Great Train Raid of 1861

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. Col. 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 Great Train 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 Col. Kenton Harper to Cherry Run, west of Martinsburg, to sever the line in that location, and he sent Col. 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.

Hauling away the bounty

Four locomotives taken to Winchester then Strasburg

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 railyards 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 [Candenquist, CWEA: Photocopy of Wheeler obituary on file in Handley Library, Winchester, VA] , 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. [Candenquist] 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." [Weber, p.78] [Article, Harpers Weekly, June 1861, and woodcut print entitled "Locomotive and tender thrown from the railway bridge at Harpers Ferry by the rebels"] 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. [Candenquist, CWEA]

Remaining locomotives and rolling stock taken to Staunton

before finally evacuating and abandoning the Harpers Ferry area. [Stover, pp.104-106]

In the weeks following this, Jackson decided to salvage 10 of the burnt locomotives at Martinsburg and move them into the Confederate rail system. [Evans, p. 78] [Harpers Weekly 1861 article entitled "Destruction of Locomotives at Martinsburg, Va." and woodcut illustration entitled "Locomotives dismantled by the rebels at Martinsburg, Va."] 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 10 locomotives and additional rail cars were moved by the same carriage and dolly method 125 miles overland 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 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 23 May 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 24 May. Shortly afterward, on 8 June, 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:

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

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.

See also

* Winchester in the American Civil War

Notes

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 [http://www.cwea.net Civil War Education Association]
* Evans, Clement A., "Confederate Military History, Volume III, Part I: Virginia", The National Historic Society, 1899.
* 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