Jackson's operations against the B&O Railroad (1861)

[4] Sometime following this, Colonel Jackson, while familiarizing himself with the B&O Railroad line, inspected Captain John D. Imboden's (later a CSA Brigadier General) assigned post, possessing the bridge across the Potomac River at Point of Rocks, Maryland.

As the war approached, the president of the B&O Railroad, John W. Garrett, who was sympathetic to the Union, became "outspoken" against the Confederacy, using "some strong adjectives to lend stress" to the word "rebel".

[3] Delagrange notes "As war seemed to be approaching, B&O President John Garrett tried to appear neutral (his sympathies were with the North), a good business practice because people weren't certain if Maryland would go Union or, even if it did, whether the line could be kept from the Confederates.

Colonel 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.

This timetable bottleneck caused the B&O Railroad to pile up trains in yards and along the lines on the double tracks on either side of Harpers Ferry in order to maximize their throughput during this new curfew.

[3] Imboden's cavalry staged themselves at the signal tower west of Point of Rocks, twelve miles (19 km) east of Harpers Ferry.

[3][14] The following morning,[1] May 23,[3] the trains waiting to the east and west of this forty-four mile section "arrived on schedule" and began moving across this curfewed span at 11:00 a.m. "freely entering the zone for an hour after eleven o'clock.

"[15] This one-hour period allowed for just enough time for these trains to make it only part way into their forty-four mile stretch without reaching the other end on the doubled-up tracks of that main stem section.

"[17] Locomotives and trains were caught in various places all along this section, and this trapped a large quantity of rolling stock in between, which "was soon concentrated in the big rail yard at Martinsburg, West Virginia.

Historian Edward Hungerford, in his centennial history of the B&O Railroad published in 1928, describes the May capture as follows: Upon an appointed day in that month of May, he held up all trains moving through Harpers Ferry and helped himself to four small locomotives; which were not too heavy to go safely over the poorly built branch line to Winchester, thirty miles away.

These engines, once obtained, were hauled by horses over the famous Valley Turnpike to Strasburg, but twenty miles (32 km) from Winchester, where they were placed on rails -- on the track of the Manassas Gap Railway, which connected with the Virginia Central and the entire railroad system of the Confederacy.

After the evacuation of Harper's Ferry, beginning on June 20, Jackson fell back to Martinsburg and "forty-two locomotives and their tenders at that important railroad center, in addition to 305 cars, chiefly coal gondolas, were given the torch.

This is when Jackson, according to Weber, decided to "spring the trap" by blocking any trains from leaving a 54-mile (87 km) stretch of track after they were allowed, from either end, to enter.

On June 13, in a telegram from Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, Johnston was authorized, if he felt the enemy "is about to turn [his] position", to "destroy everything at Harper's Ferry" and "retire upon the railroad towards Winchester.

Within a few days Jackson worked out a plan with the assistance of two railroad employees, Hugh Longust and Thomas R. Sharp, to select the 13 least damaged locomotives, dismantle the engines, and transport overland by forty-horse teams the 38 miles (61 km) to Strasburg.

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.

[43] 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 these up the valley through the summer months of 1861, and for a period of the next two years.

By the 25th of July, Captain Thomas Sharp reported that 80 cars had been successfully moved on to Confederate rails One of the pro-Union Winchester diarists, Julia Chase gave the following eyewitness accounts of "secesh" activities concerning these 10 locomotives: Sept. 2nd.

Eyewitnesses living along the Valley turnpike witnessed some locomotives being moved all the way to Staunton, Virginia about the same time that General Johnston was evacuating Manassas in the spring of 1862.

The same night of the evacuation, the B&O camelback Engine number 199 was put on the Manassas Gap Railroad tracks at Strasburg and moved south 25 miles (40 km) up the Shenandoah Valley to the very end of the line at Mount Jackson, Virginia.

The repair languished, however, and the plight of the B&O "was sufficient to make many recall that the problems of the B&O were helping increase the profits of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Northern Central, in which [the Secretary of War] Cameron had a major interest.

"[28] This initial long term service outage and blow to the B&O Railroad and Union effort finally received more attention from the War Department under Stanton, who placed more interest in restoring the line.

The Great Train Raid bounty had supplied the Confederate Army with the materials to build the Centreville Military Railroad, where Captain Sharp was once again managing much of the effort.

After Centreville was abandoned and the lower Shenandoah Valley was left lightly defended, the B&O Railroad came under Federal control, and B&O work crews were able to repair bridges and lay track during the entire month of March.

A new wooden bridge at Harpers Ferry was built on a rushed accelerated schedule and the B&O Railroad officially reopened for service on March 30, 1862, and once again the transportation path from Baltimore to Ohio was finally clear, after ten full months of closure.

[49] In his Annual Report of the B&O Railroad for 1861, President Garrett wrote: On May 28, 1861, general possession was taken by the Confederate forces of more than one hundred miles of the Main Stem, embroiling chiefly the region between Point of Rocks and Cumberland.

"[55] Garrett always remembered Stonewall Jackson's destruction of the B&O properties at Martinsburg, Virginia in June 1861, and he admired how Confederate colonel Thomas R. Sharpe, with just thirty-five men comprising six machinists, ten teamsters, and twelve laborers had moved fourteen of his big locomotives – including a Hayes Camel 198, a Mason locomotive, and a "dutch wagon" – over forty miles of dirt roads from Martinsburg to Strasburg, Virginia.

Further, it is inconceivable that the B&O's brilliant and hard-working president, John W. Garrett, or its indefatigable master of transportation, William Prescott Smith, would not have immediately seen through such a transparent ploy...

The impeccable Jed Hotchkiss in later years wrote [in an April 26, 1895 letter to historian G. F. R. Henderson] of Imboden (whom he had known in prewar Staunton): 'I do not like to say that my friend is unreliable; and yet the truth of the matter is that his statements will not bear the tests of criticism.

'[61]Biographer Byron Farwell echoes Robertson's views, stating the Imboden story is, "A wonderful tale, it illustrates Jackson's aggressiveness.