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of trains, except on the occasion of the arrestof General Harney. The coal traffic fromCumberland was immense, as the Washing-ton government was accumulating suppliesof coal 011 the seaboard. These coal trainspassed Harper’s Ferry at all hours of the dayand night, and thus furnished Jackson witha pretext for arranging a brilliant “ scoop.”When he sent me to Point of Rocks, heordered Colonel Harper with the 5 th Vir-ginia Infantry to Martinsburg. He thencomplained to President Garrett, of theBaltimore and Ohio, that the night trains,eastward bound, disturbed the repose ofhis camp, and requested a change of sched-ule that would pass all east-bound trains byHarper’s Ferry between 11 and 1 o’clock inthe day-time. Mr. Garrett complied, andthereafter for several days we heard the con-stant roar of passing trains for an hourbefore and an hour after noon. But sincethe “empties” were sent up the road atnight, Jackson again complained that the nuisance was as great as ever, and,as the road had two tracks, said he must insist that the west-bound trainsshould pass during the same two hours as those going east. Mr. Garrettpromptly complied, and we then had, for two hours every day, the liveliestrailroad in America . One night, as soon as the schedule was working at itsbest, Jackson sent me an. order to take a force of men across to the Maryland side of the river the next day at 11 o’clock, and, letting all west-bound trainspass till 12 o’clock, to permit none to go east, and at 12 o’clock to obstructthe road so that it would require several days to repair it. He ordered thereverse to be done at Martinsburg. Thus he caught all the trains that weregoing east or west between those points, and these he ran up to Winchester,thirty-two miles on the branch road, where they were safe, and whence theywere removed by horse-power to the railway at Strasburg. I do not remem-ber the number of trains captured, but the loss crippled the Baltimore andOhio road seriously for some time, and the gain to our scantily stockedVirginia roads of the same gauge was invaluable.
While we held the Point of Rocks bridge, J. E. B. Stuart (afterward sofamous as a cavalry leader) was commissioned lieutenant-colonel, and importedto Colonel J ackson for assignment to duty. Jackson ordered the consolidationof all the cavalry companies into a battalion to be commanded by Stuart,who then appeared more like a well-grown, manly youth than the matureman he really was. This order was very offensive to Captain Turner Ashby ,at that time the idol of all the troopers in the field, as well he might be, for amore brave and chivalrous officer never rode at the head of well-mounted
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PEN SKETCH OF GENERAL JACKSON, BRAWNFROM LIFE, NEAR BALL’S BLUFF,PROBABLY IN 1861.