Suppressed American History: Slavery and Southern Railroads Some claim to have built this nation infrastructure, in the mid 1800s. But slave labor in the Southern States built its backbone 50 years before the largest immigration of Europeans occurred between 1890 and 1920. These men once freed were only then used as paid labor to build, repair and maintain this same backbone of America. The records of the Southern Railroads that held slaves still exist today (see photos). Some of the first, longest and most ambitious railroads in the nation were built in the South beginning in the late 1820s. By 1860 the Souths railroad network was one of the most extensive in the world, and nearly all of it had been constructed with slave labor. Moreover, railroad companies became some of the largest slaveholders in the South. Railroads bought and sold slaves with contracts and elaborate, printed bills of sale. They recorded these events in balance sheets and company account books. Railroads also developed forms for contracts to hire enslaved labor from slaveholders. Because the company was liable for the loss of enslaved property, contracts often spelled out detailed provisions for accidents and the conditions of labor. Railroad companies in the U.S. South reported to stockholders annually on the amount they invested in human property and on the uses of enslaved labor in their operations. Railroad company officers, construction engineers, and slave traders corresponded regularly in the 1850s about buying and selling slaves and organizing their labor operations around slavery. Southern railroad companies began buying slaves as early as the 1840s and used enslaved labor almost exclusively to construction their lines. Thousands of African Americans worked on the southern railroads in the 1850s. For African Americans the work was often the hardest, most difficult, and dangerous they were forced to undertake. Although historians, such as Allen Trelease, Robert Starobin, and Walter Licht, have acknowledged the presence of slave labor on Southern railroads, we have little sense its overall dimensions or its relationship to the southern expansionism of the 1850s. Each of these historians has found slave labor on southern railroads; more recently, Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., has documented the use of enslaved labor on 85 of 113 railroads in the Confederate states. By 1860 the South was the third leading railroad nation in the world, trailing only the northern United States and the United Kingdom in total miles constructed. It contained 33 percent of the nations railroad mileage and 40 percent of its population, and southern states were aggressively promoting railroad development throughout the 1850s. Indeed, southern railroads built and maintained their roads with enslaved labor, orchestrating contracts for hire on a scale of complexity and cost that seemed logical and consistent with their purposes but far in excess of any other institutions. Railroads began buying hundreds of male slaves between the ages of 16 and 35 as early as 1841, and in the 1850s were either renting or buying hands in groups of hundreds. One president of the Mississippi Central Railroad explained to his stockholders in 1855, I am led to the irresistible conclusion, that in ease of management, in economy of maintenance, in certainty of execution of work & in amount of labor performed & in absence of disturbance of riotous outbreaks, the slave is preferable to free labor, and far better adapted to the construction of railways in the south. The State of Florida Constructing the New Railroad Actual construction of the new cross-state railroad began in September, 1855. The construction crews were made up mostly of slaves and a small number of white laborers. They cleared the dense forest and filled swamps placing the rails through a mostly uninhabited land, fighting insects and wild animals. It took almost a year to construct the first 10 miles. The first section from Fernandina to Lofton was completed on August 1, 1856, and Gainesville by February 1, 1859. When finished, it ran through 155.5 miles of wilderness, creeks, rivers, and marsh lands of Florida using only one locomotive to transport equipment and slave labor to lay the track. When the Florida Railroad was completed in 1860, it was considered to have the best equipment in the state. It had two sixty-person passenger cars of the latest design, two baggage cars, fourteen boxcars and twenty-one flatcars. On March 1, 1861, the first train arrived in Cedar Key. The completion of the railroad was also a major cause of celebration for the entire state of Florida. Trade between ports like New Orleans and those to the northeast no longer had to be routed around the Florida Keys. The railroad also offered Florida residents the opportunity to see parts of their state that they had never been able to explore before, linking many communities with a common connection through a rural state. Unfortunately, with Floridas entry into the Confederate States of America and the outbreak of the Civil War, all prospects of establishing the state as a hub for international commerce ended. Enter the Civil War On April 12, the Civil War began with the bombardment of Ft. Sumter. The railroads in the Confederate States were vital and became a critical transportation system for the south. But in Florida, with the exception of 4 miles of track built from Tallahassee west to just short of Quincy, in 1863, new construction of Florida railroads took a hiatus with the onset of the war. On March 3, 1862, Yulee and his family were the last to leave Amelia Island. The USS Ottawa shelled the retreating train as it passed over the bridge to the mainland. Witnesses said that the Yulees waved their handkerchiefs at the pursuing Union forces. Early in the war, Cedar Key was a major shipping port and in the hands of the Confederates. In 1862, the Union forces captured the port. Numerous Federal expeditions used the railroad bed to send forces inland. Service on the cross state railroad was interrupted and the line was damaged heavily during the Civil War, but it was repaired by Federal troops shortly after the Wars end. My Great-Great-Great-Grand father sold cross ties and wood for the Wood-burning Locomotives to the First Florida Railroad during the 1870 - 1890s from his property in Callahan, Florida, which is exactly 25 miles from its starting point in Fernandina Beach, Florida (Amelia Island). Today members of my family and myself still own much of this same land.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 06:08:04 +0000
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