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2010 | Photograph
Ruins of the Blue Ridge Railroad Tunnel near Crozet, Virginia
The ruins of the Blue Ridge Tunnel, as it appears today. The Blue Ridge Railroad and Blue Ridge Tunnel were built by the state?s Board of Public Works. When the railroad company?s chief engineer, Claudius Crozet, requested slave labor, the board had to decide whether the state should purchase slaves for the project. The tunnel has long since been abandoned, but the brick and stonework is the original, much of it slave-built.
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2010 | Photograph
Long Bridge, 2010
When Kate Brown crossed the Potomac River on this bridge in 1868 and was forcibly removed from the ladies? car in Virginia, the Washington Monument was only half-completed. Brown?s work at the U.S. Capitol placed her in contact with powerful Republican Party lawyers and politicians. Her lawsuit against the company went to the U.S. Supreme Court five years later.
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1864 | Photograph
Bird?s Eye View of Machine Shops, with East Yard of Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Alexandria, Va., [1861-1865]
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.
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1864 | Photograph
"Long Bridge" over the Potomac River, 1864
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.
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1864 | Photograph
Military Railroad Bridge over Potomac Creek, 1864
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.
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1864 | Photograph
Fortified Railroad Bridge Across Cumberland River, Nashville, Tennessee, 1864
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.
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1864 | Photograph
Boxcars with Refugees at Railroad, Atlanta, Ga., 1864
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.
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1864 | Photograph
General William T. Sherman at Fort No. 7, Atlanta, Ga., overlooking Chattanooga Railroad lines, 1864
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.
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1864 | Photograph
No. 1. Steam engines "Telegraph" and "O. A. Bull," Atlanta, Ga., 1864
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.
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1863 | Photograph
Depot at Hannover Junction, PA
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.
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1863 | Photograph
Wreck of blockade runner, Sullivan?s Island, S.C.
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.
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1862 | Photograph
Cumberland Landing, Federal encampment on the Pamunkey River, Virginia, May 1862
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.
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1862 | Photograph
Ruins at Manassas Junction, March 1862
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.
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1862 | Photograph
African American Laborers on the U.S. Military Railroad in Northern Virginia, c. 1862 or 1863
From the beginning of the Civil War, African Americans worked on the railroads, transferring their labor to the Union cause.
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1862 | Photograph
Savage?s Station, headquarters of General George B. McClellan, June 27, 1862
McClellan used the Richmond & York River Railroad to position his massive Army of the Potomac just a few miles from Richmond.
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1862 | Photograph
Contrabands at Cumberland Landing, Virginia, May 1862
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.?
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1861 | Photograph
Confederate guns, Pensacola Bay, 1861
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.
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1858 | Photograph
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad artist excursion, 1858
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, Harper?s 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."
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N.D. | Photograph
African American wood choppers? hut on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad
African American wood choppers? hut on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. Black men, many of them formerly enslaved on the South?s 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.
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N.D. | Map
Railroads and war zone counties, 1861?1865
If the presence of the Union army and/or a battle constituted a war zone, then only in Virginia did the Civil War?s 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 War?s Destructiveness in the Confederacy,? Civil War History, Vol. 54, No. 1 (March 2008). (Reproduced with permission of Paul F. Paskoff)
