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The Pros And Cons Of The American Civil War

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Railroads are not nearly as popular in the United States as they are in European countries. Prior to the American Civil War, railroads were a fairly new, and untried, invention. Compared to carriages and the other modes of transportation at the time, the railroad was far superior. Due to this superiority, they were used to transport soldiers, food, and supplies. A systemic railroad began to spread all across the nation, and both sides of the war used them to their advantage. The railroad construction started as soon as possible. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was founded in 1828 and its first section of rails was open in 1830. At its peak, The B&O Railroad spread from the east coast all the way to the Illinois, and was over 5,550 miles long! In 1831, the state of Maryland granted the B&O Railroad and charter to begin construction of a line connecting Maryland to Washington D.C. The south, which was mostly a society built on agriculture, was at a huge disadvantage when it came to railroads. Two-thirds of all the railroads in the nation at the time were in the north. The southern states couldn’t transport anything as easy as the north, and their income mostly relied on the exportation of their crops. Without this source of income, the Confederacy’s economy was crippled. Arguably, railroads were the reason for the South’s eventual defeat. By 1861, “22,000 miles of track had been laid in the Northern states and 9,500 miles in the South.” In the south, there were cities that

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