The Iron Way: Railroads the Civil War and the Making of Modern America

About this book

Beginning with Frederick Douglasss escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869 this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear on railroads the Confederate South slavery and the Civil War era based on groundbreaking research in digitized sources never available before. The Iron Way revises our ideas about the emergence of modern America and the role of the railroads in shaping the sectional conflict. Both the North and the South invested in railroads to serve their larger purposes Thomas contends. Though railroads are often cited as a major factor in the Unions victory he shows that they were also essential to the formation of "the South" as a unified region. He discusses the manyand sometimes unexpectedeffects of railroad expansion and proposes that Americas great railroads became an important symbolic touchstone for the nations vision of itself. Please visit the Railroads and the Making of Modern America website at http://railroads.unl.edu.