February 27, 1864 | Illustration
This image from the February 27, 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts the interior of a Union hospital car during the American Civil War. See Woman's Work in the Civil War on this site for the recollections of a hospital train nurse.
February 27, 1864 | Illustration
This image from the February 27, 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts a Union hospital train crossing a railway bridge on its run from Chattanooga to Nashville, Tennessee during the American Civil War. See Woman's Work in the Civil War on this site for the recollections of a hospital train nurse.
February 20, 1864 | Letter
E. Benjamin requests passes for black workers so that they may avoid impressment.
February 18, 1864 | Letter
John Isom designates a black church in Nashville to serve as a copper and tin shop.
January 29, 1864 | Letter
An inquiry about re-hiring a blacksmith for the military railroad.
January 4, 1864
In this letter from January 4, 1864, Samuel Reed writes to his wife explaining the reasons he was unable to return home to Joliet, Illinois for Christmas as he had expected. He describes his work clearing and repairing sections of track to both the west and east of Burlington, Iowa after a train had derailed on each section, one as a result of a bridge having been burned.
January 4, 1864
In this letter from January 4, 1864, Joshua M. Shaffer, Surgeon of the Board of Enrollment for the First Congressional District of Iowa, writes to Samuel Reed informing him that his name has been successfully stricken from the draft enrollment list in Burlington, Iowa upon receipt of proof that his name is on the enrollment list in Joliet, Illinois.
1864 | Photograph
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, African Americans seized the opportunity to work and to travel. Visible just to the left of the railroad shop smokestack and roundhouse stood the old Price and Birch "Slave Pen" at 1315 Duke Street.
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 army?s growing camps, hospitals, and defenses near Alexandria, Virginia.
1864 | Illustration
Keywords appearing in all Union commanders? correspondence in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864; 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. 1971?1972), Vol. 38 (Parts IV and V), including all Union command correspondence. (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.)
1864 | Photograph
This bridge was destroyed and rebuilt several times. In May 1862 General Irwin McDowell employed hundreds of contraband laborers, who replaced the bridge in nine days. Here, in May 1864, the U.S. Military Railroads, again with large numbers of black freedmen, constructed the bridge in forty hours. Photographs such as this one indicated the complexity, cost, and scale of the bridges across many of the South?s rivers and also conveyed the precarious, and sublime, ways the railroad was thought to defy nature.
1864 | Photograph
Confederate guerrilla forces, often operating as regular cavalry units, attacked Union-controlled railroad lines. They shot into trains, destroyed tracks, took prisoners, killed Union soldiers, and burned bridges. Union commanders responded by developing block houses and fortified bridges to protect the vulnerable lines, equipping trains with special armor, recruiting loyal local citizens to ferret out guerrillas, and dispatching special counterinsurgency cavalry units to track down the Confederate guerrillas.
1864 | Photograph
1864 | Photograph
With the capture of Atlanta, General William T. Sherman?s army seized an important rail hub for the Confederacy. This image of refugees and African Americans, sitting on rail cars with their possessions, indicates the massive displacement that came with the war.
1864 | Photograph
Sherman recognized the importance and vulnerability of railroad corridors. In September 1862 Sherman ordered an expedition to ?destroy? the town of Randolph, Tennessee, because guerrillas had fired on Union steamships from the banks of the Mississippi River. In 1864 he adopted similarly hard measures to protect the railroads during his Atlanta Campaign.
1864 | Illustration
Keywords appearing in General William T. Sherman?s correspondence in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864; the larger the word, the more often it appeared in his 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. 1971?1972), Vol. 38 (Parts IV and V), including all of Sherman?s letters in these volumes. (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.)
1864 | Illustration
The partisan war in Loudon County, Virginia, turned especially violent in the fall of 1864. Confederate forces under John S. Mosby captured and killed Union soldiers in retaliation for the burning of civilian homes, and Union general George A. Custer responded by hanging seven of Mosby?s men. Then, on November 6, 1864, Mosby executed several more Union soldiers in response. The fighting took place along the Manassas Gap Railroad line and its bridges.
1864 | Photograph
No. 1. Steam engines ?Telegraph? and ?O. A. Bull? remained in position amid the ruins of a Confederate roundhouse in Atlanta in 1864. The South possessed some of the most beautiful depots and railroad facilities in the nation in 1861. Sherman?s campaigns sought to dismantle the Confederate railroad system and in so doing deny any claim to modernity and progress. African American workers stand atop the old Georgia Railroad flatcar.
1864 | Letter
Passes for African American railroad employees requested of W. J. Stevens, Superintendent of the Military Railroad, Nashville.
1864 | Illustration
A time atlas, illustrating the time and mileage distances between Washington and numerous other world locations. Conceptualizng space and time in a way that was meaningful to an increasingly mobile population became an increasingly important task during the 19th Century.