The Growth Of The Railroad In America Summary

John F. Stover, an expert on railroads and their history in America, describes the growth of the American railroad in the 1850s. Stover focuses on this decade specifically in his book because it was during this time that railroad expansion exploded with many miles of track being laid. Americans preferred the cheap costs, shorter distances, greater speed, and greater reliability of the railroads over waterways, which signaled the end of steamboat river commerce as well. It was during the 1850s that rails finally connected West to the Northeast which became massively important when the Civil War erupted at the turn of the decade. Stover begins by hypothesizing that the railroad expansion at this time laid the groundwork for profitable manufacturing

Stover discusses Government efforts to fund the laying of rails, which were mainly centered in the Northeast rather than the South and it was this balance of railroad development in favor of the North that was the first nail in the coffin of Southern secession. Stover's material in his book is nothing really new. Historians have pinpointed the development of the railroads as a key factor in the defeat of the South in the Civil War and also the manner of development of said railroads. Stover’s points on the railroad signaling the death of steamboat river travel is also not a new concept for historians. To defend his arguments on how railroad development in the North eventually defeated the South in the Civil War, Stover laid out his chapters by region; East, West, and South to compare the rail mileage by state. He examined miles of track laid to population, land area, and capital invested per mile on a state by state, region by region basis. This book is an interesting account of the American Railroads of the 1850s and is filled with photographs, maps, and tables which are almost as useful for understanding the topic as the text