History of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad

2 The State Between the War: The L & N in Wartime, 1861-65

% The State Between the War: The L dt N in Wartime, 1861-65 Of all the railroads involved in the vast logistic problems of the Civil War, the L & N occupied a unique situation. Except for the unfinished Mobile & Ohio Railroad, no other major line in the country traversed both a Union state and a Confederate state. Not only the L & N main stem but the Memphis branch as well embraced both Kentucky and Tennessee. As a result the company inhabited a physical and emotional no-man's land. It had to participate in the War Between the States but it also had to exist in some state between the war. Like the Union itself, the L & N was split down the middle. In its desperate endeavor to keep afloat, the company found itself fighting, in very different ways, both the North and the South. In the end it profited both from northern victory and southern defeat. The Civil War was the first modern war Americans fought, the first in which the nation's burgeoning technology was to play a critical role. Efficient mobilization of the resources on both sides required a cohesive transportation system to move men and supplies. For this task the railroads assumed primary strategic importance, and those lines located directly in war zones assumed even greater value. To the side possessing them they offered a distinct tactical advantage; to the enemy they became prime targets for destruction. In either case the burden on the hapless company threatened to become intolerable. For the L & N, which had to choose sides even before confronting these problems, there existed the 2 8 HISTORY OF THE LOUISVILLE & NASHVILLE RAILROAD real possibility that the company would be destroyed or ruined financially before either belligerent could protect it. During such perilous times, the company sorely needed strong, cunning leadership. It received exactly that from James Guthrie and his able lieutenant, Albert Fink. For the first few months after Sumter Guthrie walked a narrow path between the rival governments. The war panic had caused a flood of business in provisions and supplies to move southward from north of the Ohio River. As the only open intersectional road, the L & N was deluged with traffic to the point that Guthrie had to declare a temporary embargo for ten days to clear the line. The huge flow of provisions sparked the rumor that Louisville itself was on the brink of starvation . Alarmed citizens resorted to ripping up L & N track south of the city to prevent shipments. To thwart these zealots Guthrie put armed guards on the trains until the panic subsided. As long as Kentucky tried to remain neutral, Guthrie cannily kept the lines of trade open in both directions. The Confederate government objected in principle but recognized that the overwhelming majority of traffic moved south and so said nothing. Considerable complaint about the company's avarice arose among Unionists in Kentucky and elsewhere, but Lincoln permitted the trade to continue because he understood the importance of the border states and avoided any possible confrontation with them. The anomalous status of the border states complicated many issues, and none more so than trade regulations. If Lincoln was willing to be flexible, others were not. On May 2, 1861, the Treasury Department forbade the carrying of munitions and provisions to the Confederacy. At first the company, its customers, and the government alike virtually ignored the order, but on July 11 a federal circuit court decision reinforced it. While the Louisville Courier argued that abolition of the contraband trade would ruin Louisville, some merchants evaded watchful federal officers in the city by hauling their goods a few miles south by wagon and transferring them to the train in rural privacy. That very summer, however, the Confederacy forced a decision upon Guthrie. On May 21 the Confederate Congress approved an embargo on cotton shipments to the North; later sugar, rice, tobacco, molasses, syrup, and naval stores were added to the list. Unlike the Federals, the Southerners took an inflexible stand on enforcement. On July 2 Governor Isham G. Harris of Tennessee put an agent on L & N trains in his state to watch for contraband goods. Two days later, without prior notice, Harris seized that portion of the line in Tennessee along with five locomotives, three passenger cars, and about seventy freight cars. To Guthrie's vehement pro- THE L & N IN WARTIME, 1 8 6 1 - 6 5 2 9 tests Harris replied that Tennessee owned...