Great Train Raid of 1861

Colonel Stonewall Jackson's operations against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1861 were aimed at disrupting the critical railroad used heavily by the opposing Union Army as a major supply route. A second goal was to capture the maximum number of locomotives and cars for use in the Confederate States of America. 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 a major portion of the route went through a state which later seceded.

Many historians have written that the events began when the Virginia militia initiated a military raid that started in western Virginia at the end of busy noontime traffic on May 23, 1861,"the eve of Virginia's ratification of her secession ordinance", during the early days of the American Civil War. Colonel Thomas Jackson had convinced railroad officials to limit their passage through Virginia territory between the hours of 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. Historian James I. Robertson Jr. contests this version of events. He denies that the raid occurred and questions whether the communication between Jackson and railroad officials ever happened. Robertson claims that historians who promote the accuracy of the raid place too much reliance on an 1885 account of the events written by General John D. Imboden, a source that Robertson considers to be unreliable.

In any event, from late May through June Confederate forces controlled the railroad and destroyed track and bridges throughout the Virginia portion of the railroad. Believing that Harper’s ferry was indefensible against a Union advance, General Joseph E. Johnston was given permission to abandon the post. As part of this retreat, a major bridge was destroyed at Harper’s Ferry and the railroad works at Martinsburg were destroyed. In a major engineering feat, fourteen locomotives from Martinsburg were disassembled and moved across country by horse drawn teams to Strasburg, Virginia. Eventually the locomotives were moved to Richmond where they were put to use by the Confederacy.

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