Alabama on the 11th of April, and then sent a detachment westward over
the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to open railway communication with
the Union army at Pittsburg Landing. Another detachment, commanded by
Mitchel in person, advanced on the same day seventy miles by rail
directly into the enemy's territory, arriving unchecked with two
thousand men within thirty miles of Chattanooga,--in two hours' time he
could now reach that point,--the most important position in the West.
Why did he not go on? The story of the railroad raid is the answer. The
night before breaking camp at Shelbyville, Mitchel sent an expedition
secretly into the heart of Georgia to cut the railroad communications of
Chattanooga to the south and east. The fortune of this attempt had a
most important bearing upon his movements, and will now be narrated.

In the employ of General Buell was a spy named James J. Andrews, who
had rendered valuable services in the first year of the war, and had
secured the full confidence of the Union commanders. In March, 1862,
Buell had sent him secretly with eight men to burn the bridges west of
Chattanooga; but the failure of expected coöperation defeated the plan,
and Andrews, after visiting Atlanta, and inspecting the whole of the
enemy's lines in that vicinity and northward, had returned, ambitious to
make another attempt. His plans for the second raid were submitted to
Mitchel, and on the eve of the movement from Shelbyville to Huntsville
Mitchel authorized him to take twenty-four men, secretly enter the
enemy's territory, and, by means of capturing a train, burn the bridges
on the northern part of the Georgia State Railroad, and also one on the
East Tennessee Railroad where it approaches the Georgia State line, thus
completely isolating Chattanooga, which was virtually ungarrisoned.

[Illustration]