On March 25, 1863, Cpl. William Pittenger, along with seven other soldiers, are summoned to the US War Department and are brought before War Secretary Edwin Stanton to receive the first Medals of Honor. Pittenger, narrating, tells the story of the mission they participated in through a flashback.
In April 1862, Pittenger and several other soldiers, including William Campbell are posted outside Nashville under orders from General Mitchell. Andrews rides in to speak to Mitchell, who assigns him the mission of hijacking a train behind Confederate lines and destroying the bridges along the Western and Atlantic Railroad in order to delay reinforcements against Mitchell's planned attack on Chattanooga, as well as cripple the Confederate army's supply lines, possibly putting an end to the war. Pittenger, Campbell, and several more soldiers meet Andrews the next night on a hillside where he explains the mission, and tells them to arrive in Marietta, Georgia by April 10. Over the next few days the men make their way south through Confederate territory in small groups so as not to draw suspicion. Pittenger and Campbell rendezvous with Andrews and two others at an inn on the Tennessee River, but heavy rain causes Andrews to delay the attempt for a day.
On the morning of April 12, Andrews and the raiders congregate in a railroad hotel in Marietta. They board a northbound train, pulled on that day by a locomotive named the General, waiting for the breakfast stop at Big Shanty. While on the train Andrews is approached by the conductor William A. Fuller, who is suspicious about Andrews and the men he boarded with. Andrews shows Fuller a letter from Brigadier GeneralBeauregard. This convinces Fuller that Andrews and his men are Confederate agents. While the passengers and crew are eating, Andrews and the men drop the passenger cars, hijack the engine, and proceed north. Witnessing this, Fuller pursues them on foot along with engineer Jeff Cain and foreman Anthony Murphy. Andrews and the men continue on, pulling up track to block any trains from the south and cutting telegraph wires to stop any towns ahead of them from being alerted. Fuller and his men continue to pursue the raiders; first on foot, then by handcar, then on the small yard engine Yonah.
The raiders make their scheduled stop at Kingston to wait for a southbound freight train. Andrews disguises their mission from the suspicious station staff by claiming that he's running an extra ammunition supply train to Beauregard. Once the southbound train arrives, the raiders learn, to their surprise, that Mitchell had captured Huntsville ahead of schedule and the Confederates are now running extra freight trains down south, including another train coming in from the north unscheduled. After 45 minutes of extra waiting, the last train arrives, and the raiders continue north. Shortly afterward, Fuller and his men reach Kingston. After alerting the station master of the situation, Fuller and his men take a locomotive, the William R. Smith, waiting on the side track and continue until they reach another section of removed track. Fuller and Murphy then wave down Pete Bracken and his southbound express freight and they continue the chase with his engine, the Texas running in reverse.
The raiders make several attempts to stop their pursuers but barely manage to even slow them down. The raiders arrive at the first bridge and attempt to burn it down by lighting a boxcar and setting the brake it so as to prevent it from being moved. Fuller manages to disable the brake and the Texas pushes the car out, leaving the bridge intact. With the General out of wood and water and unable to continue, Andrews decides to stop and fight, but before they can, Confederate cavalry from Ringgold approach, sent by General Leadbetter after Fuller managed to get a telegraph sent ahead of the raiders. Fuller arrives and reclaims his train as the raiders, having failed in their mission, flee into the wilderness and try to make it back home.
Over the next week, the raiders are hunted down and captured. The group is transferred from jail to jail across the south, ultimately learning that they have been found guilty and are to be hanged soon. One day, while in their cell in Atlanta, one of them manages to break the group's chains. They plan to escape the next morning. All men make it over the wall of the jail yard except Andrews and Campbell, who stay behind to fight off their captors. Eight of the raiders, including Pittenger, manage to escape while the rest are recaptured. Before his execution, Andrews requests a final visit from Fuller, who begrudgingly shows up. Andrews expresses hopes that Fuller will not hold a grudge for deceiving him, acknowledging that they both fought in their own ways. Andrews laments that he won't live to see the end of the war, when both sides come together and shake hands. He asks Fuller if they could do so instead. Fuller obliges, marking the end of their war and putting Andrews at peace.
Returning to the opening scene, Secretary Stanton tells the eight surviving raiders that their perished comrades will also receive the Medal of Honor posthumously, with the exception of Andrews who is ineligible due to being a civilian operative (also excluding William Campbell). Pittenger then thanks Stanton on behalf of all of the raiders, ending the film.
Replica of the Lafayette, which portrayed the Yonah, during filming of The Great Locomotive Chase.
The first of three locomotives commandeered by conductor William A. Fuller, the Yonah, was portrayed in the film by the Lafayette, a 1927-built 4-2-0 replica of an identical locomotive of the same name built in 1837.[5] The original Yonah, however, did not have a 4-2-0 design, but was a 4-4-0 design that pre-dated the newer 4-4-0 designs of the other locomotives involved in the Chase.
Two of the locomotives used in the actual Chase had been preserved, though were not in working order. In 1956, the General was on display at Chattanooga Union Station, and the Texas was at the Atlanta Cyclorama. It would have been too costly to make them safely operational, but fortunately Disney had access to two working 4-4-0's of nearly identical appearance, both movie veterans: the William Mason and Inyo.[4] For the film, with changes to the paintwork the William Mason became the General, and Inyo served as both the Texas and the William R. Smith.
Disney rented the Inyo from Paramount Studios, who owned it at the time. Mason and Lafayette were rented from the B&O Railroad Museum, as were five Civil War era cars: two coaches and a baggage car finished in bright yellow, and two iron ammunition cars. The studio also constructed five wooden boxcars which could be, and were, destroyed during the filming.
The locomotives today
As of March 2021, the two surviving locos from the chase, and the three which appeared in the film, were located as follows:
The film received mixed reviews upon its release. Though given acceptable reviews by most critics, the film was not as successful as Walt Disney had hoped it would be. This may have been due to the anticlimactic ending, where the Union spies are captured, jailed, and attempt to escape. According to a review by Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, "the excitement is over when they abandon the trains".[6] Moreover, some felt the film to be rather depressing or downbeat since the main characters are unsuccessful in their mission and some, including the lead character, wind up being executed.[7]
Variety wrote: "It varies between good and fair entertainment values, with enough exciting passages to promise okay prospects at the box office".[8]Harrison's Reports declared: "This Walt Disney historical melodrama should give fairly good satisfaction to the general run of audiences ... The action moves at a swift pace throughout, and is filled with many exciting, if incredible, situations before the raiders are caught".[9]The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Despite the lack of inventive incident, the story has a number of tense sequences, without, perhaps, rivalling the pace and gusto of Davy Crockett. The attempt to present both pursuer and pursued as equally attractive figures is highly successful, but this inevitably weakens the drama of the situation".[10]
The film was first released on video in 1983[citation needed] and later on DVD (first on April 25, 2000[11] and re-released on May 4, 2004).[12][13][14]
It was one of the last several films to depict the Andrews Raid of 1862.[15]
The General is a 1926 American silent slapstick Western action comedy film released by United Artists. It was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, a true story of an event that occurred during the American Civil War. The story was adapted from the 1889 memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger. The film stars Buster Keaton, who also directed it along with Clyde Bruckman.
Ormsby MacKnightMitchel was an American astronomer, polymath and major general in the American Civil War.
The Western & Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia (W&A) is a railroad owned by the State of Georgia and currently leased by CSX, which CSX operates in the Southeastern United States from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The Great Locomotive Chase was a military raid that occurred April 12, 1862, in northern Georgia during the American Civil War. Volunteers from the Union Army, led by civilian scout James J. Andrews, commandeered a train, The General, and took it northward toward Chattanooga, Tennessee, doing as much damage as possible to the vital Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A) line from Atlanta to Chattanooga as they went. They were pursued by Confederate forces at first on foot, and later on a succession of locomotives, including The Texas, for 87 miles (140 km).
Western & Atlantic Railroad #3 General is a 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive built in 1855 by the Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey for the Western & Atlantic Railroad, best known as the engine stolen by Union spies in the Great Locomotive Chase, an attempt to cripple the Confederate rail network during the American Civil War. Today, the locomotive is preserved at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier is a 1955 American Western film produced by Walt Disney Productions. It is an edited and recut compilation of the first three episodes of the Davy Crockett television miniseries. The episodes used were Davy Crockett Indian Fighter, Davy Crockett Goes to Congress, and Davy Crockett at the Alamo. The film stars Fess Parker as Davy Crockett.
James J. Andrews was a Kentucky civilian who worked for the Union Army during the early years of the American Civil War. He led a daring raid behind enemy lines on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, known as the Great Locomotive Chase. Andrews and seven fellow raiders were caught at the end of the chase and executed by the Confederates on the charge of spying.
William Allen Fuller was a conductor on the Western & Atlantic Railroad during the American Civil War era. He was most noted for his role in the 1862 Great Locomotive Chase, a daring sabotage mission and raid conducted by soldiers of the Union Army in northern Georgia. Fuller's determined pursuit prevented the Union agents from driving a captured train north to Tennessee and the Union lines thus advacing the cause of the preservation of slavery.
John Rollin Lupton was an American film and television actor.
The Chetoogeta Mountain Tunnel refers to two different railroad tunnels passing through Chetoogeta Mountain in Tunnel Hill, Georgia, United States.
The 21st Ohio Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Mostly an all-volunteer unit, with the exception of a few draftees, the 21st Ohio served for both ninety-day and three-year enlistments and fought exclusively in the Western Theater. It saw action in some of the war's bloodiest battles including Stones River, Chickamauga, the Atlanta Campaign, and Sherman's March to the Sea.
Davy Crockett was a five-part serial which aired on ABC from 1954–55 in one-hour episodes, on the Disneyland series. The series starred Fess Parker as real-life frontiersman Davy Crockett and Buddy Ebsen as his friend, George Russell. The first three and last two episodes were respectively edited into the theatrical films Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier and Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956). This series and film are known for the catchy theme song, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett".
Elihu Harlam Mason was a Union Army soldier in the American Civil War and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions in the Great Locomotive Chase.
William Pittenger was an American soldier during the American Civil War. A member of the Union Army, he was one of the first recipients of the Medal of Honor.
William Hunter Campbell was an Ohio civilian who worked for the Union Army during the early years of the American Civil War. He participated in a daring raid behind enemy lines on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, known famously as the Great Locomotive Chase. The mission failed and Campbell and seven fellow raiders were executed by the Confederates on the charge of spying.
Wilson Wright Brown was a soldier and recipient of the Medal of Honor for his role in the Great Locomotive Chase during the American Civil War.
Virginia and Truckee Railroad No. 22, also known as the "Inyo", is a 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive that was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1875 and pulled both passenger and freight trains. The Inyo weighs 68,000 lb (31,000 kg). Its 57 in (140 cm) driving wheels deliver 11,920 lb (5,410 kg) of tractive force. In 1877 it was fitted with air brakes and in 1910 it was converted to burn oil rather than wood.
Yonah was a type 4-4-0 steam locomotive that participated in the Great Locomotive Chase of the American Civil War.
William Bensinger was an American soldier who fought for the Union in the American Civil War. On March 25, 1863, he was the second person given the country's highest award for bravery during combat, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during the Great Locomotive Chase in Georgia in April 1862.
Daniel Allen Dorsey was an American soldier who fought in the American Civil War. Dorsey received the country's highest award for bravery during combat, the Medal of Honor, for his action during the Great Locomotive Chase in Georgia in April 1862. He was honored with the award on 17 September 1863.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
