Travel On Southern Antebellum Railroads, 1828–1860

Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads

1828–1860

Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads

1828–1860

Eugene Alvarez

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 1974

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First paperback edition 2007

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alverez, Eugene

Travel on southern antebellum railroads, 1828–1860 / Eugene Alvarez.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13 978-0-8173-5483-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10 0-8173-5483-2

1. Railroads—Southern States—History. 2. Southern States—History.

                    LC Classification HE2771.A13 A47

Dewey Class No. 385/.0975

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-9095-2 (electronic)

To

Mother and Father

Contents

Preface

1. The Introduction of the Railroad

2. The Railroad Mania Continues to Grow

3. Engines of Smoke, Fire, and Cinders

4. The Railroad Passenger Car

5. The Hazardous Roadway

6. The Perils of the Road

7. The Railroad Station

8. Society in the Cars

9. Traveling Through the South

Epilogue

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

The antebellum railroad in the South, as well as in all of America, was a phenomenon which provided a moving, restless population with the mixed blessings of much-needed speed and dirty discomfort. To many people it was retrograde, a step backward rather than forward. Citizens frequently complained that the wood-burning engines frightened their horses, set fire to their silos, and produced an awesome death rate unmatched anywhere in the world. However, despite the hazards, most Americans welcomed the iron horse as a means to prosperity for rural and urban communities alike. Steel rails, they reckoned, would connect isolated plantations with ports of trade, bringing affluence to all concerned. In fact, the first significant railroads were built from coastal cities to the hinterland in order to capture the inland trade; that is, to deliver cotton and other agricultural commodities to a world market which meant dollars in Southern pocketbooks.

Although passenger travel was of secondary importance in antebellum railroading, many travelers, particularly those from abroad, were drawn to the South for several reasons: slavery, a highly controversial topic; the reputation of Southerners as genteel, aristocratic hosts, particularly open-hearted to Western Europeans; and of course the natural beauty and salubrious climate of the region. However, because of the emotional impact of these factors, and a not infrequent personal prejudice on the part of travelers, both domestic and foreign, their accounts are not always to be accepted without reservations.

The American of the first half of the last century took great pride in his railroads. Fiercely nationalistic, he viewed the spreading network of rails throughout his new and growing country as concrete evidence of power, of prestige, of economic prowess in world economy. Even more important perhaps, at least socially, was the ever-surging spirit of democracy rampant on the railroads. There, no class structure, no social caste applied—only pure, raw, down-to-earth democracy was evident. The rail car was one of America’s greatest economic and social levellers. Foreigners were always amazed at the absence of class distinctions in the new nation and frequently marvelled at the crudeness, coarseness, even vulgarity, expressed by Americans in their manners and particularly in their habits of travel. As one shocked English traveler put it, these sons of the New World were a sight to behold. But behind all their bravado and boastfulness and lack of refinement, astute foreigners saw the seeds of greatness in the democracy of American life.

Although numerous books and articles have been published about early railroads in the United States, they chiefly concern the history of research, construction, and development—the routes, the costs, the mechanics of machines, the use of rails in war times, and the like. So far as I know, no single study heretofore has dealt primarily with the societal aspects of railroad travel in the South before the War Between the States.

Largely through the use of eyewitness accounts and contemporary opinions, I present an insight into the actual day-by-day reactions of railroad travelers in the antebellum South, the hardships they endured, their non-professional observations, and their ultimate reception of the most innovative mode of transportation the world of their time had ever known. Alternate titles for the book might well be Railroads in the Old South: A Social History or The Democracy of Antebellum Southern Railroading or even The Railroad in Southern Society, 1828–1860. In any event, the traveler tells his own story—what he saw, believed, heard, tasted, felt, and smelt on the iron horse—as he moved about America in that point of time known as the Jacksonian Period.

Travel on Southern Antebellum Railroads could not have been completed without the valuable assistance of several persons. Professor John Hebron Moore of the University of Mississippi first suggested the desirability of my study. Professor Horace Montgomery of the University of Georgia labored with me in developing the manuscript. I am also indebted to Professors J. Allen Cabaniss, University of Mississippi, J. Chal Vinson, Lee Boone Kennett, and Richard Murdoch of the University of Georgia, each of whom assisted materially in preparing the book. To Mrs. Eugenia Butler and especially to Dr. Florence Jean Christy, I am grateful for valuable suggestions in revising and proofreading the manuscript. And last but by no means least, my gratitude goes out to the many librarians of special collections in the libraries of the University of Kentucky, Duke University, and the University of Mississippi for their altruistic guidance and assistance.

Needless to add, any errors (whether of omission or commission) are mine, and mine alone.

EUGENE ALVAREZ

1

The Introduction of the Railroad

During the 1830’s strange, noisy little machines, followed by clouds of smoke, shattered the peaceful seclusion of the countryside and announced to America that it had entered the age of steam. Never again would the landscape or the outlook of the nation be the same, for the advent of the railroad signaled the beginning of an amazing surge of expansive growth, which by 1869 connected the nation from sea to sea by rail. Within the century, by sheer determination and ingenuity, a richly endowed nation built railroads across valleys, over and through mountains, across swamps and rivers, and through cities, hamlets, and towns. Before the birth of the twentieth century, overpowering locomotives conquered a continent, closed a frontier, and manifestly contributed to the defeat and subjection of that indigenous race, the American Indian, which fell victim to white men and steam.

During this amazing era of growth and influence of the American railroad as a national institution, perhaps no period of development was more significant than the formative years preceding the Civil War. In their first three decades of experimentation, pioneer railroad inventors and engineers improved rails and roadbeds, learned to build locomotives capable of attaining twentieth century speeds, and attempted to better passenger comfort and service through the innovation of such devices as ventilating systems and sleeping cars. In a vast country, favored by an abundance of cheap and accessible land, unhampered by customs and political barriers, the railroad wedded the town and country, accelerated the settlement and defense of distant territories, and opened the possibility of inviting commercial ventures as far away as California, Oregon, and even the Far East.¹

Following the near disaster of 1812, and during the significant years between the Treaty of Ghent and the attack on Fort Sumter, few aspects of the nation’s phenomenal growth were more spectacular than the transportation revolution. Among the more celebrated achievements were the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, the first successful trans-Atlantic voyage under steam and sail by the S. S. Savannah in 1819, and the growth of a dynamic rail system which boasted more miles of track than the rest of the nations of the world combined.² Indeed, it is not surprising that Americans were sometimes described by visiting foreigners as haughty with hope of endless progress and irresistible power, and essentially a locomotive people who were continually on the move.³

Two decades before the nation succumbed to the locomotive craze of the 1840’s and 1850’s, however, the heart of the transportation revolution had centered primarily on riverboats and especially inland canals.⁴ The more advanced steamboat had operated on American waters as early as 1807, when Robert Fulton’s Clermont churned up the Hudson River from New York to Albany and back in only thirty-two hours. By 1809 regular passenger service commenced and a new era in water transportation began. But the heyday of the river steamer was yet to come.

In the interim, Americans turned to canals, and for approximately twenty years an elaborate construction program was underway, highlighted by the completion in 1825 of New York’s Erie Canal. The seriousness of other such ventures is reflected by the determined efforts to surmount the numerous difficulties encountered during construction, and by the large increases soon evident in canal mileage. The building of these canals, it must be remembered, was all the more remarkable since the builders had only human and horse power to remove soil, only black powder for blasting, and holes for blasting had to be drilled in rock with nothing more than hand drills. Nevertheless, from a scant one hundred miles in 1816, canals claimed more than three thousand miles by 1840. But despite differing opinions on the superiority of the railroad over canals, the promise of the prosperous twenties gradually faded away, and the short-lived canal craze was over. In fact, even as early as the 1830’s, more than three miles of rail were constructed for every two miles of canal. In the succeeding decade, less than four hundred miles of canals were built; and by 1850, 123 miles of canals fell victim to railroads, as abandonments began exceeding new construction.⁵ Eventually only the most necessary water systems were capable of surviving the onslaught of the steam locomotive.⁶

To the more alert and well read speculators of the antebellum years, the fate of canals was possibly detectible as early as 1825. From England reputable periodicals reported that canals had served well in the past, but we have now got something that will do better.⁷ Two years later another sign of the changing times was printed in the North American Review, which wrote that the substitution of railroads for canals, then occurring in England, would also be likely to occur in the favorable conditions and climate of the United States. In 1828 and 1830 Niles’ Weekly Register reported that transportation by rail would reduce by two-thirds the costs suffered on regular roads, and predicted that within twenty years the many hundred miles of canals made, and now making in the United States, at an expense of about thirty millions of dollars, will be all filled up or drained, to make foundations for rail roads.⁸ Warnings appeared: The public mind is every day more and more settling into a belief that rail roads will supercede canals.⁹

The demise of canals was also noted by native and foreign travelers. One of the most attentive was the celebrated French economist Michel Chevalier. While traveling in America as a representative of the French Ministry of the Interior to study railroads and other public works, Chevalier reported between 1833 and 1835 that canals around Charleston had deteriorated to such a state of obsolescence that they were of minor importance, and were also too difficult to construct in the muddy soil of the lower Mississippi River.¹⁰ Among numerous other travelers who detected the creeping influence of railroads at the expense of stage routes and canals were James D. Davidson and John Lee Williams. Davidson gloomily predicted the demise of stage lines because of the attraction and advantages of railroads,¹¹ whereas Williams observed, during a journey in the 1830’s into the Florida territory, that canals were being superseded by railroads, which were cheaper, more expeditious, and more permanent.¹²

Among other reasons for the abandonment of canals was the fact that their usefulness for long distance hauling was terminated once canals attained their natural limits. But with railroad tracks long hauls could continue indefinitely, since lines were operable year round, and were seldom affected by frozen rivers and hindrances caused by floods and droughts. Other serious disadvantages of canals were that frequent reloadings were necessary for barges to reach landlocked destinations that could be more easily gained by rail. Passengers often remarked that water routes, though pleasing, were slow, unhealthy, and not as safe as the way taken by trains, so it was not surprising that by mid-century Americans preferred the faster and more versatile locomotive to the slower and less adaptable canal.¹³

To England must go the credit for first applying steam power to locomotion on land, when in 1801 Richard Trevithick mounted an engine on wheels that could be run on a road.¹⁴ American interest in steam took a significant step forward eleven years later, when John Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey, proposed a steam railway between Albany and Lake Erie. Although it was not until 1828 that the United States seriously began building railroads, some citizens in coastal cities began to express an interest concerning their possibilities even before they were in operation. For instance, in 1825 the Museum of Foreign Literature and Science reported as follows:

Rail-roads have already excited the strongest feelings of interest in America, that theatre where every faculty of human nature and every discovery in art and science is developed with such miraculous energy. They are undergoing discussion at the seat of government, and letters from Washington are full of inquiries concerning them.¹⁵

In later years the early zeal of pioneer builders was recalled in 1850 by the railroad expert Dionysius Lardner, who wrote that no sooner had England developed her first roads, than the Americans, with their usual ardor, resolved to import this great improvement; and projects of passenger railways, on the vast scale which characterizes all their enterprises, were immediately put forth.¹⁶

Although it may be argued that some of the first railroads in America were conceived for use primarily by passengers, for the most part the early companies were built to further the expanding inland trade of seaboard merchants and coastal ports.¹⁷ As an alternative to canals, two pioneer lines built for this purpose to serve parts of the South were Maryland’s Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and South Carolina’s Charleston & Hamburg Railroad.

The objective of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, chartered in 1827, was to compete with the Erie Canal, and siphon off portions of trade for Baltimore from New York and Philadelphia. The citizens of Maryland were all agog over the prospects of a railroad and enthusiastically endorsed the line as a means of capturing the much sought-after trade of the West. According to Samuel A. Mitchell’s guidebook of the day,

[The railroad was] by far the most stupendous national work of the kind ever undertaken in this or any other country. The entire distance will exceed 300 miles; on this road every mode of passage, by horse car power and locomotive steam car power, and wind power by sails, has been adopted. The route of this great undertaking is through a country abounding in every variety of splendid scenery that mountains, valleys, cascades, rivers, forests, and the wildness of nature in her mountainous retreats, can furnish. Various other works of the same kind are in contemplation. When these shall be completed, Maryland will probably come in for her full share of the trade of the west.¹⁸

From the very beginning the railroad was a major attraction of the city, and for one to visit Baltimore and not ride the horse-drawn trains was to have missed completely one of the major attractions of the town.¹⁹ Even during the initial construction of thirteen miles of track between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills, the progress of the great national work excited curious citizens and daily attracted large numbers of persons to view the progress of the workmen.²⁰ Curious members of Congress from nearby Washington were also dazzled by the railroad. For the modest fare of nine cents members of the august assembly frequently rode in the horse-pulled cars, which attained amazing speeds of eight to fifteen miles per hour, depending on the number of animals used and the passenger load aboard.²¹ To Henry Tudor, an Englishman, who in 1831 and 1832 came to behold the wonders of the New World, the impressive affair was the most prodigious work at present carrying on in the United States . . . and will be travelled with the greatest possible ease.²² A similar assessment was expressed by Francesco Arese, visiting from Italy in 1837 and 1838.²³

The Maryland railroad may lay claim to beginning the foremost passenger service in the United States, but it did not run the first steam powered passenger trains. This distinction belongs to the Charleston & Hamburg Railroad, of South Carolina, which, like the Baltimore & Ohio, was formed to capture the rich trade of the Piedmont then being lost to the Savannah River. Hoping to rectify the loss, a band of progressive Charlestonians turned to railroads and founded a line in May, 1828. The road was planned to emanate from Charleston, running west to the small hamlet of Hamburg, across the Savannah River from Augusta.²⁴ Almost immediately the South Carolina company seemed destined for success. Besides being the first major American railroad equipped with steam engines, the Charleston & Hamburg was also the first to carry mail.²⁵ Among its other laurels was the dubious honor of claiming the first locomotive explosion in the history of American railroads in 1831, and by 1833 it was the longest railroad in the world with 136 miles of track.²⁶

Magazine columns and the reports of travelers reveal the enthusiasm for the acceptance of these two railroads, and the records of their first years of operations seem to have substantiated the great expectations of their promoters. According to Niles’ Weekly Register, in 1828 the activity and laborious industry taking place on the Maryland line indicated the railroad would yield large revenues from pleasure carriages and the transportation of heavy goods.²⁷ So rapid was the Maryland company’s growth that by 1832 the scientist Charles J. Latrobe reported that, although the company was still in its infancy, when compared to the first time he traveled on its tracks, the progress of the railroad was something to behold. Most of the surrounding area had been transformed from a few rude and shabby shacks into towns with hotels and warehouses, while an incessant amount of traffic conveyed the natural resources of the country to demanding cities and towns.²⁸ Several examples of the lines’ financial success, as indicated in Niles’ Weekly Register, reveal that in the last six months of 1832 the total income of the Maryland line amounted to $78,160.44, although the operating expenditures were but $41,414.29. The following six months, in 1833, the company spent for operations $41,534.35 but showed receipts of $92,556.86.

In South Carolina substantial profits were enjoyed by the Charleston & Hamburg Railroad as well. In April, 1835, the Register carried in its columns a statement revealing this fact:

The increasing travel and transportation on our railroad, since the commencement of the present year, have exceeded the most sanguine expectations of its projectors and those who have been its steady friends through good and evil report.²⁹

By 1847, because of the railroad, the once quiet town of Hamburg, South Carolina had become a leading market center of the state and was handling as much as 900 bales of cotton, 3,000 bushels of corn and wheat, 50,000 pounds of Tennessee bacon, and 600 bales of yarn in one day.³⁰

While Englishmen were often content to sit back and complacently admire the several outstanding lines of their country, American enthusiasm for steam transportation had become overwhelming by mid-century. With a mania for size and a frequent disregard for safety, the enthusiasm was not far short of hysterical. London businessman Joseph Biggs, visiting the United States during the Panic of 1837, was aware of the American zeal for size and said the nation had many hundreds of miles of railways.³¹ The geologist and lecturer Charles Lyell witnessed similar findings in 1845 and 1846. But to him the people had displayed prudence and economy in building their railroads, and had provided service for the greater part of the population.³² A decade earlier, Niles’ Weekly Register commented on the craze for railroads and declared, It may doubtless be said without exaggeration, that rail roads are now projected in this country on a more extensive scale than in all other parts of the globe.³³

The craze for railroads was noted by other observers. By 1839 Grenville Mellen wrote that the number of railroads throughout the nation had increased so rapidly that even the most careful reader of daily newspapers could scarcely retain them in his recollection.³⁴ Additional testimony was recorded by Hunt’s Merchants Magazine in 1843 and 1845. According to this publication the history of American railroads had presented one of the most remarkable instances of progress ever recorded:

A few years since, the advocates of railroads were