| From the National Republican
(Washington, D. C.) |
| |
| July 12, 1861 |
| |
| War News |
| ***** |
| A letter from Martinsburg,
gives the following description of the railroad destruction there, by
the rebels: |
| "We rode about three
miles along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and then went across
the country about three miles. All along the railroad were scattered
coal cars in long lines, with the coal still burning, having been set
on fire by the 'noble and chivalric.' |
| They had kindled huge fires
around them, burning all the woodwork and a great deal of the iron.
(They were all fine iron cars, holding about twenty tons each.) Here
and there we could see the inside -- a mass of red hot coals. Some
small bridges had been burnt with the cars on them, and, giving way,
the cars were left piled one on another in the small streams below,
all battered and bent. We counted the line of locomotives that had
been burnt (forty-one or forty-two in all,) red and blistered with the
heat. The destruction is fearful to contemplate." |
|