Why Was The Corinth Railroad Important

The article, “Creating the System: Railroads and the Modern Corporation”, informs us all about the development of the transcontinental railroad and how it helped drive the nation west and also transformed western North America into a economy that had many opportunities. The railroads have always interested me when it comes to this period of time. What I learned from the reading that I didn’t know before was that the Western railroads were primary carriers of grain, other agricultural produce, livestock, coal, lumber and minerals. Also seeing the prices that the farmers shipped their products for, and what they paid for the freights rates was very interesting. Overall, if the railroads wouldn’t have been built in a time when there was so little

     The North’s advantage in transport weighed heavily as the war went on. The Union had more wagons, horses, and ships than that of the Confederacy, and they also had an impressive edge in railroads. The Confederacy had only one east-west rail connection, between Memphis, Tennessee and Chattanooga, Tennessee. The latter was an important rail hub with connections via Knoxville, Tennessee into Virginia and down through Atlanta, Georgia to Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. But the North already had an extensive railroad network. Three major lines gave the western

The railways became an important system that guided settlement and delivered economic opportunity for much of the United States. Railroads allowed access to places that people had no means of getting to and provided an opportunity to develop cities and towns

The Northern and Southern sections of the US had various economical differences which led to the Civil War. During that time period, the Northern part of the country’s economy was heavily based on industrial practices, in comparison to the Southern economy which was founded on agricultural practices. In the map of Railroads in 1860, railroads were heavily located in the Northern part of the US compared to the South because the Northern economy demands the need for railroads in order to transport the

By the outset of 1864, after three years of war, the Union had mobilized its resources for the ongoing struggle on a massive scale. The government had overseen the construction of new railroad lines and for the first time used standardized rail tracks that allowed the North to move men and materials with greater ease. The North’s economy had shifted to a wartime model. The Confederacy also mobilized, perhaps to a greater degree than the Union, its efforts to secure independence and maintain slavery. Yet the Confederacy experienced ever-greater hardships after years of war. Without the population of the North, it faced a shortage of manpower. The lack of industry, compared to the North, undercut the ability to sustain and wage war. Rampant inflation as well as food shortages in the South lowered morale.

Its social and economic impacts dwell greatly in the 1800’s to the era of 2000’s as trains have always turned America into something greater in those times where travel and transport were at its hardest, but in 1862 congress passed a bill in which it would forge new history all together with the Pacific Railroad Bill and several grants that allowed financial support for Railroad companies primarily Central Pacific

During the early stages of the Civil War, railroads proved to have a phenomenal effect on achieving the Union victory over the Confederacy. The railroads not only helped to transport soldiers and goods throughout the Union sufficiently, but also increased the production rate and preservation of manufacturing. Upon seeing the power of railroads in war efforts, the Pacific Railroad Act was passed in 1862, which provided federal bonds and land grants for building a transcontinental railroad, along a northern route("Landmark Legislation:The Pacific Railroad Act"). The act pronounced that "the said corporation is hereby authorized and empowered to layout,

“If any act symbolized the taming of the Northwest frontier, it was the driving of the final spike to complete the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.”1 The first railroad west of the Mississippi River was opened on December 23, 1852. Five miles long, the track ran from St. Louis to Cheltanham, Missouri. Twenty-five years prior, there were no railroads in the United States; twenty-five years later, railroads joined the east and west coasts from New York to San Francisco.2

Prior to the start of the Civil war in 1861, the South was still a heavily agricultural based society and remained so for years after the war ended. On the other hand, the North’s economy relied more on manufactured products rather than agricultural products. With the North’s openess to advancements in technology, came advancements in travel and shipping. The biggest advancement in travel at the time was the invention of the railroad system. The North’s percentage of railroad tracks, when compared to the total of railroad tracks located within the North and the South, was about 72 percent (Doc. C). Meaning the South had to rely on the North to transport most of the time so their crops could be transported

In the time just before the Civil War, the United States was one of the most successful nations in the world. The United States had become the world’s leading cotton producing country and had developed industry, which would in the future, surpass that of Great Britain. Also, the United States possessed an advanced railroad and transportation system. However, despite its successes, the United States was becoming increasingly divided. The North and the South had many distinct differences in terms of their social, cultural, and economic characteristics that brought about sectionalism and, eventually, the Civil War.

The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the most ambitious engineering projects, economic stimulants, and efficient methods of transportation in the early United States. If completed, the United States would be truly be united from east to west. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Transcontinental Railroad helped develop new opportunities for many aspects of American life.

And it was there that railroads began to have a significant impact on the development and expansion of American society.

Soon other lines followed throughout the country. Railroads affected almost every aspect of American life. The rapid spread of the railroads provided the basis for a tremendous westward movement of population. It also carried raw material to, and finish product from factories to consumers in a more efficient way (The USA online, n.d.). The railways became highly profitable business for their owners.

Railroads have been an important part of America’s history. These railroads had a major role in the settlement of the West. The most important railroad in American history is the transcontinental railroad. The transcontinental railroad impacted western settlement by bringing in immigrants, aiding travel to the frontier, and changing people and the economy.

Railroads were the linchpin in the new industrialized economy. The railroad industry enabled raw materials, finished products, food, and people to travel cross-country in a matter of days, as opposed to the months or years that it took just prior to the Civil War. By the end of the war, the United States boasted some 35,000 miles of track, mostly in the industrialized North. By the turn of the century, that number had jumped to almost 200,000 miles, linking the North, South, and West. With these railroads making travel easier, millions of rural Americans flocked to the cities, and by 1900, nearly 40 percent of the population lived in urban areas.