Railroads

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The transportation revolution helped America become a modern nation. In 1815 most Americans lived as subsistence farmers. They either made, raised, grew, or bartered for everything their families needed. High transportation costs made commercial farming (growing crops for sale) unprofitable for most farmers. New York's Erie Canal, completed in 1825, and then railroads, changed Americans' lives. By 1850 canals and railroads had reduced transportation costs by 95 percent. Farmers were now able to grow all the crops they could produce and sell them for cash. They could now buy items they previously had to make themselves. Factory-made cloth replaced the homespun clothing that had been produced after hours of labor by farm wives and daughters. Farmers in the North bought newly invented farm machinery to increase their crop production so they could make more money. They became consumers in America's industrial revolution.

Railroads were ideally suited for America's vast size. They ran all day, every day, and covered greater distances by more direct routes than did transportation by roads, canals or riverboats. America had 3,000 miles of track in 1840, 10,000 in 1850, and 30,000 in 1860. With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States had 50 percent of the world's railroad miles in 1855. Railroads' far-flung operation presented unique management problems that led to the development of modern management practices.

Railroads also introduced speed to business practices. Indeed, railroads started what Americans today call "standard" time. Before 1883, every town measured noon by when the sun stood directly overhead. This greatly complicated the setting of timetables and increased the danger of accidents. So the railroads adopted "railroad time" based on the concept, used earlier by some British railroads, of time zones in which the minute hand remains the same throughout the zone. The United States adopted railroad time as its official time with the Standard Time Act of 1918.

Railroads were still an emerging technology at the beginning of the Civil War. None had bridged the Ohio River or the Hudson River south of Albany. They ran on thirteen different gauges, the distance between the rails. It was not until 1886 that all railroads finally converted to the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch "standard" gauge. Local laws often required railroads to locate train stations at city limits in order to prevent fires and reduce unpleasant noise and smoke. This meant that passengers and freight had to be unloaded, carried through the city to the next station, and reloaded. Many railroads refused to allow their cars to travel on other rail lines for fear that they would lose them. Rail companies also refused to pull other companies' cars for fear of the wear and tear on equipment. The pressure to keep up with higher volume during the Civil War, however, encouraged efficiency and fostered greater cooperation among Northern railroad companies. The war set the stage for an integrated 200,000-mile national rail system by 1900.

Some historians call the Civil War the first modern war. It became a conflict increasingly driven by logistics, the practice of obtaining military supplies and distributing them as needed. Governments had to supply food and military supplies to armies fighting on several fronts and campaigning through thinly populated areas. Civil War armies rarely, with notable exceptions, provided their own food by taking supplies from local farmers, as armies did in earlier wars. Accurate rifled muskets greatly increased ammunition use and thus the need for renewed ordnance. Railroads carried wounded soldiers from battlefields to distant hospitals. Although railroad construction declined during the Civil War, railroads had an impact on the war's outcome.

Logistics requirements made the Civil War a railroad war. Every major battle took place within twenty miles of a railroad or river port. Union strategic planners deliberately targeted rail junctions, such as Manassas, Petersburg, Nashville, Chattanooga, Corinth, and Atlanta. Each side's skill in managing its railroads became an important factor in fighting the war and its ultimate outcome.

The Union received excellent service from Northern railroads. The government paid two cents per mile for carrying troops and a sliding scale for freight. High military traffic volume made the arrangement very profitable to the railroads. The profits, however, provided the money necessary to maintain tracks, locomotives, and railroad cars. Congress passed a law in February 1862 giving the president the authority to take control of the railroads during military emergencies. It also created the independent U.S. Military Railroad (USMRR) to repair or build tracks and to operate railroads in captured Confederate territory. By the end of the war, the USMRR was the largest railroad in the world, with 25,000 employees and 2,100 miles of track. Efficient Northern railroads gave Union armies an advantage of speed that offset the Confederacy's advantage of size.

Southern railroads were less advanced than Northern railroads, partly because of the seasonal nature of the South's agricultural production. Still, they formed an "imperfect skeleton" of a transportation system—or would have, had the Confederate government taken the necessary steps to organize it. Southern railroads used only two track gauges, the standard gauge or five-foot. The government sought to have the tracks of different railroads joined so as to form an integrated rail system with the capability to shift locomotives and cars to other tracks. However, although the Confederate Congress passed a law giving the Quartermaster General the power to take control of Southern railroads in time of emergency, it never enforced it. In spite of clear wartime need, railroads and the communities they served refused to join their tracks to other railroads.

The Confederate government also agreed to pay Southern railroads a two-cents-per-mile rate, but this did not cover the railroads' operating costs. Further, it paid with Confederate bonds that rapidly lost their value. Cash-starved railroads thus had no money with which to maintain their tracks and rolling stock. Finally, Confederate officers routinely disrupted railroad operations. As a result of the Confederacy's failure to organize its railroads, Southern railroad efficiency declined during the war. Its armies became immobile in a war of mobility.

The Confederacy proved very resourceful in using railroads despite these limitations. At the first battle, Bull Run, or Manassas, General Rene Beauregard shuttled soldiers by train from the Shenandoah Valley during the battle. These reinforcements helped to secure the Confederate victory. In 1862 General Braxton Bragg moved 30,000 soldiers from Mississippi to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to stop a Union advance. Its most famous movement occurred in September 1863, when 13,000 soldiers from General James Longstreet's corps traveled from Virginia to northwest Georgia. Half the soldiers arrived in time to play a significant role in the Confederate victory at Chickamauga. That half of Longstreet's force did not reach the battlefield in time, however, shows the shortcomings of Southern railroads.

In contrast to the South, the Union showed its railroading expertise after the battle of Chickamauga. It sent 23,000 soldiers from the 11th and 12th Corps, their artillery, horses and wagons, and other equipment 1,300 miles over eight railroads to reinforce its army in Chattanooga. The first infantry regiments reached the area five days after leaving Virginia. The last combat units arrived in fifteen days. They helped to secure eastern Tennessee for the Union. Chattanooga became General William Tecumseh Sherman's staging area for his Atlanta campaign in 1864. The Union and Confederacy proved the value of railroads in conducting modern war. Railroads provide an example of America's increasing expertise in logistics.

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States chartered four transcontinental railroad lines. The first one was completed in May 1869, with the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads at Promontory Point, Utah. All the railroad companies, benefiting from enormous financial support from federal and state governments in the form of generous land grants and loan agreements, brought great wealth to their investors and founders. These railroad lines fostered Western settlement by Euro-Americans, improved communication between people on the East and West coasts, and eased the transportation of manufactured and agricultural products. Tragically, the railroads hastened the demise of American Indians, their culture, and their way of life.

Age of Westward Expansion; Indian Removal and Response.

Black, Robert C., III. The Railroads of the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952.

Taylor, George Rogers. The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1951.

Turner, George Edgar. Victory Rode the Rails. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953.

Weber, Thomas. The Northern Railroads in the Civil War. New York: King's Crown, 1952.

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