| From the Richmond Whig |
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| March 10, 1864 |
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| The City |
| A Telegraphic Joke |
| Last Friday night, during the
excitement produced by the report that the Yankees were marching on
Bellona Arsenal, Amos Adams, the telegraph operator, at the Danville
Railroad depot in this city, by way of amusing himself and selling the
operator at Burksville, the junction of the Danville and Southside
Railroad Railroads, sent him some messages calculated to make him
believe that the Yankees had possession of the railroad and telegraph
between the junction and Richmond -- a design in which he was perfectly
successful, thereby producing a panic at Burkeville and causing a
stoppage of the business of the road. The dawn train to Richmond was
stopped, and the Government offices at Burksville got their papers and
plunder generated in readines for a skedaddle. After enjoying the fun
for an hour or so, Adams explained the joke to the Burksville operator,
and business was resumed. |
| Col. Talcott, Superintendent
of the Richmond Railroad, immediately, on hearing of this affair,
discharged Adams from his position as telegraph operator, and sent him
under guard to Governor Smith, by whom he was committed to jail. Adams
was brought before the Mayor yesterday, and, on the telegraph
superintendent on the Danville line explaining that Adams, who is a mere
youth, designed nothing more than a practical, though what might have
proved a very serious joke, the Mayor required him to give security to
keep the peace, and then discharged him. |
| What were the messages sent by
Adams did not transpire; but it is believed that it was more his style
of telegraphing than what he did telegraph that persuaded the Burksville
operator that a Yankee had tapped the line, and, as a matter of course,
that the enemy had taken possession of the railroad. It seems the Yankee
and Confederate, or Southern, style of telegraphing are very different,
as different as the accent and pronunciation of the two people -- and
easily distinguished. |
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