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THE BALTIMORE AND OHIOFIRST IN WAR Festus P. Summers The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, said the editor of the Wheeling Intelligencer soon after the secession of Virginia, "is to be deeply sympathized with. It is most unfortunate. Its case resembles that of the amphibious animal that could not live on land, and died in water. It is in a position in which it can be neither flesh nor fowl—neither for the Government, nor completely with the traitors."1 With roots deep in slave soil and tendrils reaching into free states, the Baltimore and Ohio occupied an unenviable position indeed at the beginning of hostilities. In 1861 the company operated 513 miles of line exclusive of sidings and second tracks. The entire road lay in slave territory but close to the Mason-Dixon Line. The main stem, 379 miles long, extended from Baltimore to Wheeling, while the Washington Branch, which turned south from the main stem at Relay House, traversed the 40 miles which separated Baltimore and Washington. Joined inBaltimoreby streettramways with terminals ofthe Northern Central and the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore railroads, the Washington Branch was thelastandonlylinkinrailroad communication between the North and the national capital. The Northwestern Virginia Railroad, leased by the Baltimore and Ohio in 1857, branched from the main stem at Grafton to the Ohio River at Parkersburg, where it connected by river with the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad at Scott's Landing. Some eighty miles north at Benwood, the main stem reached out across the Ohio by ferry to Bellaire, the eastern terminus of the Central Ohio Railroad and the southern terminus of the Cleveland and Ohio. The Baltimore and Ohio was a Maryland public work. The great majority of the marketable shares were owned by Marylanders, while the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland held two-fifths of the stock Chairman of the Department of History, West Virginia University, Dr. Summers is currently revising for republication his highly regarded history of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. 1 Wheeling Intelligencer, Apr. 29, 1861. 239 240FESTUS P. summers and a controlling majority of six on the board of directors. It was not an accident that on the eve of the war the railroad planned the establishment of its own steamship line to a European port and joined its patronBaltimoreintheeffortto make that city the chief Southern entrep ôt offoreign trade.2 To be sure, its Southernism was more dramatically reflected during the John Brown raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859. As that event took on full meaning few showed greater concern than the dynamic president of the road, John W. Garrett, whose spirited cooperation with authorities earned for him and his railway the formal thanks of the General Assembly of Virginia. And Garrett left little room to doubt what course his company would follow if war came. 'It is a Southern line," he declared. "And if ever necessity should require— which heaven forbid!—it will prove the great bulwark of the border, and a sure agency for home defense."3 Garrettdisplayed a more judicious temper during the ominous months that followed the election of Abraham Lincoln. At the railroad convention , held inWashington, January 24, 1861, he joined representatives of leading railroads of the Border States in their plea to Congress for adoption of the Crittenden Compromise. That the Baltimore and Ohio had come to the crossroads with the great border it served was also illustrated a week later when it was reported that President-elect Lincoln had abandoned consideration of a plan to travel the Baltimore and Ohio route from Wheeling to Washington. Rumor had it that the change of plan resulted from a hostile atmosphere along the road in Virginia and Maryland; and as the report was spread that these states were at the brink of secession, seaboard shipments from the Midwest via the Baltimore and Ohio were canceled or rerouted over Northern roads. However Garrett might shout down these rumors as the handiwork of the competing Pennsylvania Central, it was not until he had pledged indemnity for all losses incurred from "political or military causes," that a measure of confidence was restored.4 The decline in through traffic did not become widespread until midApril...

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