From this point the chase was the most thrilling and reckless of which there is any record. Andrews resorted to his old trick of dropping cross-ties, but he soon saw that this would not do. Then he uncoupled one of his box cars. Captain Fuller picked it up, and pushed it ahead. Andrews uncoupled another. This was served the same way, and at Resaca the cars were run on a siding. The "General," commanded by Andrews, was now forward, with one car, while the "Texas," commanded by Captain Fuller, and driven by Peter Bracken, was running tender forward, with Fuller standing on the brake board, or bumper. The locomotives were about evenly matched. Both had five-foot ten-inch drivers, and both were running under all the pressure their boilers could carry.
All thought of danger was lost sight of. The pursued had no time to hatch any scheme calculated to delay pursuit. The pursuers forgot to look for obstructions. On one side it was capture or die; on the other it was escape at all hazards. The people of the towns and villages through which the road passes knew not what to make of the spectacle. Before they could recover from the surprise of seeing a locomotive with one box car dash wildly past the station, they were struck dumb with amazement by the sight of another locomotive thundering by, tender forward, a tall man standing on the bumper and clinging to the brake rod.
They were going at a terrific rate of speed, but Peter Bracken, the brave engineer of the "Texas," knew his locomotive so well, and handled her with such a nice eye for her weak as well as her strong points, that the pursuers gradually shortened the distance between them and the raiders. The "General" was a good locomotive in its day and time, but it was in unfamiliar hands. Any locomotive engineer will tell you that a man must be thoroughly acquainted with his machine, and somewhat in love with it to boot, to get the best speed out of it, when speed is necessary.
The raiders were pushed so closely that they soon found it necessary to abandon their engine and car. Three miles north of Ringgold, they slowed down a little, and, seizing a favorable opportunity, tumbled out, and fled through the woods in all directions. It might be supposed that Captain Fuller would be satisfied with recapturing his locomotive, which was in all respects a remarkable achievement. But he had other views. He knew that there would be no safety for the road with the bridge burners at large, and so he made up his mind to be satisfied with nothing less than their capture. In passing through Ringgold, three miles back, he had noticed a company of militia drilling in an old field. So he sent word to the commanding officer by his engineer, Peter Bracken (who, with his fireman, took the two locomotives back to Ringgold), to mount his men as promptly as possible, and join in the chase of the fugitives. This message dispatched, Captain Fuller and two of his men, Fleming Cox and Alonzo Martin, ran into the woods after the fleeing raiders. Jeff Cain, the engineer of the "General," had been left with the Rome locomotive. Mr. Antony Murphy remained in the chase until the "General" was recaptured, and returned to Ringgold with the two locomotives.
All the raiders were caught and imprisoned. Andrews was known to be a spy, and he, with seven of his men who could establish no connection with the Federal army in any branch of the service, was hanged. Six escaped, and made their way to the Federal lines. The rest were regularly exchanged.
Perhaps those that were hanged deserved a better fate. They were brave to recklessness, and were engaged in the boldest adventure of the war. Their scheme was most skillfully planned, and courageously undertaken, and if it had succeeded,—if the bridges had been burned and the door of the Confederate granaries closed,—the result would have been what it was when Sherman, with a large army, and at the sacrifice of many men and much treasure, closed the State Road to the Confederates in Virginia.
Andrews and his men came near accomplishing, by one bold stroke, pretty much all that Sherman accomplished in crippling the Confederates. It was only by the merest chance that they had such a man as Captain Fuller to oppose them. If they had arrived at Marietta the day before or the day after, the probability is that they would have succeeded in their daring venture. Captain Fuller was more than the equal of Andrews in all those qualities that sustain men in moments of great emergency, and greatly his superior in those moral acquirements that lead men to take risks and make sacrifices on behalf of their convictions, and in the line of their duty.
THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD.
The people of the State had not recovered from the chaos and confusion into which they had been thrown by Sherman's march to the sea, when the news came that Lee had surrendered in Virginia, and General Joseph E. Johnston (who had been restored to his command) in North Carolina. Thus a sudden and violent end had been put to all hopes of establishing a separate government. General Sherman, who was as relentless in war as he was pacific and gentle when the war was over, had, in coming to terms with General Johnston, advanced the theory that the South never had dissolved the Union, and that the States were restored to their old places the moment they laid down their arms. This theory was not only consistent with the views of the Union men of the North, but with the nature and character of the Republic itself. But in the short and common-sense cut that Sherman had made to a solution, he left the politicians out in the cold, and they cried out against it as a hideous and ruthless piece of assumption on the part of a military man to attempt to have any opinions after the war was over. Any settlement that left the politicians out in the cold was not to be tolerated. Some of these gentlemen had a very big and black crow to pick with the South. Some of them, in the course of the long debate over slavery, had had their feelings hurt by Southern men; and although these wrangles had been purely personal and individual, the politicians felt that the whole South ought to be humiliated still further.