23,000 Men Were Sent to Save an Army. Their First Train Went North.
Powder & Ledger
192 views
On the night of September 23, 1863, Edwin Stanton had not slept. The dispatches from Georgia told of a broken army trapped in Chattanooga — sixteen thousand casualties at Chickamauga, Bragg on the heights, the supply lines failing. Within weeks, the men would be on quarter rations.
At midnight, the Secretary of War asked one man a question: how fast can you move an army corps by rail from Virginia to Tennessee?
The man was Daniel McCallum — superintendent of the New York & Erie, director of the United States Military Railroads. His answer: twenty-three thousand men. Twelve hundred miles. Seven days.
This episode is the story of what happened next.
On September 25, the XI and XII Corps of the Army of the Potomac — men who had fought at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg — boarded trains at Manassas and Bealeton. They went north through Virginia, west through Maryland on the B&O, crossed the Ohio River on barges at Benwood, changed trains at Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville, and rolled south on the L&N through Kentucky. Five railroads. Six transfers. One narrow-gauge bridge built by McCallum's men ahead of the train.
No force of comparable size had ever been moved that far, that fast, by any means. Napoleon's marches had averaged 15 miles a day. McCallum's trains averaged 170.
And the Confederate response — Lee's Bristoe Campaign, Wheeler's cavalry raid on the supply line — could not undo what had already been done. By the end of October, the Cracker Line was open. By November 25, the same men who had ridden in boxcars charged up Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge and broke the siege.
But the strategic price — Meade's army two corps lighter while Lee probed, the vulnerability of a single-line supply system, the gamble that saving the West might lose the East — is still argued today.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Twenty-Three Thousand Men
0:32 The Disaster at Chickamauga
2:01 The Midnight Meeting
3:43 The Patchwork of Railroads
7:39 Loading the Trains
8:45 The Journey: Five Railroads, Six Transfers
12:41 Counting What It Cost
13:48 Lee Strikes Back
15:39 The European Watch
16:10 What Those Men Did
18:10 The Bet That Decided the War
SOURCES
"Report of D. C. McCallum, Director and General Manager, U.S. Military Railroads," in The War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Series I, Vol. 31 (the transfer: route, timing, tonnage)
"Report of Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War" — western railroad coordination
The War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Series I, Vol. 29–31 — Chickamauga campaign, Bristoe campaign, Wheeler's raid
George H. Thomas, battle reports from Chickamauga — Official Records, Series I, Vol. 30
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs — on the situation at Chattanooga, September–October 1863
Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union — intelligence context of the September 1863 crisis
John Fiser, "The Use of Railroads in the Transfer of Union Troops, September 1863" — Military Affairs
Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War
Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy
George E. Turner, Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War
William G. Thomas, The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
Peter Cozzens, This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga
Peter Cozzens, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga
Wiley Sword, Mountains Touched with Fire: Chattanooga
U.S. National Park Service, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park — the transfer of the XI and XII Corps
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division — USMRR photographs (Brady, A. J. Russell)
National Archives (NARA) — railroad and Chickamauga photographs
Harper's Weekly, fall 1863 — illustrations of the transfer and Chattanooga campaign
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1863 — Chickamauga and Chattanooga engravings
Count Helmuth von Moltke, The Franco-German War (trans.) — the Prussian railway mobilization model
Dennis E. Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany
Wikipedia — "Bristoe Campaign"
Wikipedia — "Second Battle of Chattanooga"
Wikipedia — "Battle of Wauhatchie"
Wikipedia — "Chattanooga Campaign"
Brady-Handy Collection, Library of Congress — portraits of Edwin Stanton
23,000 Men Were Sent to Save an Army. Their First Train Went North.
Powder & Ledger
192 views
On the night of September 23, 1863, Edwin Stanton had not slept. The dispatches from Georgia told of a broken army trapped in Chattanooga — sixteen thousand casualties at Chickamauga, Bragg on the heights, the supply lines failing. Within weeks, the men would be on quarter rations.
At midnight, the Secretary of War asked one man a question: how fast can you move an army corps by rail from Virginia to Tennessee?
The man was Daniel McCallum — superintendent of the New York & Erie, director of the United States Military Railroads. His answer: twenty-three thousand men. Twelve hundred miles. Seven days.
This episode is the story of what happened next.
On September 25, the XI and XII Corps of the Army of the Potomac — men who had fought at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg — boarded trains at Manassas and Bealeton. They went north through Virginia, west through Maryland on the B&O, crossed the Ohio River on barges at Benwood, changed trains at Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville, and rolled south on the L&N through Kentucky. Five railroads. Six transfers. One narrow-gauge bridge built by McCallum's men ahead of the train.
No force of comparable size had ever been moved that far, that fast, by any means. Napoleon's marches had averaged 15 miles a day. McCallum's trains averaged 170.
And the Confederate response — Lee's Bristoe Campaign, Wheeler's cavalry raid on the supply line — could not undo what had already been done. By the end of October, the Cracker Line was open. By November 25, the same men who had ridden in boxcars charged up Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge and broke the siege.
But the strategic price — Meade's army two corps lighter while Lee probed, the vulnerability of a single-line supply system, the gamble that saving the West might lose the East — is still argued today.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Twenty-Three Thousand Men
0:32 The Disaster at Chickamauga
2:01 The Midnight Meeting
3:43 The Patchwork of Railroads
7:39 Loading the Trains
8:45 The Journey: Five Railroads, Six Transfers
12:41 Counting What It Cost
13:48 Lee Strikes Back
15:39 The European Watch
16:10 What Those Men Did
18:10 The Bet That Decided the War
SOURCES
"Report of D. C. McCallum, Director and General Manager, U.S. Military Railroads," in The War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Series I, Vol. 31 (the transfer: route, timing, tonnage)
"Report of Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War" — western railroad coordination
The War of the Rebellion: Official Records, Series I, Vol. 29–31 — Chickamauga campaign, Bristoe campaign, Wheeler's raid
George H. Thomas, battle reports from Chickamauga — Official Records, Series I, Vol. 30
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs — on the situation at Chattanooga, September–October 1863
Edwin C. Fishel, The Secret War for the Union — intelligence context of the September 1863 crisis
John Fiser, "The Use of Railroads in the Transfer of Union Troops, September 1863" — Military Affairs
Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War
Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy
George E. Turner, Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War
William G. Thomas, The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
Peter Cozzens, This Terrible Sound: The Battle of Chickamauga
Peter Cozzens, The Shipwreck of Their Hopes: The Battles for Chattanooga
Wiley Sword, Mountains Touched with Fire: Chattanooga
U.S. National Park Service, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park — the transfer of the XI and XII Corps
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division — USMRR photographs (Brady, A. J. Russell)
National Archives (NARA) — railroad and Chickamauga photographs
Harper's Weekly, fall 1863 — illustrations of the transfer and Chattanooga campaign
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1863 — Chickamauga and Chattanooga engravings
Count Helmuth von Moltke, The Franco-German War (trans.) — the Prussian railway mobilization model
Dennis E. Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology, and the Unification of Germany
Wikipedia — "Bristoe Campaign"
Wikipedia — "Second Battle of Chattanooga"
Wikipedia — "Battle of Wauhatchie"
Wikipedia — "Chattanooga Campaign"
Brady-Handy Collection, Library of Congress — portraits of Edwin Stanton