financial committee, Garrett became the B&O's new president. Hopkins, a Maryland native, had become a hardware wholesale merchant on South Charles Street and made his substantial fortune in Baltimore. The Garrett Company as well as the B&O also had strong ties to the London-based George Peabody & Company, and through their business interests, financier George Peabody (1795–1869). The Civil War The B&O got an early taste of the Civil War during abolitionist John Brown's raid on the Federal armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia (in those days still part of Virginia). Garrett learned that raiders had stopped a train at Harper's Ferry, and sent a telegram to the U.S. Secretary of War. Federal troops with U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, (U.S. Army), from Arlington House, Virginia across the river from the Capital, were sent to put down the rebellion on a special B&O train. Garrett had previously always considered the B&O to be a "Southern railroad", and had originally pro-South sympathies. However, his business sense, with possibly political and economic acumen (and his anger at seeing Confederates tearing up his railroad) made him side with the Union and the policies of President Abraham Lincoln. Under his direction, the B&O was instrumental in supporting the Federal government, as it was the main rail connection between Washington, D.C. and the northern and western states. Garrett became a confidante of President Lincoln, and often accompanied him on his visits to battlefields in Maryland. During the third Confederate invasion of the North in July 1864, B&O agents began reporting Confederate troop movements in western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley and through Frederick, Maryland under General Jubal Early eleven days prior to what became the critical Battle of the Monocacy. Garrett had their intelligence passed to the U.S. War Department, particularly to Major General Lew Wallace (later noted author of the historical novel Ben Hur), who commanded the department responsible for defense of the area surrounding the national capitol. As battle preparations progressed, Garrett provided transport for Federal troops and munitions, and on two occasions President Lincoln contacted him directly for further information. Though Union forces lost this battle, the two-day delay allowed General Ulysses S. Grant, then campaigning further south and threatening the Confederate capital, Richmond and nearby Petersburg to detach several Federal regiments from his substantial forces and send them up north on the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River. They two