The General: America's Most Famous Train Robbery

Inside the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in downtown Kennesaw, a wood-burning locomotive called the General sits less than a hundred yards from the spot where it was stolen on April twelfth, eighteen sixty-two.

The theft was a military operation. A civilian spy named James J. Andrews recruited about two dozen Union soldiers, all volunteers who posed as civilians and rode south on various trains into Confederate Georgia. They boarded the General at Big Shanty, present-day Kennesaw, while the passengers and crew went to eat breakfast at the station restaurant. Then Andrews climbed into the cab, released the brake, and headed north toward Chattanooga.

The plan was to destroy every bridge and cut every telegraph line along the Western and Atlantic Railroad, severing the Confederate supply line between Atlanta and Chattanooga and opening the way for a Union advance. It was bold, clever, and well-timed.

What Andrews did not count on was William Fuller, the General's conductor, who gave chase on foot, then on a hand-pumped rail cart, then commandeered more than one locomotive in pursuit. Fuller ran down the General after a chase of eighty-seven miles through the Georgia mountains. The raiders had not managed to destroy a single bridge. Running low on fuel, unable to stop long enough to burn anything, they abandoned the locomotive and scattered into the woods.

All of the raiders were captured. Andrews and seven others were hanged as spies. The remaining men eventually escaped or were exchanged.

Congress awarded the Medal of Honor to the soldiers among the raiders, the first time that honor had ever been given. Private Jacob Parrott received his on March twenty-fifth, eighteen sixty-three, becoming the first person in American history to hold the decoration. Andrews, as a civilian, was not eligible.

The General itself survived the war and is still here, more than a hundred and sixty years later, in the town where it was stolen.