Identifier: greatlocomotivec01pitt (find matches)
Title: The great locomotive chase; a history of the Andrews railroad raid into Georgia in 1862
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Pittenger, William, 1840-1904
Subjects: Chattanooga Railroad Expedition, 1862
Publisher: Philadelphia, The Penn publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ents I was much amused in noticing what all persons who have had much to do with sifting testimony have been forced to recognize—the uncertainty, in minute points, of the best witnesses. None of us had any motive to recall anyother than the exact facts; but we differed in a thousand little matters, though none of the discrepancies were of practical importance. With this narrative in view, I questioned the others carefully about those things which I had not jotted down at the time, or which took place beyond the bounds of my own experience. Substantial agreement, with numberless minute divergencies, was the outcome. For example (and this was themore striking from its non-essential character) we began to talk of the number of windows in the upper cell of Swims jail in Chattanooga. There was no difference as to the lower room, for every detail of that horrible place was burned into our memories forever. But some said there were three windows in the upper room, and others that there were but two.
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440 Daring and Suffering. After the dispute had lasted for some time, another came in and was at once appealed to as a fresh witness, and unhesitatingly declared that there was but one. In the two matters following I was forced to admit myself in error, which I did the more readily as in both these I had depended on other eyes. The two engineers, Brown and Knight, and the fireman Wilson united in saying that the Yonah engine was in sight when we passed. Amore serious difficulty arose in apportioning the comparative labors of Brown and Knight. When the box-car contingent, with which I was, broke out the end of their car and crawled on the engine and tender, Brown was acting as engineer. This mainly had led me to write and others to speak of him as engineer, sometimes without mention of Knight at all. But it appeared that while Brown was examined as to his qualifications as engineer by Mitchel himself, and approved; yet Knight had been spoken to by Andrews and the Colonel of the Twenty-first O

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