Civil War
To what extent did the building of the first transcontinental railroad linking the East and the West contribute to the wrenching apart of the North and the South?
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 2:03 PM
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
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3 Comments:
Congress deadlocked over whether to use a northern or southern route from 1845 until 1862 with the departure of Southern Senators during the Civil War, so the premise of the question gets the cause and effect backwards.
The transcontinental railroad which was approved by the 1860 platforms of both the Republican and Democratic parties could not be approved until after the start of the Civil War because the northern and southern politicians could not reach agreement about where the railroad would be built. The Pacific Railroad Act passage on July 1, 1862 had to wait until after the Southern Senators withdrew from the United States Senate at the start of the Civil War.
The surveys for the possible railroad routes had been made years earlier under United States Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, who became the President of the Confederate States of America.
From: "Mary Pavlovich" mpav@nyc.rr.com
Subject: Question re Bell's Gang
I have seen a Civil War Draft Registration list where residence is given as Bell's Gang for a number of men in Hudson County NJ. Have had no luck in trying to discover what that means. Thought possibly it might refer to a railroad construction gang living in a boxcar. Just grasping at straws and hoping it rings a bell with someone. ...
—Mary Pavlovich
"Ironically, only days before resigning as a U.S. Senator from Mississippi (after the state seceded from the Union), Jefferson Davis (who became the president of the Confederate States of America) expressed his support for the railroad as a symbol of national unity. 'I have thought it an achievement worthy of our age and of our people, to couple with bonds of iron the people of the Pacific with the valley of the Mississippi,' he declared, 'and show that even snow-capped mountains intervening could not divide them.'” – Scott Mall
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