Were railroads invented during the Civil War?

Prior to the Civil War in this country, railroads were a new and relatively untried invention. However, during the rebellion, railroads came of age. They became both strategic resources, as well as a military targets, precisely because they were strategic resources.



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The Civil War is 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.

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Aided by federal land grants, there was a great deal of railroad construction after the Civil War, especially in the West.

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Every major Civil War battle east of the Mississippi River took place within twenty miles of a rail line. Railroads provided fresh supplies of arms, men, equipment, horses, and medical supplies on a direct route to where armies were camped.

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Railways were introduced in England in the seventeenth century as a way to reduce friction in moving heavily loaded wheeled vehicles. The first North American gravity road, as it was called, was erected in 1764 for military purposes at the Niagara portage in Lewiston, New York.

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The earliest form of railways, horse-drawn wagonways, originated in Germany in the 16th century. Soon wagonways were also built in Britain. However, the first use of steam locomotives was in Britain.

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By 1900, much of the nation's railroad system was in place. The railroad opened the way for the settlement of the West, provided new economic opportunities, stimulated the development of town and communities, and generally tied the country together.

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Locomotives and tracks began to wear out. By 1863 a quarter of the South's locomotives needed repairs and the speed of train travel in the South had dropped to only 10 miles an hour (from 25 miles an hour in 1861). Fuel was a problem as well. Southern locomotives were fueled by wood--a great deal of it.

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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.

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The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was an engineering feat of human endurance, with the western leg built largely by thousands of immigrant Chinese laborers. The building of the Transcontinental Railroad relied on the labor of thousands of migrant workers, including Chinese, Irish, and Mormons workers.

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Civil War veteran General Grenville Dodge became Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad Company and began to ramp up production of the railroad. The Union Pacific Railroad Company also hired Civil War veterans from Union and former Confederate armies, and Irish immigrants to build their railroad.

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The building of America's railroads involved African Americans, many working as slaves. Virtually every railroad built in the Pre-emancipation Era South was built using slave labor. During the Civil War (1861–1865) the US Military Railroads (USMRR) employed thousands of freeman and contraband slaves (as seen here).

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Before the Civil War the South was one of the richest regions in the world, standing just behind Britain and the Northern states. More than half of the richest one percent of Americans were Southerners.

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The first passenger-carrying public railway was opened by the Swansea and Mumbles Railway at Oystermouth in 1807, using horse-drawn carriages on an existing tramline. In 1802, Richard Trevithick designed and built the first (unnamed) steam locomotive to run on smooth rails.

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The first railroad built in Great Britain to use steam locomotives was the Stockton and Darlington, opened in 1825. It used a steam locomotive built by George Stephenson and was practical only for hauling minerals. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830, was the first modern railroad.

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'Train' comes from a French verb that meant to draw; drag. It originally referred to the part of a gown that trailed behind the wearer. The word train has been part of English since the 14th century—since its Middle English days.

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