James J. Andrews
----------------
Leader of the Union raid that lead to the Civil War's "Great
Locomotive Chase"
c. 1829-1862
James Andrews was an American Civil War espionage agent who led a
daring raid on the Western and Atlantic Railroad that became famous
as the Great Locomotive Chase. The raid failed and Andrews and seven
followers were executed.
Andrews was born in Holiday's Cove, Virginia (now Weirton, West
Virginia near Pittsburgh). He moved to Kentucky, where he found
employment as a house painter and singing coach. During the Civil
War, he was engaged in buying contraband merchandise (including
quinine) and smuggling it between the military lines. While serving
as a secret agent and scout in Nashville, Tennessee, for Maj. Gen.
Don Carlos Buell in the spring of 1862, he devised a plan to take
eight men to steal a train in Atlanta, Georgia, and drive it
northward. They would disrupt Confederate communications in western
Tennessee and burn the long railroad bridge over the Tennessee River
at Bridgeport. The mission failed when the required engineer failed
to show up at the designated meeting place.
In April, Andrews proposed a new scheme to Maj. Gen. Ormsby M.
Mitchel to seize a locomotive in northern Georgia and drive it to
Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he would rendezvous with Mitchel's
attacking Union Army. On April 12, 1862, Andrews, another civilian,
William 'Bill' Campbell, and 22 volunteers from three Ohio infantry
regiments garbed in civilian clothes stole a locomotive known as the
General at Big Shanty, near Kennesaw, Georgia. They headed north,
destroying tracks and telegraph wires along the way in an effort to
discourage pursuers and render the railroad useless for supplying the
Confederate troops in Tennessee. The conductor of the stolen train
pursued the train hijackers in a variety of other locomotives. After
an 87-mile chase, the General lost power and Andrews and his raiders
scattered. He was captured soon afterwards and identified as the
leader.
He was court-martialed in Chattanooga and sentenced to hang in one
week as a spy. Andrews escaped from Swims Jail on June 1, but was
quickly recaptured the next day. He was taken to Atlanta (ironically
by train over the same tracks that he had used during the raid) on
June 7. Andrews was hanged about 5:00 p.m. that afternoon, near the
present day intersection of 3rd and Juniper Streets, NE. Andrews'
body was temporarily buried at the site of execution. His remains
were removed to the National Cemetery in Chattanooga on October 16,
1887, and a gravestone and monument to the raid was erected near the
Ohio Memorial (Section H, Grave No. 12,982).
He was engaged to Elizabeth Layton of Flemingsburg, Kentucky at the
time of his execution.
As a civilian, Andrews was ineligible for the Medal of Honor that was
presented to most of the raiders.
