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  • | Illustration

    The Interior of a Hospital Car

    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.

  • | Illustration

    Hospital Train from Chattanooga to Nashville

    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.

  • | Letter

    Letter from E. Benjamin to Adna Anderson, February 20, 1864

    E. Benjamin requests passes for black workers so that they may avoid impressment.

  • | Letter

    Letter from John Isom to Daniel Craig McCallum, February 18, 1864

    John Isom designates a black church in Nashville to serve as a copper and tin shop.

  • | Letter

    Letter from W. W. McCafferty to J. H. Devereaux, January 29, 1864

    An inquiry about re-hiring a blacksmith for the military railroad.

  • Letter from Joshua M. Shaffer to Samuel B. Reed, 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.

  • | 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.

  • | 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.

  • | 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.)

  • | 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.

  • | 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.

  • | Photograph

    The roundhouse, Chattanooga Railroad, Atlanta, in 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.

  • | 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.

  • | 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.)

  • | 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.

  • | 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.

  • Letter from Samuel B. Reed to Jennie Reed, December 13, 1863

    In this letter from December 13, 1863, Samuel Reed writes to his wife discussing the new position of their friend Danforth H. Ainsworth on the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad. Reed also asks his wife to get a certificate verifying that his name is on the draft enlistment rolls in Joliet, Illinois, as he needs it to have his name removed from the list of first class draftees in Burlington, Iowa. His believes that, as he was not 45 years old when the draft was initially ordered, his name will have to remain on the list of second class draftees in Joliet, but does not believe it likely that "the draft will affect both classes" and tells his wife not to be anxious.

  • | Illustration

    The Army of the Potomac Supply Depot

    This image from the December 12, 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts a Union railway supply depot for the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War.

  • | Illustration

    The Railroad Bridge Over Bull Run

    This image from the December 12, 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts the condition of the railroad bridge over Bull Run during the American Civil War and features soldiers from the Union Army of the Potomac.