The Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Rail Road

H. Roger Grant

Description

Big plans and dashed hopes of railroad pioneer

Among the grand antebellum plans to build railroads to interconnect the vast American republic, perhaps none was more ambitious than the Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston. The route was intended to link the cotton-producing South and the grain and livestock growers of the Old Northwest with traders and markets in the East, creating economic opportunities along its 700-mile length. But then came the Panic of 1837, and the project came to a halt. H. Roger Grant tells the incredible story of this singular example of "railroad fever" and the remarkable visionaries whose hopes for connecting North and South would require more than half a century—and one Civil War—to reach fruition.

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Slow, Difficult and Dangerous Travel
2. A Rail Road?
3. Knoxville, 1836
4. Surveys, Finances and Construction
5. Crisis and Contraction
6. What Happened
7. What Might Have Happened
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Railroads
• Transportation
• Rail transport
• Civil War
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253011879
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The LOUISVILLE, CINCINNATI CHARLESTON Rail Road
Railroads Past Present
GEORGE M. SMERK, EDITOR
A list of books in the series appears at the end of this volume.
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis

This book is a publication of
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2014 by H. Roger Grant
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available at the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01181-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01187-9 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
John T. Moon, II
1953-2012
Contents
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 SLOW, DIFFICULT, AND DANGEROUS TRAVEL
2 A RAIL ROAD?
3 KNOXVILLE, 1836
4 SURVEYS, FINANCES, AND CONSTRUCTION
5 CRISIS AND CONTRACTION
6 WHAT HAPPENED
7 WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED
NOTES
INDEX
Preface
Professional Historians And Interested Amateurs Have long explored a variety of railroad topics, including the organization and construction of the earliest American lines. This interest in the Demonstration Period of steam railways, which spanned the 1830s and 1840s, may be attributed to that human desire to know about the beginnings of things. This is more than an idle curiosity, being a valuable way to learn how remote events shaped later cultural, economic, political, and physical environments. The antebellum era was an exciting and expansive time in the nation s history, including the transport sector, when the agrarian republic was evolving into an industrialized nation. It would be railroads, rather than canals, roads, and waterways, that created a remarkable revolution in domestic transportation.
Although aspects of the proposed link between Charleston and Cincinnati have been discussed in scholarly monographs, doctoral dissertations, and masters theses, no book-length study consolidates the pertinent primary and secondary sources. This ambitious - perhaps too ambitious - Louisville, Cincinnati Charleston Rail Road (LC C) of the late 1830s and early 1840s deserves attention. After all, this projected railroad was one of the first seriously attempted trans-Appalachian interregional projects. It held a close connection to what was briefly the longest railroad in the world under a single management, the 136-mile trans-state South-Carolina Canal Rail-Road. Opened in 1833, this pioneer carrier demonstrated the practicability of an infant railroad technology. If the LC C had begun operations as planned, it would have been both America s longest railway and its largest single private corporation. Even though only about 10 percent of the hoped-for LC C was completed by the mid-nineteenth century, a direct route between the southern Atlantic Ocean coast and the mid-Ohio River valley was eventually established under a single management, attesting to the soundness of that audacious initial proposal.
If this most daring project of the 1830s had been completed by the 1840s or somewhat later, it surely would have had a wide-ranging impact on its service area. As a path-breaking developmental railroad, the LC C would have bolstered economies of the three cities at its extremities, most of all Charleston. The road also could have altered the political landscape of the nation, even affecting southern secession. Strong, enduring bonds of commitment might have been forged by a carrier that created and sustained rapid, safe, and predictable commercial intercourse between the Old South and the Old Northwest (or what contemporaries called the West ). Moreover, patterns of interstate migration may have been changed significantly, allowing whites from the Old Northwest and other northern areas, who frequently held antislavery views, to relocate to border and southern states. Some of these new residents might be attracted initially by railroad construction jobs and then operating, maintenance, and management positions, and others would seize opportunities in farming, lumbering, mining, and commercial and professional endeavors. But, alas, that did not happen; the iron rails of the LC C became only one part of an extensive network of intrastate South Carolina lines.
As with most railroads, whether early or late, large or small, successful or not, several individuals sparked the drive. For the LC C its greatest champion was the nationally prominent Robert Y. Hayne, a man with a passion for a Charleston-to-Cincinnati railroad. No wonder this beloved South Carolina politician played a pivotal role in organizing the greatest railroad convention in the South prior to the Civil War. In July 1836 hundreds of delegates from multiple states assembled in Knoxville, Tennessee, to consider this nearly 700-mile proposition. This railroad convention became a widely discussed and long-remembered event.
The Louisville, Cincinnati Charleston faced numerous and ultimately fatal obstacles. Without question, the courageous efforts to turn the ocean-to-river plan into reality graphically reveals that railroad undertakings were capital intensive, potentially controversial, and extremely risky. A perfect storm of sorts derailed completion, most notably a deep and long-lasting depression triggered by the Panic of 1837, Hayne s own unexpected death, and growing opposition from Kentuckians, some influential South Carolinians, including John C. Calhoun, and others. Ultimately, though, a railroad, the Cincinnati Southern, constructed by the municipal government of Cincinnati, Ohio, spanned part of the distance envisioned by proponents of the LC C, and the remainder of the Charleston-Cincinnati-Louisville trackage came about from several separate undertakings. After 1894 the Southern Railway, then newly organized, gained control of this route between Charleston and Cincinnati, effectively realizing those dreams conceived at the dawn of the Railway Age. The labors of the Knoxville Railroad Convention therefore were not discarded into the trash bin of history. Even a dozen years after the Knoxville assemblage, a meeting of internal proponents recognized the significance of the grand Atlantic Ocean to Ohio River vision. The persuasive eloquence of the gifted and lamented Hayne was not without its beneficial influence in awakening the public attention to the vast importance of bringing into more intimate intercommunication the new and enterprising States of the West, with the older sisters of the Atlantic.
Acknowledgments
Although I Have Studied Several Modern Railroad companies, I never expected to examine a largely failed carrier from the antebellum period. It would be contacts made through the Lexington Group, a seventy-year-old transportation history organization, consisting of academics, librarians, and railroad industry professionals, that led me to prepare this examination of the Louisville, Cincinnati Charleston Rail Road ( LC C ). Two Norfolk Southern Corporation employees, the late John Moon and William (Bill) Schafer, got me involved, and their supportive efforts resulted in the Norfolk Southern Foundation awarding me a handsome research grant. During the course of my work John provided guidance, including making joint trips to research centers, locating pertinent materials, and reading an early draft of the book manuscript. Others at Norfolk Southern offered assistance, including company archivist Jennifer McDaid and assistant corporate secretary Mary Ann Mullady. And my colleague Richard Saunders Jr., a prominent railroad historian, kindly supplied me with a copy of his MA thesis on the LC C that he completed in 1964 at the University of Illinois. As with every research endeavor there are others, particularly institutions, that deserve acknowledgment. The list includes: Calhoun County Museum, St. Matthews, South Carolina; Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, East Tennessee History Center, Knoxville; Cincinnati Historical Society and Museum Center, Cincinnati, Ohio; Special Collections, Clemson University; National Archives, College Park, Maryland; R. M. Cooper Library, Clemson University; South Carolina Archives and History Center, Columbia; South Caroliniana Library Archives, Columbia; Southern Railway Historical Association Archive, Kennesaw, Georgia; and University of Tennessee Library, Special Collections, Knoxville. I also wish to thank William (Bill) Klugh of Clemson, South Carolina, for providing access to his Simpson family collection of manuscripts and published materials.
Unlike earlier research projects, I examined online numerous books, journals, trade publications, and newspapers, allowing me to reduce my research travels and to broaden the scope of my work. Services provided by Clemson University Libraries and the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library in St. Louis, Missouri, gave me opportunities to access varied research materials. And the late Craig Miner, professor of history at Wichita State University, provided guidance through the maze of electronic sources.
As with earlier book projects my wife, Martha Farrington Grant, read the evo