European Capital, British Iron, and an American Dream: The Story of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad

Introduction

Introduction
Introduction A mericans,” remarked Ralph Waldo Emerson, “take to this xlittle contrivance, the railroad, as if it were the cradle in which they were born.” What impressed the poet was the nineteenth-century craze for building railroads. In the decade before the Civil War, thousands of miles of track crisscrossed the country. Some tracks went from town to town; others seemed to go nowhere in particular. Along the Atlantic Coast, from Boston to Savannah, merchants looked on the railroad as a godsend as they competed for the interior trade. Meanwhile, lines from midwestern cities reached eastward to meet trunk lines creeping along the Mohawk Valley and crossing the Alleghenies into the Ohio Valley . Linking East and West with a better transportation system than the canals, riverboats, and roads could ever provide became a common goal of businessmen and national leaders who called for a united economy. The development and popularity of the American railroad paralleled the national quest for unity. Early in the nineteenth century many Americans believed the railroad to be the best hope of achieving this unity. This was a time when sectionalism prevailed and nationalists like Henry Clay and John Q. Adams looked to economic issues like internal improvements to bring the states closer together. Railroad pioneers promised that the railroad could do 3
“ this. Historian James A. Ward writes that these men also argued that this technological marvel was in tune with the national character and actually would improve it. Creating popular images of the railroad and linking the industry to that character helped shape favorable public opinion.1 Yet the railroad did not impress everyone. Henry Thoreau referred to the locomotive as “that devilish Iron Horse.” Andrew Jackson failed to see how the railroad was going to help the farmer. Other critics decried the railroad’s destructive capabilities: forcing cities to engage in deadly competition, destroying the landscape and farmland, and driving other transportation systems into bankruptcy. Was this an early brand of populism emerging? Sarah H. Gordon looks at the social effects of the railroad and concludes,perhaps simplistically, that it helped destroy much of what was good in America, particularly the small town.2 Railroad mania was contagious, but technical hurdles existed. Just as Americans had turned to Europe for tips on turnpike and canal construction , they now took an interest in English railway experiments. Tramways started to evolve in England as early as the sixteenth century. Wooden planks eventually gave way to rails along which carts with flanged wheels were drawn by animals. Two centuries later, the use of steam ushered in a new era. The first locomotive aroused little enthusiasm , but English public opinion became more favorable in 1829 when George Stephenson won the top prize offered by the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad with his “Rocket.” The Americans also built tramways, yet it was the successful locomotive that interested them the most. In 1829 the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company imported from England the “Stourbridge Lion” and used it to transport coal between Carbondale and Honesdale, Pennsylvania . During the early days of rail transportation, the Americans used English locomotives, but later they preferred models developed by their own countrymen, such as Matthias Baldwin of Philadelphia, for their adaptability to American curves and grades. Technological improvements of the railroad, accumulating incrementally , came close to stalling in the decades prior to the Civil War. 4 introduction Early emphasis was on increasing distances, connecting cities, and reaching inland rather than on safety or comfort. The first train cars were wooden, light in construction, and dirty from all the dust and smoke. They rocked and bounced and provided little protection to the passengers. Flying cinders and the likelihood that the engine would explode always posed serious risks. Storms and extremes in temperature made a long journey unbearable. Yet the locomotive symbolized awesome power, and this helped popularize it. The first locomotives proved to be too heavy not only for the wooden tracks but for the malleable wrought-iron rails that replaced them. Neither the wheels nor the tracks could bear a very heavy load. It was also obvious that massiveness and weight did not guarantee efficiency. And, despite all the power the engine generated, horses and mules still had to be used at first to pull cars up a steep grade. Going down a hill often proved to be a real adventure, for braking systems were inadequate, and brakes on passenger cars had...