| 19th Century Development of a Transportation Infastructure (1806-1914) |
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Sections:- Public versus Private: The Internal Improvements Debate
- Robert Fulton and the Steamboat, 1807
- The Erie Canal, 1825
- The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 1830
- Railroad Accidents
- Transportation and the Civil War
- Sherman's March to the Sea
- Mississippi River Steamboats
- Steamboat Disasters
- Transcontinental Railroad
- Panama Canal
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| Historical Context
In the early 1800s, barely twenty-years since independence from Great Britain, the United States was a geographically enormous nation with a very small population. Though dotted with small farms and some cities, much of the country remained an unpopulated wilderness.
This presented numerous problems in a time before railroads. As no formal system of roads existed and the only practical means of moving large or heavy items was by water, American commerce suffered.
In 1806, Congress authorized Albert Gallatin, Treasury Secretary to President Jefferson, to prepare a report examining the shortcomings of the national transportation infrastructure. In 1808, Gallatin presented Congress with his “Report on Roads, Canals, Harbours, and Rivers,” which advocated the construction of a nationally funded system of roads and canals, funded by the tariff, to promote economic activity and provide better transportation for defense.
Gallatin’s plan was shelved by the War of 1812, though revived in 1817 by South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. By this point, the political topography had changed and the emergent view of states’ rights federalism prohibited such an ambitious national project. Because of notions of states’ rights, Calhoun’s plan passed Congress by a bare majority, but was vetoed by President Madison.
With no legal mechanism by which the central government could construct a transportation network, the majority of the responsibility fell to the states and to private companies. This led to wild disparities in the quality and extent of transportation infrastructure between the states.
Attached Documents
The first document is a letter from Robert Fulton, who would later build the first practical steamboat, to President Washington advocating the construction of a national transportation infrastructure.
The second document is an excerpt from Albert Gallatin’s 1808 “Report on Roads, Canals, Harbours, and Rivers.”
The third document is President Madison’s 1817 veto message.
Questions to Consider
1. Is it the proper role of the government to invest in economic growth? How have attitudes on the subject changed since the early 1800s to now?
2. How would a private infastructure of roads altered the national development of the United States?
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| Historical Context
"What sir, would you make a ship sail against the winds and current by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense."
Napoleon I to Robert Fulton
The era of steam navigation began on 7 August 1807 when Robert Fulton, a former portrait painter, launched the steamboat Claremont on the Hudson River. Despite the weight of a masonry boiler, on its maiden voyage the Claremont traveled 150 miles upstream between New York City and Albany in 32 hours, an astonishing speed from the time.
Fulton’s steamboat quickly revolutionized transportation and commerce. In 1811, Fulton had taken his steamboat to the Mississippi River with the New Orleans. In 1819, the Savannah crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a combination of steam and wind power.
Fulton did not invent the steamboat, as many believe, but instead created the first steamboat that could be operated economically.
Attached Documents
The image is The Claremont on the Hudson River.
Questions to Consider
Fulton constructed his steamboats with private finanicing. Is there a difference between construcing a machine and constructing a transportation network? Is one more the government's responsibility than the other?
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| Historical Context
In the early years of the 19th Century, before the invention of the railroad, the only viable means of moving heavy goods around the country was by water. Roads were often little more than trails and the weight of loads was limited to the strength of a team of oxen.
This presented major problems from trade in the United States as the major ports, New York and Baltimore, were not serviced by rivers. Goods being taken to market would be taken as far as possible by water, but then would have to be unloaded and taken to the port over land. This was time consuming and expensive.
In 1817, only months after President Madison vetoed the internal improvements legislation, New York Governor Dewitt Clinton approved construction on the Erie Canal to link the Great Lakes with the Hudson River. Because of President Madison’s veto, the canal would be built by the state of New York rather than the federal government.
When the canal was completed in 1825, it revolutionized business. Using the canal, the cost of moving one ton of wheat to market fell from $100 to $5. Similarly, a trip across New York, which had taken 20 days by land, could now be completed in 10.
In 1825, the first year that the Erie Canal was open, 185,000 tons of merchandise traveled east on the canal, including 562,000 bushels of wheat, 221,000 barrels of flour, and 435,000 gallons of whiskey.
Attached Documents
The first document is a portion of a travelogue by Nathaniel Hawthorne detailing a trip on the Erie Canal.
The image is an artist’s representation of the Erie Canal circa 1829.
Questions to Consider
1. How would this advance in technology impact society? Has anything comparable happened during your lifetime?
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| Historical Context
In 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) became the first American railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight. Investors in Baltimore, then the second largest city in the United States, sought a means to compete with the Erie Canal in New York for access to the lucrative Western trade. The railroad was initially conceived as a means to carry goods from the Ohio River to Baltimore Harbor. The first thirteen miles of track, largely a test of the feasibility of the project, opened in 1830. The Ohio River, the initial target of construction, was not reached until 1852. Eventually, the B&O Railroad expanded to serve much of the Eastern Seaboard and reached as far west as Chicago. The B&O Railroad operated until 1986.
In 1830, there were 23 miles of railroad in the United States. By 1840 it had increased to 2,808 miles of track. By 1860, 30,626 miles of track had been laid in the United States.
Attached Documents
First image: The diminutive Tom Thumb, now housed at a museum in Baltimore, was the first locomotive on the B&O.
Second image: The John Bull, an English locomotive, entered service in New Jersey in 1831. Now housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., it is the oldest operational locomotive in the world.
Third image: In 1981, the 150th anniversary of its construction, the John Bull made a trip through Georgetown.
Questions to Consider
1. How did the advent of the railroad effect commerce? How did the railroad change the way that goods were brought to market?
2. In what ways did the early locomotives resemble later steam locomotives? In what ways were they different? What sort of fuel is the John Bull using in the photograph? What sort of fuel did later steam engines use?
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| Historical Context
Through the 19th Century, as American trains became faster, heavier, and more crowded, safety features often struggled to keep pace. Signaling mechanisms were rudimentary at best, bridges and trestles were often rickety wooden structures that were not built for the larger traffic. When combined with the relentless pressure placed upon train crews to remain on schedule, the results were often disastrous. Through the nineteenth century, the United States saw an ever escalating number of railroad deaths. In the first four months of 1853, as trains became a more popular form of transportation, more Americans died in rail accidents than had in the previous twenty-five years.
One of the most famous crashes occurred on 30 April 1900 near Vaughn, Mississippi. A train driven by John Luther “Casey” Jones at an estimated 75 miles per hour to make up time, crashed into the back of a disabled train sitting on the tracks. Though the rest of the crew escaped, Jones was killed in the collision.
Attached Documents
The first file is an mp3 of the most accepted version of the song “Casey Jones.” Note that the historical version of the song bears no resemblance to the more recent Grateful Dead version of the song.
The second file is the lyrics of the version of “Casey Jones” performed in the audio file.
The third document is the official accident report for the wreck that killed Jones.
The fourth file is a photograph of a 1903 wreck near Danville, Virginia. Notice the two-tiered wooden trestle construction.
The fifth file is an excerpt from a Harpers Monthly article in which a writer takes a harrowing journey on a train.
Questions to Consider
1. What do the lyrics of "Casey Jones" suggest about the socio-economics and the domestic life of people employed by the railroads?
2. Speed was a major factor in the wreck that killed Jones. Considering the safety technology of the time, would it ever be safe to operate a train at those speeds?
3. How would the conditions described in the Harper's Monthly article contibute to railway accidents?
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| Historical Context
The failure of the federal government in the early 19th Century to enact a national plan for transportation improvements led to vast infrastructure disparities between states during the Civil War. The industrialized states of the North had greater resources and greater transportation needs than the rural South. Therefore, the Northern states invested far more heavily in railroads in the antebellum period than did the South. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the Union possessed roughly 20,000 miles of track while the South had only 9,000 miles.
Attached Documents
The image is an 1851 map of railways in the United States. Notice the disparity in railways in the 1851 map of the United States.
Questions to Consider
1. In what ways would the larger transportation network of the Union help in the war effort?
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| Historical Context
“That a single stem of railroad [from Louisville to Atlanta], 473 miles long, supplied an army of 100,000 men and 35,000 animals for a period of 196 days . . . . That amount of food and forage would have taken 36,800 wagons of six mules . . . each day, a simple impossibility . . . in that region of the country.”
General William T. Sherman, “Memoirs,”
Written during the Atlanta Campaign
In 1864 Union General William Tecumseh Sherman launched an attack designed to break the Confederacy’s ability to wage war. While the majority of the Confederate armies were tied up in the fight against Grant, Sherman took an army of 100,000 into the Southern heartland and encountered no significant opposition.
The destruction of the Southern rail infrastructure was a significant objective of Sherman’s campaign. After taking Atlanta, then the major Southern rail hub, Sherman burned the city and destroyed the transportation network along with it.
Following the destruction of Atlanta, Sherman turned his offensive towards the sea. With no significant Southern army for hundreds of miles, Sherman was able to divide his army into two columns which together destroyed the Southern country side in a swath sixty miles wide. During its “March to the Sea,” Sherman’s army paid particular attention to destroying Southern rail lines. Rather than content itself with tearing up the tracks, Union soldiers would light bonfires with the wooden rail ties which would be used to heat the metal rails. Once the rails were heated to near their melting point, they were wrapped around trees or telegraph poles. The bent rails, called “Sherman’s Neckties,” were then too weak to hold rail traffic, even if straightened.
Upon reaching the Georgia coast, Sherman’s army turned north into South Carolina, destroying the countryside as it went. After burning Charleston, Sherman was in a position to threaten Lee’s armies near Richmond, already engaged with Grant to the north, from the south. This hastened Lee's surrender.
Attached Documents
First Image: A contemporary engraving of Sherman's army destroying a rail line.
Second Image: An example of a Sherman's Necktie.
Third Image: A destroyed Southern rail bridge.
Fourth Image: The burned rail depot in Atlanta.
Fifth Image: The burned remains of Charleston, South Carolina.
The document is a letter from General Sherman demanding the surrender of Savannah.
Questions to Consider
1. Sherman had once indicated that the manufactured goods of the South were useless to the war effort if they could not be transported. Is this true? If it is true, are manufacturing and transportation networks, often near civilian population centers, legitimate military targets?
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| Historical Context
Soon after the success of the Claremont on the Hudson River, Robert Fulton was ready to bring the steamboat to the Mississippi River. In 1811 Fulton, along with partner Robert Livingston, launched the “New Orleans” to provide service on the Mississippi between New Orleans and St. Louis.
The steamboat quickly came to dominate commerce on the Mississippi. Soon after their introduction, the cost of transporting one ton of merchandise from New Orleans to St. Louis had fallen from $23 to $13, a price that would further decrease as technology improved and more boats plied the waters. Between 1814 and 1834, the number of steamboats docking in New Orleans each year increased from 20 to 1200.
The steamboats continued to hold sway on the Mississippi through the Civil War though, by 1870, the railroads had largely supplanted the steamboats for moving passengers and goods. The steamboat culture on the Mississippi River is richly chronicled in the writings of Mark Twain. Attached Documents
The image is an undated photograph of steamboats waiting at an unidentified dock.
Questions to Consider
1. The introduction of machines revolutionized transportation in the 19th Century. In what other areas of the economy was this true?
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| Historical Context
Steamboats were, to any modern standard, incredibly dangerous. Constructed of wood, the hulls of steamboats were extremely vulnerable to the sandbars and logs that filled the channel. Additionally, the wooden construction was vulnerable to the fires that heated and propelled the ship and lit the cigars and pipes in a time when smoking was ubiquitous. Many steamboats were often destroyed by boiler explosions powerful enough to reduce a wooden ship to splinters. As a result, a new river steamboat was only expected to remain in service for a few years before being destroyed.
On the night of 27 April 1865, roughly two weeks after the end of the Civil War, the boilers on the steamboat Sultana, a boat only built to hold 376, exploded near Memphis, killing 1,547 passengers , most of whom were released prisoners of war returning home.
Artifacts from the steamboat Bertrand, which sank in 1865 near Missouri Valley, Iowa, fill a museum at the DeSoto Bend National Wildlife Refuge. Artifacts from the Arabia, which sank in 1856, are now housed in Kansas City. In 2005, scientists discovered the remains of the Montana, the largest river steamboat ever built, near St. Louis.
Attached Documents
First image: An engraving of the wreck of the Sultana.
Second image: A map of the wrecks between Kansas City and Jefferson City. Note, the distance between Kansas City and Jefferson City is approximately 160 miles.
Questions to Consider
1. Was the benefit of steamboat transport worth the risks? Why or why not? |
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| Historical Context
The transcontinental railroad was the technological feat of the 19th Century. Stretching nearly 1800 miles from Omaha to Sacramento, the railroad linked the burgeoning population centers of the East with the Western frontier. With the railroad, the iconic wagon train was rendered obsolete and the river steamboat was not far behind.
The transcontinental railroad was constructed by two companies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, each of which received money and land from the federal government for every mile of track completed. From the start, the Central Pacific, building east from Sacramento, encountered difficult terrain. Forced to blast and tunnel through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Central Pacific was forced to seek additional financial considerations from the government. An untold number of immigrant Chinese laborers were killed in construction accidents, primarily as a result of volatile explosives of the time, through the mountains.
Eventually the two rail lines met at Promontory Point, Utah on 10 May 1869. The railroad opened the west for economic and territorial expansion and created such cities as Omaha and Denver. At the same time, the flood of white settlers that the railroad allowed virtually insured the destruction of the Plains Indians.
Attached Documents
The first image, one of the most famous in American history, shows the completion of the transcontinental railroad near Promontory Point, Utah.
The second image, circa 1891, is of a track surveying team.
The third image is an advertising poster for the railroad to California.
Questions to Consider
Would the transcontinental railroad have been possible without government financial assistance? Could a nation as vast as the United States be governed without a similar technology?
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| Historical Context
The Panama Canal was begun by the French builders of the Suez Canal in 1881, though the project quickly faltered primarily due to technological limitations and the impact of tropical diseases, most notably malaria. By1904, the United States, viewing the canal as crucial for economic well being, was ready to take up construction but balked at the price that Columbia, which controlled the canal site, demanded for construction to continue.
Rather than acquiesce to Columbia’s demands, the United States staged an independence movement in the Columbian state of Panama Furthermore, the United States station naval gunboats off the coast to discourage Columbian interference. The independent nation of Panama quickly agreed to allow the United States to build the canal.
By 1904, technological innovations eased construction difficulties for the Americans. The introduction of quinine limited the deaths caused by malaria and improvements in lock technology allowed engineers to overcome the elevation changes that bedeviled the French.
When the Panama Canal was completed in 1914, it was regarded as a wonder of the modern world. Twice as long as the Suez Canal in Egypt, the Panama Canal was, at 51 miles, the largest artificial body of water in the world. Over 30 years of intermittent construction, approximately 80,000 laborers worked on the canal an estimated 30,000 of whom died, mostly from malaria. Construction of the canal cost the United States approximately $352 million dollars. By utilizing the canal, a ship sailing from San Francisco to New York could save nearly 8,000 miles
Attached Documents
The first image is a photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt at the controls of a steam shovel at the canal site.
The second image is a photograph of two ships dredging the canal during construction.
Questions to Consider
Has there been a comparable feat of construction in recent times?
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