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Includes 2 charts, 7 maps, 7 figures and 5 Illustrations. Renowned Military Historian Dr Christopher Gabel charts the decline of the Confederate Railways system that was to spell ultimate doom to the outnumbered soldiers of the Southern states. Military professionals need always to recognize the centrality of logistics to military operations. In this booklet, Dr. Christopher R. Gabel provides a companion piece to his “Railroad Generalship” which explores the same issues from the other side of the tracks, so to speak. “Rails to Oblivion” shows that neither brilliant generals nor valiant soldiers can, in the long run, overcome the effects of a neglected and deteriorating logistics system. Moreover, the cumulative effect of mundane factors such as metal fatigue, mechanical friction, and accidents in the civilian workplace can contribute significantly to the outcome of a war. And no matter how good some thing or idea may look on paper, or how we delude ourselves, we and our soldiers must live with, and die in, reality. War is a complex business. This booklet explores some of the facets of war that often escape the notice of military officers, and as COL Jerry Morelock intimated in his foreword to “Railroad Generalship,” these facets decide who wins and who loses.
Combining an adept use of anecdote and detail with analysis of the written record, Noe shows that many supporters of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad viewed it as a political tool, believing it would spread slavery and unite the state. He focuses on the railroad's economic fruits - integration of the region into the tobacco kingdom, urbanization, a growth in industry, and the spread of slavery - and shows how these brought about political results.
Includes 4 figures, 13 maps and 4 tables. Renowned Military Historian Dr Christopher Gabel investigates the effects of the Railroad on the strategies employed by both the Union and Confederate Generals of the Civil War. According to an old saying, “amateurs study tactics: professionals study logistics.” Any serious student of the military profession will know that logistics constantly shape military affairs and sometimes even dictate strategy and tactics. This excellent monograph by Dr. Christopher Gabel shows that the appearance of the steam-powered railroad had enormous implications for military logistics, and thus for strategy, in the American Civil War. Not surprisingly, the side that proved superior in “railroad generalship,” or the utilization of the railroads for military purposes, was also the side that won the war.
The "iron horse" became a major weapon in the first war fully dependent on railroads. Moreover railroads would escalate and prolong the war. Leavy provides a study of trains in the Civil War through photographs and a rich narrative.
How railroads both united and divided us: “Integrates military and social history…a must-read for students, scholars and enthusiasts alike.”—Civil War Monitor Beginning with Frederick Douglass’s escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad, and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869, this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation, one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear on railroads, the Confederate South, slavery, and the Civil War era, based on groundbreaking research in digitized sources never available before. The Iron Way revises our ideas about the emergence of modern America and the role of the railroads in shaping the sectional conflict. Both the North and the South invested in railroads to serve their larger purposes, Thomas contends. Though railroads are often cited as a major factor in the Union’s victory, he shows that they were also essential to the formation of “the South” as a unified region. He discusses the many—and sometimes unexpected—effects of railroad expansion, and proposes that America’s great railroads became an important symbolic touchstone for the nation’s vision of itself. “In this provocative and deeply researched book, William G. Thomas follows the railroad into virtually every aspect of Civil War history, showing how it influenced everything from slavery’s antebellum expansion to emancipation and segregation—from guerrilla warfare to grand strategy. At every step, Thomas challenges old assumptions and finds new connections on this much-traveled historical landscape."—T.J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
Originally published by UNC Press in 1952, The Railroads of the Confederacy tells the story of the first use of railroads on a major scale in a major war. Robert Black presents a complex and fascinating tale, with the railroads of the American South playing the part of tragic hero in the Civil War: at first vigorous though immature; then overloaded, driven unmercifully, starved for iron; and eventually worn out--struggling on to inevitable destruction in the wake of Sherman's army, carrying the Confederacy down with them. With maps of all the Confederate railroads and contemporary photographs and facsimiles of such documents as railroad tickets, timetables, and soldiers' passes, the book will captivate railroad enthusiasts as well as readers interested in the Civil War.
During Reconstruction, an alliance of southern planters and northern capitalists rebuilt the southern railway system using remnants of the Confederate railroads that had been built and destroyed during the Civil War. In the process of linking Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia by rail, this alliance created one of the largest corporations in the world, engendered bitter political struggles, and transformed the South in lasting ways, says Scott Nelson. Iron Confederacies uses the history of southern railways to explore linkages among the themes of states' rights, racial violence, labor strife, and big business in the nineteenth-century South. By 1868, Ku Klux Klan leaders had begun mobilizing white resentment against rapid economic change by asserting that railroad consolidation led to political corruption and black economic success. As Nelson notes, some of the Klan's most violent activity was concentrated along the Richmond-Atlanta rail corridor. But conflicts over railroads were eventually resolved, he argues, in agreements between northern railroad barons and Klan leaders that allowed white terrorism against black voters while surrendering states' control over the southern economy.
The history of the Delmarva Peninsula is inextricably entwined with the story of its railroads. The earliest railroads were short, locally funded lines. The dream to connect Norfolk directly to Eastern Seaboard cities farther north was first realized by the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk Railroad in the 1880s. The line ran north-south along the peninsula to Cape Charles City, Virginia, where freight cars were loaded onto barges for the trip across the Chesapeake Bay. This line was eventually absorbed by the giant Pennsylvania Railroad, and the ferry service was eclipsed when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was completed in 1964. For more than a century, though, railroads played a critical role in the development of the Eastern Shore. Regional historian Lorett Treese tells this story.
Johnston ably demonstrates the major contribution of captured Virginia railroads to the ever-increasing prowess of the northern armies in the state and also describes the new techniques of warfare introduced by the Confederates, beginning with their launching of the first full-scale raids of the war against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the Shenandoah Valley. Originally published in 1961. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.