Jerry Summers: John Swaim s Jail Tuesday, December 22, 2020 - by Jerry Summers
Jerry Summers
In April 1862 James Andrews and a group of Union volunteers stole the Western and Atlantic train at Big Shanty (Kennesaw) and planned to take the train north to Chattanooga and then to Huntsville, Alabama to Union General Ormsby Mitchel. A secondary goal was to burn railroad bridges, wreck rails and cut off a vital communication link.
Said event has been memorialized in movies and written accounts but the treatment that James Andrews and a group of Union soldiers in the Chattanooga privately owned jail of John Swaim sometimes described as Swaim’s jail has received little attention. Swaim’s Jail played an important part in the “Great Locomotive Chase” that is the story of Andrew’s Union Raiders that is also an important part of the history of the General locomotive by disguised Federal soldiers.