forces, and so the those ten locomotives and additional rail cars were moved by the same carriage and dolly method 125 miles south from Martinsburg through Winchester and on to the Virginia Central Railroad in Staunton, Virginia.

Many of the rail cars that had been captured were hidden in barns and farms throughout the Winchester area, and Confederate forces along with citizens continued to move these up the valley through the summer months of 1861, and for a period of the next two years. As late as 1863 many of the railroad cars were still being hauled away up the Shenandoah Valley to Staunton for service on Confederate rail lines all throughout the South.

Aftermath

Virginia secedes

On May 23, the Commonwealth of Virginia conducted its popular vote, and secession was formally ratified. Immediately Maj. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, then of the Virginia State Militia, relieved Colonel Jackson and took command at Harpers Ferry on May 24. Shortly afterward, on June 8, all Virginia State troops were transferred to the authority of the Confederate States.

B&O Railroad eventually reopens

In his Annual Report of the B&O Railroad for 1861, President Garrett wrote:

On May 28, 1861, general posession was taken by the Confederate forces of more than one hundred miles of the Main Stem, embroiling chiefly the region between Point of Rocks and Cumberland. Occasional movements were also made, accompanied by considerable destruction upon the roads between Cumberland and Wheeling, and Grafton and Parkersburg, during the fiscal year. The Protection of the Government was not restored throughout the line until March, 1862, when the reconstruction was pressed with great energy, and the line reopened on the 29th of that month.[13]

The B&O Railroad reopened for service on March 30, 1861. Later, historian Thomas Weber summarized the damage:

"Caught in the trap and destroyed were 42 locomotives and 386 cars; 23 bridges were burned, 102 miles of telegraph line torn down, and two water stations destroyed. Because of his own transportation difficulties, Jackson could carry with him only 14 locomotives, and undetermined number of cars, and 36 1/2 miles of rail which his men had torn up. Wreaking damage on the machine shops and engine houses at Martinsburg, and blowing up the bridge at Harper's Ferry, Jackson disappeared south. His work had been well done. From June 14, 1861, until March 18, 1862, no trains ran between Baltimore and Wheeling."[14]

Following the war

Following the war, all but one of the 14 locomotives taken were returned to full service in the B&O Railroad. The one locomotive not returned, Engine No. 34, had been damaged by a Union cavalry raid, and so the boiler from that engine was installed in a Confederate gunboat, which was later sunk by the U.S. Navy. This railroad heist holds the record for being the largest train robbery and railroad theft in history.[citation needed]

Garrett always remembered Stonewall Jackson's destruction of the B&O properties at Martinsburg, Virginia in June 1861, and he admired how Confederate colonel Thomas R. Sharpe, with just thirty-five men comprising six machinists, ten teamsters, and twelve laborers had moved fourteen of his big locomotives – including a Hayes Camel 198, a Mason locomotive, and a "dutch wagon" – over forty miles of dirt roads from Martinsburg to Strasburg, Virginia. When the indispensable William Prescott Smith [B&O RR Chief of Transportation] died prematurely at age forty-seven in 1872, Garrett hired Sharpe to replace him as master of transportation"

— Gary L. Browne[15]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Dennis E. Frye at [1] writes, “James I. “Bud” Robertson’s Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend is the crowning achievement of Robertson’s remarkable 40-year career as a Civil War scholar. As a historian, Robertson’s strategy mirrors the warrior strategy of General Jackson: focus on the target (repositories and sources); analyze strengths and weaknesses (separate truth from legend); take risks and use surprise (challenge conventional assessments); and produce dramatic results.” Historian Stephen W. Sears writes at [2] ”Mr. Robertson has tracked down all this source material — finding a good deal that is new along the way — and, equally important, has subjected all of it to rigorous testing. Myths are exploded, anecdotes crumbled.” Historian George C. Rable writes at [3], “James I. Robertson Jr.'s massive new biography, Stonewall Jackson, marks the supreme accomplishment of a distinguished Civil War scholar. Based on prodigious research, this work meticulously sifts fact from legend while presenting a thorough and complex portrait of an important military leader.”
  2. ^ Robertson p. 229. Dowdey p. 27, 33. On May 12, 1861 Lee wrote to Jackson, "I am concerned at the feeling evinced in Maryland, & fear it may extend to other points, besides opposite Sheperdstown. It will be necessary, to allay it, if possible to confine yourself to a strictly defensive course." In a May 22, 1861 letter to General Milledge L. Bonham at Manassas Junction, Lee explained Virginia's policy, "But it is proper for me to state to you that the policy of the State at present is strictly defensive. No provocation for attack will therefore be given, but every attack resisted to the extent of your means."
  3. ^ Robertson pp. 827-828 fn 46. The works Robertson cites as examples are Hungerford's Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Thomas Weber's The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, Angus James Johnson III's Virginia Railroads in the Civil War, Allen Tate's Stonewall Jackson: The Good Soldier, Burke Davis' They Called Him Stonewall,and Clifford Dowdey's The Land They Fought For.
  4. ^ Candenquist, CWEA: Photocopy of Wheeler obituary on file in Handley Library, Winchester, VA
  5. ^ Candenquist
  6. ^ Weber, p.78
  7. ^ Article, Harpers Weekly, June 1861, and woodcut print entitled "Locomotive and tender thrown from the railway bridge at Harpers Ferry by the rebels"
  8. ^ Candenquist, CWEA
  9. ^ Harper's Weekly woodcut illustration "Destruction of the railroad bridge over the Potomac at Harpers Ferry by the confederates, June 15, 1861
  10. ^ Stover, pp.104-106
  11. ^ Evans, p. 78
  12. ^ Harpers Weekly 1861 article entitled "Destruction of Locomotives at Martinsburg, Va." and woodcut illustration entitled "Locomotives dismantled by the rebels at Martinsburg, Va."
  13. ^ Stover, p. 106
  14. ^ Weber, p.77
  15. ^ Browne, p. 173.

References

  • Black, Robert C., The Railroads of the Confederacy, University of North Carolina Press, originally 1952.
  • Browne, Gary L., "Baltimore & Ohio Railroad", Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, Heidler, David S., and Heidler, Jeanne T., eds., W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-393-04758-X.
  • Candenquist, Arthur, Confederates Gather Steam, historical field tours through the Civil War Education Association
  • Dowdey, Clifford and Manarin, Louis H. The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee. (1961) ISBN 0-306-80282-1.
  • Evans, Clement A., Confederate Military History, Confederate Publishing Company, 1899, Atlanta, Ga., facsimile reprint by The National Historical Society, 2008.
  • Robertson, James I. Jr. Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. (1997) ISBN 0-02-864685-1.
  • Stover, John F., History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Purdue University Press, 1987, ISBN 1-55753-066-1
  • Weber, Thomas, The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 1861-1865, Indiana University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-253-21321-5
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