Rail Routes South: Louisville's Fight for the Southern Market, 1865-72 (review)

90CIVIL WAR HISTORY in another passage places Confederate forces between Washington and the Potomac. He says the Old Capitol Prison building was originally a boardinghouse (it was the temporary United States Capitol). Anachronisms abound: he makes Stanton Secretary of War in the fall of 1861, gives Judah P. Benjamin the same position in the Confederacy in April of that year (he was Attorney General until September), creates a "West Virginia" in 1861, sets up the Army of the Potomac during the McDowell command of the Washington forces, invents the government's document-classification system decades ahead of its time, and dates the fire-bombing of New York City (November 25, 1864) ahead of the national election of that year and even ahead of the fall of Atlanta in September. In fact he confuses the sequences of events so badly that the reader has to give up trying to maintain chronological perspective. Another Horan specialty is the one-line bombshell: Pinkerton "broke up a plot to ram through an act of secession in the Maryland legislature"—a real eyebrow-raiser—and Mr. Horan drops it right there. Still another specialty is the one-sentence puzzle: "Public opinion was fiercely divided, and Mason and Dixon's Line was its northern boundary ." And: "It was a McClellan victory, but had McClellan counterattacked , he probably would have defeated Lee." Among these délectables our favorite is the following: From page ninety, first paragraph—"Pinkerton discovered that the banker [William T. Smithson] had a unique means of getting military information to Richmond—rolling it up and hiding it in a plug of tobacco." Same page, second paragraph—"The documents and coded messages captured by Pinkerton showed that Rose [Greenhow] and her spies were using ail the traditional trappings of the nineteenth century spies: hollowed -out tobacco plugs, hollow canes, . . ." This is history? Edwin C. Fishel Arlington, Virginia Rail Routes South: Louisville's Fight for the Southern Market, 1865-72. By Leonard P. Curry. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1969. Pp. 139. $5.95.) Professor Curry's study helps to fill a great need in intercity rivalry studies, of which we have too few. The story is, as the title implies, of the city of Louisville's fight for a market in the Upper South following the Civil War. An inland marketing city, with few manufacturers of its own, needed superior transportation facilities to compete successfully with other cities in the southern trade. The Louisville Nashville Railroad was the means by which the city could secure an advantage over Cincinnati, its nearest rival. The Union forces had seized the rail line and had refitted it for service before the conflict was half over. The river and rail transportation had been coordinated. Curry BOOK REVIEWS91 shows that with the break up of the plantation system the small store proprietors, requiring quick supplies, had to be satisfied. Also, the Negro population would furnish a larger market for goods. The Louisville merchants realized that to control the transportation faculties and to block their northern adversaries were chief goals in maintenance of their commercial sphere of influence. The struggle between Louisville and Cincinnati for the southern trade is emphasized. Residents of the former city viewed with alarm the penetration of eastern rail lines into the outlying sections of the state and the power of the eastern capitalist in affairs of the L and N. But this was shown as minor in comparison to the immediate intrusion of Cincinnati interests in the Louisville market. This was shown in two instances when a direct connection between L and N and Louisville , Cincinnati, & Lexington was planned and again when Cincinnati urged the building of the Cincinnati Southern line. The former was felt to be inevitable, and the Louisville merchants desired to get it done with as favorable connections as possible. In the 1865-72 period, these same commercial interests of Louisville had to face the problems of rising debts, the long haul river trade decline, and the rise of the country store. To meet these difficulties, they decided to expand their market through projection of as favorable an image as possible and with a promise of prompt delivery of merchandise. To accomplish this...