Military history professor Christopher Gabel discusses the importance of railroads and Steam Powered locomotives to the union and confederate armies and explains how railroads made the scale of the civil war possible and describes how and why the confederacys powerful Railroad System broke down as the war progressed. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this hourlong event. Thank you very much for the kind introduction and for being here. Folks, you know when we look back at the onset of the american civil war, we view it through the lens of the war, itself. That shapes what were looking at. If you view the onset of the civil war a little more objectively instead of being all seeing all of the differences between north and south, youll tend to spot all the similarities. Think about it. The two sides in this conflict. It was a war of brother against brother and in some cases literally so. The two sides shared a common language. They had similar cultures and religions. They shared a very similar political philosophy. In the military, the north and south employed virtually identical weapon. They used the same tactics. Their top commanders all graduated from the same military academy. Wherever the union put an army in this war, the confederacy put an army as well. Now, it might not have been as large and well supplied, but an army is there, nonetheless. In other words, folks, this is a surprisingly symetrical war at its outset. In fact, its hard to think of a more symetrical war. But what about data such as these, that youve all seen . If youve ever read a book on the civil war youve seen figures like this. Showing a preponderance of resources that the north had over the south in everything except cotton. Well, folks, i put it to you. If these statistics were really that important, the war should have been over in a month, right . Consider this one right here. Firearms production. 321 advantage in the north. I defy anybody to prove to me that the confederacy lost the war because they ran out of guns. That statistic apparently just isnt all that important. And so when we look over here at Railroad Mileage, 2. 4 to 1 advantage for the north, maybe that statistic is not really mportant either. Its whether or not the railroads actually were that significant in the conduct and outcome of the civil war. And if the answer to that question is no, we can save a lot of time here tonight. Okay. Well, this is the game changer right here. Water turns to steam and expands 1600 well so what . People have known this for thousands of years. Okay . Well, in the 1820s somebody figured out how to take that expansion and turn it into forward motion. You collect excuse me you collect the steam. You send it down to a piston. The piston drives the rod back and forth. The wheels go around and around and it goes forward. All right. So what . Well, here is the so what. With a Steam Powered locomotive lling a train, you can carry more cargo farther on the same amount of fuel than you can by muscle power. A six mule wagon carrying 1 1 2 ns of cargo can go roughly 333 miles on one ton of mule fuel. So you multiply 1. 5 tons times 333 miles, and you get about 500 ton miles. Thats how logistical output is measured. Now, a 15car train in the civil war could only go oh, maybe 35 miles on a ton of fuel, but it could carry 150 tons. 35 times 150, you got over 5,000 ton miles of logistical work, ten times the logistical effort for the same amount of fuel. Thats the game changer right there. Incidentally, it goes faster. Now, thats not just nice to do, but faster turn around time means you need fewer vehicles. And the train can go back and forth delivering cargoes while that wagon is still plodding along delivering its first cargo. That further enhances the logistical ability of your army. And there are some ancillary advantages. Because its faster and because its generally carried in covered cars, cargo delivered by rail gets there in better shape, whether its material or men. Theres an old definition that a battle is something that happens at the intersection of four math sheets conducted between two exhausted armies. With the railroad maybe the armies wont be quite so exhausted. Some other things you might not have thought of. You want more locomotives . Well, you hire more people. You build a bigger shop. You put on extra shifts. You crank out more locomotives. The production of mules operates under some rather severe biological constraints hat cannot be hurried. Reliability under stress, mr. Kemper mentioned that. Locomotives werent particularly reliable but they were certainly more reliable than mules were most of the time. And heres one i bet you didnt think of. When that locomotive isnt working you dont have to feed it. But when the mule is not working you still have to feed it. So given some of these factors im telling you that roughly speaking the advent of steam power and incidentally steam boats were even better than locomotives were, steam power creased the ability of supplying armies by in order of magnitude by about ten times advantage over muscle power. Thats why its important. Now, what does this mean in terms of waging war . I will go further than mr. Kemper did and i will tell you that as far as im concerned, the civil war as we know it, could not have been waged with muscle power. It could not have been done with mules. The distances were simply too great. Considering this particular campaign, which was reaching its culmination 150 years ago of t now, the memoirs William Tecumseh sherman, he reports that his Atlanta Campaign was sustained by a railroad 473 miles long, supporting his army of 100,000 men and 35,000 animals for 196 days, doing the work of 36,800 agons and 220,800 mules. 473 miles. That would have been impossible with muscle power. And, incidentally, the corollary to this is that armies got larger. You look back through human history, its hard to find an army thats bigger than 30,000 men. Because thats about the maximum size that you can generally supply with wagon haul and foraging the countryside. A hundred thousand men. Hundred thousand men in virginia. And this union army was also made possible by steam power. You want to know why the armies of the potomac spent so much of the war in the same place . Thats where the rail heads were. Spent a good part of the war here on the orange and Alexandria Railroad at culpepper and a chunk of the ar here opposite fredericksburg. This particular line of supply was particularly interesting. The baltimore and Ohio Railroad could deliver a car, a train of 16 cars to alexandria. They could run those cars straight on to barges, put those barges down the potomac, with a steam tug, run those cars right up on the Railroad Tracks and then haul them by rail to the army. It was possible to get a train of 16 cars from washington, d. C. To falmouth in 12 hours. Now, depending on traffic conditions on i95 thats about how long it would take today this makes a huge difference in the war. The size of the army, now this also helps explain why armies maybe didnt always move as much as they should have, because guess what happens if that army steps off and leaves those rail heads . How does it supply itself . Its back to wagon hauling. So its real tempting to stay right there where the good times are. You got the railroad supplying you. This is what one of those barges look like coming down the potomac river. This is what they delivered. 800 tons of supplies a day to keep the army of the potomac alive and well. This light blue area on the right is food for animals. Sitting in camp. Theyre not even working. Thats what you got to feed them when youre sitting in camp. See that little black slice there . Thats railroad supplies. Now, which means of transport would you rather use . And, once again, if that army marches away from the rail head, its going to take 400 to 800 wagons every day arriving at the army to keep it supplied. So this does make a considerable difference in the war. Clearly, Steam Powered transportation is going to have a huge impact on the military operation. It is my contention with you folks tonight that for the first two years of the war the railroad war if i can call it that between north and south was symetrical. Railroads served the south about as well as they did the north. In fact, some people argue they served the south somewhat better because the south, being on the defensive, could always have a railroad right there. And the railroads in the south did basically everything that was asked of them. But what about that pesky difference in Railroad Mileage between north and south . North has over two times as many railroad miles as the south does. Well, okay. This shows you the Union Railroads in blue that were really directly involved in the war effort. So that disparity starts to fade out a little bit, doesnt it . Moreover, when you look at the south, it wasnt like the south was backwards when it came to railroads. The south was very enthusiastic about railroads. Railroad mileage in the south quadrupled in the 1850s. There was a lot of enthusiasm both public and private for building railroads. Stockholders, private, city governments, and state governments supported the construction of railroads. And when you look at it in terms of sections, the south, i believe, by 1860, in terms of rate of construction, was out building the northeast. Now, the midwest was out building both sections. But the south was not a back water lagard when it came to Railroad Construction. When you look at comparison to other countries in the world the confederacy when it stood up in 1861 was the third biggest railroad power in the world. And, in fact, when you look at the early years of the war, the most dramatic use of railroads were generally the confederates starting with the very first big battle in the east when Joseph Johnston put his army on the Manassas Gap Railroad and got them to the battle of bull run in time to help stop mcdowell. But that was just the beginning. In 1862, this is the single biggest Rail Movement of the war. When you count the number of troops. Braxton bragg moved his army from mississippi to chattanooga to kick off his invasion of kentucky. 30,000 troops. Thats the biggest one. A little bit later in the year, not quite so efficient a move but stevenson moved his gigantic division back from tennessee to mississippi in time to help defend vicksburg. 9,000 men. And then in 1863 one of the best known Rail Movements for the confederate evidence, longstreets corps moved from Northern Virginia by a number of different routes, all by rail, and half of the army,000 of the men arrived at chickamauga in time to help at the battle there. Thats a pretty remarkable move. Oh, and, incidentally, the union in following weeks paralleled that move. Talk about symmetry. Both sides are doing basically the same thing here. So the southern rail effort is looking pretty good. And, yet, a year and a half later, the confederate rail system is in virtually complete collapse and the union rail system both civilian and military is booming along like never before. Hat caused that asymmetry to occur . Well, Everybody Knows the answer to that one. Okay. The Northern Railroads were standard gauge and the Southern Railroads were all different gauges so they couldnt interchange traffic. Everybody knows that. Right . No im not going to ask for a show of hands. Because its wrong. If you remember nothing else from this presentation please walk away with this. It was not about the railroad gauges. There was no standard gauge nyplace in the 1860s. Gauge simply refers to the distance from the inside of this rail to the inside of this rail. There was no standard gauge anywhere. Everybody got that . This is the condition in the north. The only place where you would find a section that was largely operating under the same gauge was in new england. And even there it was not universal. Northeast, new england tended to run four feet 8 1 2 inches which is what we call standard gauge today. The Pennsylvania Railroad opted for 49. , which was not so bad because it is just a half inch. A lot of equipment could interchange. But then you go out to ohio and indiana and many but not all of the railroads out there were 410. The railroads they have in missouri, the hannibal in st. Joe and the Union Pacific that theyre building from st. Louis toward kansas city during the war, 56. And then the Erie Railroad and some of its collaborators, a whopping sixfoot gauge. When you built a railroad, you picked your own gauge. It was up to you. And in point of fact, some railroads deliberately picked odd ball gauges, specifically so they could not interchange traffic with other railroads. This is true in both north and south. And incidentally, the gauge is not a show stopper. It is possible to change the gauge of a railroad. Fast forward a little bit here. After the civil war, the Northern Railroads converged on 48 1 2 inches as their southern gauge but the Southern Railroads kept building a fivefoot gauge until finally in the 1880s the Southern Railroad got together and said, look. Were going to have to go along with the north on this. So lets convert to the 4 8 1 2 gauge. By that time they had 13,000 miles of track to deal with. Would anybody care to guess how long it takes to physically move the rails to change from fivefoot gauge to 4 8 1 2 . Give it a shot. Anybody. Years . How many years . Two years. Two years . Ten years . Five years . I shouldnt have done that. This was cruel. Two days. [ laughter] two days. Theres a lot of preparatory work and it is very expensive because you have to rebuild to replace all your rolling stock. But it is not impossible to change gauges. The big problem was railroads didnt want to interchange traffic. This is richmond, the beginning of the war. Six railroads, not a single one connects with another railroad. Why . Well, the stockholders of these railroads, a lot of them were businessmen down here in richmond. They subsidized those railroads so that the railroads would carry stuff in from the countryside to their warehouses. They did not view the railroad, itself, as a way to make money. They viewed it as a way to supplement and aid their merchandise business. They had absolutely no interest in watching freight roll through richmond. That did nothing for them at all. Okay. This is in richmond. Same situation applied in hiladelphia. In both cities under the pressures of war they did build physical connections between the rail lines but that was over the objections of the people that owned those railroads. They did not want to interchange traffic. So we still have symmetry here. Both sides are laboring under the problems of different gauges. Both sides are laboring under difficulties of interchanging traffic. So where did the difference between north and south come . Well, i think it started here. In january of 1861, Congress Passed a remarkable law that authorized Abraham Lincoln to seize control of railroads and telegraph for military necessity. Now, the Lincoln Administration did not exercise that very often but they did it often enough so everybody remembered that law was there. They also immediately set out to establish a military railroad service. Part of the army to assure supply directly to the front line troops and, most specifically, to operate rare lines that the government had seized. Most of them captured railroads in the south as the union armies advanced. And theres one other curious thing they did. They paid well for their rail service. That doesnt sound like much of an advantage. Just hold on to that thought for a minute. Lets see what the confederacy did. Well, in 1863, and again in 1865, the confederate Congress Passed laws that authorized Jefferson Davis to seize railroads but he never really exercised it in any methodical manner. The confederates never set up a military Railroad Agency within their War Department, that is that actually operated railroads, and the Confederate War Department consistently tried to negotiate the lowest possible rates for their rail traffic. You all think thats a good thing . Okay. Folks, when you pay Bargain Basement rates, what kind of service do you get . Throughout the war, Confederate Military traffic had to compete against civilian traffic that usually paid better. And if youre a Southern Railroad and you know the governments not going to take you over, you are going to charge the military whatever you want. So this is where some problems began. There is also a big difference between north and south in the people that the governments brought in to supervise and administer their respective rail efforts. Early in the war, thomas scott, the Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, got invited to come to washington, d. C. And get the railroad situation in order. This guy knows how to run a railroad. Trust me. He has the expertise. And he has the authority. Assistant secretary of war. Now, he didnt stay there too long. But he did some very important things. He got some stuff up and running that his successors prospered from, and he is the one who negotiated the rates with those civilian railroads. He went out to the guys he knew in civilian life and said, listen, jack. Heres the way it is. If you cooperate with the War Department whenever we want you to do something, you can make a fa