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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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  1862 | Illustration

  "Repairing Railroad, etc"

  The U.S. Military Railroads rebuilt the South?s 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.

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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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  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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  1862 | Illustration

  Alfred R. Waud, "A Guerrilla", 1862

  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.

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  1864 | Illustration

  Alfred R. Waud, "Ruins of the Bridge over the Shenandoah River, Loudon Heights Beyond", 1864

  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.

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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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  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

  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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

  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 | Illustration

  Keywords appearing in all Union commanders? correspondence in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864

  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.)

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  1862 | Illustration

  Keywords appearing in all Union officers? correspondence in the 1862 Peninsular Campaign

  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. 1971?1972), Vol. 11 (Part III), 1?384. (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.)

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  1864 | Illustration

  Keywords appearing in General William T. Sherman?s correspondence in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864

  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.)

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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

  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.