. The great locomotive chase; a history of the Andrews railroad raid into Georgia in 1862 . anxious to find the name of this person, imagining that he wasprobably some high official of the Western and Atlantic railroad. Any •member of the expedition could at any time have purchased the promiseof his own life by telling who our engineer was—that is, if he had beenbelieved. Then Leadbetter wanted to know the purpose of our expedi-tion. I professed to be ignorant so far as any direct knowledge wasconcerned, but he still questioned and I gave him my conjectures as facts. First Prison Experiences,
. The great locomotive chase; a history of the Andrews railroad raid into Georgia in 1862 . anxious to find the name of this person, imagining that he wasprobably some high official of the Western and Atlantic railroad. Any •member of the expedition could at any time have purchased the promiseof his own life by telling who our engineer was—that is, if he had beenbelieved. Then Leadbetter wanted to know the purpose of our expedi-tion. I professed to be ignorant so far as any direct knowledge wasconcerned, but he still questioned and I gave him my conjectures as facts. First Prison Experiences, 213 All that I told him was what any person of judgment would have sup-posed—just what the Southern editors did conjecture. He acted as ifreceiving very valuable information, but expressed a doubt whetherMitchel had men enough to follow up such an enterprise; saying that,according to his information from his own spies, Mitchel had not morethan ten thousand men. It struck me as ludicrous that a general shouldbe discussing his information thus with a prisoner; but I was determined. Confronted with Gen. Leadbetter. to mislead him if I could, for his estimates were singularly correct. SoT said, that this must refer only to the first division of Mitchels force, anddid not take into account the troops that were ready to come to him byrail from Nashville and the North. He said this was perfectly true, andwanted to know how large this reserve was. I told him that in a monthMitchel would have in all over sixty thousand men ! He asked whatwould be done with such an army ? I told him that of course we did notknow, but that the general opinion was that Mitchel would soon takeChattanooga, then Atlanta, and that there was no force that could stop 214 Daring and Suffering, him till he had reached the sea and cut the Confederacy in halves ! Lead,better seemed profoundly impressed; said that he had no idea that Mitchelhad so many men at his disposal. (Had the Federal Government givenMitch
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Keywords: ., bookauthorpittengerwilliam18401, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910
