Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[814] had either run off in the train, or hidden themselves out of view. There was no one in charge of anything, and no one who knew anything. But there was some material lying around me; and, with this, I resolved to set up railroading on my own account. Having a dozen and more steam-engineers along with me, from my late fleet, I was perfectly independent of the assistance of the alarmed railroad-men, who had taken to flight.

A pitiable scene presented itself, upon our arrival at the station. Great numbers had flocked thither, in the hope of escape; frightened men, despairing women, and crying children. Military patients had hobbled thither from the hospitals; civil employees of the Government, who had missed the ‘last train,’ by being a little too late, had come to remedy their negligence; and a great number of other citizens, who were anxious to get out of the presence of the hated Yankee, had rushed to the station, they scarcely knew why. These people had crowded into, and on the top of, a few straggling passenger cars, that lay uncoupled along the track, in seeming expectation that some one was to come, in due time, and take them off. There was a small engine lying also on the track, but there was no fire in its furnace, no fuel with which to make a fire, and no one to manage it. Such was the condition of affairs when I ‘deployed’ my ‘forces’ upon the open square, and ‘grounded arms,’—the butts of my rifles not ringing on the ground quite as harmoniously as I could have desired. Soldiering was new to Jack; however, he would do better by-and-by.

My first move was to turn all these wretched people I have described out of the cars. Many plaintive appeals were made to me by the displaced individuals, but my reply to them all was, that it was better for an unarmed citizen to fall into the hands of the enemy, than a soldier with arms in his hands. The cars were then drawn together and coupled, and my own people placed in them. We next took the engine in hand. A body of my marine ‘sappers and miners’ were set at work to pull down a picket fence, in front of one of the dwellings, and chop it into firewood. An engineer and firemen were detailed for the locomotive, and in a very few minutes, we had the steam hissing from its boiler. I now permitted as many of the frightened