| James Andrews |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT JAMES J. ANDREWS | |
| 1829 births | |
| andrews, james j. | |
| 1862 deaths | |
| american civil war spies | |
| executed spies | |
| people from kentucky | |
| people from west virginia | |
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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 Regiment s 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 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. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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