Date

5-23-2025

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)

Chair

Joseph Super

Keywords

Railroads, South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, Reconstruction

Disciplines

Economics | History

Abstract

While the 1850s were productive and railroading did innovate with the initial adoption of steel, the embrace of the telegraph, the use of coal as a fuel, and the opening of generally long railroads, particularly in South Carolina, the railroads themselves generally remained conservative (almost timid) in their business models and strategic thinking. This was especially true in the South. Northern railroads recognized the need to connect major cities, connect seaports with crop productive hinterlands, and generally understood that railroad mobility, mixed economic development, and prosperity were intertwined and mutually reinforcing with the prosperity of both the railroad and the state. In the South, coastal and riverine transport linked major towns and cities. Railroads primarily connected coastal cities with interior points that catered to the cotton trade, the foundation of the southern economy, the plantation system, and foreign trade. All three of which depended on the slave trade.

These conservative balances were upset when it became a necessity for the railroads to expand white settlement west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Throughout the 1850s, railroad technology improved, and the movement of capital flowed. Entrepreneurs sought to push railroads westward, opening vast expanses of land for agriculture and trade. The discovery of gold and silver in California fed the illusion to those in the East that untold wealth lay for the taking. Railroads could provide access. The Blue Ridge Rail Road was one such attempt to gain the West and all that it offered in trade and riches, an attempt by the state of South Carolina and its entrepreneurs to share in what they thought was rightfully theirs.

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