August 20, 2014 • 34 mins
As the second part of the story picks up, James Andrews and 22 men have commandeered a northbound train in Big Shanty, Georgia. Its conductor, William Fuller, has begun chasing them on foot with two other men in a valiant effort to thwart their plot.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house
works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Frye, and today we
are continuing our episode on the Andrews Raid, also known
(00:22):
as the Great Locomotive Chase, which is a train chase
which is so exciting that it needed to be in
two parts. So to recap about where we are in
the story right now, James Andrews and twenty two men
have common deered a northbound train in Big Shanty, Georgia,
which is now Kennison. It's conductor, William Fuller, has started
chasing them on foot, along with Anthony Murphy, who was
(00:45):
a foreman with the railroad who was on his way
to Alatuna to inspect some machinery, and E. Jefferson Caine,
who was the train's engineer. That train was pulled by
a locomotive called the General. Fully remember the men from
when they embarked on the train Marietta, and at that
point he had suspected that they might be Confederate soldiers
who were deserting. He thought they'd run the General until
(01:07):
it ran out of steam and then abandon it. This
was actually a pretty logical conclusion, giving that there was
a It was a huge Confederate encampment right there, like
right by the train depot, so aboard the train, just
outside of Big Shanty. The train very briefly and terrifyingly
slowed down, and it looked like all was going to
be lost because of some kind of mechanical problem. But
(01:30):
the crew realized that a damper had been left open,
so they closed it again. They re stoked the fire,
and then they were back on their way and on
their approach to Acworth, Georgia, Andrews had the men cut
the telegraph lines using a saw that they found. They
also delayed a little so they could return to the
train's normal schedule and arouse less suspicion at the station's
(01:51):
up the line. He did, however, have an excuse ready
for why the train was not making scheduled stops. He
said the train was tasked with carrying munitions and supplies
bound for General p G. T. Beauregards Army. About two
and a half miles later, the raiders on the train
approached Moon Station and they found a station a section
crew at work on the track. The crew was immediately
(02:15):
suspicious of them. The train was ahead of schedule still,
and none of the people on the engine were familiar
to them. They normally would have known the engineer and
the conductor and the other people working on the train.
Even so, one of the raiders asked one of the
workers for a pride bar, and he handed it over
to him. This found up being the only tool they
had with which to try to destroy the train tracks.
(02:37):
Now this is simultaneously dumb, because the whole point of
this endeavor was to destroy train tracks, and they had
not brought any tools with which to do so. And
it was also necessary because they really could not travel
discreetly on foot for many miles while carrying many implements
of of train destruction. I like how they carefully walked
(02:59):
through every piece of the plan and they just left
this kind of a chance, like we hope we find
a crow bar. Oh yeah, we talked in the previous
episode about how they stayed at this hotel that was
owned by a guy who was also acting as a
union spy. That's entirely circumstantial, and to me, one of
the arguments against maybe that having been a deliberate connection
(03:22):
is that that guy would have been a good person
to pack up some things meant to destroy train tracks
and you know, label them as cargo and get them
aboard the train. But that did not happen, so instead
they had this one pride bar. So back to the
men on foot, Fuller, being as we said in the
(03:44):
last episode, in extremely good physical shape, pulled ahead of
the other two men who were chasing the train, and
when he found the crew at Moon Station, they told
him the General had gone by just about thirty minutes earlier.
Fuller got a pole car and it rolled along the
tracks while being pulled like a gondola, and he doubled
back to the other two men and then he resumed
(04:05):
his pursuit. His goal was to make it to Cooper's
iron Works, where he knew he'd find an old but
reliable engine which was known as the Yonah, which he
could then commandeer for this chase. Although the raiders did
stick pretty closely to the posted schedule for the train,
they didn't stop at any more of the stations. If
they could help it, what they would do is destroy
(04:26):
the telegraph the telegraph wire, either as they got close
to the station or after they had passed it so
that they couldn't call for help once they realized something
was wrong. Eventually, instead of cutting the wires, they would
just tie it to the back of the train and
yank it down behind them as they went. Otherwise, they
just went on past platforms full of confused passengers without stopping.
(04:48):
They also marked the train with a red flag, and
that was a signal that danger was present or there
was another train following behind them, and they did this
as an attempt to deflect suspicion. Meanwhile, aboard the poll car,
when Fuller and team got to a section of trunk
that had been blocked with cross ties next to a
pull down telegraph wire, he realized that the men he
(05:11):
was dealing with and chasing were not merely deserters. Yeah,
this is when he started, in addition to trying to
catch them, trying to call for help every time he
got to a station. Things had gotten off to a
relatively auspicious start for the raiders, but they began to
fall apart pretty quickly after getting farther away from Big Shanty.
(05:33):
When Andrews crossed the Ottowah River, he made two kind
of questionable decisions. What was that he and the crew
saw the Yonah, which at this point Fuller was already
planning to get and use. UM Andrews had no way
of knowing this, but still they He definitely knew that
the strain was something that could be used to come
after them. Um the Yonah was an older engine that
(05:55):
had been retired and it was being rented for private use,
so they number one did not destroy or disable that engine,
and then number two they also did not destroy the
bridge that the Yonah would have had to cross to
get into pursuit of them. So when Fuller and his
men arrived just as they had planned, they commandeered the
Yonah and they took up their pursuit. A little farther north.
(06:18):
In Kingston, Georgia, there was a fork in the track
and that connected to a spur out to Rome, Georgia.
Since he'd studied the train schedule, Andrews knew ahead of
time that he was going to need to stop here
to let a southbound train pass to clear the tracks
before he could go north again. But there were actually
three southbound trains on the track. Two of them were
(06:40):
not on schedule. They were driven by panic in Chattanooga
thanks to the battle in Alabama, and the Andrews wound
up being delayed by more than an hour. As all
of these trains cleared. Yeah, basically everybody in Chattanooga was like, well,
the Yankees are coming out here. We got the go
(07:00):
So yeah, he the longer he sat there, the more
people became suspicious, like something was clearly not right. He
was not the conductor who was supposed to be on there.
The engineer was not the engineer everyone knew already. They
started the people at the station started asking questions that
Andrews really couldn't easily answer. So when these three southbound
(07:22):
trains were finally clear of the station, the man tending
the switch refused to switch the track to let the
general get through. So Andrews took the key and did
it himself, which pretty much made it obvious to everyone
that he was up to no good. Yeah that at
that point, your cover is blown, I think. Well, and
a lot of their decisions that seem kind of questionable.
(07:44):
We're partially or wholly motivated by not blowing their cover. Yeah,
but at this point, I mean, they have really no
option but to go for broke. So, uh, Andrews and
his team are finally on their way, but by this
point Fuller was just mere minutes behind, because, as we mentioned,
he had commandeered the Yonah and he was giving chase,
and the three trains that Andrews had to wait for
(08:06):
didn't cause him nearly so much of a problem. Fuller
and his team were well known to the other conductors
and he was able to quickly explain the situation and
get everyone that he encountered to help, and rather than waiting,
he abandoned the Unah and picked up the William R. Smith,
which was on the other side of the waiting trains,
and as a bonus, it was also a much faster engine,
(08:27):
Plus there was some nearby militia, and they joined Fuller's
effort Aboard the William R. Smith. Fuller and his men
closed the gap on the General and they were doing
really well until they got to a missing piece of
track outside of Kingston, which Andrews men had actually managed
to finally pry up. They had to abandon the engine
(08:48):
and continue again for a while on foot. And now
let's jump back on the train tracks and get to
the action. So outside of Dairsville, Andrews and company met
the southbound Texas, which was an engine that was very
similar to the General, and it was pulling a very
long train. Andrews talked to Texas in the yielding on
(09:08):
assigning so that they could pass, using his excuse that
his train was tasked with carrying vital war supplies. As
we alluded to earlier, they could not have used this
story if they had also damaged the Texas, so, knowing
they were taking a risk, they let it be and
they continued on. They let the Texas continue on southward
(09:29):
as the General continued north, and as you may have predicted,
this turned out to be their undoing. So Fuller and
his team on foot again take that marathon, like I
think he's run far longer than several marathons. At this point,
encountered the Texas as it was traveling south, and they
flagged it down. They commandeered it, They uncoupled the freight
(09:52):
and passenger cars, and then because it was facing south,
they actually ran it up the track backwards as fast
as it could go. At this point, they're they're about
halfway to Chattanooga, and this is another way where you go.
Of course, this is a Buster Keaton movie. Backs. They
(10:13):
ran the Texas backwards as fast as they could for
pretty much the entire rest of the chase, and they
observed none of the safety precautions that were meant to
prevent head on collisions between trains. At this point, they
did not have time for any of that, so they
basically just blew the trains whistle almost NonStop while going
as fast as they could backwards on a train engine
(10:35):
that was facing south while they were going north. And
so this is the part of the chase that's super
exciting if you're watching a movie, but when you're doing
a podcast, it is not so exciting because all we
can keep saying is that they kept running the train
backwards as fast as possible, which is exciting, but it
goes on for a while that way. UH Andrews men
also pushed the general as fast as they could, too,
(10:57):
and they abandoned their plans to burn bridges and tear
up the track because the Texas was just way too
hot on their heels for them to have time to
stop and do those things, even if they had had
more time. By this point, it had also been raining
for days and it was still raining and everything was
water logged, so not really good conditions for setting fire
to things. One of the biggest bits of excitement in
(11:19):
this stretch of the chase is a story of the
Yankees lighting a box car on fire and leaving it
either on the tracks or in a covered bridge. Um.
This sadly is an embellishment that was added later. It
does appear in both movie versions of this story, though,
but historically it just does not pan out based on
(11:39):
the fact that they started with three cars. Um that
it's just the numbers don't add up. They did not
set a box car on fire. I am sad to
tell you it does sound good. I could see where
no scriptwriter would leave that out. Uh. What the men
aboard the General did do was uncoupled each of the
lad two box cars, one at a time to send
(12:03):
down the track toward the Texas. And they were hoping
that this would cause a crash, but the Texas just
reduced its speed, caught the car coupled with it because
remember it is facing backwards, and pushed it off at
the next siding. So this is kind of like a
perfect storm of all of these crazy things happened in
such a way that were completely beneficial to Fuller. Yeah,
(12:24):
it turned out to completely be an asset that they
were backwards instead of a liability. Um. Other than this
box car trick, the only damage the raiders really had
time to do at this point was throwing railroad ties
onto the tracks that they had collected, all these railroad
ties that they were going to use as fuel to
set things on fire. Um. They bashed out the back
(12:46):
of the box car because there's no door or window
or anything back there. Um, and they just started throwing
railroad ties out of the back of it. Um. This
did not work all that well because number one Feller's
men could just move them, and the number two they
just bounced all over the place. They would bounce off
of the tracks more often than they would stay there
(13:06):
um on the rare occasion they took a pause to
try to pry up some of the track or destroy it.
They just did not have enough time to do enough
of a job to slow down the Texas at all.
And additionally, Fuller very smartly also collected a telegraph operator
at one of the stations that they passed. He composed
a message to Chattanooga to warn them about what was happening,
(13:29):
and he dropped the operator in this message off at
the next stop with the hope that he would be
able to send this message before the men aboard the
General cut the wire farther up the line. As a
side note, this actually worked, but Fuller had no way
of knowing that it worked because he didn't have time
to wait for the conductor to come back. Um With
the Texas closing in and their supply of firewood dwindling,
(13:54):
it became really clear that Andrew's plan was on the
verge of absolute total failure, and they did not even
know that a second train, which was carrying ten Confederate
infantrymen and their commander, had also joined the pursuit behind
the backwards running Texas. Union soldiers on board The General
started talking about how maybe they should stop the train
(14:14):
and make a stand, but Andrews really didn't have any
way of knowing how many Confederate soldiers were aboard the Texas,
and he thought it might be a lot, so he
decided they should continue on. They did make some brief
stops for firewood and water so that they could keep
the engine going, but they can never spend enough time
at any of their stops to get a full load,
(14:35):
and as their supplies wound down, they resorted to burning
paper hats clothes and even Andrew's saddle bags. Basically anything
that they could part with and that would catch fire
was going in to keep the engine running. And the
train went slower and slower and slower, and so finally
out of fuel entirely. The General stopped two miles north
(14:59):
of Wrangled, which is eighteen or so miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
So it had traveled eighty seven miles in seven hours,
and under normal circumstances, the trip all the way from
Atlanta to Chattanooga was at least a twelve hour journey.
So these trains had at various points been traveling at
amazing speeds considering the time, Like, having a train goes
(15:21):
sixty miles an hour today not a big deal. Having
a train goes sixty miles an hour over poor quality
track during the Civil War astounding uh and the raiders
abandoned the engine and they scattered into the woods. Fuller,
after making sure that the General was okay, pursued them,
along with the Confederate soldiers and others who had joined
(15:43):
the chase along the way. I love that he checked
on the train first nine two in Wringled. It was
muster day that meant that the town was full of
families and of young men hoping to enlist in the
Confederate Army. So when words spread the a bunch of
Union spies had escaped into the woods in the area, uh,
(16:04):
they all joined the search in earnest and all of
the raiders, including the ones who missed the train in Marietta,
were captured on those last two. As a note, it
quickly became obvious that these two strangers, who seemed to
have nothing to do in Marietta, had something to do
with the train that was stolen just up the track
in Big Shanty. So all of the men were captured. Yeah,
(16:25):
there were a couple of men who almost managed to
make a clean getaway, but in one way or another,
somebody caught onto the fact that they were not who
they said they were, and they all wound up if
they were captured near wrangled on a train bound to
Atlanta to go to prison, which was pulled by the general. So,
(16:46):
even though he was a civilian, Andrews was court martialed
and he was sentenced to death as a spy on
May thirty one, with his execution scheduled for a week later,
and the night after that he and another inmate actually
escaped from prison, although they were captured again consequently. When
Andrews went to the gallows on June seven, eight sixty two,
(17:07):
the shackles around his ankles were secured with rivets. His
hanging was rather gruesome, even as hangings go. He was
a very tall man, as we said in the previous episode,
and so in addition to him being too tall, the
rope was too long, which meant that his death was
slow and agonizing, and did not occur until someone literally
(17:28):
scooped the dirt out from under his feet so that
they would not touch the ground. His fiancee, Elizabeth Layton,
died less than two years later, and her family was
quite insistent that she had died of a broken heart.
Seven others of the raiders were also hanged on June eighteenth,
and that immediately followed their convictions because the Confederate Army
(17:50):
did not want to risk another escape attempt by putting
off the execution for a later date. In this case,
the ropes for two of the raiders, William Campbell and
Samuel Slaven's, broke and they had to be hanged all
over again. The rest of the raiders who at this
point either had not been tried or had not been sentenced.
Wound up in prison for a while, and they started
(18:13):
writing to Jefferson Davis and other important people UH to
ask for clemency. However, because there's never uh an end
to twists and turns and excitement in this story, and
this is why it's two episodes long, right, ten of
the men actually busted out on October sixteenth of eighteen
sixty two. They took the keys from a guard and
(18:36):
made their escape, and then they paired up UH and
they scattered in pairs of two. Two of the men
were caught within a day. Six of them actually found
their way northward into Union territory over land. Two made
it to corinth Mississippi, on November eighteenth, and on the
same day two more made it to Lebanon, Kentucky. Two
(18:56):
more got to Somerset, Kentucky on December two. And many
of these men went on to write accounts about the
raid and their escapes, which are of course full of
danger and hardship and some extreme embellishments, although the story
really doesn't need a lot of extreme embellishments to be
kind of amazing. Yeah, I mean, especially when you consider
that they all spent more than a month in enemy territory,
(19:19):
mostly on foot, try to get home, and were escaped
prisoners of war. As if that were not already exciting enough,
alf Wilson and Mark Wood did a completely non intuitive
thing in their escape attempt, and they went south along
the Chattahoochee River and they continued to follow rivers south
until they got to the Gulf coast of Florida. Then
(19:41):
they managed to find a boat and they rode it
out into the Gulf of Mexico to the USS Somerset,
which the Union was given using as part of a
blockade on November seven. That's what we call the hard way.
It was the hard way, but they got to the
Union faster than anyone else. The remaining six Raiders that
(20:04):
were still in jail were moved from Fulton County Jail
in Atlanta to Livy Prison in Richmond in eighteen sixty two,
and from there they were moved to Castle Thunder, which
was a wartime prison in Richmond, and they stayed there
until March seventeenth of eighteen sixty three, when an officer
came in and gave a call for anyone who wanted
to go to the United States. The raiders went with
(20:26):
about three hundred other prisoners as part of an exchange,
and they all arrived in Washington on Thursday, March nineteenth.
So in Washington, d c. They gave an account of
the raid to the Advocate General of the Army, who
was Joseph M. Holt, and he had been tasked with
investigating this raid that they had all kind of heard
a little about. I mean, it had been headline news
(20:48):
in all of the newspapers everywhere, but they didn't really
know what had happened. So the Advocate General made a
note of their bravery and his report. From there, the
raiders also appeared before the Secretary of War, Edwin McMaster Stanton,
who presented each of them with medals of Honor. This
made Private Jacob Parrot, Sergeant Elu Mason, Corporal William Pittinger,
(21:12):
Corporal William Reddick, Private William ben Singer, and Private Robert
Buffam the first to receive the Medal of Honor in
the United States. So a note on the Medal of Honor.
It was conceived by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Davis Townsend, who
was looking for ways to bolster troop morale as the
war war on. It was to recognize extraordinary courage and
(21:33):
inspirement in their service. Abraham Lincoln signed a bill creating
the Naval Medal of Valor in eighteen sixty one and
another creating the Army Medal of Honor in eighteen sixty two.
These were the first official military awards in the United States.
These bills originally applied just to the Civil War, but
Congress amended the laws in eighteen sixty three so they
(21:54):
would apply outside of the context of the Civil War,
and the amendments also made it of that the medals
could be given retroactively all the way back to the
beginning of the Civil War, and they could be given
to commissioned officers, so to kind of recap on the timeline.
Even though these laws had been passed in eighteen sixty
one in eighteen sixty two, by eighteen sixty three, when
(22:15):
the Raiders made it to Washington, d c. None had
actually been awarded yet until they were awarded to the raiders,
and those six recipients who were the first to receive
these awards that were from Andrew's raid were also each
given one hundred dollars and they were ordered to be
reimbursed for expenses and the value of anything that had
been confiscated from them when they said they wished to
(22:38):
return to the army. They were also all given promotions,
and they were invited to meet the President, which they
did on March twenty five, eighteen sixty three. The raiders
who had escaped and the ones who were executed were
mostly also given medals of honor as well. Um there
was an exception for some reason of George Wilson and
(22:59):
Perry Shadrack. It's not completely clear why everyone else got
medals and they did not. The civilians James Andrews and
William Campbell were not eligible for the Medal of Honor
because they were civilians. Um, one of the two men
who got pressed into Confederate service at the very very
beginning of the story also did not receive a Medal
(23:19):
of honor. And it's I'm not quite clear on why
the three uh who were in the military and did
not get a medal, why they did not get to
meddle and this story actually became deeply important to both
the North and the South. In the North, the men
were characterized as daring, cunning heroes, in spite of this
(23:41):
their failure. They had worked their way deep into enemy territory,
and they had tried to execute an ingenious idea, and
you can blame whether and bad luck for it not
being quite as successful as they hoped. And to the south,
Fuller and the men who joined him were determined heroes
for thwarting the Northern action, even though he was a civilian.
(24:01):
James J. Andrews body was moved to the National Military
Cemetery in Chattanooga in eight seven, and it lies there
next to the bodies of seven of the other raiders.
The General was actually damaged during Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, and
it's not completely clear whether it was damaged by Confederates
to keep it from falling into Union hands or by
(24:22):
the Union just in an effort to damage the Confederate forces.
It was repaired after the war, however, Yeah, I found
sources that said the complete opposite on who damaged the General.
Um Today, the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive
History is where the General lives. Uh. This was pretty
much built for that purpose in nineteen seventy two, and
(24:45):
it's affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. This however, followed an
extremely long kind of custody battle between Tennessee and Georgia
about who should have the General that actually went all
the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear
the case, and that lets stand a lower course ruling
that the railroad could do whatever it wanted with the train,
(25:07):
and it wound up belonging to Georgia. If you live
in Georgia or Tennessee, it may not surprise you, as
the two states have a number of rivalries. Uh. The
Texas is in the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum, which, Uh,
isn't that the Cyclorama moving at some point the not
(25:28):
Tuesday the Future Show? Presumably the Texas will as well.
I think so. But uh, I went as I was
confirming because the places that I had found that said
where all these trains are a couple of years old,
and I was trying to confirm that everything was where
it says it is. Uh, And I was like, why
is the Cyclorama website down? That would be why. Yeah,
I think they're doing a whole move and renovation plan
(25:51):
with it. Well, that makes sense then, so. Buster Keaton's
The General was a huge box office flop when it
came out, it was critically panned. It's budget was one
of the biggest budgets of the silent film era. But
today it has become a classic. It's number eighteen on
the American Film Institutes tenth Anniversary edition of one hundred Years,
(26:13):
one hundred Movies. Um. They wanted to use the actual
General locomotive in the movie, but the people who owned
it at the time found out that it was a comedy.
They said no. Um. I watched this movie over the weekend.
It is delightful. If you have an opportunity, I recommend it.
(26:33):
And the Disney movie that was made in the fifties
is a drama, and it's more or less accurate in
terms of the general idea and the stops along the line.
But of course it is a movie made to thrill audiences,
so it is embellished. Uh. And as it's a fifties
era movie about the Civil War, there are some parts
of it that are a little uncomfortable by today's standards,
(26:55):
for sure, particularly when they sang I wish I was
in Dixie and other parts. Do you have some listener
mail for us actionist thrilling rind? So, before I get
into the listener mail. This is one of the ideas
that came for a call for happier history stories. I'm
so glad someone suggested it me too, as as soon
(27:18):
as I was like, well, that sounds like an awesomely
good time to talk about, as kind of a breather
from some of the dark and dour things that we
have had on the podcast lately. I will confess that
I'm a little I'm still a little bit fixated on
Fuller's running. I'm like, did anybody clock how far he
actually ran and how fast? Because that's the kind of
(27:41):
running nursery I would enjoy. I think his running I
would probably put it into the more of the ten
k range than the marathon range because whenever they could
get a hand car or a pole car or some
other conveyance. Yeah, they did that mostly because it was
faster than I'm still impressed. It's still yes, it is
(28:05):
still extremely impressive, especially because he was dressed in a
classic conductor's uniform at the time. Okay, our listener mail
is from Rob. Rob says Hi, Tracy and Holly. I
just wanted to send you a letter to say thank
you for the wonderful work you do with Stuff You Missed.
I came across your podcast when I decided to take
a break from the numerous pro wrestling podcast I've been
(28:27):
listening to. Please don't hold that against me. I'm gonna
pause here and say pretty much our point of view
is like what you like, so we're not going to judge. Um.
I wanted to see if anyone had any information on
a favorite topic of mine, Rappa Neui Easter Island. That's
when I found the massive bank of podcasts from Stuff
You Missed. I was almost as excited as you guys
(28:47):
were went doing your cheese podcast. I've spent the last
two weeks going through episode after episode while driving, doing chores,
or just working out. It's been so wonderful to listen
to you and your past hosts talk about just wonderful
moments in time and listening or and learning so much
that I can pass a line to my middle school students,
a question for you and a possible suggestion for future casts.
(29:10):
My students always look for quote, the ones true answer,
or what really happened when we study history, But as
we find out, there is never one answer. There are theories, beliefs,
and hunches. The time we'll probably never know the quote truth,
which is hard for my kids and many adults to accept.
How do you come to grips with this realization? How
(29:31):
has this caused challenges for you in doing your podcast? Um?
And then he gives some other suggestions, one of which
is the antikithera mechanism, which so robbed Jino. We have
that one already, yes, I still love that one. We
have a whole whole archive now at our website, so
you can go um and find it there. And then
(29:55):
he says thank you and keep up the fantastic work.
So uh. To answer the question in about the like
knowing what the truth is or what really happened? Um.
That's actually been one of the motivators of this podcast
for me, because I feel like a lot of my
history classes in school presented things as though that was
(30:16):
the one true answer um. Or sometimes I had one
teacher in particular, it joe me kind of crazy. She
would throw out the sort of bombshell of an idea,
like why do you think there is prejudice against such
and such a group of people? And she would act
as though there was an answer to this question that
was the right answer. But then she wouldn't tell us
(30:37):
what the right answer was, and it was deeply frustrating
to me. I was like that, if there's an answer,
why did you tell us? She just wanted to get
you thinking, but she did it in a way that
was probably more frustrating than uh yeah, igniting of your
imaginations and your thought processes. So really, when when it
comes to the podcast, number one, I think figuring out
(31:01):
what story we have not already been told is sort
of a long time motivator of the podcast. Um. But
then number two, reading things of multiple perspectives and putting
my own gut response aside and actually listening, uh is
a big part of how I I work with that. Like,
(31:22):
I see a behavior sometimes that where we will we
will put up a link to an episode or a
link to something interesting, and a lot of people will
just immediately shut it down because they already know that
and that they're angry that what we have said is
not what they already know. And I just want to go, okay,
just stop responding for a minute and listen to what
(31:44):
is being said, like, actually listen to it. Then you
can figure out what you think about that or how
you respond to it. Don't start by responding to it
before you have actually listened. Yeah. I mean, for my part,
I am one of those people that I am uh
not ever really comfortable speaking in absolutes. I never really
(32:05):
have been, uh, And I don't know if that's just
because it was always imparted to me as a kid, like, Hey,
there's rarely one finite simple way to explain anything, whether
it's you know, something like history or you know, uh,
will this person be here, Well, they're going to try,
but you know, any number of things could befall them
on the way kind of simple. So for me, it's
actually more comfortable to not look for the one answer.
(32:28):
It kind of keeps it open where you can, as
Tracy said, listen and take in all of the different sources,
in all of the different versions you hear that saying
of there there are three truths, your truth, my truth,
in the one in the middle that's probably closer to real.
There are variations on that saying, but uh, yeah, I
mean I think you kind of do pattern recognition, and
you you look at all of the different accounts of
(32:49):
the thing that happened and kind of way where those
accounts came from, and and it's kind of like painting
a picture, except with facts, and for me that's actually
the more exciting part of it. Yeah. And I encourage
everyone to think critically about stuff that they read and
here at just like listen first before you start with
your critical analysis of the thing, uh, because you're not
(33:13):
really starting from a critical point if you are having
gut reaction first that you just go with rather than
like actually absorbing some information to think about first. So
that is how I feel about all that. And now
Holly has just expressed that she feels about all that.
Thank you again, Rob for writing to us. If you
(33:33):
would like to write to us, where History podcasts at
how Stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook
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(33:54):
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or missed in history dot com. For more on this
(34:19):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house
works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Frye, and today we
are continuing our episode on the Andrews Raid, also known
(00:22):
as the Great Locomotive Chase, which is a train chase
which is so exciting that it needed to be in
two parts. So to recap about where we are in
the story right now, James Andrews and twenty two men
have common deered a northbound train in Big Shanty, Georgia,
which is now Kennison. It's conductor, William Fuller, has started
chasing them on foot, along with Anthony Murphy, who was
(00:45):
a foreman with the railroad who was on his way
to Alatuna to inspect some machinery, and E. Jefferson Caine,
who was the train's engineer. That train was pulled by
a locomotive called the General. Fully remember the men from
when they embarked on the train Marietta, and at that
point he had suspected that they might be Confederate soldiers
who were deserting. He thought they'd run the General until
(01:07):
it ran out of steam and then abandon it. This
was actually a pretty logical conclusion, giving that there was
a It was a huge Confederate encampment right there, like
right by the train depot, so aboard the train, just
outside of Big Shanty. The train very briefly and terrifyingly
slowed down, and it looked like all was going to
be lost because of some kind of mechanical problem. But
(01:30):
the crew realized that a damper had been left open,
so they closed it again. They re stoked the fire,
and then they were back on their way and on
their approach to Acworth, Georgia, Andrews had the men cut
the telegraph lines using a saw that they found. They
also delayed a little so they could return to the
train's normal schedule and arouse less suspicion at the station's
(01:51):
up the line. He did, however, have an excuse ready
for why the train was not making scheduled stops. He
said the train was tasked with carrying munitions and supplies
bound for General p G. T. Beauregards Army. About two
and a half miles later, the raiders on the train
approached Moon Station and they found a station a section
crew at work on the track. The crew was immediately
(02:15):
suspicious of them. The train was ahead of schedule still,
and none of the people on the engine were familiar
to them. They normally would have known the engineer and
the conductor and the other people working on the train.
Even so, one of the raiders asked one of the
workers for a pride bar, and he handed it over
to him. This found up being the only tool they
had with which to try to destroy the train tracks.
(02:37):
Now this is simultaneously dumb, because the whole point of
this endeavor was to destroy train tracks, and they had
not brought any tools with which to do so. And
it was also necessary because they really could not travel
discreetly on foot for many miles while carrying many implements
of of train destruction. I like how they carefully walked
(02:59):
through every piece of the plan and they just left
this kind of a chance, like we hope we find
a crow bar. Oh yeah, we talked in the previous
episode about how they stayed at this hotel that was
owned by a guy who was also acting as a
union spy. That's entirely circumstantial, and to me, one of
the arguments against maybe that having been a deliberate connection
(03:22):
is that that guy would have been a good person
to pack up some things meant to destroy train tracks
and you know, label them as cargo and get them
aboard the train. But that did not happen, so instead
they had this one pride bar. So back to the
men on foot, Fuller, being as we said in the
(03:44):
last episode, in extremely good physical shape, pulled ahead of
the other two men who were chasing the train, and
when he found the crew at Moon Station, they told
him the General had gone by just about thirty minutes earlier.
Fuller got a pole car and it rolled along the
tracks while being pulled like a gondola, and he doubled
back to the other two men and then he resumed
(04:05):
his pursuit. His goal was to make it to Cooper's
iron Works, where he knew he'd find an old but
reliable engine which was known as the Yonah, which he
could then commandeer for this chase. Although the raiders did
stick pretty closely to the posted schedule for the train,
they didn't stop at any more of the stations. If
they could help it, what they would do is destroy
(04:26):
the telegraph the telegraph wire, either as they got close
to the station or after they had passed it so
that they couldn't call for help once they realized something
was wrong. Eventually, instead of cutting the wires, they would
just tie it to the back of the train and
yank it down behind them as they went. Otherwise, they
just went on past platforms full of confused passengers without stopping.
(04:48):
They also marked the train with a red flag, and
that was a signal that danger was present or there
was another train following behind them, and they did this
as an attempt to deflect suspicion. Meanwhile, aboard the poll car,
when Fuller and team got to a section of trunk
that had been blocked with cross ties next to a
pull down telegraph wire, he realized that the men he
(05:11):
was dealing with and chasing were not merely deserters. Yeah,
this is when he started, in addition to trying to
catch them, trying to call for help every time he
got to a station. Things had gotten off to a
relatively auspicious start for the raiders, but they began to
fall apart pretty quickly after getting farther away from Big Shanty.
(05:33):
When Andrews crossed the Ottowah River, he made two kind
of questionable decisions. What was that he and the crew
saw the Yonah, which at this point Fuller was already
planning to get and use. UM Andrews had no way
of knowing this, but still they He definitely knew that
the strain was something that could be used to come
after them. Um the Yonah was an older engine that
(05:55):
had been retired and it was being rented for private use,
so they number one did not destroy or disable that engine,
and then number two they also did not destroy the
bridge that the Yonah would have had to cross to
get into pursuit of them. So when Fuller and his
men arrived just as they had planned, they commandeered the
Yonah and they took up their pursuit. A little farther north.
(06:18):
In Kingston, Georgia, there was a fork in the track
and that connected to a spur out to Rome, Georgia.
Since he'd studied the train schedule, Andrews knew ahead of
time that he was going to need to stop here
to let a southbound train pass to clear the tracks
before he could go north again. But there were actually
three southbound trains on the track. Two of them were
(06:40):
not on schedule. They were driven by panic in Chattanooga
thanks to the battle in Alabama, and the Andrews wound
up being delayed by more than an hour. As all
of these trains cleared. Yeah, basically everybody in Chattanooga was like, well,
the Yankees are coming out here. We got the go
(07:00):
So yeah, he the longer he sat there, the more
people became suspicious, like something was clearly not right. He
was not the conductor who was supposed to be on there.
The engineer was not the engineer everyone knew already. They
started the people at the station started asking questions that
Andrews really couldn't easily answer. So when these three southbound
(07:22):
trains were finally clear of the station, the man tending
the switch refused to switch the track to let the
general get through. So Andrews took the key and did
it himself, which pretty much made it obvious to everyone
that he was up to no good. Yeah that at
that point, your cover is blown, I think. Well, and
a lot of their decisions that seem kind of questionable.
(07:44):
We're partially or wholly motivated by not blowing their cover. Yeah,
but at this point, I mean, they have really no
option but to go for broke. So, uh, Andrews and
his team are finally on their way, but by this
point Fuller was just mere minutes behind, because, as we mentioned,
he had commandeered the Yonah and he was giving chase,
and the three trains that Andrews had to wait for
(08:06):
didn't cause him nearly so much of a problem. Fuller
and his team were well known to the other conductors
and he was able to quickly explain the situation and
get everyone that he encountered to help, and rather than waiting,
he abandoned the Unah and picked up the William R. Smith,
which was on the other side of the waiting trains,
and as a bonus, it was also a much faster engine,
(08:27):
Plus there was some nearby militia, and they joined Fuller's
effort Aboard the William R. Smith. Fuller and his men
closed the gap on the General and they were doing
really well until they got to a missing piece of
track outside of Kingston, which Andrews men had actually managed
to finally pry up. They had to abandon the engine
(08:48):
and continue again for a while on foot. And now
let's jump back on the train tracks and get to
the action. So outside of Dairsville, Andrews and company met
the southbound Texas, which was an engine that was very
similar to the General, and it was pulling a very
long train. Andrews talked to Texas in the yielding on
(09:08):
assigning so that they could pass, using his excuse that
his train was tasked with carrying vital war supplies. As
we alluded to earlier, they could not have used this
story if they had also damaged the Texas, so, knowing
they were taking a risk, they let it be and
they continued on. They let the Texas continue on southward
(09:29):
as the General continued north, and as you may have predicted,
this turned out to be their undoing. So Fuller and
his team on foot again take that marathon, like I
think he's run far longer than several marathons. At this point,
encountered the Texas as it was traveling south, and they
flagged it down. They commandeered it, They uncoupled the freight
(09:52):
and passenger cars, and then because it was facing south,
they actually ran it up the track backwards as fast
as it could go. At this point, they're they're about
halfway to Chattanooga, and this is another way where you go.
Of course, this is a Buster Keaton movie. Backs. They
(10:13):
ran the Texas backwards as fast as they could for
pretty much the entire rest of the chase, and they
observed none of the safety precautions that were meant to
prevent head on collisions between trains. At this point, they
did not have time for any of that, so they
basically just blew the trains whistle almost NonStop while going
as fast as they could backwards on a train engine
(10:35):
that was facing south while they were going north. And
so this is the part of the chase that's super
exciting if you're watching a movie, but when you're doing
a podcast, it is not so exciting because all we
can keep saying is that they kept running the train
backwards as fast as possible, which is exciting, but it
goes on for a while that way. UH Andrews men
also pushed the general as fast as they could, too,
(10:57):
and they abandoned their plans to burn bridges and tear
up the track because the Texas was just way too
hot on their heels for them to have time to
stop and do those things, even if they had had
more time. By this point, it had also been raining
for days and it was still raining and everything was
water logged, so not really good conditions for setting fire
to things. One of the biggest bits of excitement in
(11:19):
this stretch of the chase is a story of the
Yankees lighting a box car on fire and leaving it
either on the tracks or in a covered bridge. Um.
This sadly is an embellishment that was added later. It
does appear in both movie versions of this story, though,
but historically it just does not pan out based on
(11:39):
the fact that they started with three cars. Um that
it's just the numbers don't add up. They did not
set a box car on fire. I am sad to
tell you it does sound good. I could see where
no scriptwriter would leave that out. Uh. What the men
aboard the General did do was uncoupled each of the
lad two box cars, one at a time to send
(12:03):
down the track toward the Texas. And they were hoping
that this would cause a crash, but the Texas just
reduced its speed, caught the car coupled with it because
remember it is facing backwards, and pushed it off at
the next siding. So this is kind of like a
perfect storm of all of these crazy things happened in
such a way that were completely beneficial to Fuller. Yeah,
(12:24):
it turned out to completely be an asset that they
were backwards instead of a liability. Um. Other than this
box car trick, the only damage the raiders really had
time to do at this point was throwing railroad ties
onto the tracks that they had collected, all these railroad
ties that they were going to use as fuel to
set things on fire. Um. They bashed out the back
(12:46):
of the box car because there's no door or window
or anything back there. Um, and they just started throwing
railroad ties out of the back of it. Um. This
did not work all that well because number one Feller's
men could just move them, and the number two they
just bounced all over the place. They would bounce off
of the tracks more often than they would stay there
(13:06):
um on the rare occasion they took a pause to
try to pry up some of the track or destroy it.
They just did not have enough time to do enough
of a job to slow down the Texas at all.
And additionally, Fuller very smartly also collected a telegraph operator
at one of the stations that they passed. He composed
a message to Chattanooga to warn them about what was happening,
(13:29):
and he dropped the operator in this message off at
the next stop with the hope that he would be
able to send this message before the men aboard the
General cut the wire farther up the line. As a
side note, this actually worked, but Fuller had no way
of knowing that it worked because he didn't have time
to wait for the conductor to come back. Um With
the Texas closing in and their supply of firewood dwindling,
(13:54):
it became really clear that Andrew's plan was on the
verge of absolute total failure, and they did not even
know that a second train, which was carrying ten Confederate
infantrymen and their commander, had also joined the pursuit behind
the backwards running Texas. Union soldiers on board The General
started talking about how maybe they should stop the train
(14:14):
and make a stand, but Andrews really didn't have any
way of knowing how many Confederate soldiers were aboard the Texas,
and he thought it might be a lot, so he
decided they should continue on. They did make some brief
stops for firewood and water so that they could keep
the engine going, but they can never spend enough time
at any of their stops to get a full load,
(14:35):
and as their supplies wound down, they resorted to burning
paper hats clothes and even Andrew's saddle bags. Basically anything
that they could part with and that would catch fire
was going in to keep the engine running. And the
train went slower and slower and slower, and so finally
out of fuel entirely. The General stopped two miles north
(14:59):
of Wrangled, which is eighteen or so miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
So it had traveled eighty seven miles in seven hours,
and under normal circumstances, the trip all the way from
Atlanta to Chattanooga was at least a twelve hour journey.
So these trains had at various points been traveling at
amazing speeds considering the time, Like, having a train goes
(15:21):
sixty miles an hour today not a big deal. Having
a train goes sixty miles an hour over poor quality
track during the Civil War astounding uh and the raiders
abandoned the engine and they scattered into the woods. Fuller,
after making sure that the General was okay, pursued them,
along with the Confederate soldiers and others who had joined
(15:43):
the chase along the way. I love that he checked
on the train first nine two in Wringled. It was
muster day that meant that the town was full of
families and of young men hoping to enlist in the
Confederate Army. So when words spread the a bunch of
Union spies had escaped into the woods in the area, uh,
(16:04):
they all joined the search in earnest and all of
the raiders, including the ones who missed the train in Marietta,
were captured on those last two. As a note, it
quickly became obvious that these two strangers, who seemed to
have nothing to do in Marietta, had something to do
with the train that was stolen just up the track
in Big Shanty. So all of the men were captured. Yeah,
(16:25):
there were a couple of men who almost managed to
make a clean getaway, but in one way or another,
somebody caught onto the fact that they were not who
they said they were, and they all wound up if
they were captured near wrangled on a train bound to
Atlanta to go to prison, which was pulled by the general. So,
(16:46):
even though he was a civilian, Andrews was court martialed
and he was sentenced to death as a spy on
May thirty one, with his execution scheduled for a week later,
and the night after that he and another inmate actually
escaped from prison, although they were captured again consequently. When
Andrews went to the gallows on June seven, eight sixty two,
(17:07):
the shackles around his ankles were secured with rivets. His
hanging was rather gruesome, even as hangings go. He was
a very tall man, as we said in the previous episode,
and so in addition to him being too tall, the
rope was too long, which meant that his death was
slow and agonizing, and did not occur until someone literally
(17:28):
scooped the dirt out from under his feet so that
they would not touch the ground. His fiancee, Elizabeth Layton,
died less than two years later, and her family was
quite insistent that she had died of a broken heart.
Seven others of the raiders were also hanged on June eighteenth,
and that immediately followed their convictions because the Confederate Army
(17:50):
did not want to risk another escape attempt by putting
off the execution for a later date. In this case,
the ropes for two of the raiders, William Campbell and
Samuel Slaven's, broke and they had to be hanged all
over again. The rest of the raiders who at this
point either had not been tried or had not been sentenced.
Wound up in prison for a while, and they started
(18:13):
writing to Jefferson Davis and other important people UH to
ask for clemency. However, because there's never uh an end
to twists and turns and excitement in this story, and
this is why it's two episodes long, right, ten of
the men actually busted out on October sixteenth of eighteen
sixty two. They took the keys from a guard and
(18:36):
made their escape, and then they paired up UH and
they scattered in pairs of two. Two of the men
were caught within a day. Six of them actually found
their way northward into Union territory over land. Two made
it to corinth Mississippi, on November eighteenth, and on the
same day two more made it to Lebanon, Kentucky. Two
(18:56):
more got to Somerset, Kentucky on December two. And many
of these men went on to write accounts about the
raid and their escapes, which are of course full of
danger and hardship and some extreme embellishments, although the story
really doesn't need a lot of extreme embellishments to be
kind of amazing. Yeah, I mean, especially when you consider
that they all spent more than a month in enemy territory,
(19:19):
mostly on foot, try to get home, and were escaped
prisoners of war. As if that were not already exciting enough,
alf Wilson and Mark Wood did a completely non intuitive
thing in their escape attempt, and they went south along
the Chattahoochee River and they continued to follow rivers south
until they got to the Gulf coast of Florida. Then
(19:41):
they managed to find a boat and they rode it
out into the Gulf of Mexico to the USS Somerset,
which the Union was given using as part of a
blockade on November seven. That's what we call the hard way.
It was the hard way, but they got to the
Union faster than anyone else. The remaining six Raiders that
(20:04):
were still in jail were moved from Fulton County Jail
in Atlanta to Livy Prison in Richmond in eighteen sixty two,
and from there they were moved to Castle Thunder, which
was a wartime prison in Richmond, and they stayed there
until March seventeenth of eighteen sixty three, when an officer
came in and gave a call for anyone who wanted
to go to the United States. The raiders went with
(20:26):
about three hundred other prisoners as part of an exchange,
and they all arrived in Washington on Thursday, March nineteenth.
So in Washington, d c. They gave an account of
the raid to the Advocate General of the Army, who
was Joseph M. Holt, and he had been tasked with
investigating this raid that they had all kind of heard
a little about. I mean, it had been headline news
(20:48):
in all of the newspapers everywhere, but they didn't really
know what had happened. So the Advocate General made a
note of their bravery and his report. From there, the
raiders also appeared before the Secretary of War, Edwin McMaster Stanton,
who presented each of them with medals of Honor. This
made Private Jacob Parrot, Sergeant Elu Mason, Corporal William Pittinger,
(21:12):
Corporal William Reddick, Private William ben Singer, and Private Robert
Buffam the first to receive the Medal of Honor in
the United States. So a note on the Medal of Honor.
It was conceived by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Davis Townsend, who
was looking for ways to bolster troop morale as the
war war on. It was to recognize extraordinary courage and
(21:33):
inspirement in their service. Abraham Lincoln signed a bill creating
the Naval Medal of Valor in eighteen sixty one and
another creating the Army Medal of Honor in eighteen sixty two.
These were the first official military awards in the United States.
These bills originally applied just to the Civil War, but
Congress amended the laws in eighteen sixty three so they
(21:54):
would apply outside of the context of the Civil War,
and the amendments also made it of that the medals
could be given retroactively all the way back to the
beginning of the Civil War, and they could be given
to commissioned officers, so to kind of recap on the timeline.
Even though these laws had been passed in eighteen sixty
one in eighteen sixty two, by eighteen sixty three, when
(22:15):
the Raiders made it to Washington, d c. None had
actually been awarded yet until they were awarded to the raiders,
and those six recipients who were the first to receive
these awards that were from Andrew's raid were also each
given one hundred dollars and they were ordered to be
reimbursed for expenses and the value of anything that had
been confiscated from them when they said they wished to
(22:38):
return to the army. They were also all given promotions,
and they were invited to meet the President, which they
did on March twenty five, eighteen sixty three. The raiders
who had escaped and the ones who were executed were
mostly also given medals of honor as well. Um there
was an exception for some reason of George Wilson and
(22:59):
Perry Shadrack. It's not completely clear why everyone else got
medals and they did not. The civilians James Andrews and
William Campbell were not eligible for the Medal of Honor
because they were civilians. Um, one of the two men
who got pressed into Confederate service at the very very
beginning of the story also did not receive a Medal
(23:19):
of honor. And it's I'm not quite clear on why
the three uh who were in the military and did
not get a medal, why they did not get to
meddle and this story actually became deeply important to both
the North and the South. In the North, the men
were characterized as daring, cunning heroes, in spite of this
(23:41):
their failure. They had worked their way deep into enemy territory,
and they had tried to execute an ingenious idea, and
you can blame whether and bad luck for it not
being quite as successful as they hoped. And to the south,
Fuller and the men who joined him were determined heroes
for thwarting the Northern action, even though he was a civilian.
(24:01):
James J. Andrews body was moved to the National Military
Cemetery in Chattanooga in eight seven, and it lies there
next to the bodies of seven of the other raiders.
The General was actually damaged during Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, and
it's not completely clear whether it was damaged by Confederates
to keep it from falling into Union hands or by
(24:22):
the Union just in an effort to damage the Confederate forces.
It was repaired after the war, however, Yeah, I found
sources that said the complete opposite on who damaged the General.
Um Today, the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive
History is where the General lives. Uh. This was pretty
much built for that purpose in nineteen seventy two, and
(24:45):
it's affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. This however, followed an
extremely long kind of custody battle between Tennessee and Georgia
about who should have the General that actually went all
the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear
the case, and that lets stand a lower course ruling
that the railroad could do whatever it wanted with the train,
(25:07):
and it wound up belonging to Georgia. If you live
in Georgia or Tennessee, it may not surprise you, as
the two states have a number of rivalries. Uh. The
Texas is in the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum, which, Uh,
isn't that the Cyclorama moving at some point the not
(25:28):
Tuesday the Future Show? Presumably the Texas will as well.
I think so. But uh, I went as I was
confirming because the places that I had found that said
where all these trains are a couple of years old,
and I was trying to confirm that everything was where
it says it is. Uh, And I was like, why
is the Cyclorama website down? That would be why. Yeah,
I think they're doing a whole move and renovation plan
(25:51):
with it. Well, that makes sense then, so. Buster Keaton's
The General was a huge box office flop when it
came out, it was critically panned. It's budget was one
of the biggest budgets of the silent film era. But
today it has become a classic. It's number eighteen on
the American Film Institutes tenth Anniversary edition of one hundred Years,
(26:13):
one hundred Movies. Um. They wanted to use the actual
General locomotive in the movie, but the people who owned
it at the time found out that it was a comedy.
They said no. Um. I watched this movie over the weekend.
It is delightful. If you have an opportunity, I recommend it.
(26:33):
And the Disney movie that was made in the fifties
is a drama, and it's more or less accurate in
terms of the general idea and the stops along the line.
But of course it is a movie made to thrill audiences,
so it is embellished. Uh. And as it's a fifties
era movie about the Civil War, there are some parts
of it that are a little uncomfortable by today's standards,
(26:55):
for sure, particularly when they sang I wish I was
in Dixie and other parts. Do you have some listener
mail for us actionist thrilling rind? So, before I get
into the listener mail. This is one of the ideas
that came for a call for happier history stories. I'm
so glad someone suggested it me too, as as soon
(27:18):
as I was like, well, that sounds like an awesomely
good time to talk about, as kind of a breather
from some of the dark and dour things that we
have had on the podcast lately. I will confess that
I'm a little I'm still a little bit fixated on
Fuller's running. I'm like, did anybody clock how far he
actually ran and how fast? Because that's the kind of
(27:41):
running nursery I would enjoy. I think his running I
would probably put it into the more of the ten
k range than the marathon range because whenever they could
get a hand car or a pole car or some
other conveyance. Yeah, they did that mostly because it was
faster than I'm still impressed. It's still yes, it is
(28:05):
still extremely impressive, especially because he was dressed in a
classic conductor's uniform at the time. Okay, our listener mail
is from Rob. Rob says Hi, Tracy and Holly. I
just wanted to send you a letter to say thank
you for the wonderful work you do with Stuff You Missed.
I came across your podcast when I decided to take
a break from the numerous pro wrestling podcast I've been
(28:27):
listening to. Please don't hold that against me. I'm gonna
pause here and say pretty much our point of view
is like what you like, so we're not going to judge. Um.
I wanted to see if anyone had any information on
a favorite topic of mine, Rappa Neui Easter Island. That's
when I found the massive bank of podcasts from Stuff
You Missed. I was almost as excited as you guys
(28:47):
were went doing your cheese podcast. I've spent the last
two weeks going through episode after episode while driving, doing chores,
or just working out. It's been so wonderful to listen
to you and your past hosts talk about just wonderful
moments in time and listening or and learning so much
that I can pass a line to my middle school students,
a question for you and a possible suggestion for future casts.
(29:10):
My students always look for quote, the ones true answer,
or what really happened when we study history, But as
we find out, there is never one answer. There are theories, beliefs,
and hunches. The time we'll probably never know the quote truth,
which is hard for my kids and many adults to accept.
How do you come to grips with this realization? How
(29:31):
has this caused challenges for you in doing your podcast? Um?
And then he gives some other suggestions, one of which
is the antikithera mechanism, which so robbed Jino. We have
that one already, yes, I still love that one. We
have a whole whole archive now at our website, so
you can go um and find it there. And then
(29:55):
he says thank you and keep up the fantastic work.
So uh. To answer the question in about the like
knowing what the truth is or what really happened? Um.
That's actually been one of the motivators of this podcast
for me, because I feel like a lot of my
history classes in school presented things as though that was
(30:16):
the one true answer um. Or sometimes I had one
teacher in particular, it joe me kind of crazy. She
would throw out the sort of bombshell of an idea,
like why do you think there is prejudice against such
and such a group of people? And she would act
as though there was an answer to this question that
was the right answer. But then she wouldn't tell us
(30:37):
what the right answer was, and it was deeply frustrating
to me. I was like that, if there's an answer,
why did you tell us? She just wanted to get
you thinking, but she did it in a way that
was probably more frustrating than uh yeah, igniting of your
imaginations and your thought processes. So really, when when it
comes to the podcast, number one, I think figuring out
(31:01):
what story we have not already been told is sort
of a long time motivator of the podcast. Um. But
then number two, reading things of multiple perspectives and putting
my own gut response aside and actually listening, uh is
a big part of how I I work with that. Like,
(31:22):
I see a behavior sometimes that where we will we
will put up a link to an episode or a
link to something interesting, and a lot of people will
just immediately shut it down because they already know that
and that they're angry that what we have said is
not what they already know. And I just want to go, okay,
just stop responding for a minute and listen to what
(31:44):
is being said, like, actually listen to it. Then you
can figure out what you think about that or how
you respond to it. Don't start by responding to it
before you have actually listened. Yeah. I mean, for my part,
I am one of those people that I am uh
not ever really comfortable speaking in absolutes. I never really
(32:05):
have been, uh, And I don't know if that's just
because it was always imparted to me as a kid, like, Hey,
there's rarely one finite simple way to explain anything, whether
it's you know, something like history or you know, uh,
will this person be here, Well, they're going to try,
but you know, any number of things could befall them
on the way kind of simple. So for me, it's
actually more comfortable to not look for the one answer.
(32:28):
It kind of keeps it open where you can, as
Tracy said, listen and take in all of the different sources,
in all of the different versions you hear that saying
of there there are three truths, your truth, my truth,
in the one in the middle that's probably closer to real.
There are variations on that saying, but uh, yeah, I
mean I think you kind of do pattern recognition, and
you you look at all of the different accounts of
(32:49):
the thing that happened and kind of way where those
accounts came from, and and it's kind of like painting
a picture, except with facts, and for me that's actually
the more exciting part of it. Yeah. And I encourage
everyone to think critically about stuff that they read and
here at just like listen first before you start with
your critical analysis of the thing, uh, because you're not
(33:13):
really starting from a critical point if you are having
gut reaction first that you just go with rather than
like actually absorbing some information to think about first. So
that is how I feel about all that. And now
Holly has just expressed that she feels about all that.
Thank you again, Rob for writing to us. If you
(33:33):
would like to write to us, where History podcasts at
how Stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook
dot com slash miss in History and on Twitter at
miss in History. Are tumbler is miss in Hisstory dot
tumbler dot com, and we are on Pinterest at pinterest
dot com slash miss Industry. We have a brand new
store full of t shirts and cell phone cases and
all kinds of other delightful stuff. It is at missed
(33:54):
in History dot spreadshirt dot com. And if you would
like to learn more about what we talked about today,
we can come to our parent companies website but the
word trains in the search bar, you will find how
Trains Work. Or you can come to our website and
find show notes and an archive of every episode we
have ever done. So you can do all that and
a whole lot more at how stuff works dot com
or missed in history dot com. For more on this
(34:19):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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