Transportation Revolution

NH Civil War Gal

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I'm reading "Battle Cry of Freedom" by McPherson and he has a couple of pages devoted the transportation revolution - railroads and canals. I'm sure some of you hard-core rail men knew this but I didn't AND I wonder if the Civil War could even have happened (certainly not on the scale it did) if there weren't railroads.

"The 9,000 miles of rail in the United States by 1850 led the world, but paled in comparison with the 21,000 additional miles laid during the next decade, which gave the United States in 1860 a larger rail network than the rest of the world combined."
 
In 1861, the states that would become the Confederacy had 1/3 of the rail trackage that the Union had. Doesn't seem like a whole lot. However this mileage would have put her in 3rd place world-wide.

Some countries had a great river network and population and industry grew up around them. Euro countries (other than Russia) just didn't have the distances to cover like the USA did. East of the Mississippi most US rivers weren't all that navigable and didn't go in a needed direction. The Mississippi and her tributaries being an exception. (But then again, pop and industry grew up around her for that reason) Canals and rails were built to bring the products of the hinterland to the major ports of the East - NYC / Philly / Balto et al.

Would the war have happened? I think yes. Improved transpo didn't change the underlying causes. On the scale that it did? I think yes. Improved transpo didn't change borders. What WOULD have been different would be the pace of the war. Maybe lasting longer to get to the final conclusion we had originally or maybe shorter because voters got tired of the stalemate.

Just my ramblings...

Cheers!
USS ALASKA
 
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Oh, the underlying cause was still there and would have exploded one way or the other. But the pace and scope I think would have had to be different. I'm reading where shipment time of freight went from 50 days to 5 and Cincinnati became the meatpacking capital of the US. The the wholesale price of western pork in Cincinnati and New York dropped from $9.53 a barrel to $1.18 a barrel. No wonder the North could feed an army. How would they ever have managed to feed and keep stores coming to depots without the fantastic price drop. Flour went from $2.48 a barrel to .28 cents.

Did telegraph lines follow railroad lines? If so, that played a HUGELY important role in the CW - never mind troop movements, heck the commissaries could telegraph each other and wholesalers to get the best pricing on large quantities of food stores.
 
Did telegraph lines follow railroad lines? If so, that played a HUGELY important role in the CW - never mind troop movements, heck the commissaries could telegraph each other and wholesalers to get the best pricing on large quantities of food stores.

Pretty much yes though like much else the telegraph was a system in its infancy, the railroads some of the first to pick up on their usefulness. Also the railroad companies were laying new routes through the countryside and the easiest way to get the new wires in was to follow these.
 
Oh, the underlying cause was still there and would have exploded one way or the other. But the pace and scope I think would have had to be different. I'm reading where shipment time of freight went from 50 days to 5 and Cincinnati became the meatpacking capital of the US. The the wholesale price of western pork in Cincinnati and New York dropped from $9.53 a barrel to $1.18 a barrel. No wonder the North could feed an army. How would they ever have managed to feed and keep stores coming to depots without the fantastic price drop. Flour went from $2.48 a barrel to .28 cents.

Did telegraph lines follow railroad lines? If so, that played a HUGELY important role in the CW - never mind troop movements, heck the commissaries could telegraph each other and wholesalers to get the best pricing on large quantities of food stores.
Good points.
 
Did telegraph lines follow railroad lines?

Absolutely. The flat, level - for the most part - right of way that the railroads held was perfect for stringing telegraph wires. Already plotted and cleared, and it was easy to service. And the RR lines went from populous place to populous place...where the money would be for mass communication.

The telegraph did cross the US before the RRs did...1861

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
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I'm reading where shipment time of freight went from 50 days to 5 and Cincinnati became the meatpacking capital of the US. The the wholesale price of western pork in Cincinnati and New York dropped from $9.53 a barrel to $1.18 a barrel. No wonder the North could feed an army. How would they ever have managed to feed and keep stores coming to depots without the fantastic price drop. Flour went from $2.48 a barrel to .28 cents.

Don't let the prices get you caught up - every country deficit spends in wartime. How good is your credit? How much war can you afford?

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
I've seen the argument that the cotton kingdom would not have been possible without the steamboat and the steamship. Having no strong background in the matter, I can't say whether that is accurate or not. Certainly the cotton industry developed just fine without the assistance of railroads.
 
I've seen the argument that the cotton kingdom would not have been possible without the steamboat and the steamship. Having no strong background in the matter, I can't say whether that is accurate or not. Certainly the cotton industry developed just fine without the assistance of railroads.

Yes as far as it goes. All the planters wanted was to get cotton to a seaport and rivers were just fine for that. Rivers were not so good for transporting farm produce to cities, State interiors and eventually to armies.
 
I've seen the argument that the cotton kingdom would not have been possible without the steamboat and the steamship. Having no strong background in the matter, I can't say whether that is accurate or not. Certainly the cotton industry developed just fine without the assistance of railroads.

Not to be argumentative sir but the King would not have happened without the cotton gin. That is what made cotton a mass product consumable. After that, ways would have been found to service world markets.

As @DaveBrt has posted, some river transpo took up to two years due to winter and low water levels. What RRs brought was consistency even if the initial cost was higher.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
As @DaveBrt has posted, some river transpo took up to two years due to winter and low water levels. What RRs brought was consistency even if the initial cost was higher.

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

True... though there is often a misconception that railroad freight traffic was the magnificent cure all. One day it took years, now with the arrival of the railroad it will take hours.

It won't (well, not unless travelling very short distances).

Passenger locomotives in this period didn't travel that fast. Certainly not over any great distance... and freight trains were much slower. Rarely would a locomotive on a freight turn get above maybe thirty miles an hour (and on consideration I might be being a bit optimistic here). 15-20 was often considered good going... and it gets worse for freight trains were usually given a very low priority. Therefore they often sat on the sidelines for long periods of time waiting for the right of way and trains (especially heavy ones like the freights could often be) can take forever to accelerate even to the previously mentioned speeds.

(What I love though are what were euphemistically called 'express freights'. A more accurate statement would be it will hopefully not be as slow as a standard freight but...)

Now I'm not saying they werent important. Manifestly they were but there needs to be a certain caveat to all this. Especially when we remember that railroads quickly became targets. So at times they just weren't available. Also as the war went on wear and tear on them became atrocious, they often retasked to do things they weren't designed for.

Just my thoughts.
 
True... though there is often a misconception that railroad freight traffic was the magnificent cure all. One day it took years, now with the arrival of the railroad it will take hours.

It won't (well, not unless travelling very short distances).

Passenger locomotives in this period didn't travel that fast. Certainly not over any great distance... and freight trains were much slower. Rarely would a locomotive on a freight turn get above maybe thirty miles an hour (and on consideration I might be being a bit optimistic here). 15-20 was often considered good going... and it gets worse for freight trains were usually given a very low priority. Therefore they often sat on the sidelines for long periods of time waiting for the right of way and trains (especially heavy ones like the freights could often be) can take forever to accelerate even to the previously mentioned speeds.

(What I love though are what were euphemistically called 'express freights'. A more accurate statement would be it will hopefully not be as slow as a standard freight but...)

Now I'm not saying they werent important. Manifestly they were but there needs to be a certain caveat to all this. Especially when we remember that railroads quickly became targets. So at times they just weren't available. Also as the war went on wear and tear on them became atrocious, they often retasked to do things they weren't designed for.

Just my thoughts.
Add incompatible guages especially in the CSA to the list of delays.
 
The northern advantage over the south in rail networks was a critical component of northern victory. Both north and south used their networks to concentrate far flung armies to strategic points, as in Longstreet's movement from Virginia to strengthen the Army of Tennessee before the battle of Chickamauga, and the Army of the Potomac’s XI and XII Corps movement to bolster the Chattanooga forces in October 1863. But because of incompatible guages as pointed out by jgoodguy, the southern move took comparatively way longer.
 
Add incompatible guages especially in the CSA to the list of delays.
Not a real problem. There were only 2 gauges in the Confederacy east of the Mississippi River -- one in Virginia and North Carolina and one everywhere else (exception -- one road in Alabama). Far more important was the reshipping required at the end of each road and the start of the next. This was not caused by gauge, but by the lack of a way to use and care for other roads' rolling stock -- so each road tried to keep its own rolling stock on its own road. This was not always possible, but it was what caused a lot of the slowness of Confederate freight shipments.
 
The northern advantage over the south in rail networks was a critical component of northern victory. Both north and south used their networks to concentrate far flung armies to strategic points, as in Longstreet's movement from Virginia to strengthen the Army of Tennessee before the battle of Chickamauga, and the Army of the Potomac’s XI and XII Corps movement to bolster the Chattanooga forces in October 1863. But because of incompatible guages as pointed out by jgoodguy, the southern move took comparatively way longer.
Not true - there was only one gauge change on that trip -- Charlotte NC or Wilmington NC, depending on the route being used by a particular shipment of troops. The slowness of the Confederate trip was caused by lack of rollingstock on every road being used.
 
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