Jackson's operations against the B&O Railroad (1861)
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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 operations began when the Virginia militia launched a raid 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. Historian James I. Robertson Jr. contests this version of events, saying that such a raid never occurred and that the story grew out of an unreliable 1885 account of the events by General John D. Imboden.
In any event, from late May through June Confederate forces controlled the railroad and destroyed track and bridges throughout the Virginia portion of the railroad. Believing that Harper's Ferry was indefensible against a Union advance, General Joseph E. Johnston was given permission to abandon the post. As part of this retreat, a major bridge was destroyed at Harper's Ferry and the railroad works at Martinsburg were destroyed. In a major engineering feat, 14 locomotives from Martinsburg were disassembled and moved across country by horse drawn teams to Strasburg, Virginia. Eventually, the locomotives were moved to Richmond where they were put to use by the Confederacy.