Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society

• TWO: Knowledge
• Chapter
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. 31-54
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CHAPTER TWO
Knowledge

When Charleston attempted to improve its fortunes with a railroad, Georgians did not sit idly by. In July 1833 a public meeting in Augusta agitated for a railroad, and citizens successfully incorporated the Georgia Railroad Company that December. The company was given the authority to construct a railroad leading out of the town, linking the interior to the Savannah River. While the road was to be constructed of rails, the corporation’s seal suggested that the road would not necessarily be driven by steam power: at the center was a horse’s head (figure 1).¹

The prominence of the horse on this young company’s seal reflects the uncertainty that surrounded early railroads. Augustans were hardly shy or tentative in their pursuit of this transportation link, but the use of steam was not yet a settled question: early trains could just have easily as been pulled by horses. Georgians were not alone in weighing their options. Comparing the early days of the SCRR to the early days of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, civil engineer John McRae reflected that “both commenced before it was determined whether Horse or Steam power was the most advantageous & both have had to wade through a series of most expensive experiments which other companies of more recent date have benefited by without the cost.” It was a time when “engineers vigorously debated all aspects of railroad design” and had to do so in the context of young corporations attempting to turn a profit. Balancing these several and sometimes competing concerns would be a task that fell to civil engineers.²

“A Locomotive sort of character”

As a profession, civil engineering was in its infancy in the United States during the early nineteenth century. Opportunities for formal training were slim, but the growth of internal improvement projects created substantial demand. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, canal builders faced tremendous challenges as every aspect of the process—how to retain water in the canal, how to build locks—was unfamiliar to them. As the nation turned from canal building to railroad building, a new round of technological questions sprang up. The shortage of engineering talent led companies to turn to the federal government for assistance: engineers from West Point surveyed more than twenty railroads across the nation from 1832 to 1836. The national demand for engineers was reflected in their salaries, which rose dramatically from 1835 to 1849.³ Companies hoped to find engineers with technical qualifications and skills. When the SCRR was considering hiring Horatio Allen as chief engineer, board member E. L. Miller wrote to another civil engineer, John Jervis, inquiring after Allen’s qualifications. The first item requested by Miller was an assessment of Allen’s “scientific qualifications as a Civil Engineer.” The appeal of proceeding from a “scientific” base was clear enough to the board—it wanted its expensive project to be handled with care and expertise. But with few formal training opportunities available, solutions to problems were developed from on-the-job experience, not simply copied out of books. Civil engineers became skilled in a wide range of tasks. “You would marvel to me what a wonderful machinist I am becoming,” Henry Bird, an engineer working in Virginia, wrote to his fiancée in Pennsylvania in 1832. “I can make all sorts of cars & I could make a tolerable steam engine by this time. Warehouses, bridges & weighing houses, cast iron wheels, wooden wheels, spinning jennies &c. &c.” Civil engineers remembered with pride what they had accomplished through ingenuity. McRae recalled in 1849 that engineering was “very laborious business & to meet with success requires either a long continued application or an unusual share of talent. The book knowledge as to any scientific profession is very important but it is not all that is necessary.” Even if comprehensive formal training would have been available, any knowledge had to be leavened with appropriate understanding of local conditions.⁴

Figure 1. Seal of the Georgia Railroad. Reproduced with the permission of the CSX Corporation.

Civil engineers responded to increased demand for their services and readily moved around the country. “A Rail Road Engineer is a Locomotive sort of character,” McRae wrote in 1849.⁵ Engineers were not always concerned where they worked, if they were able to find good employment and exciting engineering challenges. Northern projects attracted men who had worked on southern works, and vice versa. As historian Raymond Merritt has observed, “Nineteenth-century engineers … were so rootless in their employment, so flexible in their work, and so variable in their associations that the geographical and social stereotypes commonly used to identify outstanding men often do not apply to them.”⁶ Examples of engineers who were unrestricted by region abound through the antebellum era. In its first annual report, the Pennsylvania Railroad announced with pleasure that it had hired John Edgar Thomson, “a gentleman of enlarged professional experience and sound judgment, who had obtained a well-earned reputation upon the Georgia Road, and in whom the Board place great confidence.”⁷ Horatio Allen, the SCRR’s chief engineer during construction, also did work on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. William Gibbes McNeill and E. S. Chesbrough worked on the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad in 1839. They also worked on the Boston and Providence Railroad; Chesbrough went on to become the city engineer for Chicago. Engineers in Georgia hailed from the North, such as William Wadley (from New Hampshire) and L. P. Grant (from Maine). Alfred Sears was working in Massachusetts when he attempted to secure a position on the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. Alexander Cassatt worked on railroads in Georgia and Pennsylvania. John Childe worked on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, Tennessee and Alabama Railroad, and the New Orleans and Ohio Railroad, among others. Simply put, engineers followed work wherever it went.⁸

There were some calls for more permanent training facilities for engineers in the South. A journal called the Self-Instructor published an appeal in 1853 for engineering training: “Let us support our military schools as near as possible on the model of West Point, and there will be no want of mechanical talent and theoretical knowledge among our youth, to supply any demand we may make.” The advantages to the region were clear: “When the South supplies her own working-men, in the shop, the school-house, the pulpit, the field and the bar, as the North does, then, and not before, may we hope to command the wealth and use the strength which is ours, by the gift of God.” Georgia civil engineer William Mitchell pushed for a school for engineers at the University of Georgia. Despite his efforts, one did not open until 1866. Efforts to open engineering programs at the University of Alabama and University of Virginia also faltered in the antebellum era.⁹

The lack of formalized training in the South reflected the state of the profession. Significant, formalized training and professional associations did not emerge in the United States until the decade preceding the Civil War and did not solidify until the years after it. Schools began to add engineering to their curricula in earnest in the 1850s—while southern schools did not join this movement as eagerly as the Self-Instructor would have liked, this disadvantage did not prevent southern states from pursing railroads aggressively in the same decade. To make up for the dearth of formal training opportunities, engineers established intellectual networks with their counterparts working on projects across the country. Sometimes this interchange came from direct observation. A Mr. Dod asked the SCRR’s board of directors in 1836 for permission to travel north for the “purpose of procuring men, and examining rail roads.” He was granted a leave of absence for five or six weeks. Consulting also extended to internal management practices. In 1851 Herman Haupt noted that in order to set up the accounts of the Pennsylvania Railroad he visited several railroads throughout New England to learn about “everything connected with their business operations.” He concluded that “no mode of keeping accounts exceeded that of the Georgia Railroad in its simplicity,” demonstrating that southern practice could influence northern practice. Given England’s importance to railroad development, trips overseas were also warranted. England was, as Allen told Jervis in 1828, “the land of Rail Roads,” and Allen’s own trip to England exemplifies the lengths to which Americans went to gain information about this new technology. Americans were reliant on England through published literature, letters, and personal accounts of visits such as Allen’s.¹⁰

In addition to traveling, engineers wrote frequently to each other to track the newest developments in a rapidly changing field. As they traveled and worked on different projects, engineers built networks that they maintained for information and support. The topics ranged widely. McRae shared his information on contracts and rates with L. D. Fleming of the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad. The next year, McRae was on the other side of the table; he wrote to several railroads requesting “any printed regulations in use on your road & copies of such blank forms for recording the operation &c as it may be convenient for you to send.” These letters were sent to engineers on the Boston and Providence, the Baltimore and Ohio, the Central of Georgia, and the Baltimore and Philadelphia railroads. McRae wrote to Benjamin Henry Latrobe to ask about inclined planes and railroad track. Latrobe responded with information from his own travels, reading, and discussion with other engineers. Latrobe’s responses to McRae’s inquiries demonstrate the importance of experience and experimentation and how experimental knowledge was transferred. Referring to a method of preserving wood, Latrobe wrote that “the application of this process has not been invariably successful as I have had opportunities of observing in some experiment upon it I have made upon my own work.” Later, Latrobe wrote that his “experience confirms this view of the superiority” of a certain type of rail. While Latrobe cited publications, McRae was clearly interested in Latrobe’s opinion, which was informed by his personal observations and experimentation. Not all engineers were forthcoming. E. S. Chesbrough wrote to McRae that he had given up trying to get some Massachusetts reports because previous attempts had been “useless.” Because word about their unhelpfulness spread through the network, uncooperative engineers snubbed colleagues at their peril; to justify his response, Chesbrough noted that “other engineers tell me that like efforts on their part have met with like success.”¹¹

Engineers also kept abreast of the literature in their field. General works on civil engineering were advertised regularly in Charleston, South Carolina’s bookshops. We know about McRae’s reading habits in part because of notes he sent to publishers. He once complained to a book supplier that books and journals that he had ordered months ago had yet to be sent. From another publishing house, McRae ordered an article on bridges from the Encyclopedia Britannica and a report “‘Embankment of the River Adige in Tyrol’ drawn up by ‘Court Counsellor Dassette’ (not Gazette) which is probably printed in Italy and of course in Italian.” The American Railroad Journal also served as an important conduit of information. McRae wrote to the Journal’s editor, D. K. Minor, that “I sent you a short time ago a list of five new subscribers and $20 to pay for the subscriptions of four of them. I hope they arrived safe. I hope in the course of a month or two to send you some more. We are just beginning to waken up on the subject of R.R.s.” He also asked Minor to send some extra copies of the Journal so that he could take them to a meeting of the stockholders of the Greenville and Columbia Railroad. Engineers made up for a lack of formalized training and professional credentials by maintaining a network of fellow engineers, by remaining conversant with engineering literature, and with practical knowledge and hard-won experience. Because of networking, literature, and the mobility of the engineers, we cannot characterize southern projects as purely of “limited” or “local” interest. However small, these projects were tied into the developing national engineering culture through their engineers.¹²

Engineers had to be willing to improvise and experiment. In 1829 the SCRR’s board of directors reminded the stockholders that constructing railroads was still a “novelty.” Railroad construction in the South followed a relatively simple plan, as outlined by N. J. Bell: “A piece of hewed timber was laid on each side of the roadbed, lengthwise, and the crossties laid on the sills—called mudsills. A stringer was let into the ties; the stringer was a square piece of long sawed timber; the rail was a flat iron rail with spike holes in the center of the rail, and was spiked on top of the stringer. The ends of the rails came together with a little neck and groove that made the joint. At the joint of the stringers was a wooden wedge driven in to keep them in their places.” This simple, strap-iron construction was followed by many railroads in the country, particularly at the beginning of railroad development.¹³

In his memoir, Allen described the unique process used to build the SCRR, revealing how cost considerations came into play: “Confidence and capital had not yet reached the growth to make an iron track of the most modest weight per yard a possibility, and steel rails were as unthought of as the telegraph. On timber rails, six-inch by twelve-inch section, iron bars two and a half inches by half an inch were spiked. The wood was the Southern pine, the hard, resinous surface of which was as suitable for the iron bars as wood could be. I desired to use iron of the same width and thickness, but with a flange on one edge,” but that proved too expensive. In this case, Allen demonstrated that he had not only mastered the technical concepts associated with railroad building but was also profoundly aware of the financial constraints.¹⁴ Perhaps the most notable experiment on the SCRR was constructing the railroad on wooden piles instead of embanking the route. By elevating the entire road, Allen hoped to accomplish three goals: “permanent solidity of foundation, uniformity of surface and accuracy of direction.” Moreover, the method of construction was cheaper than embanking, and Allen believed that the method used by the road would prove popular across the country. The piles could reach a rather dizzying height. “In some places the road is raised upon wooden stilts 25 feet high,” commented traveler James Davidson in 1836. The unfamiliarity of the work created problems, though. Workers attempting to drive piles found themselves hampered by quicksand in some places and hard clay in others. The construction of the inclined plane (a source of much future frustration and controversy) near Aiken was undertaken by men faced with the “novelty of construction … who only begin to be expert when the work is done.”¹⁵

The harsh reality of such experiments is that they could fail. The SCRR almost immediately recognized that the piling system was inadequate. A period of dry weather in 1833 followed by harsh rains “has presented a combination of circumstances tending thoroughly to disclose all places where the supporting structure has been wanting either in solidity of foundation, or substantial workmanship.” As a result the railroad announced that “the Embankments will be gradually introduced, before the natural decay of the material, will render them or a re-construction indispensable.” By the end of 1835, the company could report that seventy-seven miles of the road had been embanked.¹⁶ By 1839, according to a traveler, embanking “had just been completed” but the road was still high enough that “looking from those elevated structures down into deep chasms” caused a “shudder.” Failure, of course, presented opportunities for others to learn. Soon after the SCRR realized the error of its ways, a committee in Columbia, South Carolina, argued that a proposed road to its city should follow a “more substantial and perfect plan.” Yet the committee acknowledged that the road from Charleston to Hamburg was constructed “at that early period in the history of Rail Roads,” and given the “limited resources of the company,” it was “the only one which could have succeeded at the time.” The report was made in 1834, yet the SCRR’s initial construction of a few years previous was already labeled an “early period” in railroad history. Experimentation led to error but also learning opportunities.¹⁷

Other experiments consumed Allen’s time. His efforts to secure satisfactory wheels from J. and J. Townsend of Albany, New York, demonstrate the problems he faced. He complained that, in one shipment of wheels and axles, “the journals have had nothing around them to protect their surfaces from rust. I must beg your attention to these particulars.” He also made it clear that he expected the company to adjust the wheels to the SCRR’s specifications as they investigated the proper dimensions. “We find it necessary to make some slight alterations in the cast iron box in which the brass bearing is secured, and will send a pattern by mr David Brown,” he wrote the Townsends much later. “The alteration is required to suit our arrangements for springs.” Experimentation and a willingness to fail and learn from that experience were necessary qualities for nineteenth-century engineers.¹⁸

If experimentation was a major characteristic of engineering life, variety was another. Engineers had to address a range of nontechnical aspects of their work. Antebellum engineers dealt not only with the mathematical and scientific challenges of constructing a railroad but also with the political world of directors, recalcitrant landowners, and the like. “Making railroads forms but a small item in my business,” Henry Bird reported to his fiancée in 1832. “I have not only to assist in making the road, but to arrange wagons & engines; to commence the transportation of passengers & goods, and to keep dozens of people daily from breaking their necks.” Thus, in addition to their technical work, engineers battled weather and disease, worked with contractors as the road was built, handled corporate bureaucracy, and dealt with landowners. This wide array of tasks did not appeal to all engineers, and some demanded that their jobs be better defined.¹⁹

Battling Nature

Despite the promises of boosters that the railroad would conquer nature, in the construction process engineers found themselves at the mercy of the weather. Construction on the SCRR did not begin in earnest until February 1831, but even then the coldness of the weather “render[ed] the labour of blacks totally inefficient,” according to an early report. Given such problems, civil engineers wanted to take advantage of good conditions whenever possible. For example, Andrew Talcott, chief engineer of the RDRR, informed his bridge contractors, “I wish it were practicable for you to be here now with a strong force as the river is unusually low and will probably continue so for some weeks & I should be glad to see the foundations done of a portion of the piers at least.” Such conditions made it imperative to hire workers quickly.²⁰

High water presented its own set of problems. On the SCRR, McRae reported that one group of workers in 1847 “crossed the river just before the present flood & cant get back now they are consequently idle.” The necessary trestle and bridgework over South Carolina’s Congaree Swamp could be acquired by the LCCRR only at a high price. Building the railroad to Columbia was admittedly difficult: in addition to the work over the swamp, it required, in places, deep cuts and embankments of up to fifty feet. Torrential rains in 1840 and 1841 destroyed much of the progress that had been made: to complete their work, the contractors had to wait not only for the rain to stop but also for the water to drain away so that foundations could be laid.²¹

Wet weather plagued McRae in 1853. His lengthy letter of complaint illustrates just how badly work could be set back:

Since I last wrote you but little work has been done. The ground has been so thoroughly saturated with water that for nearly two months the work done by carts would not pay for the wear and tear. The ground is now beginning to dry up & most of the contractors have got to work again. The effects of the weather on the cutting have been very bad. The slopes are every where caving in & without much regard to the degree of slope given to the cuts. One cut on Carter’s section near Jamestown where the slope had been changed has slipped more than 10 ft I should think outside the slopes. Harris’ cut on section 10–4th Division had just been finished & ditched when several hundred cart loads slipped. The cut is long and wet & it will be nearly impossible to get this earth out before spring until it dries somewhat, which will not be before spring.²²

Of course, northern railroads also faced weather problems. While building the Boston and Worcester, contractors struggled in the face of “the severity of the winter, and the long continued cold and stormy weather.” Samuel Nott reported that the “great proposition of mild, wet weather, having very much increased the difficulties of the Contractors, and the consequence is that the estimate is not so large by far as is desirable.” Wary of such rising costs, railroads tried to beat out bad weather when they could. George Bliss urged the president of the Western Railroad to appropriate funds for the immediate laying of foundations for bridges and culverts, because masonry was better done “before the Wet & cold weather.”²³

In addition to the challenges posed by weather, engineers faced disease. Sickness could have a powerful effect on communities of the early nineteenth century. Reporting from Knoxville, contractor A. L. Maxwell wrote that shortly after he arrived in the city he found it nearly deserted, four thousand people having fled disease “within three days.” Everything was closed, and people were “badly frightened.” When attracting laborers from outside the South, southern railroads had to address the region’s reputation as an unhealthy place. An Alabama railroad advertised for workers in 1836 with the promise that work would be in an area “of the most pleasant and healthful character.”²⁴

The experience of the northern construction firm Stone and Harris, building a bridge in Richmond, demonstrates concern about disease. Initially in June 1849, J. R. Anderson informed the company, “There have been a few cases of cholera here, the greater number whilst you were here. Yesterday there were reported 2 cases, no death except of a patient who had previously been taken. Our city has never been more healthy.... We dont feel any apprehension of danger here.” Anderson gave another positive report a few weeks later, noting that six workers freshly arrived in Virginia “say they are not at all afraid of the Cholera & should like to be employed as early as practicable.” But the luck of Stone and Harris’s workers eventually took a turn for the worse. In October, cholera in Richmond gave “cause of alarm to northern laborers” and delayed the work on the James River bridge for a while until a “large and efficient” force could be fully secured.²⁵

Indeed, the timing of sickness could affect the completion of a railroad, which made engineers nervous. McRae wrote to a northern colleague that he was “getting very anxious” about completing his road, adding “if the sickly season next summer should catch us it will be very bad especially if it should prove as sickly as this season.” Of course, engineers themselves were not exempt from sickness. When he discovered that he was to have a new assistant, McRae’s only regret was that “he comes here at a bad season & may get sick.”²⁶

Engineers and Contractors

Once a route was surveyed, the engineers began the process of supervising construction. They set the terms for the contracts, took bids, and ensured that the work was done to the contract’s specification. Contractors submitted bids for work, stating what rates they considered reasonable for the work to be done. The best bid was then selected by the company. Of course, factors could come into play besides the financial appropriateness of a proposal. When A. W. Craven proposed to work on the Camden branch of the SCRR, his colleague and road employee John McRae discovered after talking with one of the road’s directors that “your bid was rejected with it being stated that it was invited by the President & that this might have altered the decision some what.” Contractors were required to provide security to demonstrate that they had the financial means to finish the work and sustain themselves through economic hardship. Such a demonstration could prove critical. The LCCRR extended a contract to a man to build their depository in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The winning bidder, “though not considered the most responsible man,” received the contract “after giving security to the amount of $2500.”²⁷

Contracts laid out specifically which parties would bear which responsibilities. William S. Mills submitted the following bid to the Spartanburg and Union Railroad in 1854:

We will furnish hands to lay Track & to do any grading that may be necessary, to clear the way for the same as follows. Board &c &c and be at all expenses of Hands for one dollars per day overseer and Cook to be counted hands. Mule and cart to be counted equal to a hand. Cart-Boys half-price, wet days to count half time. We will loose going down and returning and all sick time, we will find a sett of Blacksmith tools & all other tools necessary for grading except shovels, the Company to find shovels and all other tools necessary for laying Track. There will be a Blacksmith and Two pretty good carpenters in our lot of hands. Waggon-Team and Driver five Dollars per day. We will leave Alston the 1st day of June and return there the final week in October.²⁸

Rates for different workers (and ages of workers), timing of the work, allowance for sickness, provision of equipment—all these were accounted for in the contract. Other contracts were executed in a similar fashion. In a contract for embanking, the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad agreed to furnish “a Locomotive and train of gravel cars” as well as “the rails spikes sills, frogs, levers and switches for any side tracks that the Engineer may adjudge necessary for the performance of the work.” The contract detailed how the account would be paid and the time by which the work must start. The engineer was also acknowledged to have “final and conclusive” authority over “any dispute which may arise between the parties to this agreement relative to or touching the same.”²⁹

Contractors were both local southerners and northern businessmen. Southern railroad companies actively solicited northern contractors, although it could be difficult for contractors to compete with planters. While working on the SCRR, McRae invited Craven to place a bid on the Wateree Swamp trestlework. McRae warned Craven, however, that it was not worth his while to make any sort of offer for the grading, because “you could make nothing on it.” The fact that planters along the road intended to offer for the grading meant that “there is little or no chance” that anyone else would get the contract. This demonstrated the crucial advantage that planters had in their ability to provide slave labor. McRae wrote to another potential contractor, James Herron of Philadelphia, and warned him that “if you trust to getting hands here it is not unlikely that you might be disappointed & you might find differently in prevailing upon hands to come from the North at that season of the year.” Herron assured McRae that he was not scared by the prospect, but “engagements here will preclude the possibility of my compassing yours.” Later, McRae told Herron that he made the right decision by not taking the job: “The work you would have to do would come in the most sickly season of the year. If you had trusted to getting hands here you would probably have been disappointed, had you brought hands with you they would have got sick or frightened.”³⁰

Such problems notwithstanding, some northern companies did substantial business in the South. As we have seen, the RDRR contracted a Massachusetts construction firm, Stone and Harris, to erect a bridge in 1849. Stone and Harris’s agent, J. R. Anderson, indicated that he was also in negotiations with Virginia’s Louisa Railroad regarding bridgework. Although Stone and Harris sent its men throughout the South, their experiences were not always positive. Working on a railroad in Knoxville, A. L. Maxwell wrote to the home office that the chief engineer was the “poorest pay master we have anywhere, and the most troublesome Eng[inee]r withall… . I would not do any more work under him at any price.” Arriving in Richmond, William Birnie complained that so little had been done that he feared they would not have the road graded and track laid for “six months.” Moreover, an inexperienced “young Irishman” was now responsible for the engineering drawings, and Birnie “felt very much” like informing the lead engineer “that I would go home and wait a few months untill he got his road in better shape.”³¹

Because of their proximity to the work and their ability to provide slave labor, southern planters played a critical role in constructing southern railroads. Although they initially lacked experience in railroad building, this hardly made them different from anyone else at the beginning of the railroad era. Planters brought with them significant advantages. In 1839 the CRRG reported that it preferred to use planters as contractors, because it would “enable us for the future to keep up a more uniform scale of operations during the whole year, and also to render the work more popular, by diffusing the benefits attending its construction, more generally among our own citizens, than if the labor were performed by strangers.” Planters would not stand in the way of the modernizing South; the CRRG argued that planters could actually facilitate this transformation. Moreover, the company realized that having planters involved would make the work more “popular,” and give the community around the road a greater stake in the road’s success.³²

The LCCRR’s construction of the railroad from Branchville to Columbia, South Carolina, also demonstrated the practicality of using planters as contractors. Although the LCCRR admitted that the planters did not always posses the most experience, it was easily gained, and any lack of experience was more than compensated by the fact that the planters possessed “labor, provisions and quarters of their own, in the immediate neighborhood of the work.” Indeed, planters did better than their nonplanter counterparts. Those contractors who lacked their own capital and were dependent upon the company’s monthly payments ran into difficulty when the weather and sickness brought delays, but “those who had their plantations to resort to, were scarcely, if at all embarrassed.” The company noted with satisfaction that the contractors, “as a body, were very efficient and gave full satisfaction, as might have been expected from the high standing of most of them. The interest which some of them took in the workmanlike completion of their sections is not only highly commendable to themselves, but ornamental to the Road.”³³

Other railroads agreed. As it prepared to begin construction, the Spartanburg and Union Railroad approved a new bidding process: “Land holders shall be preferred as contractors for Grading the Road through their own Land provided their Bid be equal” or lower than that of any other bidder. The Blue Ridge Railroad of South Carolina switched to having planters work as contractors after an unfavorable experience with all-white labor. The company president reported in 1854 that the “mixed population of our Northern seaports … was not found to answer” and so the road had been “sub-let to parties chiefly on the line of the road.” As might be expected, there was some delay in getting the work started as the switch was made near the harvest season and planters were unable to put their slaves on the line until the crops had been taken in. For planters, agriculture remained the top priority, but the success with which planters were employed as contractors also shows their willingness to diversify and improve the South’s transportation infrastructure.³⁴

Managing the work of contractors could be a difficult task. Civil engineers and contractors were driven by very different desires. Engineers obviously wanted to have the highest-quality construction; contractors hoped to keep costs to a minimum if there was to be any chance of profit. McRae’s constant struggles with contractor Thomas Stark on the SCRR demonstrate the problems that civil engineers faced. McRae informed Stark in July 1846 that it was “many weeks since I informed you that the contract for grading the first section of the Camden Branch was awarded to you & I have not yet seen any steps taken towards a commencement.” With only three months remaining on the contract, McRae warned Stark that “to do the grading in this time will require a force of 70 hands even if there were no more work than shown by the estimate. If you do not expect or rather are not prepared to put this force on in a week or ten days, I think you had better give up the work.”³⁵

In August the story was the same; McRae again had to write to Stark demanding that the work be taken seriously. Although Stark had promised to secure as many hands as possible with a minimum of forty, McRae found that only seventeen were working on the road. In September, McRae wrote that only half of what should have been done had been completed. McRae reminded Stark that the president of the company had extended a contract to him “out of kindly feelings.” The difficulties with Stark led McRae to take his own initiative in the search for workers to complete the grading of the road. Even when McRae was able to locate these workers, the job did not necessarily go more smoothly. “I wrote to you on the 18th ult. offering to aid you in procuring Mr. Cordes hands & I have heard nothing from you since,” McRae wrote to Stark on October 3. “I am somewhat surprised at this as time is now so precious.” Unable to get hands from an expected source, McRae forwarded Stark hands from the “reserve” force, although the price of hiring such hands would be higher for Stark.³⁶

Stark was also unable to keep his workers under control. McRae informed him of a rather serious offense: “I am informed that your overseer Mr Moye with some others on Sunday last took one of the R R Company’s cars which was on the Camden Branch & ran it on the Columbia Road, and not satisfied with this trespass whereby they laid themselves liable to prosecution they cursed and abused one of the officers of the company who was coming up the road on an Engine. If this is so I am left no alternative but to order that Mr Moye be discharged from employment on the road. I shall regret very much if this will subject you to inconvenience as I do not of course consider you in any way to blame.” When the cost and trouble of reletting the work was greater than the cost of retaining contractors already engaged in the work, engineers were forced to deal with such incompetence.³⁷

Contractors bore fiscal responsibility for the work that they were to complete, but they were also required to complete the work to the satisfaction of the railroad. Understandably, this could lead to disputes. Companies demanded adherence to the contract price, which could lead to ruin for contractors who were unable to keep their own costs down. Engineers regularly inspected railroad work in order to judge progress as stipulated by contracts. “Had OBrians hands (2) cleaning dirt off of & raising retaining wall that he had covered up,” noted Orange and Alexandria Railroad engineer Thomas Shaw in 1857. This error would cost the contractor: “Shall not allow him anything for them as he should not have had it covered up.” Engineers also held firm to the estimates. “You will observe that the contract fixes the price you are to be paid,” McRae informed a contractor, “under that contract you cannot claim more; in a legal point of view your objections are of no avail.” In settling a dispute, engineers were quite specific about enforcing the formal and detailed requirements of their contracts. McRae once referred a negligent contractor to “page 5, specification 7,” and “on page 7 in two separate paragraphs” in order to make a point. In response, contractors sought to keep their expenses down and could be tenacious in holding to their claims; contractor Anson Bangs once told another contractor that “he would not pay 5 cents if it cost him $50,000.” The opposing demands of contractors and engineers could make for hard battles.³⁸

If contractors were not happy with the estimates for the work given by the engineer, they could express such dissatisfaction by removing their laborers from the work. Others protested the low rates that were allotted for their work directly to the engineers. McRae wrote that one contractor was particularly out of sorts. “This morning I mentioned to Mr Shaver (it having escaped me till now) the price you fixed on the masonry of the street Bridge Salisbury ($5.50 per cy). It put him so much out of temper that I thought it better to make no remarks or explanations. He says the price will scarcely pay his masons & swears he will sooner tear the work down than take it.”³⁹

Managing the costs of railroad work could be perilous, and some contractors fell on hard times. McRae once considered a few of his contractors to be in dire straits: “I do not know any contractor more in need of money than Mr Murdoch. I have heard several contractors, H. C. Jones, Saml. C. Harris & others, complain of want of money but cannot say who are more needy.” Legal consequences were the result for those who fell deeper into financial misery. McRae notified the president of the SCRR that contractor William Bowen was “in jail for debt,” and McRae had to take over Bowen’s work himself.⁴⁰

Such difficulties reveal the risks involved in railroad construction and were not peculiar to the South. Northern contractors were also capable of mismanagement and falling into bankruptcy. Surveying the state of ten numbered sections on the Schenectady and Troy Railroad, an observer noted that on section one the grading was “indifferently managed” and that the contractor for the depot “made very little.” Although the contractor for section two made a profit of $1,500, it could have been “double” with “proper management.” The contractor for section three made out “about even.” Section four was “managed indifferently” with a loss of $3,000. Sections six and seven had “medium” management; section eight had “bad” management.⁴¹ On another railroad, Samuel Nott complained that one subcontractor was in so much debt that he would not “be able to secure himself, if he work[ed] there forever.” One contractor on a Vermont railroad worried about a $10,000 debt that was “frightful to think of it but we must make the best of it.” And northern contractors protested when their finances were inadequate to their needs. “The Contractors complain loudly of their estimates,” Wilson Fairfax reported on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in 1836. “Wages are very high $1.00 to $1.12 for hands is enough to destroy all their profits entirely. Many advances were consequently made to them by Mr. [Moncure] Robinson who is very kind & feels much for their situation.”⁴²

Financial risk and cost overruns were not unique to southern projects. Indeed, in our own time, large transportation infrastructure projects have “widespread” cost overruns. As with nineteenth-century railroads, new projects that involve technical innovations are susceptible to expenditures that quickly outpace estimates. Such problems “haunt” major projects, almost exclusive of time and place. Antebellum engineers faced similar problems that modern engineers do—unfamiliar technology, difficulty in procuring materials, fluctuating labor force, the vagaries of nature—and estimates can easily be made irrelevant by one or a combination of such factors. It may simply be in the nature of such projects—and not a peculiar “southern” incompetence—that led to inadequate projections and financial difficulties. According to planning professor Bent Flyvbjerg and his colleagues, writing in 2003, “Cost overrun today is in the same order of magnitude as it was ten, thirty or seventy years ago.” Moreover, they discovered that publicly and privately undertaken projects exhibited similar “patterns” of overruns, even if causes were different. Rather than seeing widespread mismanagement in southern improvement projects, we may simply be seeing the real costs of working at the cutting edge of technological change and wrestling with construction projects of enormous scope.⁴³

Railroads had to design strategies for working with contractors who fell on hard times. Some companies tried positive incentives. In order to get the Southwestern Railroad completed before the cotton crop was ready for transport, the company promised “additional prices … to several of the contractors, with the condition that they complete their contracts by a specified time.” When contractors fell delinquent it was often difficult to reassign the work; McRae noted that it was usually “a most expensive and troublesome business to relet work.” When contractors did not complete their work in time, the railroad occasionally had to take steps itself to complete the job. Such was the case on the RDRR in 1850. The chief engineer, Andrew Talcott, reported that contractors for one portion of the road had completely neglected it, “though repeatedly directed to prosecute it with greater vigor.” Talcott asked the permission of the board of directors to put his own force on the road should the contractors continue to delay.⁴⁴

In other cases, the railroad found itself stuck with the contractors. Talcott recommended allowing Robert Harvey and Company additional time to complete its contract instead of disposing with the firm and reletting the work:

Shall we re-let it at as favorable prices? It is not reasonable to conclude so, as labour is in great demand and all prices are ranging higher. In such a state of things economy & the true interests of this company in my opinion require that we should go on with the present contract by which we make it only a question of time. Is it then better for this company to wait the completion of this contract twelve months, or by declaring it abandoned arrest the work and run all the hazards of increased expense, with the additional hazard of not getting it sooner. I think the policy is plain, I think a delay of a few months is not to be compared with the hazard, rigors and casualties we should encounter by an opposite policy.⁴⁵

Harvey illustrated the bind that railroad companies found themselves in: the contractor was not performing well, but starting over from scratch would mean an enormous loss of time and would not necessarily be less costly.

Managing a New Bureaucracy

Engineers found themselves at the center of a rapidly growing corporate bureaucracy. Engineers were responsible for a vast amount of paperwork associated with operating the railroad. Contractors needed detailed information about the work expected of them for their sections. The engineer collected information from contractors in order to judge the progress of the road and provided assessments to the executives of the company. Engineers also oversaw financial matters, with a dizzying array of items required to run the company properly. Expenses for surveying a railroad in 1836 included such items as advertising, horse hire, food, slave hire, firewood, pencils and drawing paper, clothes for slaves (“Shirts for George,” “Great Coat for Daniel”), wages, and “cooking furniture” for the camp. Standardized forms helped routinize information management but could also make work multiply: a contract for slave hire on the SCRR in 1846 was to be “Executed in Triplicate.” Given the need to track all of this paper, combined with the fact that offices could move as the work went on, it is little wonder that occasionally engineers would take time out to catch up with paperwork. On October 25, 1839, the senior resident engineer of the LCCRR began to organize his office; from the 28th to the 30th he and his underlings were “arranging and labelling the papers, drawings and books, and overhauling and storing away the instruments, camp equipage &c of the company.”⁴⁶

The workload could lead to long nights and weekends. Closing a letter to a friend, McRae noted that it was “Sunday evening & I have yet several letters to write for tomorrow mornings mail.” Some engineers did not appreciate night work. Edward St. George Cooke complained about his boss for that very reason: “I will cite an instance of his annoying me. He told me that he desired me to work regularly in the office at night. I told him that when any work was pressing, I would willingly do so, but when there was such a lack of employment, that I was idle half the day, I must decline any such arrangement.”⁴⁷

In the process of overseeing construction, engineers had to make sure that the appropriate materials were ready when needed. Timing was critical when doing construction, because not working meant that workers were idled, could get restless, and leave (if not already held in bondage). Examining one week of construction on the LCCRR easily demonstrates the logistical management required. Contractors began laying mudsills near Branchville on December 23, 1839. After working for about a half mile, however, it was discovered that many of the sills were “very defective” and “frequently very crooked.” The rail layers were already on the construction site but could not begin their work until the sills were down. Without work, they would not be paid and would likely leave. On the 25th, the contractors were instructed to cut down trees near where the road was being built and to fashion their own sills to replace those that were defective. That same day, the engineer learned that the rails, spikes, and plates were all waiting in Charleston and had yet to be sent up the road. The next day the resident engineer wrote to the contractor responsible for supplying the sills and informed him that “he must immediately send horses and hands to supply the deficiencies.” On the 27th, the engineer instructed the idle rail layers to take over the process of cutting down trees and fashioning sills for the company’s use. Engineers had to juggle labor forces and schedules when equipment deliveries were not timely.⁴⁸

There were similar problems on other roads. In 1849 a contractor in Richmond wrote hurriedly, “We have been looking for some time rather impatiently for a reply to some one of our last four or five letters. we wrote you twice within ten days to know what had become of the cars that Wasson made for the Richmond & Danville RR co. not hearing any thing from you we Telegraphed you on Friday. Every thing will be ready in a day or two to commence hauling stone from the quarry but no cars heard from.” One week later, G. H. Burt complained, “The car man has arrived but not the cars & we are ready for them.” One small delay could have a damaging effect on other parts of the work.⁴⁹

In addition to overseeing the office, managing contractors, and overseeing procurement, engineers also had to work around the demands of their superiors. John Smedberg, working on a surveying crew in 1837, wrote that he “was hard at work till 10 every night … doing my share of the estimates to be ready for the meeting of directors.” When the engineering drawings of the LCCRR were “hung up” for inspection by the stockholders at their annual meeting, the engineers could do only “very little in the way of drawing.” Boards could also demand work to be redone when they received complaints from citizens. Regarding competing claims from residents of Kershaw and Sumter, South Carolina, McRae noted that he would “be delayed a little in consequence of the consternation which the proposed change in the location has caused among the people of Sumter.... I have in consequence been directed to make more extended surveys as the matter will be brought before the Board again.” Engineers learned how to communicate needs in language the board would appreciate, couching their own arguments in the language of the business needs of the road. “An immediate movement and the utmost despatch in the laying of the rails will now be necessary, to open the road in season for the fall business of the West,” reported the engineer of the Northwestern Virginia Railroad Company in 1856. The engineer doubtless knew that his superiors would be thinking along the same lines.⁵⁰

Engineers also had to be attuned to the political machinations of the boards of directors. McRae wrote to a friend in 1846, “Ker Boyce & his friend have been turned out of the Board of Directors, a happy riddance in the opinion of all friends of the road.” Engineers could also try to influence votes themselves. “I understand that an effort is to be made next meeting of the stockholders to turn [James] Gadsden out” of the presidency of the SCRR, McRae wrote at the beginning of 1847. He encouraged his correspondent: “If you know any who hold the stock use your influence.” Shortly thereafter, McRae would discover that the politics would end up influencing his own career. When Gadsden was thrown out, McRae wrote that he had but one “close friend on the Board [and] it is not improbable I will have to follow.” Indeed, he soon informed a friend that he was attempting to find employment elsewhere. Years later McRae still realized that his reputation was tied up with that of Gadsden, and because Gadsden was “unpopular with the moneyed interests in Charleston … his unpopularity is visited upon my shoulders.” Engineers could not separate themselves from the politics and nonengineering aspects of railroad construction.⁵¹

Engineers and the Public

Finally, civil engineers had to address the needs of individual citizens along the route of the railroad. Most often, these encounters came when the railroad was attempting to secure land. Sometimes, these encounters were made more complex by the legal standing—or lack thereof—of the landholder. Mr. Sheppard of the RFPRR paid $200 to the “friend and agent” of “Mary Harris a lunatic” who was to receive land damages for construction of the railroad. A few days later Sheppard asked to have payment made to a representative of a landowner who was under twenty-one years of age. Land damages could not always be settled between the engineer and the owner. After talking to landowner Thomas Seay, McRae reported that “we both came to the conclusion that the law must take its course.”⁵²

Once railroads received land, they tenaciously defended their claims. “We met the assembled wisdom of the Dutch & Dutch Reformed Churches here yesterday,” McRae wrote in 1851. “They had been quietly laughing in their sleeves at the Company with the belief that their property was sacred, but have been forced to admit that they could not prevent the Company from going through & have concluded to be satisfied by getting all out of the Company they can.” The railroad would not give up its land easily, and those who stood in the way only garnered McRae’s sarcastic contempt.⁵³

As construction progressed, engineers fielded complaints from landowners. In January 1840 the engineer for the LCCRR was still working with one landowner to settle claims for damages done to his crops in 1838. McRae received a complaint from a landowner in 1846 that his crops had been damaged. He expressed surprise that the landowner intended on suing the contractors, because “your overseer informed me that no damage was done to your crop.” McRae reminded the landowner that the contractors had delayed the work in part to allow him to do work necessary on his crops. Once again, engineers found themselves to be the public face of the corporation.⁵⁴

The wide variety of work and its frustrating nature led some engineers to cry out for a better definition of their duties. Engineers argued that their work was professional enough that they should not have to trifle with petty concerns. Likewise, they felt that important decisions should not be left to laymen. After wrestling with two claims of landholders and facing the recent resignation of an assistant engineer, the resident engineer of the LCCRR wrote a letter to the company president “relative to the necessity of defining the duties and responsibilities of the Eng[inee]rs.” After speaking with a member of the board of directors, the resident engineer agreed to draw up a set of regulations that might alleviate this problem. McRae had similar questions more than a decade later and wrote to a colleague to gauge what his duties should be: “How should you occupy your time on the survey and location? Would you consider the procuring of the right of way a part of your duty professionally?” Evidently McRae did not believe that his feelings were adequately addressed, because he resigned his position on the Charleston and Savannah Railroad after a disagreement with the president as to his duties. McRae considered it “reasonable” that an engineer of his position “should be subject only to the general instructions of the Board through their President, and that as to all matters of detail such as the point at which his services are needed whether in the field or in the office, the disposition of the parties and the duties of his Assistants he should be himself the judge.” By 1855 engineers had professionalized to the point where McRae felt he could claim such privilege.⁵⁵

Stumphouse Mountain

All of the challenges that engineers faced in the antebellum era could be encapsulated in the Blue Ridge Railroad’s effort to build a tunnel through Stumphouse Mountain in northwestern South Carolina. Ultimately unsuccessful, the tunnel would have been 5,863 feet long when completed and would have trimmed seven miles of off the BRRR’s route. The portion of the tunnel that still stands is a testament to the multiple frustrations engineers faced.

From the perspective of civil engineering, it was a massive undertaking. Numerous people visited Stumphouse Mountain and commented on the extraordinary magnitude of the work. Dr. J. T. Craig visited in 1854 and observed that there were “about 200 cabbins put up, two stores, & two very good Hotels.... The supposition was that there would be about 1500 work hands before the summer ended.” John Hamilton Cornish visited a few months later. “We … drove 5 miles to the top of Stump Mountain, through which the Blue Ridge R. Road Company are cutting a tunnel—1 and ¼ mile long—through solid granite or Ness Rock. The East side of the mountain is faced down and the head of the Tunnel cut in about 60 feet, and the whole cleaned out some 15 or 20.” Cornish then described the process by which the tunnel was being constructed. “There are to be four shafts sunk a thousand feet apart. Shaft No. 1 is now about 60 feet deep. They are working in it, as in the Tunnel—night and day. Shaft No. 2—the water has stopt further progress till they get a steam pump, the depth of this shaft will be about 200 feet. There is a hotel and quite a village of Cabins already on the mountain.” These four shafts dropped down to grade level were to speed the work. Workers could then go down the shafts and dig outward in each direction. Thus, the workers could work on ten surfaces at once—inside four shafts and at the two openings of the tunnel. The work required a large commitment of machinery and men and led to the deaths of nine imported Irish laborers during the course of the work.⁵⁶

Soon after Cornish visited the work, tunneling was delayed because of problems with contractors. Anson Bangs and Eli Bangs (who, with other partners, formed Anson Bangs and Company) accepted a contract for constructing the BRRR from Anderson, South Carolina, to Knoxville and initially advertised for three thousand workers.⁵⁷ In November 1854 the Bangs brothers relinquished their contract and the remaining partners reformed the company under the name of A. Birdsall and Company. The railroad was displeased with the fact that Anson and Eli Bangs had left the firm, because they “were represented to be experienced contractors who had realised a large capital in the business of rail road building.” The new company claimed the legal right to fulfill the contract. Although the Birdsall firm had no experience in building railroads, the company later said that A. Birdsall and Company “were presented and believed to have brought into the concern capital and credit to assist in the performance of the contract.” Sadly for the railroad, it was not to be. Indeed, as the company later claimed, it “never would have made the Contract with Birdsall, Mather, and Bixby, or either of them” had those three individuals alone been part of the original contract.⁵⁸

The contractors abandoned their work around April 1856, and all the grading that they had done to that point was “chiefly in earth, and in patches where they found the work easy.”⁵⁹ Later in 1856 Dun credit reporters reported that a $434 claim had been put out for Birdsall and Company, but “none of the firm are at present in this state, and doubt whether any or either of them return to this jurisdiction, a foreign attachment has been taken out and levied on sundry goods and chattles belonging to said firm.” The next year, they were further exposed by the credit reporters: “All the members of this firm are from the state of N.Y… . Since dismissed by the R.R. Co. have now a suit vs said Co. in the U.S. Court for Georgia… . Some 18 mos or 2 yrs since forced to leave this state on acc’t of suits by subcontractors vs them. a large no of attachment cases, now pending in our courts.”⁶⁰

As the Dun reporters alluded, the result of these delays was a legal battle. Contractors complained that the BRRR had “refused, repeatedly, to furnish the Contractors with the location and survey of the line,” and had, “on more than one occasion, actually ordered the suspension of portions of the work then in progress.” The BRRR countered that it had hired the Bangs brothers because of the special skills they possessed in regard to railroads and that the partners who took over were “wholly destitute” of those same skills. The BRRR further charged that much of the work done by the replacements was ineffective. Piles at Darricott’s Bottom were “so insufficient, and so slightly driven, that they were condemned and cut down.” A “shapeless excavation” was at the eastern end of the Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel. Other tunnels were likewise in poor condition. Some work had been done on Middle Tunnel, but it had since collapsed. Little had been done at Saddle Tunnel, and only ninety men were employed at all three tunnels when the contract was dissolved. Similar complaints could be made about trestlework and masonry by several creeks. Finally, the company believed that it had been lied to regarding a potential contract for iron in England. The railroad employed agents in England to learn about the supposed contract with a man named Parry and discovered “that Parry’s last employment was that of a bookseller, and that he was declared a bankrupt in 1853.”⁶¹

The work was relet to George Collyer in May 1856. One shaft was sunk to grade in late February 1857, a second in September 1857. The delayed delivery of a steam engine to sink the shafts in the spring of 1857 arrested the work, but when a report was made in November 1857, three steam engines were at work sinking the shafts and digging out the tunnel. Two smaller steam engines were driving fans for ventilation in the tunnel. Two hundred workers were employed “by relays, night and day” to dig out the mountain. Although the force applied by the contractor was large, the company still warned that it would take from three to four years to complete the work. Moreover, Collyer himself had left the work, by November 1857, complaining that he was losing too much money to attend to the work “vigorously.”⁶²

The BRRR was clearly losing patience by 1857. A tunneling contract issued by the BRRR that year required that work proceed at a constant pace as demonstrated by three particular clauses: “6th. The excavation shall proceed at the same time from both ends of the Tunnel—and also in opposite directions from each shaft. 7th. The Contractor shall have in the Tunnel and shafts as many hands as can be employed to advantage. 8th. The work is to progress night and day, without interruption, in the Tunnel and shafts, and to be performed by not less than two shifts, and if required by the Engineer, by three shifts.”⁶³ Collyer was replaced by the contractors Humbird and Hunter. The BRRR’s chief engineer, Walter Gwynn, noted that Humbird and Hunter had successfully worked on six other railroads, including the Baltimore and Ohio and the Virginia Central. Gwynn further noted that the “suspension of the public works at the North” should make it easier for the firm to obtain the hands it needed to complete the tunnel. In any event, the firm was fully prepared to employ African Americans to prevent any “deficiency of force.”⁶⁴

Humbird and Hunter immediately set about increasing the force. In November 1858 they had seven steam engines working at the mountain, and the third shaft had been sunk to grade. Work seemed to be progressing well; the credit agent for R. G. Dun described the contractors as “men of experience.” Labor remained a problem: as the chief engineer noted, the “only impediment to the regular and uniform progress of the work has been caused by the inability of the contractors to keep at all times a full force.” Yet an enormous work force was present; at the time the chief engineer made his report the contractors had brought down 832 men from the North, and the total “population” of the mountain was 1,232. The engineer believed that the difficulties northern public works were experiencing meant that the company would have no trouble attracting workers to the South. Irish laborers presented their own difficulties, however. Although the engineer believed that the work could be completed in just under two years, the fact that the Irish had a tendency to “roam among the various public works in progress, and … constantly arriv[e] and depar[t] from the different lines as interest or caprice dictates a change” led him to increase his estimate for completion to twenty-six or twenty-seven months. This proved too optimistic; the sheer cost of the enterprise and the inability of the company to secure governmental funding led the work to be essentially suspended in 1859. By June 1859 only 340 workers were at work on the tunnel. Soon, the Civil War would permanently end the dream of tunneling through Stumphouse Mountain.⁶⁵

Engineering work was not for everyone. The difficulty of the work could lead even accomplished engineers to experience self-doubt. “The prospects of the Hamburgh Rail Road have brightened very much of late,” Horatio Allen wrote in 1830. “I however am seriously thinking of abandoning the profession, and have already made some arrangements to that effect. I of course keep my views to myself.” Allen stuck with his work, but not everyone remained satisfied with the life that engineering offered. Edward St. George Cooke left the field in 1856: “I cannot go into details but I have almost concluded to abandon Engineering and study Medicine as the quickest way of getting along.... I am dead broke, and would be glad if you could lend me a little money.” But the impact of those who were willing to stay was undeniable. Engineers played a critical role in turning the dreams of promoters into reality, and a profession that was only in embryo at the dawn of the railroad era had constructed a remarkable series of railroads by the eve of the Civil War. Lacking a large variety of sources for formal training, engineers adapted well to the myriad local conditions they found. Engineers created the intellectual community they needed by traveling, keeping in contact with fellow engineers, and reading and contributing to an expanding literature. A willingness to experiment, fail, and share the results drove the country’s growth in engineering knowledge in the era before institutionalized training programs.⁶⁶

Once in the field, engineers discovered that “book learning” went only so far. Engineers had to master a wide array of nontechnical tasks to complete their works. They had to manage materials and men, chase after incompetent contractors, contend with politics and boards of directors, and address the claims of aggrieved landowners. The best-laid plans could be destroyed by a week of bad weather or the threat of disease. Through all of this, engineers had to maintain a steady hand, master the intricacies of a new technology, and preferably come in under budget.

In examining the practice of engineers who worked in the South, it is easy to see the parallels with northern developments. Although engineers in the South certainly had to adjust to southern landscapes, there were not substantial differences between North and South when it came to engineering practice. Engineers traveled the country searching for work and gladly took it where they could find it. The professional networks they built were not limited by region. Engineers North and South had to contend with problems of weather and contractors who could not meet their obligations. Just as railroad boosters could be found in all parts of the country, the experience of engineers was not generally defined by region. There was, of course, one substantial area of difference: the institution of slavery. The option of hiring or purchasing slaves was available to civil engineers in the South and the railroads that employed them.