That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt (review)

BOOK REVIEWS71 sion to move on Gettysburg—"I should have left well enough alone." Heth should also be consulted for his remembrances of the Perryville, Chancellorsville, Bristoe, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg campaigns, and the surrender at Appomattox. Unfortunately, the excellent footnotes are in the back of the book, but this minor flaw does not detract from its genuine value to the bibliography of the war. Roy P. Stonesifer, Jr. Edinboro State College That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt. By James A. Ward. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Pp. 278. $11.97.) The career of Herman Haupt coincided with and indeed was part of the transportation revolution and the general rise of industrial capitalism that spanned much of the nineteenth century. A significant figure in American railroad development, Haupt was, according to this biographer , a creature of the early part of the century, but was unable to adapt his ideas and skills to the more crassly materialistic and corporate scramble of the Gilded Age. Born in 1817 and trained as an engineer at West Point, Haupt devoted most of his professional life to building, organizing and operating railroads. A pioneer in bridge design, he early became a protege of J. Edgar Thomson and rose to become general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1850's. In that capacity, he was one of the first to study actual costs and to advocate lower rates; he also fought incessantly with the state canal commission and with his own board of directors, until he left to become involved in a disastrous railroad venture in Massachusetts—a project, partially underwritten by the state, which included driving a four-mile tunnel through Hoosac Mountain in the Berkshires. After years of lobbying with the legislature, countless wrangles with his partners, futile and sometimes inane financial arrangements, not to mention numerous technical difficulties, the partly -completed work was suspended, with Haupt cast somewhat in the role of villain as well as loser. The Hoosac took much of his not inconsiderable fortune; it drained away his youth, his optimism, his financial backers, and much of his professional reputation. That he still retained his drive was indicated when he was called to Washington in 1862 to rebuild and reorganize the Union railroads in the Virginia sector, a job he accomplished remarkably well, only to be shelved when he refused to accept the brigadier generalship he was offered. His war career prematurely shortened, he spent much time salvaging what he could from the Hoosac debacle; plunged deeper into debt to acquire wilderness land in western Virginia; supervised completion and operation of the Atlanta and Richmond Railroad until his position was abolished; and built the first long-distance pipe line for 72CIVIL WAR HISTORY crude oil in Pennsylvania. Ultimately in 1881 he became for two years general manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad and did much to improve the administration and operation of that line. By the time of his death in 1905, Haupt had dabbled in a variety of enterprises apart from railroads: coal mines, a granite quarry, street cars run by compressed air, the raising of goats, plans to improve the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers; and a process for manufacturing powdered milk. Along the way, he had been fleeced by his partners half a dozen times. A man of talent at a time when professional engineers were rare, he seemed to lack the financial feel and the intensity of purpose of the more successful entrepreneurs of his era. Energetic, efficient and a times displaying touches of technological genius, he was at the same time brusque, pigheaded, and perhaps naive. Few viewed him neutrally, though here James Ward paints a sympathetic, but not one-sided portrait, in which from time to time even a bit of the scoundrel shows through. Soundly based on a broad array of sources, manuscript as well as printed, That Man Haupt is a worthwhile addition to the literature of the railroad era. Clahk C. Spence University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Through "Poverty's Vale": A Hardscrabble Boyhood in Upstate New York, 1832-1867. By Henry Conklin. Edited by Wendell Tripp. (Syracuse : Syracuse University Press, 1974. Pp. xxiii, 263. $8.50.) Through...