The Development of Transportation Infrastructure in 19th Century America

1
The Development of Transportation Infrastructure
in 19th Century America
2
Public vs. Private The Internal Improvements
Debate

• In 1800, the United States was geographically
  large but with a small population.
  
• Other than population centers, much of the infant
  United States was largely uninhabited.
  
• The vast expanses of wilderness made
  transportation difficult in a time before
  railroads.
  
• In 1808, Secretary of State Albert Gallatin
  issued Report on Roads, Canals, Harbours, and
  Rivers, a paper which advocated the construction
  of a national system of transportation
  infrastructure, funded by the tariff, to promote
  economic activity and provide for better
  defense.
• The War of 1812 shelved Gallatins plan, but it
  was reintroduced in 1817 by South Carolina
  Senator John C. Calhoun.
  
• Calhouns internal improvements bill passed
  Congress by a bare majority, but was vetoed by
  President James Madison who contended that it was
  not the place of the federal government to build
  a transportation network.
• Because of Madisons veto, the responsibility of
  building transportation infrastructure fell to
  the individual states, which resulted in uneven
  development.

Albert Gallatin
President James Madison
3
Robert Fulton and the Steamboat
"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

• On 7 August 1807, Robert Fulton launched the
  steamboat Claremont on the Hudson River for a
  trip between New York City and Albany.
  
• The Claremont completed the 150 mile trip in just
  over 32 hours, an astonishing speed against the
  current for the time.
  
• Although the Claremont was not the first
  steamboat, it was the first steamboat that was
  economically viable.
  
• By 1811, Fultons had taken the steamboat to the
  Mississippi River and, in 1819, the Savannah
  crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a combination of
  steam and sail.
• The introduction of steam power meant that
  transportation was no longer reliant on animals,
  wind, and currents.
  

The Claremont
4
The Erie Canal

• Before the invention of the railroad, the only
  practical means of moving heavy objects around
  the country was by water.
  
• This proved an impediment to commerce as the two
  major American ports, Baltimore and New York,
  were not served by rivers.
  
• This meant that goods had to be offloaded from
  barges and carried overland to the port for
  shipping.
  
• In 1817, months after Madison vetoed the internal
  improvements bill, New York began construction of
  a canal to link New York Harbor with the Hudson
  River and the Great Lakes beyond.
• When the canal was completed in 1825, the cost of
  transporting one ton of wheat across New York
  fell from 100 to 5. A journey that had taken
  20 days could now be competed in 10.
• Though improved, the Erie Canal remains in
  operation
  

The Erie Canal circa 1829
In its first year of operation 185,000 tons of
merchandise was moved on the Erie Canal. This
included 562,000 bushels of wheat, 221,000
barrels of flour, and 435,000 gallons of whiskey.
5
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

• In 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio became the first
  railroad in the U.S. chartered to carry
  passengers and freight.
  
• The railroad had not yet been invented when the
  Erie Canal was built.
  
• Designed to link Baltimore Harbor with the Ohio
  River, the BO eventually covered the Eastern
  seaboard and reached as far west as Chicago and
  continued operation 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.

The Tom Thumb, the first locomotive on the BO
Railroad.
6
Railroads and the Civil War

• President Madisons 1817 veto of the internal
  improvements bill left the development of
  transportation infrastructure to the various
  states. This led to wide disparities in
  transportation networks between states.
• The industrialized Northern states generally had
  greater need for transportation and more
  resources to invest than did the agricultural
  Southern states.
• At the outbreak of the war, the Northern states
  had roughly 20,000 miles of rail while Southern
  states had only 9,000 miles.

A Mayan Calendar
Map of American railroads in 1851. Note the
disparity between the North and the South.
7
Shermans March to the Sea

• In 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
  launched an attack at the Souths ability to wage
  war.
  
• With an army of 100,000 men, Sherman entered the
  South destroying the industrial and
  transportation network.
  
• The South did not have enough soldiers to both
  hold the front and resist Sherman, so Sherman was
  able to march through the South largely
  unopposed.
• Shermans army would tear up railroads and heat
  the rails over a bonfire until they could be bent
  them around a tree trunk or telegraph pole. This
  would weaken the metal and make the rail
  unusable. The resultant twisted metal was called
  a Shermans Necktie.
• Sherman burned Atlanta, the major Southern rail
  hub and Charleston, a major Southern port.
  
• With the loss of their transportation network,
  the Confederacy was unable to supply its army in
  the field. This hastened the end of the war.

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
An example of a Shermans Necktie
8
Mississippi River Steamboats
Steamboats waiting at a dock

• With the success of the Claremont on the Hudson
  River, in 1811 Robert Fulton brought the New
  Orleans to the Mississippi.
  
• 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
• By the end of the Civil War, railroads had
  largely supplanted steamboats.
  
• Mississippi River steamboat culture is chronicled
  in the writings of Mark Twain.
  

9
Steamboat Wrecks

• 19th Century Steamboats were, by any standard,
  incredibly dangerous.
  
• Their wooden construction was vulnerable to
  objects in the water and fire.
  
• The boilers necessary to power the ship often
  exploded with enough force to reduce the boat to
  splinters.
  
• On 27 April 1865, the boilers on the steamboat
  Sultana exploded near Memphis, killing 1,547
  passengersmore people than died on the Titanic.
  
• Most of the people killed on the Sultana were
  freed Union POWs returning home from the war.
  
• A new Steamboat was only expected to remain in
  service for a few years before being destroyed.
  

A map of steamboat wrecks found in only 160 miles
of the Missouri River.
10
The Transcontinental Railroad

• The transcontinental railroad was the greatest
  technological achievement of the 19th Century.
  
• Stretching 1800 miles from Omaha to Sacramento,
  the railroad allowed the complete integration of
  the western states into the Union.
  
• The transcontinental railroad created western
  cities such as Omaha and Denver.
  
• The path of the original line is closely mirrored
  by Interstate 80 today.
  
• The railroad was built by two companies the
  Union Pacific and the Central Pacific which
  received a payment from the federal government
  for every mile of track completed.
• The Central Pacific had a much more difficult
  path, having to blast through the Sierra Nevada
  Mountains.
  
• An unknown number of people, primarily Chinese
  immigrants were killed in blasting accidents due
  to the unstable explosives of the time.
  
• The flood of white settlers the railroad enabled
  doomed the Plains Indians.
  
• The railroad cut the cost of traveling to San
  Francisco by 90.

The completion of the transcontinental railroad
near Promontory Point, Utah, 1869.
11
Panama Canal

• By the turn of the century, French efforts to
  build a canal through Panama faltered primarily
  due to technological limitations and malaria.
  
• In 1904, the United States, viewing a canal as
  essential to the economy sought to take up
  construction.
  
• Panama was, at the time, part of Columbia. The
  Columbian government, realizing the economic
  necessity of the project for the United States,
  demanded a large cash payment to resume
  construction.
• Rather than pay the Columbians, the United States
  engineered a revolution to make Panama an
  independent country.
  
• To discourage Columbian interference with the
  revolution, a U.S. Navy gunboat was stationed off
  of the coast.
  
• On the same day that Panama declared
  independence, it granted the United States the
  right to construct the canal.
  
• The Americans succeeded where the French failed
  because of improvements in canal technology and
  quinine, a cure for malaria.
  
• When the canal was competed in 1904, a ship
  traveling from San Francisco to New York could
  save 8,000 miles from its journey.

Boats building the Panama Canal
Over 30 years of construction between the
Americans and French, 80,000 laborers worked on
the canal, 30,000 of whom died.
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Multimedia Citation

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