On April 12th, 1862, Union Army volunteers led by James J. Andrews commandeered a Western & Atlantic Railroad train headed by a steam locomotive named the General, at Big Shanty, Georgia, on its way from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and proceeded to cut telegraph wires, destroy track, and burn railroad bridges to cut off the Confederates' supplies and reinforcements as they traversed northbound. The General's conductor, William Fuller, initially pursued on foot and a handcar before taking a smaller steam engine named the Yonah, another engine called the William R. Smith, and finally, the Texas, which ran backward in hot pursuit for a total of eighty-seven miles until Ringgold, Georgia, where the General ran out of fuel and water. The Great Locomotive Chase officially ended with most of the raiders, save for six, being caught, captured, and eventually executed for their actions. The surviving raiders, who were held as prisoners of war, were ultimately released in a prisoner exchange and were awarded the Medal of Honor on March 25th, 1863.
This incident would be well-documented in the century that followed through writing (like the 1889 memoir The Great Locomotive Chase written by surviving Andrews Raider William Pittenger), illustrations, and eventually, the silver screen, with the most notable examples being Buster Keaton's silent comedy classic, The General (1926), and Walt Disney's big-screen dramatization, The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). Both movies are iconic in their respective ways; one as a slightly fictionalized silent comedy starring, co-written, co-edited, co-produced, and co-directed by Keaton, and the other as a talking Technicolor and CinemaScope historical adventure movie produced by Disney himself and his live-action film production studio. I will give my overall thoughts on both films before moving on to my personal views on this fascinating moment in the American Civil War.
The General follows Western & Atlantic Railroad engineer Johnnie Gray (Keaton), whose love for not only his locomotive, the General, but also Annabelle Lee (played by Marion Mack) is not enough for him to be enlisted in the Confederate Army upon the beginning of the Civil War as he is viewed as more valuable as an engineer. Annabelle is displeased with Johnnie's rejection and refuses to speak to him, which leads to an iconic sight gag where Johnnie sits on one of the General's side rods as a hostler slowly steams the locomotive into the engine house. A year later, during a stop in Big Shanty for a quick meal, Union spies steal the General with Annabelle on board a baggage car, which leads Johnnie to pursue them on foot and handcar, but unlike the actual Chase, steals a bicycle, before resorting straight to Kingston, Georgia, where he takes the locomotive, the Texas, initially coupled up to an army detachment, before accidentally leaving them behind. Johnnie pursues the raiders and the General into Northern territory, where he stops the engine and hides in a forest during a downpour.
That night, Johnnie sneaks into a cottage where he overhears Union officers discussing a surprise attack on the Confederate Army at the Rock River Bridge, an essential crossing for supply trains. Johnnie then rescues Annabelle from the officers by knocking one out unconscious, and they hide out in the forest. They find two Union supply trains in the morning, one headed by the General, and the other by the Texas, preparing for the attack. Johnnie retakes the General, and another Great Locomotive Chase ensues, but in reverse. Upon reaching the Rock River Bridge, Johnnie stops the General, sets the bridge on fire to cut off his pursuers, and proceeds forward to alert the Confederate forces. Shortly afterward, the Texas catches up, but it collapses spectacularly into the river below when it crosses the bridge. When the Union forces try to cross the river, the Confederate army charges in and drives them off.
Meanwhile, the Union officer whom Johnnie had knocked out regains consciousness, and Johnnie takes him prisoner upon discovering this. This is seen by a Confederate general, who commissions Johnnie as a lieutenant as a reward for his bravery. The movie ends with Johnnie sitting on one of the General's side rods, reuniting with Annabelle, and saluting the passing troops as he kisses her.
Much of this movie is timeless and continues to thrill and amaze me every time. From Buster Keaton's masterful direction and staging of the picture's various stunts (the most impressive being a famous sequence where he balances himself on the Texas' wooden pilot while carrying a wooden tie and, with precise timing, throws it down onto another tie laying across the tracks, clearing the way just in time) to his eye for visual and historical details, especially for a 1920s comedy. While Keaton was unable to utilize the real-life General locomotive due to the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway (which had entitlement on it)'s refusal to lend it over Keaton's project being a comedy, he used and cosmetically modified three logging engines located on the Oregon, Pacific & Eastern Railway that ran between Cottage Grove and Culp Creek, Oregon, to great effect. The most iconic (and most expensive) moment from this movie, where the Texas rolls onto the burning bridge and falls into the river, was meticulously planned out and done in a single take with a third steam engine on hand dressed as the Texas serving as its stunt double. Given its status as an all-time classic, I am still surprised that this movie was a flop upon its initial release. However, if time does one thing right, it allows contemporary audiences to view an older or historically underappreciated film through fresh eyes and a new perspective.
However, not every aspect of Keaton's The General has aged well, especially when I view it through the eyes of a young man of color living in a society that wholeheartedly condemns white supremacy and white nationalism in the United States. Specifically, the sequence toward the third act of The General, where the Confederate Army charge to the rescue in a triumphant display of heroism, which upon contemporary viewing, I find to be a product of the time, much like The Birth of a Nation (1915), which, while revolutionary for its filmmaking achievements, glorified the Ku Klux Klan. The widespread myths of the Confederacy's cause for the war being the fight for states' rights and nothing to do with preserving the enslavement of African men, women, and children are deeply ingrained in the movie and present around the film's time of release.
These myths are further backed up by this quote from Keaton, who, according to Stan Cohen and James G. Bogle's book The General & The Texas: A Pictorial History of the Andrews Raid, April 12, 1862, explained why he changed the perspective of the Chase from the Union Raiders' side to the Confederates' (in the form of the fictional engineer Johnnie):
"You can always make villains out of the Northerners, but you cannot make a villain out of the South. You can't do that with a motion picture audience...The South lost the war anyhow so the audience resents it...When the story ended, the South was winning...All this took place in 1862, and the South lost in 1864."
From this statement, it can be inferred that on the surface level, the Confederacy was winning, albeit temporarily. However, since there is no other way around this controversial subject without defending the unspeakable horrors of slavery, I have prepared a statement.
As a young boy, I enjoyed reading about this story out of my love for trains without paying attention to the historical context behind the Civil War. However, as I grew older and eventually learned about what the Confederacy stood for, I became emotionally torn between my nostalgia for pre-Civil War steam trains and whether I had unknowingly been exposed to a white-washed version of history. Thus, regarding my relationship with the Great Locomotive Chase, it is now a complicated one, for not only do I have a newfound perspective on the context behind the Raiders' motives and why the surviving Raiders received the Medal of Honor, but also one regarding the General and Texas themselves. Despite being mere machines, they were accessories in fighting for the Confederacy. While the General was used as a vessel by the Union to end a battle within a massive war between the United States versus traitors to the country, with the former ultimately triumphing despite Andrews being executed, I still cannot shake off the fact that enemies of the state used a locomotive I have admired since I was little. In conclusion, for society to ideologically and philosophically progress, everyone must take an honest look at human history and try to identify white-washed history lessons, unlearn their racist messaging, and do their part to not only reject white supremacist philosophies but also learn from our mistakes in how one may have played a role in pushing them growing up.
Regardless of the film's portrayal of the Northern and Southern armies, Keaton's The General is an all-time classic of silent comedies with exquisite period set pieces and well-choreographed and executed visual and physical gags that remain as impressive and influential almost a century later. From the rail mortar with a mind of its own to the iconic climax where a full-size steam locomotive steams over a burning trestle and plunges to its watery demise upon the trestle's collapse, The General was and still is a timeless technical marvel that, while taking multiple creative liberties with the characters involved, continues to simultaneously provide audiences everywhere with not only plenty of visual thrills but also laughs.
In 1956, Walt Disney released his film adaptation, The Great Locomotive Chase starring Fess Parker of Davy Crockett fame as Andrews and Parker's Crockett costar Jeffrey Hunter as Fuller. Unlike The General, this production rented and utilized two authentic nineteenth-century steam locomotives to portray the General and Texas: the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's William Mason and the Virginia & Truckee Railroad's Inyo.
On a side note, both the Mason and the Inyo were later used in The Wild Wild West, with the Inyo appearing in the original 1965-'69 television series and the Mason in the 1999 film adaptation.
Disney's adaptation of the Great Locomotive Chase begins and ends with surviving raider Corporal William Pittenger (played by John Lupton) narrating the events of the Chase, with the story playing out as a flashback. This adaptation makes an active effort to be closer to the historical events by incorporating the Yonah (portrayed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's 1927 replica of the Lafayette) and William R. Smith engines (also played by the Inyo) into the story and tonally playing it straight compared to Keaton's comedic interpretation of the Chase. It also includes Andrews and the raiders being captured and imprisoned, the Raiders attempting a prison escape, Andrews making peace with Fuller before the former's execution, and the movie ending with the surviving raiders receiving the Medal of Honor. This unhappy ending may have proven to be quite uncharacteristic for a Disney film of the day, as evidenced by some of the reviews at the time, like this one from Bosley Crowther for The New York Times:
"The excitement is over when they [the raiders] abandon the trains."
Regardless of how well the ending fares compared to the rest of the picture, this production is an impressive one in its own right, from the performances of Parker, Hunter, and Slim Pickens as Pete Bracken, the Texas' engineer, to its use of the scenic Tallulah Falls Railway that once ran for thirty-five miles between Franklin, North Carolina, and Cornelia, Georgia, about fifty miles east of the tracks where the real-life Chase occurred.
Both movies do an excellent job utilizing full-size steam locomotives as not only active participants and characters in the story but also ones who do their physical stunts (i.e., running backward and forward at high speeds, forcing to rapidly stop and reverse directions while risking severe damage to their wheels, or worse). While one picture tries more obviously to paint one side of the Civil War more sympathetically and triumphantly (the South), the other film does its best to present historical events as accurately as possible while delivering an entertainingly thrilling chase movie. While creative liberties used when depicting historical events in films are unavoidable, and for all their faults in portraying whose side was on the right side of history, both pictures hold up as historical filmmaking documents on a memorable Civil War incident. As a history buff, understanding and learning the historical context behind specific events is crucial for me as an active participant in what a democratic society should be. Simultaneously, the movie lover and train enthusiast in me admires both films for their craft and entertainment value and their utilization of authentic steam locomotives to bring history to life.
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