page_title: Jackson's operations against the B&O Railroad (1861)
section_title: Jackson moves to Martinsburg
hierarchical_section_title: Jackson's operations against the B&O Railroad (1861) / Secession and Retreat from Harper's Ferry / Jackson moves to Martinsburg
caption_attribution_description: English: Harper's Weekly woodcut illustration, July 20, 1861
context_page_description: Colonel Stonewall Jackson's operations against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1861 were aimed at disrupting the critical railroad used heavily by the opposing Union Army as a major supply route. A second goal was to capture the maximum number of locomotives and cars for use in the Confederate States of America. During this point in the war, the state of Maryland's stance was not yet determined. The B&O Railroad, then owned by the state of Maryland, ran through Maryland and along the Potomac River Valley in its pass through the Appalachian Mountains, but took a crucial turn at Harpers Ferry and passed south, through Virginia and Martinsburg while crossing the Shenandoah Valley. The railroad then continued on through much of present-day West Virginia, which then was still part of Virginia, meaning that a major portion of the route went through a state which later seceded.
  Many historians have written that the events began when the Virginia militia initiated a military raid that started in western Virginia at the end of busy noontime traffic on May 23, 1861,"the eve of Virginia's ratification of her secession ordinance", during the early days of the American Civil War.
context_section_description: The Virginia legislature had ratified the Confederate constitution on May 2, and General Joseph Johnston had been given the Confederate command over the area covering Harper's Ferry.  Johnston arrived in Harper's Ferry on the afternoon of the 23rd and informed Jackson of the change.  From the beginning Johnston felt that Harper's Ferry was indefensible, and he soon began pleading his case with Richmond.  On June 13, in a telegram from Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, Johnston was authorized, if he felt the enemy "is about to turn [his] position",  to "destroy everything at Harper's Ferry" and "retire upon the railroad towards Winchester."
  On June 19, while Johnston and Jackson were on the road, Colonel "Jeb" Stuart was in Martinsburg, twenty miles (32 km) north of Winchester, and Johnston was concerned that Union troops might be advancing towards Martinsburg.  Johnston ordered Jackson to join Stuart and destroy the important B&O railroad shops before they fell into Union hands.  Jackson arrived in Martinsburg on the afternoon of June 20. Robertson wrote:
  Pursuant to orders, but against his better judgment that railroad equipment should always be saved, Jackson began a systematic destruction of the Martinsburg yards.  Details ripped up track and burned cross-ties; other groups of soldiers set fire to the round houses and machine shops.  Some fifty-six locomotives and tenders, as well as at least 305 coal cars, were either set afire, heaved into the Opequon river, or dismantled to the point of uselessness.
  Jackson was conflicted over supervising the destruction of material badly needed by the Confederacy.  Within a few days Jackson worked out a plan with the assistance of two railroad employees, Hugh Longust and Thomas R. Sharp, to select the 13 least damaged locomotives, dismantle the engines, and transport overland by forty-horse teams the 38 miles (61 km) to Strasburg.
  At Martinsburg, as Jackson proceeded with this "wreckage", he started to have doubts as "word [came] from his beloved Southland of the desperate need of locomotives."  He noted that "some of these Baltimore and Ohio engines had not been so very badly burned; after all, there is very little about a locomotive that can ever be destroyed by fire.".  Hungerford writes:
  Slowly a great idea formulated itself within his mind.  If only some of the best of the locomotives could be moved down upon those Southern railways. ... Over the turnpike; as he had done with the little Harpers Ferry engines, from Winchester to Strasburg.  True it was that the distance from Martinsburg through Winchester to Strasburg (thirty-eight miles) was considerably longer, but the highway was good and the thing was possible.
  At any rate, one bright morning in July, he arranged to take the first of the engines out over the turnpike.  A picked group of about thirty-five men, including six machinists, ten teamsters and about a dozen laborers, had been told of the task.  They were placed under the immediate charge of Hugh Longust, an experienced and veteran railroader from Richmond.  Longhust reported in turn to Colonel Thomas R. Sharp, at that time ranked as captain and also as acting quartermaster-general in the Confederate Army.
  Hungerford states that "In this way, fourteen Baltimore and Ohio engines, of every sort and variety, 'made the Gap' that summer of '61."
  Jackson's plan was to move these assets down the Winchester and Potomac Railroad via Harpers Ferry to Winchester, disassemble them and mount them on special wagons, and move them overland to Strasburg, Virginia, where they were to be reassembled and moved south on the Manassas Gap Railroad. With the assistance of the chief engineer of the Winchester and Potomac Railroad, Thomas R. Sharp, Hugh Longust, an experienced railroad engineer from Richmond, Virginia, and Joseph Keeler and his son Charles Keeler—wagoneers living near Stephenson's Depot—special carriages and dollies were constructed and used to transport the first four small locomotives south from Winchester along the Valley Turnpike to Strasburg and then to Richmond via the
caption: July 20, 1861 Harper's Weekly News Illustration:Rail cars destroyed by Mississipans at Harper's Ferry
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