"Railroads of the Confederacy" Topic

"The Civil War was the first war in which railroads were a major factor. The 1850s had seen enormous growth in the railroad industry, so that by 1861, 22,000 miles of track had been laid in the Northern states and 9,500 miles in the South. The great rail centers in the South were Chattanooga, Atlanta, and most important, Richmond. Very little track had yet been laid west of the Mississippi.

Wars have always been fought to control supply centers and road junctions, but the Confederate government was slow to recognize the importance of the railroads in the conflict. By September 1863, the Southern railroads were in bad shape. They had begun to deteriorate very soon after the outset of the war, when many of the railroad employees headed north to join the Union war efforts. Few of the 100 railroads that existed in the South prior to 1861 were more than 100 miles in length. The South had always been less enthusiastic about the railroad industry than the North; its citizens preferred an agrarian living and left the mechanical jobs to men from the Northern states. The railroads existed, they believed, solely to get cotton to the ports…"

link

More here

link

Armand

Yet another example of the failure of Southern vision.

Glup!…

Armand

The perception of the way things were in the South (and north) on the eve of the Civil War and the reality were not necessarily the same. The situation with railroads is just one example. Likewise the shortcomings of the Southern rail lines during the ACW was as much the result of as the cause of other weaknesses in the Confederate war effort.

Thanks

Armand