Railroads

By 1815 there were few nations in the world with a greater need for an effective transportation system than the United States. With the uncertainties of national survival overcome, Americans were beginning to move west over the Allegheny Mountains. Although most of the nation’s population lived near the seaboard, and the rivers draining into the ocean provided adequate local transportation, the need to travel inland was increasing, and the lack of transportation across the mountains was a major hindrance.

The first idea of a railroad in the United States had been advanced before the Revolutionary War when the great American inventor Oliver Evans suggested the construction of a steam-powered railroad between Philadelphia and New York. Evans, who was not adequately appreciated by his contemporaries, had been experimenting with steam engines to power millstones. By 1801, he had constructed an amphibious steam carriage that chugged around Philadelphia, convincing people that Evans was deranged. Unfortunately, his inventions were ahead of their time, and he was unable to secure funds to perfect them. He died in 1819, convinced that future steam locomotives would pull passenger trains up to 300 miles per day. Most of his contemporaries continued to derive great mirth from Evan’s predictions, but many of them lived to see him vindicated.

Probably the first known transportation system to actually use rails in the United States was constructed in 1795 to transport rock and cement in the Boston area. In 1807, another railway was constructed in Boston by Silas Whitney. Two years later, Thomas Leiper built a railroad to a stone quarry near Philadelphia, and in May 1827 a nine-mile line was constructed to a coal mine in Pennsylvania. The longest early railroad was the Delaware & Hudson (D&H) Canal Company’s 29-mile gravity railroad from its Honesdale, Pennsylvania, coal mines to the D&H canal at Rondout, New York. All of these railroads, however, used wooden rails and horse or mule power. Most of the lines were gravity lines, where cars coasted downgrade with loads and were drawn back up to the mine or oven by animal power. With the exception of the D&H line, they were also quite short. These lines were designed to haul a single cargo to the point where it was to be used or to haul it to a better-developed and more efficient source of water transportation.

The first incorporated railroad in the United States was the Granite Railway Company of Massachusetts, which was chartered by the state on March 4, 1826. Its purpose, hauling blocks of granite for the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument, was similar to that of the earliest railroads. The Granite Railway was only three miles long and was powered by horses. It was also the first railroad to utilize wooden rails overlaid with iron. The line eventually became part of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad.

The first known charter for an intercity railroad in the United States was granted to New Jersey in 1815 to Colonel John Stevens. Stevens had been attempting to secure this charter since 1811, and in 1812 he petitioned Congress to support a national railroad. Since Colonel Stevens was not as eccentric as Evans, he was regarded more seriously. In 1825, he operated one of the first live-steam model railroads—a locomotive that ran around a loop of track on his lawn.

One of the major reasons people were unwilling to back Stevens was that most Americans believed an effective transportation system had already been developed. The same year Stevens first operated his live-steam model, the great engineering marvel of the new nation, the Erie Canal, had been opened. The canal opened the west to New York City and, furthermore, provided a laboratory for the training of many American civil and mechanical engineers, such as John Jervis. Until the 1840s, canals remained competitive with railroads in the question over which could provide better transportation. Eventually, the high initial cost of canals, the fact that they froze over in the winter in many parts of the country, and the slow speed of the boats allowed the railroad to win out. Canals continued, however, to transport bulk commodities, such as coal, that did not require speedy or timely delivery. Canals never were able to overcome their problem dealing with mountainous terrain. Railroads proved to be more adaptable to the severe grades faced by projects moving to the West.

This engraving depicts a race between Peter Cooper's locomotive Tom Thumb and a railcar pulled by a horse. (Hulton/Archive)

Thus, by the late 1820s, railroads clearly promised to be one facet of a transportation system that the new nation could utilize to, in the words of John C. Calhoun, “bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.” Although railroads were in their infancy when Calhoun made his statement in 1817, by 1830 they were already looming as a major factor in interstate transportation. Two major factors combined in the 1820s to increase the need for all forms of transportation. One was the tremendous population growth of the states west of the original 13 states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, and Missouri). In 1810, these states or territories contained 15 percent of the total U. S. population, but by 1830 this figure had grown to 28 percent. Trade with this increasingly populous region was extremely important for the East. The topography of the Midwest provided adequate river transportation down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Early efforts were made to improve transportation by connecting the Great Lakes and the Ohio River by canal. If the East did not develop an effective transportation link with these western states, those in the West would be forced to trade primarily with New Orleans. By 1825, a significant number of steamboats were already competing to make the best time to and from New Orleans.

The second major factor was the rivalry that developed between the major eastern cities for dominance in the western trade. There were five major American coastal cities in the early 19th century: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston. New York and Philadelphia had the initial edge for the western trade because of their size and huge financial resources. Baltimore’s convenient and strategically placed harbor allowed it to join the “big two.” Both Boston and Charleston gradually fell behind in the battle for the western trade, Boston because it was located farther from the western states than the other cities, and Charleston because it did not have the capital base of the merchant-oriented northern cities. Boston, in particular, still attempted to gain its share of the western trade indirectly by trading with New Orleans, but the city was less and less successful as the century progressed.

Early railroads had one of three purposes. First, there were the short lines, like the Granite Railway of Massachusetts, whose major purpose was to carry a single product a short distance. Second, there were the intercity railroads or western lines that attempted to link up cities or markets in a linear fashion, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad being a primary example. Finally, there were railroads designed to provide transportation to local markets in a major city. Such cities usually had lines radiating out from them like the spokes on a wheel. Boston was the leading example of this type of railroad system, with lines running to Lowell, Fitchburg, and Worcester, Massachusetts; Norwich, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island.

With the success of such railroads as the Baltimore & Ohio, the South Carolina, and the Mohawk & Hudson, a type of “railroad fever” swept many parts of the nation. Opposition to the railroads came from people who stood to lose business and money because of their introduction. Sometimes railroad workers were shot at and beaten up, sections of railroad were torn up, and locomotives and rolling stock were damaged. But such opposition did not last long. Railroads were infinitely superior to canals and turnpikes, and the feared displacement of workers did not occur.

The Baltimore & Ohio was not the first railroad to reach the western waters from one of three competing eastern cities; rail service between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes had been available since the 1840s. About 10 short connecting railroads, including the Mohawk & Hudson, constituted an unincorporated “Central Line,” but the trip from New York to Albany had to be made by river-boat until 1852, when it was possible to travel from New York to Lake Erie by rail. Philadelphia businessmen began a western railroad late compared to Baltimore, but, once started, they pushed its construction across Pennsylvania

With vigor. The Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated in 1846, and by 1852, also a little ahead of the B&O, the line was completed to Pittsburgh. Until 1854, this line had to use inclined planes to reach over the Allegheny Mountains. Thus, rail lines from all three cities reached western waters at Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Wheeling at about the same time.

Another early railroad associated with Philadelphia and New York was the Camden & Amboy (C&A), built by Robert L. and Edwin A. Stevens, the sons of Colonel John Stevens. After acquiring a charter in 1830, the C&A was constructed from Camden, New Jersey, across the river from Philadelphia, to South Amboy, New Jersey, on the ocean 30 miles south of New York City. Final connections to both cities involved ferry boats. Direct connections on rails leased or owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad from west of Philadelphia to New York were not obtained until after the Civil War. From the 1850s to 1863, New York-bound traffic from Pennsylvania had to be turned over to Philadelphia & Reading at Harrisburg. The C&A dominated transportation between Philadelphia and New York for over 30 years.

Railroad construction in New England did not lag behind that in the Middle Atlantic states merely because Boston appeared to be out of the race for western trade. Eventually the railroads radiating out of Boston made efforts to connect with key markets in three specific directions. First, a series of lines, including the Fitchburg and the Vermont Central, attempted to link Boston with eastern Canada, thus directing Canadian trade to and from Boston. Second, attempts were made, primarily through the Western Railroad of Massachusetts, to link Boston with Albany and the “Central Line” to Buffalo and the western trade. Third, via predecessors of the Boston & Maine and the New York, New Haven & Hartford, efforts were made to link Boston with New York. All of these efforts succeeded to some degree, but they were unable to restore Boston to the economic preeminence it enjoyed in the 18th century.

Until the 1850s, the financing of railroads involved a combination of private and public capital. The coal-mine lines were low-cost affairs financed by the owners of the mines and quarries themselves. The Baltimore & Ohio and the South Carolina Railroad were essentially city projects, and most of the money came in the form of municipal bonds or other forms of public support. Exceptions such as the Camden & Amboy were financed primarily by individual investors, who also played a minor early role in the B&O and the South Carolina Railroad. The Pennsylvania Railroad, during the late 1840s and early 1850s, was heavily financed by state and local commitments; in 1857, however, an amendment to the Pennsylvania state constitution made it illegal for counties, municipalities, or townships to invest public funds in railway construction. Thereafter, the issuance of stocks and bonds formed the basis for financing Pennsylvania’s railroads. Several other states developed similar prohibitions on using public money to support what were frequently dubious railroad construction projects. Prior to the Civil War, little capital to support railroad construction came from outside the United States.

In 1830, 23 miles of railroad were in operation. This figure grew to 2,818 miles in 1840 and to 9,021 miles in 1850. The year in which the greatest mileage was put into service was 1850, with 1,261 miles added. By 1860, 30,626 miles of railroad were in operation. Part of the reason for the success of railroads was the speed and relatively low cost of the transportation. In 1853, the cost of moving a ton of freight one mile by turnpike was approximately $15, while the rate on most railroads ranged between $1 and $2. River transportation, costing about 37 cents, was the least expensive, but rivers did not always flow where the freight had to go.

By the time of the Civil War, an extensive network of railroads covered New England, the Middle Atlantic states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the southern Michigan and Wisconsin. Lines in the South were less numerous, but all states had at least one rail line. In states like Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama, many of the lines were isolated with no outside connections, which was seldom the case in the North. The South had little of what could be termed a railroad system, but the North had already progressed a long way toward developing such a system.

Further reading: Sarah Gordon, Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996); John F. Stover, American Railroads (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).