The "General," April 12, 1862

I have been reading Stealing the General: The Great Locomotive Chase and the First Medal of Honor by Russell Bonds (Westholme, 2008).  It is an account of the raid led by James J. Andrews on April 12, 1862, to capture a train on the Western & Atlantic Railroad in north Georgia and run it up to Chattanooga, burning bridges and damaging the line that was key to Confederate movements of supplies and troops.  The raiders hoped to coordinate with Union general Ormsby M. Mitchel as he moved his troops east with the aim of capturing Chattanooga: the destruction of the line would hinder the Confederates in their efforts to defend the town.

In a daring feat, the raiders did manage to capture the locomotive called the “General” and to run it up the line as far as Ringgold, Georgia—not far short of Chattanooga—before they used up all their fuel.  But the intrepid crew of the captured train, who’d been caught off guard when they got off the train for a breakfast stop, were determined to chase them down. They commandeered a series of locomotives and followed in hot pursuit.  When the “General” ran out of steam, the pursuers were just behind.  All of the raiders were captured.  Andrews was hanged, as were seven of the raiders who were convicted as spies.

It was in October, 1862, when the ones not yet hanged heard their turn could come next—and soon—that they decided to escape from their jail in Atlanta.  And this part of the story fascinates me even more than the locomotive chase itself.  In the day before they made their escape, they decided among themselves to form pairs, and they discussed the different possible routes.  They were hoping to connect with Union troops they believed to be as close as northern Alabama or east Tennessee, but in fact Union forces under the indecisive leadership of Don Carlos Buell had retreated, and the troops were no closer than Mississippi and Kentucky.

Imagine this: you are weak from your six-month imprisonment.  You have no map or compass, your clothes and shoes are tattered, you have no food, no weapons.  You are deep in hostile territory, and you can only guess at the location of the blue army.

The astonishing thing is that of the 14 raiders left at that point (two more had been captured who were part of the conspiracy but hadn’t actually been in the raid), eight of them—four pairs—managed to travel hundreds of miles and to reach Union lines.  And they went in several completely different directions, ending up in Corinth, Mississippi; Somerset and Lebanon, Kentucky; and all the way down at the mouth of the Apalachicola River.

Their journeys were entirely improvised.  They had no information.  They woke each morning wondering which way fortune would take them.

Porter and Wollam went west to Corinth, Mississippi.

Dorsey and Hawkins went north to Lebanon, Kentucky.

Brown and Knight went north to Somerset, Kentucky.

Wilson and Wood went south to the mouth of the Apalachicola River.

(To be continued)

I’ve received a CD of photos and videos taken by Josh and Paul of our Woolly Tops expedition.  Some of them show the waterlogged second day of our trip.  Many wonderful ones to choose from—here are a few.

The tributary of Eagle Rocks Prong we waded down (taken by Paul)

Brian contemplates the stream (taken by Josh)

Peter and Jenny forge down the stream (taken by Josh)

Jenny bushwhacks along Laurel Top ridge (taken by Josh)

Jenny's hat (taken by Josh)

We hit the A.T. (taken by Josh)

The Reaper cooks breakfast at Tricorner Knob (taken by Paul)

Hoar frost along the A.T. (taken by Josh)

"Roi des Belges," the steamer Conrad took up the Congo in 1890

“To the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous.”

—Joseph Conrad, “An Outpost of Progress”

Conrad understood those two distinct, neatly joined facets of a European man’s deterioration in central Africa.  All that was comfortable melted away; all that was alien grew grotesque and disturbing.

His 1898 story “Outpost of Progress” takes up the subject in an anecdotal way.  Of course the word “Progress” is ironic.  The two ill-prepared traders who are set down at a station by the river gradually learn that their trade involves the selling of men as well as the buying of tusks, and they sink into a moral cesspool, then destroy each other.  The story could have been told over gin on a colonial verandah, much as Somerset Maugham’s tropical characters did two decades later.

Heart of Darkness (1902) takes the same subject but blurs the edges, as J.M.W. Turner did in his landscapes of the Thames.  And Conrad’s novella about the murk of the Congo is wrapped inside a glimmering outer story set on a boat on the Thames.

"The Fighting Temeraire" by J.M.W. Turner

But no one could have described the moral desolation of Kurtz over a gin and tonic.  Conrad had to get us all into a trance, and he repeats himself, backtracks, elaborates. He wears on our nerves.  But we’ll never get rid of the image of the heads on stakes around the house in the midst of the jungle— and those words “The horror! The horror!” will never go away even if they’ve nearly become a joke.

I can see that Heart of Darkness is the greater work, but I recommend “An Outpost of Progress” for anyone who wants to understand the simple mechanics of what happened to those employees of the “Societe Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo.”