>> you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. next on the civil war, military history professor christopher gabel discusses the importance of railroads and steam powered locomotives to the union and confederate armies. he expands how bill rhodes made the scale of the civil war possible and describes how and why the confederacy powerful railroad system broke down as the war progressed. the kansas city public library hosted this hour-long event. >> thank you very much for the kind introduction and thank you for being here. at the onsetback of the american civil war, we view it through the lens of the

war it self. that shapes what we are looking at. if you view the onset of civil instead oftively, seeing all of the differences between north and south, you tend to spot the similarities. think about it. , a two sides in the conflict war of rather against brother in some cases, literally so. the two sides shared a common language. they had similar cultures and religion. they shared a similar political philosophy. the north and south employed virtually the same weapons, used the same tactics, their top commanders graduated from the same military academy.

union put an army in this war, the confederacy put an army as well. large, bute been as an army is there nonetheless. in other words, this is a surprisingly symmetrical war. in fact, it is hard to think of a more symmetrical war. data such as these, which you have all seen? you have seen figures like this showing the resources of the north and the south in everything except cotton. well, folks, i put it to you. if these statistics were really important, the war should have been over in a month, right? consider this one right here. fire arms production.

i defy anyone to prove to me that the confederacy lost the war because they ran out of guns. that statistic is not that important. when we look over here at maybe thatleage, statistic was not really important either. the first thing we have got to establish tonight is whether or not the railroads actually was significant. if the answer is no, we could save a lot of time here tonight. [laughter] changer is the game right here. water turns to steam and it turns to power. so what? people have known that for thousands of years.

in the 1820's, someone figured out how to take that and turn it into forward motion. you collect this team and you send it down to a system and wheels that goes round and round. so what? here is the so what. with a steam powered locomotive pulling a train, you could carry on the samearther amount of fuel then you can buy muscle power. -- by muscle power. 500x mule wagon carrying tons of cargo may go roughly 333 miles on one ton of mule fuel. 333 milesly 1.5 times

and you get about 510 miles. that is how they measured. a 15 car train could only go maybe 35 miles, that it could carry 150 times. over 5010 miles -- 10 times the logistical effort for the same amount of fuel. that is the game changer right there. it goes faster. there are faster turnaround times. the train can go back and forth while that wagon was still plodding along. that further enhances logistical

abilities. there is some ancillary advantages. because it is faster and cars,lly covered with cargo delivered by real gets there in better shape whether it is material or men. there's an old definition that the battle is something that happens conducted between two exhausted armies. railroads, maybe those armies wouldn't be quite exhausted. other things you may not have thought of -- you want more locomotives, you higher were people to build and put on some extra shifts. -- therection of mules are severe biological constraints. that cannot eat hurried. -- be hurried.

[laughter] railroads were more reliable than mules most of the time. when that locomotive isn't working, you do not have to feed it. when the mule is not working, you still have to feed it. given some of these factors, i will tell you roughly speaking that the advent of this theme power and steamboats were even better than locomotives were. steam power increase ability to supply armies by about an order advantagede 10 times over muscle power. that is why it is in or to. in terms ofis mean waging war? i will tell you that as far as i'm concerned, the civil war as we know it could not have waged

with muscle power. it could not have been done with mules. the distances were simply too great. considering this particular campaign that was reaching its culmination 150 years ago right memoirs have been ported that an elected cap and .as sustained by a railroad supporting his army of 100,000 men and 35,000 animals and doing of wagons and mules -- that would have been possible with muscle power. incidentally, the corollary is that armies got larger. he looked back through human history.

it is hard to find an army that is bigger than 30,000 men. that is about the maximum size that you can generally supply with wagon hall -- haul. men indred thousand you didn'td this army was also made possible by steam power. you want to know why the army spent so much of the war in the same place? that is where the rail lines were. a good part of the were on the the war -- the chunk of here -- this particular line of supply was particularly interesting. a car or trainr of 16 cars through alexandria.

they could run those cars straight onto the barges, put those barges down the potomac with the steam tug, run those cars right up on the railroad them by rail to the army. it is possible to get a train with 16 cars from washington, d.c. to another place in 12 hours. with the standing conditions on an interstate nowadays, that is how long it would take today. [laughter] this also helps explain why armies may be did not always move as much as they should have. guess what happens if that army steps off? haul.back to wagon it is tempting to stay right there where the good times are.

ofidentally, this is one barges coming down the potomac river. this is what they delivered. 800 tons of supplies a day to keep the armies at the potomac alive and well. this light blue area on the right is food for animals. camp, they're not even working. that is what you have got to feed them when you are sitting in camp. see that little black slice? that is railroad supplies. that means the transport -- which would you rather use? 400-800 wagons everyday arriving at the army to keep it supplied. considerablee a difference in the war.

clearly steam powered transportation is going to have a huge impact on the military operations. for the first two years of the war, the railroad more between north and south was symmetrical. railroads served as south about as well as they did the war. in fact, some people argue that they serve the south so much better because the south being on the defensive could always have a railroad right there. the railroads to the south did basically everything that was asked of them. what about that pesky difference in railroad mileage between north and south? north has over two times as many miles as the south does. well, ok. this shows you the union railroad in blue that were

really directly involved in the war effort. that disparity starts to fade out a little bit, doesn't it? when you look at the south, it wasn't like this help move backwards. the south was very enthusiastic about the railroads. railroad mileage quadrupled in the 1850's. there is lots of enthusiasm both public and private for building railroads. they supported this constructional railroads. when you look at in terms of believe inhe south i 1860 was out building the northeast. now the midwest was out building both sections. the south was not a backwater laggard when it came to railroad

construction. when you look at comparisons to other countries in the world, the confederacy was the third-biggest railroad power in the world. in fact, when you look at the early years of the war, the most dramatic use of railroad was generally the confederates, starting with the very first big johnsonn the east when put his army on the manassas railroad and got them to the battle of old run intent to stop mcdowell. but that was just the beginning. le 1862, this is a singul biggest railroad of the war.

a mood to from mississippi to chattanooga. from mississippi to chattanooga. they came in time to help defend . 9000 men. in 1863, 1 of the best-known rails movement of the confederate efforts move from northern virginia by a number of different routes all by rail and half of the army arrived in chickamauga. that is a pretty remarkable move.

talk about symmetry. both sides are basically doing the same things. so, the southern rail effort is looking pretty good. a year and a half later, the confederate rail system is in virtual complete collapse and the union rail system both civilian and military is booming along like never before. what cost that asymmetry to occur. everyone knows the answer to to that. -- to that. railroads were all different gauges. they could interchange traffic movement. everyone knows that, right? no, i'm not going to ask for a show of hands. [laughter]

because that is wrong. please walk away with this -- it was not about the railroad gauges. there is no standard gauge anyplace in the 1860's. gauge incidentally refers to the distance from the inside of the rail to the inside of this rail. there was no standard gauge anywhere. everyone got that? this is all in place you'd find a section that was largely operating under the same gauge within new england. even there it was not universal. this is what we call standard gauge today. just -- then you go out

to ohio and indiana. many, but not all of the railroads out there were four foot 10. the railroads they had in missouri that they built from waslouis toward kansas city six. rail with ae six-foot gauge. when you build a railroad, you build your own gauge. it was at to you. some railroads picked oddball gauges specifically so they could not interchange traffic with other railroads. this is true in both north and south. incidentally, the gauge is not a showstopper. it is possible to change the gauge of a railroad. fast forward to over a year.

the northern railroads converged other standard gauge. the southern railroad kept building. in the 1880's, the southern railroad got together and said, look, we will have you go along with the north on this. let's convert the gauge. by that time, they had 13,000 miles of track. would anyone care to guess how long it takes to physically move the rails to change the five 8.5?gauge to four foot years? how many? two? ten? five? i shouldn't have done that. this is cruel. [laughter] two days. [laughter] two days.

there's a lot of preparatory work and it is expensive as you have got to rebuild and replace, that it is not impossible to change gauges. problem was the railroads did want interchanging traffic. this is richmond, the beginning of the war. six railroads and not a single one connects with another railroad. why? , the stockholders of these railroads a lot of them were dismissed men -- were businessmen down in richmond. they subsidize those railroads and if the railroads would carry stuff in from the country side to warehouses, they didn't do the relevant as a way to make money. they viewed it as a way to supplement and eight there merchandise is this.

-- business. they have interest in watching freight roll through richmond. that did nothing for them at all. ok? this is in richmond, the same situation apply in a. philadelphia. objection of the the people who own those railroads. they did not want the interchange traffic. we still have symmetry here. underides laboring difficulty of interchange in traffic. where does the difference between north and south cobb? well, i think it started -- north and south come? well, i think it started here.

congress passed a remarkable law that authorized eight there -- abraham lincoln to seize control of railroads and telegraphs for military incessantly. now the lincoln administration that, but didse it often enough so everyone remembered that law is there. they also immediately set out to establish a military railroad service part of the army to assure supply to troop and to operate rail lines that the government had seized. most of them captured railroads in the south as the union army advanced. there's one other curious thing they did. that doesn't sound like much of an advantage.

let's see what the confederacy did. in 1865, thegain confederate congress passed laws that authorized jefferson davis to seize railroads, but he never really exercised it. the confederates never set up a military railroad agency in their war department. it operated railroads. in the confederate war department consistently tried to negotiate the lowest possible rates. you all think that is a good thing? ok. when you pay bargain rates, look kind of service do you get? [laughter] throughout the war, they had to compete for the traffic that paid better. if you are a southern railroad

and you know the government is not going to take you over, you will charge the military whatever you want. this is where problems began. there is also a big difference between north and south and the people of the government brought in to supervise and administer the restrict if -- their respective railroads. the vice president of the pennsylvania railroad got invited to come to washington, d.c. and get the railroad situation in order. trust me. he had the expertise and he has the authority. long. not stay there too he did some important things. he got some things up and running and he is the one who negotiated the rates with those civilian railroads. he went out to the guys he knew

in civilian life and said, listen, here is the way it is. if you cooperate with the war wanttment whenever they you to do something, you could make a fair amount of coin. if you do not cooperate, we will take you over. your call. they believed him and they listen to him. , andhe rest of the war operation between civilian railroads and that union where effort was quite remarkable. you need someone to run this new u.s. military railroad to operate chains. the government went out and got the superintendent of the eerie railroad. this guy knows how to run a railroad. the pioneer of the use of telegraphs to control the rail lines. he knows what he is doing good they brought him in and gave him a direct connection to the kernel. he has the expertise and the

authority. by the way, he recorded -- reported directly to the secretary of war. incidentally, when i came to work for the army, my father advise me if the army offered me a direct commission to hold out -- use [laughter] like.s. military railroads this guy back in the 1850's was the chief engineer of the pennsylvania railroads. he was a civil engineer not locomotive driver. he was the nation's leading expert in the design and construction of bridges. you think you might he come in handy from time to time? incidentally, herman was a resident of pennsylvania.

some people say there is a resemblance. [laughter] he, too, have expertise and the authority. he never held a government position, but he wanted to talk to the secretary of war, he didn't need an appointment. he owned the only real thing to washington, -- rail line to washington, d.c. some historians claim his sympathies were southern and favored the confederacy and he recognized that the well-being of the railroad that he was president of required a union of the three in this war. and so he's spent every effort to support the union where

effort, completely setting aside his personal preferences. he had expertise, too. folks, when you start peeling back the onion a little bit, it looks a little bit less symmetrical. managed all, the union to move twice as many men in the same length of time. here is how the movement actually transpired. 1863, 23rd of september president lincoln, secretary of war stanton, general halleck, and the director of military railroads met to discuss the feasibility of moving 20,000 reinforcements from virginia to tennessee. one day later, the planning began. the planning did not take place

in the war department. the transportation division did the planning. one day after that, the first soldiers got on the train in virginia. daniel maccallum, the head of the u.s. military railroad, got on the train. garrett and the baltimore and ohio railroad coordinated the movement over two or three other railroads. thomas scott who had returned to civilian life came down from pennsylvania, and he administered the move as far as bridgeport, alabama. the most remarkable thing about this is that the movement began two days after it was first suggested. ask some of our military colleagues in the room how long it would take to plan the .ovement of 12,000 troops today

it is a little longer than two days. these are clearly people who have the authority and the expertise to make things happen. the situation on the confederate side was significantly different. there was a man in charge of in the quartermaster office of the confederate war department. have been the president of the railroad, but he was more of a businessman than railroad operator. his expertise was ok. he held the rank of major, which is not going to carry a lot of clout in the war department. he had no staff. he really wasn't able to do a great deal. watley --sor, william this is the best shut the

confederacy ever had, this guy. he was born in new hampshire. .e was a georgian by choice he had railroaded all over the country. when the war began, he was the president of the railroad down in louisiana. they brought him in, offered him the rank of colonel. this guy has the expertise, and he could have had the authority, but the confederate congress refused to ratify his commission of colonel, probably because he was in northern or by birth. he picked up and left. his successor wasn't a railroad enough, --to oddly at all. oddly enough, he was the most effective of the three. frederick simms had a staff, a railroad bureau, and he was a wheeler and dealer. he was one of these guys that could just get these done.

1863, thereis, by are some other things started to go wrong. he is the guy that orchestrated the move from virginia down to chickamauga. the biggest problem that these guys had to deal with was the confederate rail system wasn't really a system at all. it was a connection of short railroads. you see the pattern of the east coast. railroads converging at seaports. most of the confederate railroads were actually feeder lines to water transportation. it was actually the water transport system that was the southern national transport system. there were 99,000 miles of railroad. there were over 100 different railroad companies.

the average southern railroad was less than 90 miles long. there was some construction in the 1850's. they were building some longer road road. the problem is, they are in the long place -- wrong place, and they run in the wrong direction. what the confederacy really needs our rail lines that link the features of war spanning the appalachian mountains. at the time of the war, the north had four railroads that span the appalachian mountains. you are looking at one here. how is that? does that look pretty good? memphis andd charleston railroad actually ran from memphis to stevenson, alabama. you need three other railroads just to get to virginia, and then at least one of the railroad to get anyplace in virginia.

named the memphis and charleston railroad? there is a long-standing american tradition of naming railroads after places they don't go. [laughter] time, if you are building the hooverville and podunk railroad, and you are trying to attract investors, you're going to name it the hooverville, podunk, and pacific railroad. my favorite one is right here. do you see that little know? that is the vicksburg, shreveport, and texas railroad. it does not touch the vicksburg, shreveport, or texas. [laughter] what we've got is not a system. it is a collection of small railroads. that is going to be a challenge for any significant real movement, -- rail movement, civil or military.

during the war, the north added 5000 miles to its rial s -- rail system. this was all the south was able to build. part of this was cannibalizing rail from other railroads. it does not improve as we go along, which brings us to the problem of rial. -- rail. rail at the time of the civil war came in three varieties -- te rail is the system that is used today, but there was also some older u rail and some ancient strap rail. strap rail, the rail was od with awould -- wop strip of iron along the top. there was still some strap rail in use in the confederacy when the war began. here is the problem. under heavy use, rail would tend about threein

years. the south did in fact manufacture rail. when the war began, they manufactured about half the rail that they needed to replace worn-out rail every year. the other half they had to import mostly from england. railthe rail -- war began, manufacturing in the confederacy dropped to zero. if you had a plant that could manufacture rail, guess what you are manufacturing once the war began? you are manufacturing armaments. rail is wearing out all over the south, and the stockpiles are largely gone. out, trainsars have to run slower.

mishaps are more frequent. when trains run slower, you have to run more trains to keep the same volume of supply going, right? which means the locomotives work harder, which brings us to locomotives. here we see some georgia boys in 1860 posing proudly next to their brand-new locomotive made in new jersey. the confederacy could build locomotives. the best figure i saw was they probably built 19 locomotives in the south in 1860. the north built 451. alright. you're not going to get any new locomotives once the war started. the biggest locomotive factory in the south was in richmond.

guess what the ironworks started making once the war began? armaments. the south goes into this war with zero rail production and zero locomotive production, and by 1863, they are running into trouble. locomotives need to be rebuilt regularly. a steam locomotive incrementally destroys itself every time it is fired up. think about it. heat, water, pressure, and big moving parts. they need constant maintenance, and they need periodic rebuilds. detail, theg into confederacy lacked everything they needed for locomotive maintenance. everything, from locomotives, lubricating oils, to steel

gauges -- you name it, they didn't have it. the situation in 1863. to the best of my knowledge, none of these locomotives out of action are due to enemy action. it is all wear and tear and the inability to repair what they've got. you might ask yourself, why don't they take these nine locomotives, strip them for parts, and get these nine locomotives working again? there are two problems with that. is that theer two same parts wear out on all the locomotives at the same time. is that steam one locomotives at this point in history where handcrafted items, and you couldn't take a card from one and put it on the other. the confederacy by 1863 is running out of rail, the rail is

turning bad, and their locomotives are breaking down. the situation is not much better when it comes to cars. each railroad car is almost entirely wood. you could say rail cars grew on trees. [laughter] most of them. labor to cut the trees and make the rail cars, which is the problem in the confederacy by 1863. setting that aside, the wheels do not grow on trees. the confederacy could manufacture wheels. there were a couple of plants in the vicinity of savannah, georgia that were capable of making 50 wheels a day. by 1863, they are down to 15 wheels a day. why? the railroads can't get raw materials to them to make wheels. why can't the railroads get them the raw materials? because the wheels on the cars are wearing out.

then you factor in inflation, which affected everything the confederacy tried to do. a railroad wheel would cost $15 when the war began and cost $500 by the end of the war. a wheel is a sophisticated device. even a minor imperfection in a wheel can damage the rail and cause it irrelevant. when wheels start to go bad, trains slowdown. -- slow down. same problem. another declining resource is personnel. railroads at this time were tremendously labor-intensive. it took 5-7 man to operate a train that might be carrying 100 tons of cargo -- 150 tons of cargo. the trains you see out here today have a two-man crew, 10,000 tons. most of the people on this crew

were brakemen. job, when this train wants to stop -- he is not posing for a picture -- that is his workplace. stop,his train wants to he has to grab that handle and manually twist on the brakes that will hopefully slow that car down. you might have 3, 4, 5 of these guys space out on the train as you go along. we are running out of people. track crews -- the most heavily traveled tracks at this time in history required on average 4-5 workmen per mile to keep that railroad in operation. all told, when the confederacy began the war, they had 16,000 railroad workers. some of them were northerners, and they went home. some of them volunteered for the military. they went away.

the construction law of 1862 in the south supposedly exempted railroad workers, but as the war progressed, the exemption got narrower and narrower, and more and more railroad workers ended up sitting in army camps, which were hungry because the railroads couldn't deliver food to them. maybe those guys would've been better off out on the railroads delivering food instead of sitting in the cap eating the food. a lot of the track workers, a lot of the manual workers in the south were slaves. railroads owned a lot of slaves, and they would rent slaves from plantation owners. as the war progressed, slaves were harder and harder to come by, too. this was extremely dangerous work. atmy very rough calculation, this time in history,

approximately 2%-4% of railroad workers were injured or killed on the job every year. that is not as dangerous as being in the army, but it is pretty close. 1/3 to 1/2 of those injuries were cutler related. on the right, you have the automatic couplers you use today. if you want to couple cars, you bang them together, and those couplers automatically engage. in the civil war, you had to link the cars manually. in coupler.ink and p let's say there's a locomotive that is going to pick up this train. somebody has to stand there between the rails holding that his hand, bring the locomotive back. guideses that link -- that link into the locomotive,

down toes the pin secure it. pretty dangerous work. the most spectacular way to become a casualty on the railroad was through a boiler explosion. the most common way a boiler explosion would occur was if the crew was inattentive, if there gages were bad, they were lazy, undertrained, or fatigued. if there isn't water covering the top of the firebox, the top of the firebox will get hotter and hotter and hotter until it softens and ruptures. if it is a little rupture, it will simply be a blast of live steam that comes rushing back into the cap, and the crew might even survive. if the rupture is big enough, oh my. the water in this boiler is over 212 degrees fahrenheit. the only thing that keeps most of it in liquid form is it is

under pressure. if all of that pressure is released at the same time, all of that water tries to turn existing, expanding 1600 times in volume, exploding like a bomb, like that. this is a result of a 20th century boiler explosion. civil war locomotives operated at about 140 pounds per square inch. in the 20th century, they are in excess of 200 pounds per square inch. there is one boiler explosion in the 1930's that they calculated when the boiler blew, it exploded with a force of 300 million pounds per square inch -- 300 pounds per square inch. this is dangerous business. the most serious shortage was with machines, mechanics. these guys are essential for locomotive manufacture and repair. the south didn't have very many of them.

this guy is a craftsman. it takes years to go through the apprenticeship and experience to become a master machinist. years. when the war began, some of these guys went home. a lot of them want to work for the armament industry, and there was not time, the war didn't last long enough to grow new machines. these guys are in very short supply. deferred maintenance, that is going to complicate all of the problems. this ain't looking too good, is it? just as all of this is coming together, about 1863, all of these chickens are coming home to roost -- the rail is going bad, the locomotives are going bad, we are running out of people, and the union is starting to get really good at reading confederate railroads. by 1864, it is getting to the point where the confederacy cannot always repair the damage

it has done. when a railroad does get torn to repair an important railroad the confederates will cannibalize tracks from some little railroads. what is the net effect of that overtime? eventually, you have huge areas of the confederacy that are basically cut off from the rest of the world, and they are no good to the war effort anymore. even more devastating were the retreats. when the confederates retreated, they had a choice -- they could either destroy their own stuff, or they could leave it behind for the union to use. y contrast, this is the u.s. hop inry railroad s alexandria, virginia. i showed you this picture before to show you the coupler. this is all rail. this is all rail.

they are telling the confederate raiders, bring it. tear up rail. waste your time. that is what we have to replace it. it's not just the material that the organization. folks, i hope you are stunned by this ugly, ugly organizational chart. aroundbeen squirreling with this topic for 20 years now, and for the life of me, i cannot figure out who answer to who and how the lines of authority ran. i don't think the people who were doing it knew either. this is ugly. this is what the u.s. military railroad set up down at the operating level. they had a separate group of people to do construction and another group of people to run the trains. they organized it like a civilian railroad.

virtually everybody in these organizations is a civilian. some of them had been given military rank. most of them had not. the workers, the train crews, htreet civilians -- straig civilians, but they knew what doing, and they answered to a military chain of command. these are the rules that henry house -- hermann health set up to operate railroads. this took some doing. he had to get the secretary of war to tell the army, i don't care what your rank is, i don't care if you are a general office, you do not wake up to and takeoad tracks control of the train. if you do that, i will fire you. we aren't going to ship you everything you think you want. you're going to ship you what you think you need -- what we think you need. when it gets to the front,

everybody unloads trains. if there's an infantry regiment standing around when a train pulls up, and the train master says, you guys, unload this train, or the secretary of war is going to fire your kernel -- unload the train. places where there was a telegraph, they operated on a rigid schedule, and nobody interfered with that schedule. this is some advice that the assistant secretary of war gave to haupt. [laughter] with apologies to any general officers who may be in the room tonight. 1863 thatointed by military was construction crews could rebuild track about as fast as the confederates could tear it up. --ut 10,000 of these people

there are about 10,000 people in these construction crews. a large proportion of them were freed men, ex-slaves. haupt's most remarkable accomplishments came in 1862 when he was called upon to rebuild the bridge behind mcdowell's corps during the peninsula campaign. this bridge was completely destroyed by the retreating confederate. haupt showed up. anduilt a sawmill on site, 34,760 linealut feet of timber, and working largely with unskilled men, haupt built that bridge in nine days. president clinton came out to see it, and when he went back to

washington, he said, that man haupt has built a bridge across the potomac feet -- creek about 400 feet long and 100 feet high over which loaded trains are running every hour, and upon my word, gentlemen, there is nothing in it but being polls and cornstalk -- bean poles and cornstalk. do you know what haupt's reaction was? too slow. in alexandria, the u.s. military prefabricateded bridge components. it got to the point where they could almost replace a bridge as fast as the confederates could destroy one, such as this one over bull run. by the end of the war, the u.s. military railroads was, i think, the largest railroad in the

united states by a considerable margin. this is big-time railroading. what is the impact on campaigns? in 1863 when lee started his second invasion of the north, the army of the potomac started moving north to parallel lee's force. said, you are going to need a rail support. he rushed up to frederick. as the army kept going north, he rushed over here to the western maryland, which is a crappy rural railroad. put it into order, and they started delivering supplies from there. then he sent people to the gettysburg railroad and opened a railhead here.

the gettysburg railroad did not open in time for the battle, but it opened in time to help evacuate about 15,000 wounded soldiers. the remarkable thing is when the army started

when he swung around petersburg,

the u.s. military railroad put into operation and began supplying his army. at city of petersburg point as the union lines extended around the confederate , the u.s. military railroads lay down on the ground soallel to the union lines there was delivery straight to the front line troops by rail during the siege of petersburg. that is pretty impressive stuff. contrast, on the confederate side, the end is near. as sherman moved into south carolina, the confederate government ordered the railroads in north carolina to change their gauge so that some of the cars and locomotives could be

evacuated. governor vance said no. all the equipment was lost. division tried to move 48 miles into the railroad. it took them three days. the rest of the division walked. none of that was due to enemy action. it was due to the locomotives. general the commissary about a month before appomattox reported the military requirement for supplies in the richmond area amounted to about 500 times a day on top of the other rail traffic. he said he could not think he could do it. the railroads cannot move it anymore. so, by 1865, the eighth symmetry was complete.

the rails in the north were blooming and prospering. the rails to the south -- the wheels have literally come off. i would suggest to you that the northern supremacy of the railroad war did not just happen nor was it preordained. lincoln's war department grasped early in the war that railroads would play a vital war in the conflict and it acted forcefully to ensure effective support from both civilian and military railroads. the confederacy never seated in finding the organization or attrition. a war of the union railroads laid the foundation for victory while the confederate railroads atrophied and died placing the confederate states of america on the roads to oblivion. ladies and gentlemen, i thank

you for your kind attention. [applause] >> if they were running so slowly, the confederates, then made them really vulnerable for the army to get them and burn them up. right? >> there were plenty of instances of union raters, captain confederates that had the other way as well. it does increase the vulnerability. yes, sir? >> i saw the piles of preassembled rails. was that a new thing at the time? it is like laying down a model railroad.

>> that was rather new. most railroads were built locally with local resources and talent. the u.s. military railroads prefabricated professionally designed railroad bridges. that was a new development. yes, ma'am? >> it feel to be weird up front. quick question about andersonville. one of the explanations i have heard for why andersonville got -- it -- the conditions was because the railroads were not running any more. the railroads were running well enough for men to get there. can you explain -- you knew anything about this problem or alleged problem? >> part of the problem by that thet is that the area

confederate military officers were able to draw from were often times very remote. lee's army is actually drawing much of its supply from georgia. part of the problem was not that the rails were not running, it was getting sucked up from the army in virginia possibly to the detriment of andersonville and certainly to the detriment of the confederate army in tennessee which ironically was defending georgia and watching the food in georgia go out on railcars to other armies. >> thank you. >> yes, sir? >> i noticed a statistic the other day. the total casualties of the confederates versus the union -- the union took far more casualties. can you argue that the railroad

system itself contributed heavily towards that or is that not a correlation? >> it does contribute in a way. one argument you can make is that the armies were to so tied to the railroads, it made decisive maneuver difficult. if the other army had rail supply, chances are it could be reinforced. it is my contention that the existence of the railroad helped make the civil war last as long as it did. in that sense, what it added to the casualties. >> the union side had more casualties than the confederates. that is what i am asking. >> the biggest difference is union forces are on the offensive through most of the war. it is the axiom of the war that the guy on the offensive will take more casualties.

i would suspect the railroads themselves explain those differences. yes, sir? >> have you read or heard anything about that sometime before world war ii, rush wrote change the railroad change to retard invasions? >> that is commonplace and not true either. they started building the railroads the time the americans did. if they picked the gauge, they went the wrong way because foreign invader it is real easy to move five foot gauge to four 4.5 foot. they had a pretty easy. think about the problems -- let's say the soviets had a four foot gauge railroad. when the german showed up, they would've had to get that rail out. that changes all appearances.

that changes all the differences between track. that changes bridges and tunnels. that changes yards. that is hard to do. if the russians deliberately did it, they did it wrong. yes, sir? >> i am wondering about raw materials for manufacture. did they have adequate supply? >> they had supplies that they were not adequate for all of their needs. this is a problem when it comes to obtaining goods from outside. they would have liked to of gotten british iron products to supplement their own inadequate supplies. when you think about it, those british supplies will have to come in from blockade runners. think about railroad grade. raid. -- that isde runner

like going through home depot and shoplifting brick. [laughter] it is really a low profit cargo. it is very heavy, very hard to move and it does not pay. one of the problems is the blockade runners were large enough to stop it. two ansi or question, the to answer your question, the confederates that i have enough for their needs. >> how with the resources divided between munitions and rails? who made those calls. especially in the south if they are looking at less resources available, how could they make -- how were those choices made? >> it is my sense -- i cannot document this -- the south was suffering from a fair degree of

militarism and is this is ts decision-making processes in anything other than gun making would be short tripped. in the confederate government, jefferson davis as president, x military officer, ask secretary if a railroad guy comes and argues for iron and eigha army guy argues, the armyy is going to win. this showed up in some other ways. the confederacy was short of rail by 1863. some of the rail got ripped off by the navy because they use inlroad rail as ad hoc armor some of the ironclads they built. the confederate government allowed this to happen. the confederate government

allowed soldiers to leave camp to go work on ironclad but it would not allow soldiers to leave camp to go work on railroads. pervasive is just a sense of macho testosterone ridden militarism that affected some of their decision-making. it called for some pretty clear thinking to say in the long run these railroads are not operating, those guns are not going to do is any good. that kind of thinking was not always at the forefront. [applause] thank you very much. >> of the civil war ayers here every saturday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m.. to watch more, visit our website.