Our Documents archive includes personal letters, newspaper articles, images, business documents and more. Documents are identified with a particular Topic, and are accessible through and used by our Case Studies. This page shows users the most recently added and updated new documents in the collection. Our complete database search includes all documents and objects in the Railroads and the Making of Modern America collection from various archives and partners, public as well as private. The collection is refreshed and reindexed regularly to include new materials, usually at the beginning of every academic semester (August, December, May).
N.D. | Photograph
African American wood choppers hut on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. Black men, many of them formerly enslaved on the Souths railroads, chopped timber for railroad ties, bridges, and fuel for the U.S. Military Railroads. Stationed at remote camps, such as this, they also faced the constant danger of Confederate partisan and guerrilla raids.
N.D. | Map
If the presence of the Union army and/or a battle constituted a war zone, then only in Virginia did the Civil Wars destruction touch the majority of counties. Vast sections of the South remained out of the war zone, but over the course of the war destruction tended to follow closely along the pathways of the major lines of communication and transportation. From Paul F. Paskoff, Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil Wars Destructiveness in the Confederacy, Civil War History, Vol. 54, No. 1 (March 2008). (Reproduced with permission of Paul F. Paskoff)
1850 | Photograph
Few original images remain of railroad workers in the 1850s, especially of construction crews, whether free labor or enslaved. Northern railroad companies employed thousands of men on their payrolls in a dizzying array of occupations.
1858 | Photograph
Following its 1857 grand banquet, the B & O hosted an artists excursion in 1858 to show off its dramatic vistas and massive tunnels. The men and women took turns riding precariously on the cowcatcher, Harpers Weekly reported, to get a "better view of the grand scenes which were opening before and around them . . . such was the confidence felt in the steadiness and docility of the mighty steed."
December 4, 1858 | Illustration
The railroad depot at Pittsburgh (Harpers Weekly, December 4, 1858). Pittsburgh celebrated 100 years since Fort Duquesne was captured from the French--the railroad depot stood on the site of the old fort, a symbol of the citys modernity. By 1861 Pennsylvania possessed over 500 depots, so many that 85 percent of the states population lived within fifteen miles of a depot.
1861 | Photograph
Columbiad guns of the Confederate water battery at Warrington, Fla., near Pensacola, February 1861. With the railroad to Pensacola under construction and finally completed in May, the Confederates could move large guns and troops more quickly to the coast.
1861 | Map
Using a fifteen-mile buffer around the railroad networks for each state in 1861, and an algorithm to distribute a countys population across the landscape, this estimate of the percentage of county residents who had access to the railroad depots shows the Souths advances in the 1850s. The addition of more railroad miles reached a point of diminishing returns in every state.
1862 | Illustration
The U.S. Military Railroads rebuilt the Souths railroads in the closing months of the war. African American railroad workers cut timber, broke rock, and hauled gravel for the grading. Their experience on the railroads as trackmen and laborers, as well as firemen and brakemen, continued after the war. In 1880 over 50 percent of all railroad workers in Virginia were black; in Pennsylvania, by contrast, railroad workers were almost uniformly white.
1862 | Photograph
From the beginning of the Civil War, African Americans worked on the railroads, transferring their labor to the Union cause.
1862 | Illustration
When guerrillas attacked Union forces, the northern public was outraged. Confederate guerrillas and partisan rangers attacked the railroad and telegraph systems, opening up the war to civilians and exposing the remorseless nature of the national conflict. Their activities played a central role in the war.
1862 | Photograph
In the Peninsular Campaign, Federal forces encountered thousands former slaves who sought freedom and work in the Union army camps. Even if slaves fled slavery, their status was unclear in the first year of the war. In July 1862 Congress declared such refugees from slavery forever and henceforth free.
1862 | Illustration
Keywords appearing in all Union officers correspondence in the 1862 Peninsular Campaign; the larger the word, the more often it appeared in their writings. Compiled from U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Gettysburg, Pa.: National Historical Society, c. 19711972), Vol. 11 (Part III), 1384. (Voyeur Tools [copyright 2009] Steffan Sinclair and Geoffrey Rockwell, v. 1.0; graph by Trevor Munoz and the author [September 2009]. This image was generated using Wordle, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.)
1862 | Photograph
McClellan used the Richmond & York River Railroad to position his massive Army of the Potomac just a few miles from Richmond.
1862 | Photograph
Numerous railroad hubs in the Confederacy became sites of repeated fighting, both large- and small-scale. Here, the ruins were the work of the Confederate Army as it abandoned its forward position in northern Virginia to protect Richmond.
1862 | Photograph
Federal Encampment on the Pamunkey River, Va., May 1862. Union soldiers came into the South by steamer and train in the first year of the war. They closely observed the landscape, assessing and comparing it to their northern communities.
1863 | Photograph
Dawes fought in the Battle of Shiloh, then protected the railroads in Tennessee with the 53rd Ohio. He was promoted to major of the regiment on January 26, 1863.
1863 | Photograph
Blockade runners became increasingly sophisticated, taking advantage of the latest technological innovations to achieve maximum speed. For Confederates, the blockade--combined with shortsighted Confederate policies of self-reliance--slowed time and cut off communication with the world of nations, damaging Confederate transatlantic ties and claims of modern progress.
March 7, 1863 | Illustration
United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) recruiters in 1863 fanned out along the railroads, especially in Tennessee, stopping at depots along the route to sign up soldiers. Over 180,000 black men volunteered and enlisted for service in the U.S.C.T. Both white regiments and U.S.C.T. units found themselves guarding railroads and watching for guerrillas.
1863 | Photograph
Northern railroad stations became places to gather for news and information. President Abraham Lincoln passed through Hanover Junction in November 1863 on his way to Gettysburg for the opening of the national cemetery. Crowds gathered to meet the president.
1864 | Photograph
The original footbridge across the Potomac was replaced with this railroad bridge in 1864 by the U.S. Military Railroads, connecting Washington, D.C., with the armys growing camps, hospitals, and defenses near Alexandria, Virginia.
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