The Great Locomotive Chase

(NYTimes) For Confederates, the quickest connection across the Appalachian Mountains, which roughly split the eastern and western theaters of the war, was a railroad line from Richmond, Va., to Chattanooga, Tenn. From Chattanooga other lines fanned west and south toward the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Consequently, the Mountain City’s strategic significance was far greater than its population of just 2,500 people might lead one to believe.
Union forces would not gain undisputed control of the town until November 1863. But one general authorized a daring plan that could have led to Federal occupation more than a year and a half earlier: a scheme that, today, is popularly remembered as the Great Locomotive Chase. Continued