Engines of War

by Christian Wolmar

  In response, Haupt worked what seemed a miracle. Even though he could call only on a few experienced men, as most of the troops from an agricultural background were useless for such complex work, he reconstructed the line and rebuilt bridges at an astonishing rate. Within two weeks, between ten and twenty trains were running daily on the fifteen miles between the two ends of the railroad. Lincoln himself was appreciative of Haupt’s efforts, particularly his achievement in rebuilding a 400-foot bridge over the Potomac in just nine days despite, according to contemporary reports, having only green wood and saplings at hand and a largely unskilled labour force, and suffering from a lack of tools and bad weather. Lincoln praised Haupt, saying: ‘I have seen the most remarkable structure that human eyes ever rested upon. That man Haupt has built a bridge… over which loaded trains are running every hour, and… there is nothing in it but beanpoles and cornstalks.’13 The greatest testimony to Haupt’s work, however, was the oft-used but anonymous quote, attributed to local onlookers watching his men rebuild a bridge: ‘The Yankees can build bridges quicker than the Rebs can burn them down.’ While the destruction of the Fredericksburg line had been on an unprecedented scale, its rapid reconstruction demonstrated a truth that would be repeated in conflicts many times during the next century: railways were often far easier to bring back into use than those destroying them realized.

  The assault on the Fredericksburg was not, however, the first major railroad destruction of the war. The Baltimore & Ohio, America’s oldest railroad, which ran west from Washington and Baltimore to the Midwest, was the carrier most affected by the war as it virtually formed the boundary between the warring parties. There were several raids by Confederate forces on the Baltimore & Ohio, including a particularly destructive incident in June 1861, the razing of Martinsburg, the principal yards of the railroad, in an attack led by General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. The ruse which Jackson used to wreak maximum destruction of the yards demonstrated that the combatants in the early stages of the Civil War were still confused about whether it was to be a gentlemanly war, played out like those genteel eighteenth-century battles before Napoleon along well-defined rules tacitly agreed by both sides, or an all-out savage conflict with no attempt to limit the damage inflicted on the other side. Although the territory around part of the Baltimore & Ohio was occupied by Confederate forces, Jackson had allowed freight trains run by Union forces to continue using the railroad. This might have appeared to be a magnanimous gesture but was nothing of the sort. Recognizing that locomotive power would be crucial to the war, he devised a cunning scheme to capture as many engines as he could manage as well as wreck the railroad. He informed the railroad management that he did not want the trains keeping his troops awake at night and therefore it was arranged that they should only be allowed to enter the Confederate zone between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Amazingly, the Unionists accepted this flimsy argument and enabled Jackson to lay a perfect trap. On 14 June 1861, he allowed in all the trains to the fifty-four-mile section of line but then prevented them from leaving by ripping up the track. Before the Union forces grasped what was happening, he destroyed forty-two locomotives and 386 freight cars, taking with him by road another fourteen engines as well as much of the track for use in the South. His men wrecked the machine shops and warehouses at Martinsburg and as a result of the attack the Baltimore & Ohio’s western section was closed for nine months. The rest of the line was kept going, however, thanks to the loyalty of its president, John Garrett, to the Unionist cause. His dedication to keeping the line working, despite frequent attacks from the Confederates, ensured that it was used throughout the conflict in the interests of the North.

  Most of the early destruction of the railroads was by the South, principally in pre-emptive moves to prevent the Federal armies from building up forces to launch attacks, but the North had been actively wrecking railroads too. There were a few early attacks by Northern forces such as the one on Harper’s Ferry in February 1862, but the most famous of these early raids was the attempt by a young civilian scout, James Andrews, to destroy the crucial Confederate-controlled Western & Atlantic Railroad, which ran between Chattanooga and Atlanta. The raid 200 miles into enemy territory was prompted by General Ormsby Mitchel, the commander in middle Tennessee, whose target was Chattanooga, which was a key hub for both rail and river transport. Wrecking the Western & Atlantic would weaken the ability of the Confederates to defend the town, and Andrews was sent in with a group of twenty-one soldiers to capture a train and sabotage the line as he headed back north. On the morning of 12 April 1862, the group – two short as a pair had overslept – boarded a northbound train in the tiny town of Marietta, Georgia, twenty miles north of Atlanta. At Big Shanty, seven miles up the line, the train conductor, William Fuller, announced a stop of twenty minutes for breakfast, giving the raiders the opportunity to take over the train. Detaching the passenger cars, Andrews commandeered the engine, The General, and headed north, cutting the telegraph wires in order to prevent the pursuers from alerting the stations ahead. Fuller, furious at the hijacking of his train, proved to be just as determined and heroic as Andrews. He pursued the train, first for the initial two miles to the next station on foot, then with a gandy dancers’ handcart. It proved to be a versatile method of transport, as he was able to overcome a gap in the track which Andrews’s gang had torn up, dragging the trolley through the ballast and rerailing it on the other side. Then, after being derailed again, he found a locomotive, the Yonah, which was fortuitously in steam, and when, again, there was a gap in the track, he ran another two miles to stop a train passing in the other direction to commandeer its locomotive.

  And so the chase went on for a hundred miles, with the locomotives at times reaching speeds of 60 mph until The General ran out of fuel and the raiders dispersed into the local countryside. Because of Fuller’s effort in keeping so closely behind, Andrews’s men never managed to create any serious damage to the railroad. Their attempts to burn down bridges were thwarted by damp tinder and their efforts to tear up the track were confined to small sections, which were later easily repaired. They were all picked up quickly by the Confederate authorities and poor Andrews, just twenty-two years old, was soon hanged, along with seven of his gang. However, a group of others managed to escape back to the North, some helped by slaves, and most survived the war, one living until 1923. All the nineteen military participants received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first soldiers ever to receive this newly instituted award. On his side, Fuller, too, was feted as a hero and spent his later years ensuring that the story was told from his point of view, which suggests that there may have been some rewriting of history. Indeed, the raid has been mythologized, inspiring several films, most notably Buster Keaton’s The General, which took the side of the Confederate pursuers, with the Unionists depicted as ruthless train wreckers.

  Raids deep into enemy territory by cavalry detachments with the aim of destroying railroads were a tactic on both sides. On the Unionist side, the most remarkable such raid was by 1,700 men led by Colonel Benjamin Grierson, a former music teacher, in the spring of 1863. They rode 600 miles through hostile territory from southern Tennessee, through Mississippi to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which was held by the Union, tearing up railroads, burning sleepers and destroying storehouses. Not only did Grierson’s raid tie up large numbers of Confederate forces, but amazingly only three of his men were killed and nine went missing during the whole venture. Again, this tale attracted Hollywood producers, with John Wayne starring in the 1959 version of the raid, The Horse Soldiers.

  For the Confederates, the most effective was the Morgan raid at Christmas 1862. With 4,000 horsemen, General John Morgan attacked the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, a strategic route which he knew would be used by Union forces to push southward into Georgia. Sweeping through Kentucky, he captured a railroad station in the small town of Upton and used the telegraph system to fool the Unionists further up the line into giving him information on the position of their forces.
His men proceeded to demolish a series of bridges and warehouses on the railroad and after a week of havoc during which he wrecked much of the Louisville & Nashville, he withdrew, taking 2,000 prisoners with him. Even Haupt could not weave his magic quickly, as it took him the best part of six months to restore the line.

  Despite Haupt’s efforts on the Fredericksburg Railroad, the Peninsular Campaign failed, but in recognition of his railroad work he was appointed chief of construction and transportation for United States Military Railroads in May 1862. Learning from his experience of using untrained and reluctant troops, Haupt insisted on forming a specialized construction force to work on the railroads and was immediately given the task of reconstructing the short Manassas Gap Railroad in Virginia, near Washington, to allow the army to pursue the troops retreating under Jackson. In repairing and then operating the railroad, he was able to apply the two strict principles he had developed on control of the railroads and the rapid unloading of freight cars. Nothing was allowed to stand in his way to prevent smooth operation and the route was reopened in three days. Five bridges were reconstructed in one day and when he found an official using an empty boxcar in a siding as an office, he forcibly ejected the hapless fellow along with his money chests, furniture and papers so that the track could be used for railroad operations. Haupt then ensured that traffic flowed uninterrupted, quickly clearing a backlog of empty freight cars. Then, investigating the non-arrival of four trains at Piedmont, at the end of the line, Haupt found that the wife of a senior officer had stopped her train in order to find accommodation for the night and three others behind hers had not been able to get through. Going to the scene, he ordered the conductor to restart the train and then found the woman who had caused the trouble. His anger was expressed with great restraint. Writing in his autobiography, he recalls that the elegantly dressed lady came tripping across the field and ‘I did not display extra gallantry on the occasion, nor even offer the lady assistance. She had detained four trains in three hours in a period of urgency, and I was not in an amiable mood.’14

  Haupt spent the next year reinstating and running railroads that were vital to particular battles, but he was not averse to destroying them, too, using the gunpowder torpedoes on bridges and the hook method to rip up track. He was put in charge of all the railroads of Virginia and in a series of operations demonstrated the importance of maintaining efficient running. He formulated precise working arrangements. As well as ensuring that cars were unloaded quickly, supplies were never to be forwarded until required and trains had to run to a schedule from which they were not allowed to deviate even if that meant departing half empty. Haupt understood what railroad operators around the world have subsequently learnt – that a delay in one part of a system almost invariably leads to hold-ups elsewhere. Railways must be run with military precision or they risk degenerating into chaos.

  Haupt established a system of priorities: subsistence stores were given first priority, forage second, then, in order, ammunition and hospital stores. Interestingly, only fifth in line were veteran infantry regiments, followed by raw recruits, while artillery and cavalry troops were not to use the railroads at all. Haupt reckoned that provided his principles were adhered to, a single-track line could maintain a supply chain for an army of 200,000 men, a remarkable number and, according to Haupt, ten times greater than would be possible if his rules were not maintained.

  Haupt was nothing if not an innovator. When the Army of the Potomac was moved to a position near Fredericksburg, the railroad connection initially involved a lengthy detour around the Rappahannock river. Instead, Haupt devised the notion of using huge barges, fitted with rail track, to cross the river, creating a connection between the Orange & Alexandria and Aquia Creek railroads. Using this method, the normal sixteen-car trains were able to be transported directly without having to unload their contents onto the barges, saving both time and manpower.

  A little insight can be given into the chaotic state of the war, much of which was taking place on Washington’s doorstep, and was brought even nearer by the existence of the railroad. During the second battle of Manassas (Bull Run), the Secretary of State for War, Edwin Stanton, ordered Haupt to provide a train to take civilian volunteers from Washington to the battle site in order to help the wounded. Haupt had only wanted medical staff to be transported but instead an unruly group of 800 men, half of them drunk, arrived near the site late at night and proceeded to demand priority over the wounded on the return train.

  The importance of sticking to his rules was likewise demonstrated by Haupt’s supply operations for the battle of Gettysburg, where General Lee’s second advance into Northern territory was halted. In May 1863, Lee had beaten the Unionists at Chancellorsville and the South was at the height of its conceit, with genuine hopes of being able to triumph in the war. Overconfident, Lee had continued to march into the North with visions of possibly even reaching Philadelphia until the Unionists confronted him at Gettysburg, which was to become the bloodiest battle of the war. As soon as it was realized that there would be a major confrontation, Haupt went to Baltimore to organize the running of the Western Maryland Railroad, a line running north-west from Baltimore to Westminster, thirty miles away, where it eventually connected through to the Gettysburg front in Pennsylvania. The Western Maryland was a lousy little single-track line, laid with scrap-iron rails on poor-quality sleepers and with no adequate sidings or even a telegraph system. Haupt quickly drafted in 400 men to bring the line up to standard and used it to send a series of huge convoys to the front and to bring back wounded soldiers. Because of the shortage of rolling stock and the lack of sidings, Haupt established a service of three trains per day, each consisting of five ten-car sets carrying 1,500 tons of supplies, which returned to Baltimore with between 2,000 and 4,000 wounded soldiers each. His system was so effective that it not only helped the Unionist forces to victory but, seeing the potential, encouraged General George Meade, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, to use supplies from the railroad to pursue Lee and beat him decisively. That would have required repairing a series of railroads pulled up by the retreating Confederates, which Haupt prepared to do, but, in the event, Meade, worried about the state of his troops after the bloody battle and their susceptibility to disease further south, did not pursue Lee’s retreating army, possibly prolonging the war.

  Haupt left the Army soon afterwards owing to his involvement in a long-running dispute over the construction of a tunnel in Massachusetts, but his influence remained through the principles of operation he had established, which most senior officers in the North – but by no means all – had come to accept. Many of those running sections of railroad for the Northern forces had been trained directly by Haupt. With the Southern attacks into the North stymied, the only remaining question for the Unionists was to work out how to conquer the South.

  Railroad construction was to play a major part in both the east and the west as the North counter-attacked and began to enter enemy territory. The last two years of the war, 1864 and 1865, saw feverish activity by the United States Military Railroads, which built and rebuilt railroads, as well as operating and maintaining them. Almost every attack was preceded by the establishment of a railway supply route, often requiring sections of new line, as well as significant troop movements by rail. Already in the Mexican War in 1846, American railroads carried troops down to New Orleans to do battle, but now the scale of such movements would be unprecedented. For example, when General Ulysses Grant planned to capture Richmond from the South, he needed to build two new military railroads, totalling twenty-two miles, before the attack could commence. Not only were countless railroad lines laid, but others were pulled up in order to supply rails and sleepers for the new ones. Troop movements involving tens of thousands of men were carried out in waves of trains on single-track railroads which before the war might have accommodated just a couple of trains per day. To give just one example, in the course of a fortnight in May 1865, 18,000 men were carried in forty-fi
ve trains, each with around ten coaches (which works out at around forty soldiers in each one), on the 120-mile trip between Danville and Manchester in Virginia. Such mass movements became routine and, since Haupt’s rules were largely maintained, normally passed off without causing chaos.

  In the Western Theater, broadly defined as the area west of the Mississippi river, the situation was very different from in the east. The amount of territory covered was far larger, and the role of the rivers, which were navigable for vast stretches, was far more significant. Nevertheless, although railroads were sparser, they still played an important role in several key battles, often in conjunction with river transportation. Battles in the Western Theater required several lengthy troop transfers by rail, including the greatest movement of the war, a 1,200-mile journey from east to west along the boundary between the rival armies in the early autumn of 1863. It was prompted by the defeat of General William Rosecrans’s Army of Tennessee at the battle of Chickamauga, Georgia, in September 1863. The defeated Unionists retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, a vital rail hub, and Grant, who took over the command from Rosecrans, urgently needed 20,000 reinforcements for the defence of Tennessee and for future attacks in Georgia.

  The initial estimate was that it would take up to two months to transfer such a large body of men to relieve Chattanooga. However, McCallum, the superintendent of the military railroads, devised a route which would enable a far speedier transfer, involving the use of no fewer than seven railroad journeys broken only by two short ferry trips across rivers: the Orange & Alexandria, the Baltimore & Ohio to Wheeling, where a ferry took the troops across the Ohio, the Central Ohio to Columbus, the Indiana Central to Indianapolis, the Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis to Jeffersonville where another ferry took them across to Louisville, the Louisville & Nashville, and finally the Nashville & Chattanooga. It was, in the words of the historian of the Northern railroads during the war, ‘the most dramatic rail operation of the entire war’15 and certainly the most impressive anywhere in the world up to that point. Remarkably, the whole operation, involving 23,000 troops, was completed in just two weeks and they made a crucial difference. Thanks to the arrival of these reinforcements, the siege of Chattanooga, where the Union troops were suffering from hunger and lack of medical supplies, was relieved by a battle in November and the town became a crucial staging post for the Unionists’ invasion of the South.