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Posted on 04/11/2003 5:37:21 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Andrew's Raiders For more than a year war raged in the fields of Virginia and Tennessee while factories and farms in Georgia produced supplies that fed and clothed the Confederate Army. In the spring of 1862, the quiet of North Georgia was shattered by a group of 22 Union spies on a mission to disrupt Confederate supply lines. The General, an engine owned by the Western and Atlantic Railroad, left Atlanta at 4:00 am on April 12, the first anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter. At Marietta (History of Marietta, Georgia) the raiders boarded the train under the command of James Andrews. When the train stopped for breakfast, the men made off with The General in a daring raid that had been planned the night before at the Fletcher (now Kennesaw) House  Andrews gained the trust of the Confederates by smuggling quinine across the battle lines for a period of several weeks. Using these "friends" he infiltrated Georgia with men skilled in handling locomotives, among them William Knight, a young Kentucky volunteer who had been an engineer before the war. Union General Ormsby Mitchel approved the plan to steal a locomotive and move north on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, destroying track, bridges and tunnels along the way. Mitchel, fighting in North Alabama reasoned that with the W&ARR destroyed Chattanooga could be easily taken. The Union commander agreed to take Huntsville on April 11, 1862, which he did, and wait for Andrews to arrive in Huntsville before advancing on Chattanooga. The train pulled up to the Lacey Hotel and the passengers and crew walked to the hotel for breakfast. Andrews had selected this as the site to hatch his plot because Big Shanty did not have a telegraph office. The spies stole the train and began the journey to Huntsville.  The crew of The General had a different idea. Jeff Cain, engineer, and Anthony Murphy, a machine foreman joined conductor William Fuller, who took the theft as a personal affront, as he pursued the raiders. On foot at first, they ran the two miles to Moon's Station, and procured a platform handcar and two members of a maintenance crew to help them pole and push. From here to the Etowah River the track grades slowly but steadily downhill. Two more men jumped on the moving handcar in Acworth. Andrews, Knight and two other Union spies stayed in the cab while the other 18 men spread across the train. Many Georgians along the route inquired when they saw Fuller's regular train and schedule with a different crew. Andrews responded by telling the men that he was taking a "powder train" through to General Beauregard, then at Corinth, a believable story since this was a few days after Shiloh.  The pursuers at first thought the men were deserters who had stolen the train to escape, but the rail ties in the roadbed, cut telegraph wires and missing rails convinced them a formidable enemy lay in front of them. In Etowah Fuller took the switch engine Yonah to pursue the raiders. Suprisingly, Andrews did not remove any rails between the river and the complicated rail yard in Kingston. Delayed by northbound trains, Andrews and Fuller were now less than 10 minutes apart, although the Union spy still did not know his Raiders were being pursued. Abandoning the Yonah, the crew of the General negotiated the yard on foot, taking the William R. Smith north towards Adairsville. They encountered track torn up by the raiders, abandoned the engine and two of them, Murphy and Fuller, continued the pursuit on foot. Undaunted by the obstacles the raiders laid in the way Fuller and Murphy took a southbound engine, The Texas, south of the Adairsville station. The chase was on - The Texas in pursuit of the General at top speed, in reverse! Just north of the city of Calhoun the pursuers spotted the General for the first time. Andrews and Knight considered the situation. A quick attempt by the raiders to raise a rail was fruitless.  Andrews and Knight came up with three options, but the first, crossties dropped from the rear of the General, did not slow the pursuers. Next, with the raiders on the locomotive and coal tender they released two boxcars from the end of the train. The men on the Texas pushed those off on the next siding. Now, approaching the covered wooden bridge over Oostanaula River, Andrews set fire to the remaining car hoping not only to slow the Texas but also burn the bridge. However, wet conditions made it impossible to set the bridge afire. The Texas again pushed the cars off the track and the chase became a test of endurance. With the telegraph from Atlanta out of service because of the wire cutters employed by the raiders a telegraph operator, 17-year old Edward Henderson, headed south from Dalton in search of the problem. South of Calhoun, Fuller saw the lad, whom he recognized, and pulled onto the moving train. Fuller wrote out a message to General Ledbetter in Chattanooga, warning him of the approach of the captured locomotive. In Dalton the telegrapher was dropped from the train and he made off to send the message.  The whistle of the pursuers warned towns and soldiers of the approaching chase. But the end was near. Just before the top of Ringgold Gap The General gave out. The locomotive would not have made it much further. The message from Dalton had made it to Chattanooga and Confederates were already on the track travelling south to Ringgold. The Raiders failed to destroy bridges over Chickamauga Creek or the Etowah River, or the tunnel at Tunnel Hill, their main targets. Over the next two weeks, Andrews and his men were rounded up by the Confederates. They managed to get as far away as Bridgeport, Alabama. All 22 men were caught. Of the 14 men sent to Confederate prison 8 escaped in October, 1862 and the remaining 6 were paroled in March, 1863. Andrews and 7 of his men were tried in Atlanta and hung, their bodies buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave.  Congress created the Medal of Honor in 1862 and awarded it to some of the Raiders. James Andrews, leader of the raiders, was not in the military and therefore not eligible. The bodies of the raiders who had been hung were disinterred from the unmarked grave and buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery. The General survived the episode and the war, continuing in service on the Western and Atlantic and the Louisville and Nashville for another 30 years.
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I am A Soldier I am A Soldier
Today James E. Tyle (April 1, 1926 - March 30, 2003), WWII vet, was laid to rest. Full military honors were presented by Delavan American Legion Post 95. He served in Italy and Germany in the armored tank division under General Patton.
Thought for the day : "Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt."
Jim once told me that after the march into Berlin he never feared anything again in his life.
Please remember Jim in your prayers.
The locomotive Texas, like the General, was built in, Paterson, New Jersey, but not by the same builder. The Texas was built by Danforth, Cooke & Company and placed in service on the Western & Atlantic Railroad in October, 1856. The original cost of the Texas was $9,050. At the time, the gauge of the Western & Atlantic RR was five feet, and the Texas was built to that gauge. The drivers were 60 inches in diameter, and there were four, together with four leading truck wheels, making the locomotive of the well known American type with a 4-4-0 wheel arrangement. Her cylinders were fifteen inches in diameter, and the stroke was 22 inches. The Texas was of the same power and approximately the same size as the General. The engine was shipped from New Jersey by water to Savannah and there put on the rails of the Central Railway of Georgia to Macon and thence over the rails of the Macon & Western RR to Atlanta. One of the first modifications made to the engine in the shops of the Western & Atlantic RR was to replace the pilot or cow catcher with one of horizontal pieces of strap iron. This type of cow catcher was a mark of engines of the Western & Atlantic RR in those days, and all pilots were of this type. The man who made them was Richard A. "Uncle Dick" Saye, who died in 1910.
During the Civil War period, it was customary to assign a locomotive to assign a locomotive to an engineer and to a special run. In April, 1862, the Texas was assigned to Peter James Bracken, engineer, and his fireman was Henry P. Haney. Braken was a man of 28 years while Haney was a mere lad of fifteen years. They were assigned to a regular freight run between Dalton and Atlanta. At Dalton, the Western & Atlantic RR was connected with the East Tennessee & Georgia Railroad which served east Tennessee and had connections to the north and east. On April 11, 1862, the Texas ran north leaving Atlanta about 10:00 AM, and arriving in Dalton around 6:00 PM. On the morning of April 12, 1862, Bracken left Dalton with the Texas and 21 loaded cars bound for Atlanta. About two miles south of Adairsville, he was flagged by Conductor William A. Fuller and Anthony Murphy, foreman of the Machinery and Motive Power at the State Road Shops in Atlanta. These two were afoot at this point seeking to overcome their train pulled by the General, which had been stolen that morning by the Union raiding party led by James J. Andrews, spy and contraband merchant. Bracken knew both Fuller and Murphy, and he stopped his train and took them aboard. They proceeded to tell Bracken what had happened, and Bracken backed his train to Adairsville. Just a few minutes before, the General, with its three cars, had passed him at Adairsville, and he was curious then about the train speeding through with no one aboard who was familiar to him. They reached Adairsville within a few minutes, and the 21 cars were set aside on the fly. Then The Great Locomotive Chase was on more even terms, even though the Texas was running in reverse.
The pursuit of the General by the Texas continued northward for some 51 miles before the General was abandoned by the Andrews Raiders about two miles north of Ringgold. Certainly the Texas was the hero of this run, but through the years, the General has received most of the credit and notoriety. Captain Fuller was inclined towards the Texas, as he stated in an interview in 1895, "The question as to whether the General or the Texas should have the honors has been discussed. I am rather inclined to the Texas, but at the same time I never could have availed myself of the service of the Texas if I had not succeeded in getting the William R. Smith at Kingston; nor could I have got to the Smith if the Yonah had been out of reach at Etowah. And if I had not had the use of the old handcar from Moon's Station to Etowah, I never could have reached the Yonah in time. So all of these came in for a share." Along with the Texas should be honored those men who were running her. At the top of the list is Peter James Bracken, the engineer; Henry P Haney, the fireman; Alonzo Martin, wood passer; and Fleming Cox, brakeman, together with Conductor William A. Fuller, and foreman Anthony Murphy.
As the chase ended and the raiders abandoned the General and fled into the woods, each man for himself, Braken eased the Texas to within a few feet of the General. He then directed young Haney to go aboard and see if anything was wrong. Haney found the firebox door open and very little fire in the firebox. He then tried the water cocks and found little or no water in the boiler. After a wait of 20 or 30 minutes, the Texas took the General in tow and moved her back to Ringgold. Here the General was left, and Bracken and Haney with the Texas went on down to Adairsville where they picked up their freight cars and proceeded to Atlanta, just as though nothing had happened.
In October, 1895, Peter J. Bracken summed up his experience in running the Texas on April 12, 1862 in a letter to William A. Fuller as follows: "I was running the Texas on the day that Andrews stole the General. If I had not been running myself, I would not have rode on her with anyone else running, as I would not (have) taken the chances or run the risk we run that day with any one else handling the engine. It makes me nervous now when I think of the X-ties on the track. I do not want any unnecessary notoriety about the chase and would not answer or pay any attention to those questions from any one else but on account of old times and old friendship, I will answer them to the best of my recollection and ability. My recollections are that no one else touched the throttle of my engine from the time I saw you coming down the hill east of Adairsville until we run up on the General about three miles above Ringgold."
Original Medal of Honor
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