Evaluating Antebellum Railroads

Evaluating Antebellum Railroads
Zachary Callen
Political Science
Allegheny College
The American rail system that emerged through the 19th century was shaped by the
broader political institutions in which those railroads were embedded. In particular, early
American rail construction was directly shaped by the divided power nature of American
federalism, along with Americans’ preference for market-based solutions to infrastructure
development. The fractured nature of American rail development shaped domestic rail development by transforming decisions about rail promotion, coordination, and regulation into
primarily local choices which were handled by states and municipalities. These antebellum
railroad decisions were thus often made based on state legislators’ and city council members’ myopic evaluation of railroads as viewed generally through parochial lenses, and rarely
with an eye to larger regional, much less national, concerns.1 It was this emphasis on provincial factors, such as local economic development, in railroad planning that discouraged many
states from subsidizing rail development and also fueled interstate rivalries that led yet other
states to avoid direct connections over state borders with their competitors.
Yet, despite these short-sighted approaches to early American rail construction, it is
also evident that antebellum states and cities were able to shepherd a continental rail system
into being by the early 1860s. A brief examination of the American rail system in Figure
1, which displays the spread of the American rail systems over several decades of the mid19th century is a testament to the viability of a rail system built via a splintered political
1
Local is, in this case, defined as issues that fall primarily at the state, county, or city level of governance.
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system. However, while the United States managed to eventually build a rail system despite
the maze that is American federalism, that does not necessarily mean antebellum political
leaders made the best policy choices when they undertook early rail development.
The quality of the antebellum American railroad is best ascertained through comparisons with other 19th century rail systems, notably through contrasting the American rail
system with its British and French counterparts. British, French, and American railroads
are ideal for comparison, since all three nations were Western states undergoing industrialization in the early 19th century. Of course, the similarities across the three nation-states is
not perfect. The United States was a markedly younger, frontier nation than its European
counterparts. While we should be wary of American exceptionalism, this empirical difference
between the three states is worth noting. Further enriching a comparison of British, French,
and American railroads is the unique tactics each state pursued in attempting to build a
new infrastructure network. While the three countries share a history of simultaneous rail
development, each state approached the problem of rail promotion from a markedly different
perspective. The French employed a strong central state when developing its railroads. The
British, in contrast, relied entirely on private investors and the market to build their rail
system. The American approach staked a middle claim between these two, relying primarily
on a partnership between local governments and private companies to build a continentalscale rail system. Thus, these three cases, due to both their similarities and differences,
are an ideal comparison for evaluating antebellum America’s success at rail construction
(Dobbin, 1997). Through a careful comparison of the railroads developed by the divergent
tactics of each country, it will become evident that while the American approach was reasonably successful, it was also severely limited in critical ways. In particular, federalism
divided American resources, limiting effective national planning as well as squandering rail
development opportunities for the frontier nation when both capital and technical expertise
were often in short supply. These limitations in early American rail development suggest
that dividing the policy responsibility for infrastructure among multiple levels of govern-
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ment, especially in a frontier state, produces less than optimal results for the American rail
system.
National Approaches to Railroad Development
In order to accurately evaluate rail development in the United States, France, and
Britain each’s nations distinct approach to railroad construction problem must be considered. Since railroads were an undeniably modern invention, bringing together ideas of mechanization and rational engineering during the Industrial Revolution, it might be assumed
that railroad planning followed rational dictates. In other words, we might hypothesize that
railroad planning and construction would proceed in a homogenous fashion, with rail planners from around the world quickly converging on the quickest rail building processes as well
as the most cost efficient rail planing systems. However, while in the abstract we might suppose that market mechanisms and industrial construction lead to a single approach to rail
planning dominating national infrastructure development, this ended up being far from the
case in practice. Instead, rail planning diverged on the basis of national character and circumstance. Specifically, national approaches to rail planning involved nationally particular
(rather than universal) understandings of rationality transformed into material infrastructure policy (Dobbin, 1997; A. Smith, 1976). Thus, railroad planning differed considered from
nation to the nation among 19th century Western industrial states.
American Rail Construction
The American approach to rail development was not, as we have seen from the many
states and localities that engaged in rail promotion during the 19th century, laissez-faire.
Due to both regional bickering and very real constitutional limits, the national state was
limited in the support it provided to railroads. However, cities and states offered a range of
benefits, including tax credits, subsidies, banking rights, and even outright public construction, in order to establish capable, dense local rail networks. Frank Dobbin stresses that
while American political culture was distrustful of national action and a powerful federal
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state, Americans were much more open to local governments taking a hands-on approach
to economic and social management (Dobbin, 1997). In fact, Americans support state and
local governments’ actions in a range of policies beyond internal improvements, from regulating noxious trades to fire protection (Novak, 1996, 2008; Pisani, 1987; Rubin, 1961;
Scheiber, 1969, 1975; Teaford, 2002). Thus, the American approach to rail development
stresses the value of government action, but carefully restricts state support for railroads to
the sub-national strata.
However, while state and local governments offered critical assistance to early rail efforts, the American rail system was still heavily shaped by private investors and companies.
Railroads were generally built and operated by private actors. States, cities, and counties
offered support and incentive to launch railroad programs, which were regularly short of
capital. Importantly, though, state governments were not interested in operating emerging
railroads: railroads which were heavily supported by state legislatures in Georgia and Pennsylvania were quickly sold to private hands for day-to-day operations (Burgess & Kennedy,
1949; Heath, 1954; Dobbin, 1997; Schotter, 1927; W. B. Wilson, 1899). Simply put, local
governments did not want responsibility for setting rates, schedules, or dealing with passengers (Dobbin, 1997). While states would pass some loose regulations over rail rates, and the
national state would later carefully regulate rail shipping rates, the American state’s stance
to rail development tended towards a “hands off” approach in the antebellum era (Dobbin,
1997; Sanders, 1999). In sum, the federal state did not support railroads for the first half
of the 19th century, and local governments primarily provided early funds to launch capable
local networks without any eye towards actually running the rail systems that public monies
established.
This local action on rail development is well documented. State governments, from
New York and Pennsylvania to Alabama and Georgia, all engaged in railroad promotion.
Of course, state dedication to railroads varied wildly. Missouri spent more than any other
state on antebellum railroad promotion, and actually engaged in a series of programs that
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aimed to foster local rail development (Goodrich, 1960; Million, 1896). Other states, such
as Alabama, engaged in a single attempt at railroad promotion, with local political elites
very consciously eschewing future rail aid (Cline, 1997; Griffith, 1972). In addition to states,
cities and counties were active rail supporters. Baltimore and Charleston both engaged
in vigorous support of local rail lines (Heath, 1954; Rubin, 1961). Even in locales where
the state constitution barred the state legislature from support railroads, such as in Iowa,
municipalities still took an aggressive stand to encourage local railroad vitality (Larson,
1984). While many of these schemes failed to produce meaningful railroads, such as in
Illinois, or were subject to corruption that deeply dulled their effectiveness, which was the
case in Missouri, these instances reveal a pattern of local railroad promotion that thrived
despite national inactivity on infrastructure (Million, 1896; Stover, 1975).
Dobbin argues this acceptance, and preference, for local railroad development reflects
the republican spirit of the antebellum United States. According to Dobbin, “community
self-determination” was an important, and politically viable, program in the antebellum era
(1997, 43). Thus, state legislatures and city councils supported local rail proposals in order
to provide communities with “the rail service they desired” (Dobbin, 1997, 39). In this
sense, state and local support for railroads is wrapped up in notions of democratic popular
sovereignty. Hence, due to the democratic and republican nature of local government, empowering the state to pursue citizens’ preferences (including stimulating local infrastructure
projects) seemed obvious to 19th century Americans. Local governments were perceived as
an extension of citizen interests and desires, therefore using state powers to meet citizens’
demands to improve the territory was not just legitimate - it was actually a desired outcome
of democratic governance. Furthermore, infrastructure projects were considered especially
worthy of state and municipal support since rail projects furthered the public good (Dobbin,
1997). Rail development fostered economic growth, increased land values, and linked farflung citizens more closely to the political and economic core of the nation. Therefore, state
support for railroads was perceived as a noble, reasonable use of local governmental power
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in pursuit of an obvious common good. Importantly, this power to intervene in the economy
was a power only of local governments. Americans were still wary of central state authority
amassing too much power, and therefore refrained from enabling the national state to participate in planning or erecting a national infrastructure system. Further, this early rail support
also always stressed the centrality of private actors in railroad construction. Americans were
not interested in a publicly constructed and operated railroads. Instead, local government
resources were only used as a “seed,” to provide starting investment and support to launch
private rail enterprizes.
The American approach to rail development represents a “middle way” between the
French and British approaches. Like the French, the Americans utilized state power to foster
rail growth. However, American rail support only came from sub-national governments, and
not from the central state. In addition, like the British, Americans believed strongly that
private actors should do the bulk of rail construction and operation. However, unlike the
British, Americans still turned to political institutions to jump-start their rail infrastructure.
However, the underlying question that emerges is: was supporting railroads through local
support of private companies the best policy choice to encourage successful rail development
in the antebellum United States?
French Rail Construction
In contrast to the American approach to railroad development, which emphasized local
governments nurturing private rail companies through subsidy, the French government engaged in a significantly more centralized railroad promotion endeavor. In France, the state
essentially planned the national rail system, directing all trunk lines towards Paris. In addition, French railroads were heavily supported by state funds and subject to considerable
state oversight (Dobbin, 1997; Doukas, 1945; Ratcliffe, 1973). The strong hand of the state
in French railroads reflects a much different history and political culture than the United
States. The American political system is marked by its fragmented federal form and a dis-
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7
trust of central authority. Political life in France, by contrast, is centered around a strong
state bureaucracy led by well-trained technocrats. When it came to railroads, the French
state possessed both the legitimacy and the engineering talent necessary to erect a capable
rail system.
The centralized planning of the rail system was not a new approach to infrastructure
for the French government. Earlier infrastructure systems, such as canals and turnpikes,
were also closely overseen by the state.2 The French were seeking a coherent infrastructure
system, that effectively connected Paris to the hinterlands and integrated new technology,
such as rail, with extant canal and turnpike systems (C. O. Smith, 1990). French political
leaders believed that the state and its highly trailed corps of engineers were best suited
to this task for two reasons. First, the French government believed that state engineers
would identify the most efficient routes. The state turned to engineers to plan the quickest
and most necessary routes, while at the same time avoiding redundant lines or unnecessary
detours. The French pursuit of efficiency in the national rail system possessed a very specific
definition, as evidenced by the three major planning goals of French rail engineers. First,
French engineers sought to connect the periphery as directly as possible with Paris (Dobbin,
1997). In pursuit of reaching Paris, French railroads rarely altered from a direct course, often
leading engineers to bypass smaller towns along the way (Dunham, 1941).3 . Second, lateral
connections were minimized in the national rail system. Thus, major rail routes converged
on Paris, but there were few major rail lines that branched across the central trunks lines.
In other words, it was easy to get to Paris from anywhere in the France. But to reach other
regions of the country, a traveler could not move “sideways,” and was instead first forced to
travel to Paris. Finally, there was no transport built through Paris. Trunk lines from rural
areas tended to terminate at their own, individual terminals once arriving at the capital.
2
This does not mean that private actors did not matter for the earliest French infrastructure. For instance,
some early canals were planned and funded by private actors (Pilkington, 1973).
3
British rail engineers also favored straight roads, in large part to minimize the capital spent on purchasing
expensive land. Since labor was cheap in Britain, more funds could be spent on workers to tunnel through
hills or level grades than in land. Only American railroads meandered widely, in part because of how cheap
land was in North America (Schivelbusch, 1986)
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Hence, France’s central planning of railroads by state engineers produced a rail system that
very consciously served to link the country primarily though the political center.
The second reason the French relied on state engineers in national rail planning was that
the French perceived infrastructure as a political project, with real policy significance beyond
the provision of infrastructure itself. The French sought to use the rail system as a nation
building, with the hope that well-constructed rail routes would both enhance national defense
and cultural unity (Dobbin, 1997, 108-112). This belief that railroads, and infrastructure
generally, served a broader political goal was evident in the choices French rail engineers
made. Railroads were seen as foundational to the French economy and defense strategies.
As a result, French engineers believed that no cost should be spared when building railroads.
Since the state is less sensitive to cost than private actors, it seemed only reasonable to French
leaders to use state resources to construct the rail system (Dobbin, 1997). When French rail
planning began, it was directed by Victor Legrand, who called upon Louis Navier to lead
the planning efforts. Navier believed “a transport line was a public service - its utility not
measured by Adam Smith’s direct returns but by indirect ones” (C. O. Smith, 1990, 668-669).
In other words, infrastructure value is measured by the improvements it offers in moving more
goods faster than before, not by its direct construction costs. Reflecting this concern, French
railroads were built with low grades, and very wide turns. The intention of this approach was
to allow early, but weak, steam engines to carry a great deal of tonnage. French engineers
assumed that when engine strength improved, French locomotives would simply pull still
longer trains at even higher speeds. In addition, French construction materials were of the
highest quality: bridges were never constructed from wood, but instead from stone, despite
the higher cost (Dobbin, 1997; Dunham, 1941). Hence, the French belief that infrastructure
held a central position in the state’s economic and political affairs is stressed not just by the
stressing of efficiency the policy of central planning, but also by the expense the state bore
to build its rail system.
In practice, the French rail system was not entirely controlled by the state. Private
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finance also provided funding for many railroads. Further, private companies laid the track,
actually operated the railroads, and constructed the rail stations. Additionally, while the
central state built most of the railroads, local governments did finance smaller routes that
connected their locales to the major trunk lines (Dobbin, 1997). Yet, while the French rail
system was not built entirely by the national government, the national state was undeniably
the hand on the rudder. The French rail strategy, with its emphasis on rational planning,
offers real advantages in terms of efficiency. But, as we will discuss below, French railroad
development was imperfect. The French were actually slow to begin building railroads,
due to a preoccupation with canals, and rail construction in southern France often lagged
(Dunham, 1941; Landes, 1969). Given these shortcomings, whether France’s central planning
was a better approach to rail development than the United States’ local government approach
of the disinvested stance or the British remains remains an open question.
British Rail Construction
While the American approach to rail development attempted to balance private investment alongside local government action and the French preferred a strong central approach to
rail promotion, the British stance on railroads relied staunchly on private firms and individual liberty. In Britain, rail companies were the sole providers of rail funding and construction
efforts throughout the 19th century. Compared to the American interest in elevating political
communities through robust local governments, the British approach stressed laissez-faire
methods that defended individual liberty and the independence of firms.
While the British state had the option to publicly fund or even purchase railroads, those
options were never exercised. Instead, all British rail funding and planning was carried out
by private actors working on their own terms (Carlson, 1969; Dobbin, 1997; Paris, 1965;
Simmons, 1978). Reflecting this preference for private railroad construction, the earliest
British railroads actually began as entirely private affairs. Specifically, the first British
rails appeared on private land to serve immediate work needs, such as moving coal from
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a mine or helping move produce across property, rather than as a means of national or
even regional transportation infrastructure (Simmons, 1978). Quite quickly, the British
rail system grew from these private roads into a national system that moved freight and
goods across the island. The British reliance on private firms produced a great number of
rail companies, which went through mergers, bankruptcies, and other chaotic periods but
nonetheless managed to develop a dense, efficient rail network (Simmons, 1978).
While the British Parliament was “hands-off” in terms of funding and planning the
emerging rail system, this should not suggest that the British government wholly ignored
railroads. Parliament granted all corporate charters, though those charters were granted
easily and any rules demanded by the charters were easily evaded. Further, Parliament
required incorporating railroads to possess 10%, and later 5%, of necessary capital before
granting a charter (Dobbin, 1997). Finally, charters did provide rail companies with “right
of way” access on some private lands, as part of the state’s efforts to foster the public good
with improved national infrastructure. But, beyond this small gesture, the British state was
not involved in funding, securing loans for, or otherwise planning its nascent rail system
(Dobbin, 1997).
In Britain, rather than promoting railroads, the state was more heavily invested in rail
regulation after lines were constructed. The British Parliament was particularly interested
in safety regulations, especially for poorer travelers traveling in the most economical rail
cars. In addition, the Parliament required every railroad company to run one train per day
that not only stopped at every station but also charged only one penny per mile (Dobbin,
1997). Hence, the British state incorporated the status of the individual traveler alongside
its concern for defending firms’ freedom when working to protect individual liberty as it
related to railroads.
In spite of an interest in rail regulation, the British state’s approach to railroad promotion diverges wildly from French and American tactics. The British relied heavily on private
firms, acting essentially on their own, in order to provide its national rail system. The French
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turned to state engineers and a great deal of national financial support to build a rail system
that directly served overt political needs. In the United States, local governments worked
in concert with private agents to patch together a frontier railroad. Significantly, the policy
approach of each nation flowed from its unique political culture, suggesting underlying logics
that drive each nation’s method for solving any number of policy problems (1997). This
diversity of approaches to railroad development underscores the lack of a single, rational
policy on which nation-states converged when addressing infrastructure, or any other policy,
problems. Instead, state building resulted form an intersection of parochial ideas on rationality, which are defined by context as much as universal principles, with the rise of new
policy problems. While, building from Dobbin, we may recognize that each state is locked
into an approach to industrial policy that it cannot easily shake, due to local conceptions of
rationality, we are still left wondering: are all of these strategies for establishing a rail system
equally effective? Specifically, in the case of the American approach to railroad development,
we are forced to wonder whether the fragmented strategy of relying on local governments
and private companies was the best choice in a frontier nation strapped for both financing
and technical expertise.
Comparing Rail Policy Effectiveness
The first step in comparing and contrasting the rail policies of the United States,
France, and Britain is defining a reasonable and transparent set of measures and analytic
tools. When analyzing a policy, our primary focus is a policy’s outcomes, or the actual
changes in a society that result due to the policy’s enaction. Ideally, policy measures should
capture the full range of a policy’s outcome, addressing multiple aspects of benefits and costs
of implementation (Munger, 2000; Poister, 2003; Wheelan, 2011). However, policy analysis
faces a critical hurdle. Namely, there are not clearly identified upon standards for evaluating
whether a policy is achieving its desired outcomes (Stone, 2002; J. Q. Wilson, 1968). Any
policy program, once put into action, produces a number of outputs, both direct and indirect.
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The difficulty in policy analysis is determining which of these outputs best describes the
policy’s intent, as well as the most accurate means of measuring any agreed upon outputs
(Volden, Ting, & Carpenter, 2008; Heckman & Krueger, 2003; Stone, 2002; J. Q. Wilson,
1968). In light of these methodological issues, successfully investigating British, French,
and American railroads policy requires first identifying a series of comprehensive, accurate
measures that fully describe the impact of each state’s rail policy on national infrastructure
quality.
With the limitations of policy measurement in mind, my approach to analyzing the
rail policy success of British, French, and American approaches will hinge on using a number
of self-evident measures. At their core, all of my policy metrics for determining effective
rail development will be based around the penetration of rail lines into the hinterland.4 My
primary measure of rail policy effectiveness is travel time from rural areas to the capital.
However, I will also consider rail density in each country as well as county-level rail access
to the national capital in my policy evaluation. Using a combination of historical studies,
maps, as well as network analysis conducted through geographic information systems (GIS).
With this broad range of measures, I argue a reasonable policy comparison across these three
countries is possible.
The most critical evidence I rely upon is network analysis, performed in ArcGIS.
Through network analysis, specifically a closest facility analysis, I am able to determine
travel time between set points on a transportation network. In this case, I digitized railroads from each country across time. I began with American railroads from 1840, 1850, and
1860 (Carville Earle, 1999). Then, I constructed models of the French rail network in 1845,
1854, and 1878 (Robert M. Schwartz, n.d.). Finally, I built similar networks for British
4
Other possible measures might look at the connectivity between the nation’s capitol and large cities,
or regional administrative sites. However, I focus on overall connectivity, since state authority requires
reasonable control over an entire territory. Without relatively dense penetration into the hinterland, a state
will have a difficult time with defense or extracting any newly discovered resources. While a state may
not control all areas of its hinterland equally, it does strive to have a minimal presence in most locales
(A. T. Smith, 2003)
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railroads for the pre-1845, 1845-1854, 1855-1876, and 1876-1914 periods (Simmons, 1978).5
After digitizing these historical rial routes for each country, I transformed each railroads into
its vertexes. Next, I placed each of these rail routes on the historic maps of its respective
nation (Areas, n.d.; MacGill, 1917; Southall & Burton, n.d.). Then, I determined the center
point of every county in the United States and Britain, and the center points of cantons in
France. In order to complete the network, I constructed straight lines that connected each
county/canton center to the nearest rail vertex (Beyer, 2007). These lines acted as roads, to
“jump” counties/cantons onto the rail network. Finally, I set the travel speed for railroads
at twenty-five miles per hour, and the roads at seven miles per hour.
In order to evaluate policy effectiveness, I chose to focus on determining the travel times
from the hinterlands to each nation’s capital (Paris, London, and Washington D.C.). First, I
looked at the average time from all counties/cantons in each nation to the center. However,
that measure seemed overly blunt. In my second set of analysis, I divided each country into
“quartiles.” Beginning at the center, I selected counties/cantons that fell only in the 25th ,
50th , 75th , and greater than the 75th quartile sections of each country. The quartiles were
determined by measuring the distance from each capital to its most distant border. Then,
a buffer tool in ArcGIS allowed me to separately select out the counties that fell only in
each group. The final result was a set of concentric circles, with each ring encompassing
only counties which fell within that specific category of distance from the capital. For Paris,
the quartile distances from the capital were 0-115 miles, 116-250 miles, 251-345 miles, and
finally greater than 345 miles to the border. In Britain, the quartiles were defined as 0-75
miles, 76-150 miles, 151-225 miles, and greater than 225 miles up to the border. The United
States is problematic, since the country was expanding so rapidly in the early 1800s. Thus,
the distance categories for 1840 are 0-300 miles, 301-600 miles, 601-900 miles and 901-1200
miles. However, in 1850 and 1860 those distances were adjusted to less than and up to
5
These time periods obviously do not overlap perfectly. However, locating accurate 19th century rail
maps for each nation is not easy. Therefore, I went with these established sources for my comparison. While
an imperfect solution, the time periods roughly coincide, and provide a general sense of rail development in
each nation at a concurrent time period.
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675 miles, 676-1350 miles, 1351-2025 miles, and greater than 2025 miles. To provide more
clarity for American rail development, I also conducted a network analysis using the United
States’s 1840 boundaries with the 1850 and 1860 railroads. By providing data for both the
core and the expanded frontier United States, I hope to provide as accurate as a comparison
as possible with England and France.
Of course, examining travel times is not a perfect mechanism by which to measure rail
policy effectiveness. In particular, issues of topography can complicate time travel estimates.
Further, the territorial expansion of the United States muddies any simple comparison across
states. Finally, since we are looking at travel time over such a short period, with only a few
data points for each country, we are unable to even talk very deeply about rates of change
over time. Ultimately, these are travel time comparisons across across countries of very
different size.
However, the attraction of using travel times as our measure of policy effectiveness is
that it gives us a very clear, if somewhat simplified, insight into how each nation’s railroads
were connecting the political capital with more distant sites. While crude, travel time reveals
how easily the state could reach into its periphery. The travel time measure is preferred for its
clarity and starkness. At the very least, an effective rail policy should decrease travel times
between the capital and surrounding areas. Thus, despite its weaknesses, the foundation
of my policy analysis is the travel time measure. Given these benefits of the travel time
measure, the focus of my analysis is travel time improvements within each state over time,
with a consideration of national level improvements both over a state’s entire geography
as well as across each state’s quartile breakdowns. By emphasizing each state’s individual
improvement in transportation quality, relative to the other nations’ successes and setbacks,
while also keeping in mind particular national circumstance, we can at least begin to compare
the effectiveness of each state’s rail development policy.
At first glance, we can compare the actual rail lines constructed in each country. Figure
1 shows the evolution of the American rail system, while Figures 2 and 3 respectively show
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the expansion of the British and French rail systems. From these maps, it is evident that
while each nation undertook very different approaches to building railroads, each nation also
followed a very similar overall pattern of rail development. Namely, each country first built
major trunk lines that pushed away from the capital and deeply into the national territory,
and then slowly more local railroads filled in the gaps. What is also evident from the maps is
how quickly the British rail system developed. In contrast, the French rail system, especially
in the southern regions, fills in considerably more slowly. However, while the United States
does build a reasonable rail system, it is also evident that both France and Britain covered
their own territory more quickly than their American counterpart.
The limits of the American approach to rail development are also evident in looking
at rail travel times. Figure 4 displays overall and quartile travel times from the United
States from 1840-1860. Looking at the raw travel time numbers in Figures 4, 5, and 6, it is
evident that traveling across the United States took much longer than Britain and France.
This, of course, has less to do with the design of the rail system and is almost entirely a
consequence of the United States simply being much physically larger than either of the
other two countries.6 However, when looking at changes in American travel times in Figure
4a, several interesting patterns become apparent. First, overall travel times dips from 1840
to 1850, which we would expect as more rail lines are constructed. However, travel time
spikes in 1860, a function of the country expanding to the West coast and thereby creating
much longer distances to traverse the nation.
While the 1860 spike in travel time is easily explained, the patterns in the quartile
figure are considerably more problematic. Notably, Figure 4b shows travel time actually
increasing from 1840 to 1860 in the first and second quartile. This is surprising, since as
time progresses, more railroads were laid. Therefore, it would seem that travel time should
naturally be decreasing as time moves forward. This increase in travel time occurs because
the nation actually grew in physical size during this time period, so the area defined as the
6
The United States is over 3.7 million square miles. France is slightly more than 260,000 square miles
and the England portion of Britain is approximately a mere 50,000 square miles.
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“first quartile” moved outward. But, the change is fairly small. Travel time for the first
quartile only increased by approximately 760 minutes from 1840 to 1860, while the distance
in miles covered expanded by nearly 400 miles. While the comparison is not perfect, due to
the change in size of the first quartile, this quick contrast does underscore that the antebellum
American rail system - at least in areas nearest the capital - was nonetheless improving at a
reasonable rate through its mixed public/private rail development scheme.
However, what is stark in Figure 4b is what is missing. There are no third or fourth
quartile travel times for 1840, and no quartile travel times for 1850. These gaps appear
since, at least until 1860, the various regional components of the the American rail network
was not fully connected to one another. Regions developed locally dense railroads, but those
rail systems did not always connect into a nationally cohesive railroad infrastructure. While
rail lines close to Washington, D.C. could reach the capital, railroads in other part of the
country simply could not. This does not mean that more distant locales were cut off from
Washington. A network of turnpikes, post roads, canals, rivers, and sea ports still connected
the nation as a whole. However, the rail system - which is prized for its speed and regularity
- still failed to effectively reach much of the country. This is, it must be observed, much
less of a problem in Britain and France. French and British railroads reach their hinterlands
more effectively, and without as many significant gaps in connectivity. While the American
approach to railroads did provide for a fairly robust local rail system, it failed to build
a cohesive national system. This piecemeal infrastructure system raises serious questions
about the American state’s capacity to direct its interest and control its more distant cities,
in comparison with its European counterparts.
Of course, the problem in analyzing the American rail system during this era is that
the country’s geography grew very quickly over these three decades, perhaps faster than
technology and industry could keep pace with in terms of laying rail track. While it is
important to assess the American rail system as it served the country’s true geography,
it is not an unproblematic analytic approach. The problem lies in the fact that neither
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
17
Britain nor France were expanding during this same period. As a result, our comparisons
across all three countries are not wholly controlled if we consider just travel time across the
accurate, entire United States for each time period. Therefore, as a secondary analysis, travel
time changes using just the 1840 American boundaries but with 1850 and 1860 railroads is
insightful. When looking at just the United States core, through analyzing rail connectivity
in 1850 and 1860 with 1840 political boundaries, it is evident that the American approach
to rail development was not wholly a mistaken policy. As indicated by Figure 5a, American
travel times were much lower overall in the core regions of the country than when the
nation as a whole was considered in the first set of analyses. Though still higher than
travel times in Europe, much of this discrepancy between American travel times and travel
times across the Atlantic has more to do with the obviously larger geographic size of North
America.7 However, the American approach to rail development, even in the core, still faced
considerable problems. In particular, as Figure 5b underscores, there is still missing data
for many quartiles over time. Thus, while there were more railroads in the core over time,
not all of those railroads connected to one another. As a result, the nearest railroad to
many counties was not linked up with the Eastern seaboard, and therefore unable to provide
direct travel to Washington, D.C. along the railroads. Instead, travelers and freight would be
required to travel along many means of transit, including turnpikes and waterways. While
the United States did better at developing railroads on the East coast, those lines were still
imperfectly linked together and often did not provide sufficient mileage to reach into all parts
of the country.
The limits of the American approach to rail development stand in starker relief when
7
However, once again, travel times increase from 1840 to 1860 in Figures 5a and 5b. Since geography is
held constant here, this trend is surprising. But, in this instance, the increase in travel time across these
two decades is more a function of an increase in the number of counties with rail access that linked with
Washington. In 1840, many counties that were distant from Washington connected to local rail systems
that were not fully integrated into the East coast rail system, and thus could not reach Washington in the
closest facility analysis. Since those county originating points could not reach the capital, they were dropped
from the analysis. As the railroads throughout the Atlantic states improved, however, more county starting
points could jump onto their local railroads and link with the nation’s capital. Since many of these counties
were quite distant, the end result is an increase in travel time from 1840 to 1860. It should be noted, that
increase is quite small, and still suggests a quite robust railroad in the core.
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
18
contrasted with British and French railroad construction. British rail development is summarized in Figure 6. Given the small size of the isle, British rail travel times are obviously
quickest. More significantly, Figure 6a stresses that British rail development progressed very
quickly over time. Especially in early decades, the slope of the line in Figure 6a is quite steep
- suggesting rapid improvement in the British rail system. Similarly, Figure 6b highlights
both that British rail connectivity consistently improved over time as well as across all four
quartiles. In addition, Figure 6b underscores that, unlike in the United States, from the
earliest pre-1845 railroads, at least some counties in all of the quartiles were able to connect
with London. However, the British system also stresses the limits of rail connectivity, with
improvements in the system essentially leveling out by 1855. This leveling of connectivity
times suggests the British rail system was built quickly and reached maturity fairly rapidly.
The British reliance on private industry building railroads essentially stalled additional rail
construction once major profit-producing routes were built, raising questions of how well
serviced less commercially viable areas were by the national rail system.
The French rail system shows a development pattern somewhere between the United
States and Britain. Given its smaller size in comparison to the United States, French travel
times are considerably lower. But if we look at connectivity patterns, as displayed in Figure
7a, it is clear that France had a spike in travel times during the median year analyzed,
much like what occurred in the United States. Interestingly, the fastest travel era in France
was 1845. Then, travel time increased dramatically in 1854. While trave time dropped
considerably by 1876, it still remained higher than in 1845. Again, as in the United States,
this unusual pattern is generated by a greater number of cantons being connected to the
rail system in later years. These higher travel times reflects more cantons, from further
away, now being able to access Paris via rail and thus driving up the average travel time.
This travel time patterns is a reminder that early French rail development initially failed
to connect many parts of the nation to Paris; it took some years for railroads to reach all
parts of French, especially in the South. Figure 7b is ultimately more telling of French
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
19
rail development. Figure 7b stresses the limits of early French rail development, as cantons
further from Paris in 1845 were simply unable to reach Paris. Most of these cantons were
in France’s underdeveloped southern regions. However, if we look at quartile connections
over time, the consistent improvement of the French rail system is obvious. The French
rail system also had a distinct advantage that is not captured in this network model: since
the French rail system was overseen by the vigilant central state, there was a single rail
gauge used throughout the country. British and American systems were both plagued by
multiple rail gauges, which meant that freight needed to be moved from rail car to rail car
in order to “jump” to a new network (Dobbin, 1997). Therefore, in some ways, the French
rail system was even more effective than the British or American networks since time was
saved by not having to change trains due to gauge issues. Across the board, the travel
time analysis suggests that the American response to rail development was insufficient: the
United States was simply less successful at internal connectivity than France and Britain.
Even from the perspective of the 1840-only boundaries, American rail transit still lagged
behind its European counterparts.
While the raw travel time data gives us the widest picture of rail development in
each country, it complicates cross-national comparisons since geography confounds controlled
analysis. In order to more directly compare rail development progress, it is useful to examine
each country’s relative year to year percent improvement in rail transit travel time. Tables
1-4 summarize percent change in travel time for the United States, England, and France.
Travel time improvements were calculated based on a percent change from time period to
time period, rather than against an initial baseline. Given the small sample of rail networks,
there are only two periods of change for the United States and France, while England has
three. By comparing percent change, even with such a small sample, a better sense of change
across time, divorced from differences in travel time created by geographic size of each nation,
can be established. Tables 3 and 4 underscore the conclusions reached from the raw data:
France and England both made exceptional and early strides in improving rail connectivity
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
20
very early. The United States, on the other hand, struggled. Table 1 illuminates a real
lack of progress on American railroads by 1860 when considering the entirety of the early
United States. To adjust for this, Table 2 reports improvements in travel times for just
areas within the 1840 boundaries over the relevant decades. When contrasted with Table
1, Table 2 underscores the significant increases in rail development that unfolded in just
the Northeastern corner of the United States: in the Eastern core, rail improvements were
unfolding at a noticeably quicker rate than when rail improvements across the nation as a
whole. But even with that said, even within only the 1840 boundaries, American progress
on rail development was considerably behind that of France and Britain.
Through this point, my analysis has stressed travel time as a mechanism to ascertain
rail quality. However, since the rail networks are a stylized model of connectivity in each
country, they are an imperfect measure of actual transportation infrastructure. Therefore,
it is useful to supplement the travel time analysis with additional measures. First, as an
exceptionally transparent measure, it is useful to consider the density of rail networks in each
state. Towards this end, Table 5 summarizes rail miles per square mail in each country across
time. From Table 5, both the geographic and policy problems the United States faced become
very stark. In the early decades of rail development, the American fragmented approach to
rail promotion lagged behind England but was actually performing better than French efforts.
By 1850, however, the United States was suddenly lagging well behind both England and
France in railroads per square mile. This drop off, though, is due to the massive increase in
the physical territory of the United States by 1850, as evidenced in Figure 1. However, by the
1860s and 1870s, it is clear that England is the clear winner in building a dense rail network,
with a France a struggling second. The United States’s rail development, on the other hand,
increases only marginally by the end of the antebellum period, at least as measured through
rail density. Even if the United States’s boundaries are held constant at their 1840 edges,
the American approach to rail development still lagged substantially behind its European
counterparts. Table 5 indicates not only the exceptional success the British had in early rail
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
21
development, but also the particular limits of the American approach to railroad support.
The highly divided, local approach Americans took to support their railroads seemed able
to foster a capable rail network in a smaller country. But, once the United States expanded
into a continental power, this fractured, uncoordinated approach to railroad development
was simply unable to keep pace with the nation’s actual need.
In the same vein as rail density in each nation, another useful mechanism to gauge the
success of national rail policy is to consider what proportion of a country’s counties/cantons
can access the capital through the rail system in a given year. Analyzing the proportion of
counties with access to the capital is a useful measure, since it is both transparent and less
sensitive to geography. Presumably, states have an interest in being able to reach into the
bulk of their political subunits as a means of enforcing rules, gathering information, extracting resources, or defending interests. As seen in Figure 8, the United States lagged behind
both France and Britain in being able to reach all of its component counties. Britain was
particularly aggressive in rail development, with every nearly every county being connected
to London by 1850. France is not as successful as Britain in connecting Paris to outlying
counties, but Figure 8 displays that the French rail system in 1854 was already essentially
equivalent to the American rail system from four years later in 1860. While the United States
system was surely more complete, in terms of county/capital connections by 1870, neither
France nor Britain were also never as poorly connected as the United States was in 1840 and
1850. Just examining county access for the U.S. 1840 boundaries reveals that only 0.057%
of American counties could reach D.C. in 1850 through railroads. That percentage did raise
to 0.88 by 1860, but that’s roughly commensurate with the value for the entire 1860 surface
area of the United States. Even after handicapping the rail analysis to the United States’s
advantage, it is very evident that hands-off, split-up approach the American state took to
rail development was sorely lacking. Much as with the other measures, the capital/county
access data summarized in Figure 8 suggests the American approach to rail development
was lacking in a fundamental way.
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
22
Context and Rail Planning
Comparing national rail development policies is an exceptionally difficult task. Countries vary wildly in terms of historical context, institutional structure, resources, and topography. However, by comparing three Western nations, which underwent rail development
and industrialization at roughly the same period, we control for at least some of these most
glaring confounding factors. From this comparison, we consistently come to the same conclusion: the United States rail policy of using local promotion was lacking in some way.
Rail times were slow, and many areas lacked access to the capital. A reliance on local rail
promotion meant that many places that tried and failed to engage in local rail promotion,
as commonly occurred in the Western frontier, lacked quality transportation infrastructure
(Stover, 1975). Simply put, the United States was unable to match the rail production of
its European counterparts.
However, the relatively poor performance of the United States on rail construction
should not lead us to the more extreme conclusion that American states and cities were
terrible at rail promotion. The United States did, after all, build a national rail system
primarily through local aid and private corporations. In addition, the United States faced
real barriers to rail construction. First, railroads are expensive and technically difficult to
erect. America in the 19th century lacked capital and technical expertise, outside of military
engineers that were initially less than enthused with railroads (Angevine, 2004). Second,
the United State’s political structure complicated the process of building a national rail
system. Most notably, the U.S. Constitution, while not placing an absolute limit of federal
action, certainly complicated national efforts to intervene on internal improvements (Larson,
2001). Additionally, federalism not only limited national action, it also complicated statelevel planning and coordination by introducing droves of state legislatures - instead of a single
unitary state - into the planning process. The multitude of governments, both national and
state, working in the rail problem in the United States ultimately squandered resources
and restricted careful planning across jurisdictions. Finally, empirical space was the largest
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
23
obstacle to the flourishing of the antebellum American rail system. The early United States
was a massive country by European standards, and much of it was still frontier filled with
often (rightfully) hostile natives. When considering the rail development that occurred at the
nation’s political center, it is evident that antebellum American rail policy not a wholesale
failure. Rather, the fragmented approach to rail development was simply in appropriate
for an expanding frontier nation. The fragmented approach to rail development, with its
reliance on private companies and local governments, seemed reasonably capable of building
railroads in denser, wealthier regions. But, once the scope of the railroads expanded to a
continental scale, this divided approach to rail policy was simply unable to keep up with the
realities of geography. To sum up, the conditions that early American railroads were built
in were, to say the least, demanding and not easily overcome through any policy.
But, even with these caveats, we can still perceive shortcomings in the early American
approach to railroads. Of course, this conclusion just leads us to the question of: what type
of policy should early American policy makers have implemented instead of local support? If
we were to look at France and Britain’s rail journey, we might come to the conclusion that the
early United State should have emulated the laissze faire approach of the British Parliament
given the rapid growth of the British rail system. But this is dubious comparison, and a
flawed conclusion: it is impossible to ignore the contextual difference between the antebellum
United States and Britain when evaluating rail policy. Britain had a less severe terrain, a
smaller area to cover, more capital, a well-established state, and technical skill. The United
States found itself in the exact opposite situation, with less capital, a large continent with
mountainous terrain to address, and a dearth of engineered. Due to these advantageous
differences, Britain - unlike the United States - could rely on private firms for its railroad
development. The United States, lacking many of these advantages, was hardly in a position
to place necessary internal improvements projects wholly into private hands. In terms of
pure central planning, this would also have been a dubious course. As indicated in Table 5,
the French rail approach to rail support was hardly a run away success, even when compared
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
24
with Americans’ faltering, initial forays into rail development. Further, as mentioned above,
the federal government in the United States lacked the legal power and political legitimacy
to take such a hands-on and direct approach to infrastructure construction in the antebellum
period.
What is the conclusion, then, in terms of a hindsight transportation policy recommendation for antebellum Americans? Put in the bluntest terms, the federal state should have
supported more rail development sooner. To be clear, the United States could not have
emulated the strong state approach of France. As indicated above, legal limits, imposed by
the Constitution, as well as cultural limits that were wary of central authority made such
a bold action impossible in the United States. As Dobbin advocates, culture shapes policy
responses to even the most identical of social problems (1997). Further ,regional conflict
among states - driven primarily by fear of economic advantage that federal action would
impart on some states while others went without - would also have stalled any strong federal
action on a handful of key railroad routes. Hence, we could not expect Washington, D.C.,
operating in a context that disapproved of central authority, to dictate national rail planning or direct its construction. However, federal support could have come in other forms,
including land grants, direct subsidy, and technical assistance much earlier than it did. In
particular, small packages of federal aid, spread across many states, regularly received support in the antebellum Congress and could have been a useful jolt to many early American
rail plans (Wallis & Weingast, 2005).
Significantly, federal action on railroads (especially of the small, widely dispersed variety) was hardly impossible during the antebellum era. By 1850 the federal government
provided a series of land grants for railroads in the Midwest and South. By 1862, Congress
and the President approved the Pacific Railroad Acts, which offered land and bonds to support a railroad to the West coast. Thus, only two decades after rail development began as a
solely local affair, federal action was far-reaching and sizable. In these few short years, there
was not a massive transformation of American character. The Civil War, which removed
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
25
Southern opposition to national action on internal improvements, along with the growing
problem of reaching the distant coast in an expanding nation were key concerns that paved
the way for national action. However, while these are critical moments in American political
history, it is not clear that either the Civil War or Western expansion along with Manifest
Destiny could account for a major sea change in American transportation policy, much less
an entire political culture as defined by Dobbin. It seems more plausible that federal action
on infrastructure was possible from the earliest days of American railroading. But a lack
of interest on the part of political elites combined with an unwillingness of local leaders to
compromise on federal rail plans shut the door to federally supported railroads during the
nascent period of American railroading. This early, mistaken policy choice led to evident
shortcomings in the American rail system that hobbled state building by slowing the transport of goods and people, especially in comparison to French and British transit systems. It
was these gaps in the American rail system which actually led Congress to engage with the
rail development problem in 1850.
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Figure 1. United States Rail Routes, 1840-1860
(a) 1840
(b) 1850
(c) 1860
Table 1: American Improvement in Travel Time with Expanding Boundaries, 1850 and 1860
Area
First Quartile
Second Quartile
Third Quartile
Fourth Quartile
Complete
1850 1860
-8% 129%
-11% 356%
Table 2: American Improvement in Travel Time with 1840 Boundaries, 1850 and 1860
Area
First Quartile
Second Quartile
Third Quartile
Fourth Quartile
Complete
1850 1860
-8% 34%
-11% 229%
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
Figure 2. English Rail Routes, pre-1845-1914
(a) pre-1845
(b) 1845-1855
(c) 1855-1876
(d) 1877-1914
Figure 3. French Rail Routes, 1845-1878
(a) 1845
(b) 1854
(c) 1878
30
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
Figure 4. United States Travel Times with Expanding Boundaries, 1840-1860
(a) Total Travel Time
(b) Quartile Travel Time
Table 3: English Improvement in Travel Time, 1845 - 1877
Area
First Quartile
Second Quartile
Third Quartile
Fourth Quartile
Complete
1845
-25%
-27%
-24%
-23%
-26%
1855 1877
-28% -3%
-17% -2%
-15% -2%
-13% 0%
-17% -2%
Table 4: French Improvement in Travel Time, 1854 and 1876
Area
First Quartile
Second Quartile
Third Quartile
Fourth Quartile
Complete
1854
-27%
-31%
-44%
13%
1876
-25%
-30%
-24%
-10%
-8%
31
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
Figure 5. United States Travel Times with 1840 Boundaries, 1840-1860
(a) Total Travel Time
(b) Quartile Travel Time
Figure 6. England Travel Times, pre-1845-1914
(a) Total Travel Time
(b) Quartile Travel Times
32
EVALUATING ANTEBELLUM RAILROADS
33
Figure 7. France Travel Times, 1845-1878
(a) Total Travel Time
(b) Quartile Travel Time
Figure 8. Proportion of Counties/Cantons with Access to Capital Via Railroad
Table 5: Rail Density (Miles per Square Mile) in the United States, France, and England, 1840-1877
Country
United States
U.S. (1840 Boundaries)
England
France
1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s
0.0027 0.0025 0.0083
0.0027 0.0068 0.023
0.039
0.12
0.21
0.28
0.017 0.010
0.046