| From The Adams Sentinel
(Gettysburg, Pa.) |
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| September 11, 1861 |
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| Further Railroad Depredations by the
Confederates |
| Their Reoccupation of the Upper Potomac |
| The Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad Company has received positive information that during the
last two or three weeks an army of the Confederates has occupied the
country along their line, from Harper's Ferry towards Hancock, and
that further serious depredations have been committed by them upon the
Company's property. All the machinist tools, machines and materials
for repairs of engines and cars, have been taken from Martinsburg
repair shops, amounting in value, it is said, to nearly $10,000. Five
(5) medium sized passenger locomotives have also been removed, by
turnpike, through Winchester. This latter movement seems to have been
ingeniously performed. The front wheels or trucks of the engines were
removed, and hauled upon wagons, while strong wooden wheels were
substituted, and with which the engines were hauled away by teams of
twenty-eight horses. It is said that the locomotives and the shop
machinery have all been carried to the Manassas road for transport to
Richmond. The locomotives are a portion of those burned by the
Confederates in June last, and, being very seriously injured, can
hardly be put to use by them for a month or more, from the necessity
of extraordinary repairs being required. Besides the foregoing, some
eight or ten miles of the iron, constituting the track west of
Martinsburg, above North Mountain, are reported to have been taken up
and carried away in the same direction; also a considerable portion of
the telegraph wire, forming the Railroad Company's line. |
| All of this costly property is
undoubtedly of extraordinary value to the Confederates at this time,
their ability to occupy the country and remove it with impunity is
another strong illustration of the bad consequences of General
Patterson's inertness in that quarter. We are informed that Harper's
Ferry, Charlestown, Kerneysville, Martinsburg, and several other
places are now occupied by detachments of Confederates, and that their
pickets or scouts range along the Virginia sides of the Potomac generally
through Jefferson, Berkley, and Morgan counties. |
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