The Civil War
The B&O got an early taste of the Civil War during John Brown's raid on the Federal armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia (in those days still part of Virginia). Garrett learned that raiders had stopped a train at Harper's Ferry, and sent a telegraph to the Secretary of War. Federal troops led by Robert E. Lee were sent to put down the rebellion on a B&O train. Garrett considered the B&O to be a Southern railroad, and had pro-South sympathies. However, his business sense (and his anger at seeing Confederates tearing up his railroad) made him side with the Union, and under his direction, the B&O was instrumental in supporting the Federal government, as it was the main rail connection between Washington, DC and the northern states.
Garrett is particularly remembered for his part in the Battle of Monocacy. Agents of the railroad began reporting Confederate troop movements eleven days prior to the battle, and Garrett had their intelligence passed to authorities in the War Department and to Major General Lew Wallace, who commanded the department that would be responsible for defense of the area. As preparations for the battle progressed, Garrett provided transport for federal troops and munitions, and on two occasions was contacted directly by President Abraham Lincoln for further information. Though Union forces lost this battle, the delay allowed Ulysses S. Grant to successfully repel the confederate attack on Washington at the Battle of Fort Stevens two days later, and after the battle, Lincoln paid tribute to Garrett as "The right arm of the Federal Government in the aid he rendered the authorities in preventing the Confederates from seizing Washington and securing its retention as the Capital of the Loyal States."
Garrett was a confidant of President Lincoln, and often accompanied him on his visits to battlefields in Maryland. In 1865, Garrett organized the funeral train that took the body of the assassinated president from Washington to Springfield, Illinois, a trip that included stops and processions in Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago.
Read more about this topic: John W. Garrett
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)