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Page 20
We left Feliciana in the morning, and ran down the New Orleans and
Ohio railroad to Union City, 18 miles, thence on the Mobile and Ohio
road to Humboldt, which we reached by five o'clock in the evening.
It had now grown dusk. During this time, I had mastered the working
of the engine, when all was in good order; had noted the amount of
steam necessary to run the train, the uses of the various parts of
the engine, and had actually had the handling of the locomotive much
of the way. When we reached Humboldt, where we took the Memphis and
Clarksville railroad for Paris and Bowling Green, the engineer,
Charles Little, refused to run the train on during the night, as he
was not well acquainted with the road, and thought it dangerous. In
addition, the head-light of the locomotive being out of order, and
the oil frozen, he could not make it burn, and he could not possibly
run without it. Colonel Williams grew angry, probably suspecting him
of Union sentiments, and of wishing to delay the train, cursed him
rather roundly, and at length told him he should run it under a
guard; adding, to the guard already on the engine, "If any accident
occurs, shoot the cursed Yankee." Little was a Northern man. Upon
the threat thus enforced, the engineer seemed to yield, and prepared
to start the train. As if having forgotten an important matter, he
said, hastily, "Oh, I must have some oil," and stepping down off the
locomotive, walked toward the engine-house. When he was about twenty
yards from the cars, the guard thought of their duty, and one of
them followed Little, and called upon him to halt; but in a moment
he was behind the machine-shop, and off in the dense woods, in the
deep darkness. The commotion soon brought the colonel and a crowd,
and while they were cursing each other all round, the firemen and
most of the brakemen slipped off, and here we were with no means of
getting ahead. All this time I had stood on the engine, rather
enjoying the _m�l�e_, but taking no part in it, when Colonel
Williams, turning to me, said,
"Can not you run the engine?"
I replied, "No, sir."
"You have been on it as we came down."
"Yes, sir, as a matter of curiosity."
"Don't you know how to start and stop her!"
"Yes, that is easy enough; but if any thing should go wrong I could
not adjust it."
"No difference, no difference, sir; I must be at Bowling Green
to-morrow, and you must put us through."
I looked him in the eye, and said calmly, "Colonel Williams, I can
not voluntarily take the responsibility of managing a train with a
thousand men aboard, nor will I be forced to do it under a guard who
know nothing about an engine, and who would be as likely to shoot
me for doing my duty as failing to do it; but if you will find
among the men a fireman, send away this guard, and come yourself on
the locomotive, I will do the best I can."
And now commenced my apprenticeship to running a Secession railroad
train, with a Rebel regiment on board. The engine behaved admirably,
and I began to feel quite safe, for she obeyed every command I gave
her, as if she acknowledged me her rightful lord.
I could not but be startled at the position in which I was placed,
holding in my hand the lives of more than a thousand men, running a
train of twenty-five cars over a road I had never seen, running
without a head-light, and the road so dark that I could only see a
rod or two ahead, and, to crown all, knowing almost nothing of the
business. Of course I ran slowly, about ten miles an hour, and
never took my hand off the throttle or my eye from the road. The
colonel at length grew confident, and almost confidential, and did
most of the talking, as I had no time for conversation. When we had
run about thirty miles, and every thing was going well, Colonel
Williams concluded to walk back, on the top of the box-cars, to a
passenger car which was attached to the rear of the train and
occupied by the officers.
This somewhat hazardous move he commenced just as we struck a
stretch of trestlework which carried the road over a gorge some
fifty feet deep. As the locomotive reached the end of the
trestlework the grade rose a little, and I could see through, or in,
a deep cut which the road ran into, an obstruction. What it was, or
how far ahead, I had almost no conception; but quick as thought--and
thought is quick as lightning in such circumstances--I whistled for
the brakes, shut off the steam, and waited the collision. I would
have reversed the engine, but a fear that a reversal of its action
would crowd up the cars on the trestlework and throw them into the
gorge below, forbade; nor was there wisdom in jumping off, as the
steep embankments on either side would prevent escape from the wreck
of the cars when the collision came. All this was decided in an
instant of time, and I calmly awaited the shock which I saw was
unavoidable. Though the speed, which was very moderate before, was
considerably diminished in the fifty yards between the obstacle and
the head of the train, I saw that we would certainly run into the
rear of another train, which was the obstruction I had seen.
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