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  • The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America
  • Aaron W. Marrs
Robert G. Angevine . The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004. xvii + 351 pp. ISBN 0-8047-4239-1, $65.00 (cloth).

Robert Angevine's excellent monograph offers valuable insights for historians of technology, business, and the military. This book details the "symbiotic" relationship of railroads and the military, showing how the relationship evolved during the nineteenth century.

Angevine lays out his story chronologically. The fact that the United States was going to need some sort of transportation infrastructure in order to move troops in a timely manner was first realized after the War of 1812. As a result, the army played a role in road building and in so doing began a long series of debates over the appropriateness of the army's involvement in internal improvements. One of the strengths of this book is that it integrates such debates into the history of the early republic rather then describing them in isolation. Angevine shows how arguments about the army's role occurred in the context of a broader debate about the need for a standing army.

The railroads' reliance on the army began with the engineering talent coming out of West Point. Initially, the school emphasized [End Page 210] civil engineering rather than military engineering. Angevine notes that the cadets at the school took these lessons to heart—many left the military after receiving their training, preferring lucrative engineering positions to being stationed in remote forts. When engineers left the military to join railroad companies, they brought with them the military values of order and hierarchy. Although Angevine relegates most of his historiographical battles to his footnotes, he clearly argues against minimizing the impact of military experience on the development of the business of American railroading.

During the 1830s the military and railroads began to part ways, as Angevine shows through an analysis of the rhetoric of railroad boosters and the military's response. He contends that historians have given too much weight to the claims boosters made about the military value of their routes. This rhetoric appears to have been largely puffed up in an attempt to demonstrate the national necessity (and thus worthiness for federal funding) of local projects. The army grew wary of railroads when advocates argued that militia forces deployed rapidly via rail would render a standing army unnecessary. This shift played out at West Point: as the school began installing its own graduates as instructors, the civil engineering mission became a military engineering one. For Angevine, this transformation culminated during the Mexican War, in which railroads played a small role.

The Civil War was the next significant marker in the shifting relationship. Having emphasized military engineering, the army found itself dependent on civilians for running the trains during the war. After the Civil War, the army adopted the model of relations that had characterized the Union army's cooperative relationship with railroads rather than the Confederacy's failed policy of nonintervention. Angevine highlights the roles of officers such as William T. Sherman, who attended West Point but did not perform well enough there to join the Corps of Engineers, and thus were more willing to look outside the corps for guidance on technological issues. When the army and railroads turned their attention to the West after the Civil War, such men helped the railroads and military build a cooperative relationship. The military offered protection to railroad companies that were building through land held by hostile Native Americans, and the military hoped to gain several benefits from railroad development, such as lowered transportation costs.

As more transcontinental lines were built in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the army protected the workers and gave the roads business, using them to move troops against Native Americans. Indeed, the railroads' success allowed Sherman to turn the antebellum [End Page 211] argument on its head. In his mind, the railroad underscored (rather than obviated) the need for a standing army: well-trained troops could be rapidly deployed and then ready to fight immediately on arrival. The Spanish...

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