Included in the Online Relocation Package Whitfield/Murray County GA - information about Whitfield and Murray Counties and nearby areas.

Sometimes we take our own back yard for granted - historic events have taken place in our own town but are long forgotten. Well, let's bring this one back - a few years ago I watched the old movie The Great Locomotive Chase made in 1956 and it was quite a treat. Here's the story:

"Boys, we're going into danger, but for results that can be tremendous," said Union spy turned saboteur James J. Andrews to the 24 volunteers he had recruited from three Ohio regiments to take part in a secret railroad-bridge-burning mission. Union General Ormsby M. Mitchel wanted to capture the Confederate city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and he and Andrews had concocted a plan to isolate that important munitions center from Rebel reinforcements by cutting its rail connections and then sending in the Union army.

The plan was for Andrews and his men, in civilian clothes, to make their way in groups of 3 or 4 to Chattanooga, where they would board a train headed south to Atlanta. They would get off at Marietta, about 25 miles north of Atlanta. There they would commandeer a northbound train and race back toward Union lines, and they would burn bridges and cut telegraph lines as they went. Mitchel's army, in the meantime, would move to cut the tracks west of Chattanooga and be in position to take the city when the raiders returned.

Two undercover Union raiders were drafted into the Confederate army before they reached Marietta and two others overslept, but at daybreak on the morning of April 12, 1862, Andrews and the remaining 20 raiders boarded the morning train from Atlanta and started back north.

The train was pulled by the locomotive General and was composed of a tender followed by three empty boxcars and a string of passenger cars. The train pulled into the station at Big Shanty, Georgia at 6:15 A.M. for a quick breakfast stop. The train crew and the passengers all got out and filed into Lacy's Hotel to eat, and Andrews' men quickly undid the coupling in front of the passenger cars. Three of the raiders with railroading experience climbed aboard the General. One of the diners in the hotel looked out the window and shouted to the train's conductor, "Someone is moving your engine!"

Conductor William A. Fuller was surprised to see his train-minus the passenger cars-suddenly lurch forward and race off down the tracks. Realizing it was being stolen, Fuller chased after the train on foot.

Andrews stopped the train often to take on wood and water; the raiders took up a rail to delay pursuers and also cut telegraph wires so that word of the stolen train would not precede them up the tracks.

After traveling 30 miles, the raiders came to Kingston, where they sat for an hour waiting for southbound trains to pass, thereby clearing the track ahead. Four minutes after Andrews pulled out of Kingston going north, Fuller arrived from the south in a locomotive he had commandeered for the chase. Finding his way blocked by three southbound trains, Fuller abandoned his engine and boarded another, continuing the pursuit, this time with 40 armed men on board.

Four miles from Kingston, Fuller again abandoned his train because the raiders had torn up another rail, and again he continued the chase on foot. Meeting a southbound train, he turned it back after the raiders. Andrews' men stopped again to tear up a rail, but before they finished Fuller's train came into view and raced toward them with its whistle screaming. The raiders jumped aboard their train and tore off up the tracks with Fuller pursuing.

The track ahead was clear to Chattanooga, but the raiders hoped to burn more bridges. A flaming boxcar was left on one covered bridge, but Fuller's train arrived in time to push the car onto a side track. The Confederates were following so closely now that the raiders could not stop for fuel, and they were forced to abandon their train 18 miles south of Chattanooga and scatter into the woods. The eight-hour chase had covered 87 miles.

The confederates captured all of the raiders and hanged Andrews and seven others. Eight escaped and the rest were exchanged in March 1863.

You can see the General today at the Kennesaw Civil War Museum and follow the chase from its start in Atlanta to its end north of Ringgold, Georgia. The centerpiece, however, is the General itself, restored by the old Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad in time for the 1962 centennial.