Of course the details for this anticipated railroad destruction had been carefully planned before we started. All the necessary appliances for the work had been brought along. Each officer knew exactly what he was expected to do, and, as a rule, they all successfully completed their tasks. It was expected that I should be of service in tapping the telegraph wires, and to me was left, in a general way, the oversight of the telegraph business.
The General and his Staff, to which I was attached, did not, of course, ride in the extreme advance. Imagine my surprise and disgust, on coming up with a party of these railroad wreckers, to find that they had exceeded their instructions, and cut down nearly a mile of telegraph poles to burn with their ties. They had gathered the wire up and piled it in heaps on the fires. This was exactly what I did not want done. My purpose was to first tap the wires and attach my pocket instrument and have some fun out of it. Another reason for disappointment was, that I had discovered—if not patented—a safer and surer method of destroying telegraph lines. Of course a mile of wire is more easily transported then a mile of rails. Two men can carry a half-mile coil of wire. A telegraph line can be rebuilt and used with the wire lying on trees, or even fences, in dry weather. Therefore, the cutting out of a mile of poles was not an effectual interruption. My plan was—and I call attention of future war-telegraphers to it—to first take some of the small magnet wire, which is so thin as to be almost invisible, attach this to the insulator hook, or wire at the top of the pole, lead the thread of wire down the pole, imbedding it, if possible, in some seam or crack to further conceal it, and at the bottom of the pole run the other point of wire into the ground. If this is done, be the wire even as small as a silk thread, and made of copper, all electric communication is effectually conducted off its channel. Each current, or wave, or signal, sent from either side of this wire will take the short cut and follow it to the ground, where it becomes lost. Neither side can converse or signal over such an obstruction, and they do not know the character or location of the trouble, as the wire works as usual. Of course each operator will wonder why the other does not respond to his signals, and absence is taken for granted as the reason.
I had supplied myself with a quantity of this fine copper wire. Finding the point nearest Gordonsville where the wire had not been removed from the poles, I attached a thread of this thin wire to the line-wire and led it to the earth, so as to be concealed. I knew very well, from long experience, that the telegraph operator at Gordonsville would know, from the loss of all circuit, that the wire had been destroyed at some point, and it would become his first duty to send a man out along the road to find out and repair the damage.
We did not want Gordonsville to know that we, the Yankee raiders, were the destroyers. The piece of wire which I attached to the ground made the circuit short but complete, so that the wire worked as usual up to that concealed point, but no further. When the linemen should come out to repair breaks he would find the wire broken. This he would repair speedily and return to Gordonsville without discovering the little ground-trap that I had set. In time it would be discovered, by a system of tedious and expensive tests from pole to pole, but this would probably consume several days. A broken or destroyed gap of wire could be at once discovered and rebuilt in a few hours.
On the same evening, at a point some distance below this destroyed gap of railroad and telegraph wire, I drew the wire down from a convenient pole in a secluded way-side grove.
It was about sundown when I, with a few helpers, was dancing around a pole when the General and Staff road by. Seeing us engaged in this apparently mysterious business, their curiosity was of course, aroused; we were questioned, the General and his entire Staff stopping to watch the result of tapping the rebel wires.
Unfortunately, the premature cutting of the wires that morning had interfered with my plans for working quietly and secretly in this direction. When I got my little relay attached to the wire, you may imagine with what nervousness I took hold of the adjustment spring to feel for a signal from a distant rebel operator, probably in Richmond.
At first there were no signs of life on the wire. It was while my face was turned away from the instrument, talking to General Stoneman of the mistake of the men in cutting the wire, that I heard a faint click on the magnet. I turned from the General abruptly, bent my ear to the little ticker, and listened with every nerve and sense strained.
A second signal was soon made, which was lost to my ear by some loud talking among the Staff. I nervously turned to them and ordered General Stoneman and his Staff to "keep still."
That's a fact. The General laughed quietly, but didn't dare to open his mouth again.