Blog Discussion: Growth in the Postbellum Economy
There is, perhaps, no better bellwether of the postbellum American economy and life than the railroad. Even the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, tying the nation’s coasts together, can quite easily be seen as a desire to reunite what had been divided earlier that same decade, even as the Reconstruction Era was reaching its apex. The comparison of rail networks throughout the American West and the South – the former a region that had not previously been integrated into a national rail network, the latter a region whose rail network had been largely disrupted by the war – provides an excellent insight into the postbellum reliance on rail and its effects on the broader American economy and quality of life.
For the sake of this analysis, growth will be evaluated through the following metrics: raw length of rail, passengers transported, tonnage shipped, and employees hired – all in comparison to the national total. Several economic histories and statistical analyses of United States railroads (particularly postbellum) exist and provide helpful resources to bolster the discussion. The most useful primary source to get a picture of the overall impact of these regional industries’ growth is the Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, conducted by Henry C. Adams for the Department of the Interior. This source in particular gives detailed breakdowns of growth, profit, loss, and change in the railroad industry from 1880 to 1890. This analysis will refer to this census report’s groupings, as many of the statistics are broken down by regional group rather than by individual state/territory. [1]
Regarding westward expansion, the push to unite the West Coast with the rest of the Union took place beginning in 1863, with the construction of the Central Pacific railroad starting in Sacramento and the Union Pacific starting in Omaha. [2] While this work would not be completed until six years later in 1869, the ramifications were immediately apparent – rail lines along the West Coast, though nascent, grew precipitously as the century drew to a close. In California alone, the raw mileage of track doubled from 1880 to 1890, from 2,177 miles to 4,356. [3] While all 19 states/territories expanded their rail lines during this period by at least 30%, only 4 fell short of growing by 100%. [4] Montana, for example, grew from a mere 18 miles in 1880 to over 2100 miles a decade later. While not the only important metric in growth, the raw mileage demonstrates the rapid influx of rail construction in this single decade and the “shrinking” of America by bolstering transcontinental trade.
Antebellum rail networks in the South already languished behind that of the North, and a Confederate disdain for federal aid to what was seen as private enterprise meant that federal funds were not initially allocated for the development of rail lines in the nascent Confederate States of America (though such CSA improvement did take place). [5] The war required heavy use and rapid expansion of existing southern railroads, but would ultimately see them almost completely ruined: railroads were consistently destroyed by retreating Confederate armies for the sake of hampering the Union advance, [6] and Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea in 1864 targeted Southern rail lines as part of his scorched earth campaign. [7]
Within the South, growth was quite steady throughout the postbellum era. While the percentages of growth are not nearly as dramatic as those out west, growth in these regions should not be underestimated. Every state of the twelve included in “southern” groups on the 1890 census experienced a growth of their rail network by 50% over the preceding decade, and four of these – namely, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas – show growth of more than 100%. [8]
Comparing the two directly, the results are mixed. By 1890, western states/territories outgrew total rail miles in the South by almost 8,000 miles, [9] but the two remained fairly evenly-paced regarding employment: the South employed slightly more workers (119,424) than the West (118,835). [10] In terms of tonnage shipped, the South remained very more competitive: while the West shipped 55 million tons of commodities and goods, the South totaled just shy of 75 million. [11] It should be noted, however, that both regions still lagged heavily behind the rest of the nation – these two regions combined only totaled 20% of the nation’s total tonnage shipped in 1890; the Mid-Atlantic states (New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, etc.) almost doubled this percentage of combined tonnage alone in this same year. [12]
However, regarding passenger transportation, western rail lines outpaced their southern counterparts; southern railroads transported roughly 70,000, while western railroads totaled close to 90,000 passengers in 1890. [13] With this distinction, the different regional focuses become apparent – the southern lines were much more heavily focused on industry and shipping commodities, whereas western lines catered to transporting passengers (almost certainly along the new transcontinental routes). While the entire nation’s rail moved over 400,000 people during this timeframe, the two regions comprise a much more sizable portion of the nation’s passengers (40%) than its tonnage. The transportation of passengers across the Great Plains into the western states/territories makes a great amount of sense, as more settlers, visitors, and travelers had easy access to a territory that had previously only been sparsely populated. The southern focus on shipping commodities (cotton, agriculture, coal, etc.) also makes sense, as mature production systems already existed in these states and could more readily benefit from being integrated into a transportation network.
It is unfortunate that, despite comprehensive breakdowns of national profitability of the entire rail industry by several different metrics, no regional/sectional breakdown is given in the census report. Such would an analysis would have aided in a much more definitive statement regarding these two regions’ contributions to the growth of the national economy. However, the report does include an overview of the gross income of the railroad industry in America which offers general insight to the industry’s profitability to the nation. In 1880, the railroad industry saw gross earnings of $580,450,594.24 (equivalent to $17.5 billion today); in 1890, the same industry reported earnings of $1,074,104,550.13 ($32.3 billion in 2024). [14] While by no means responsible completely for this growth, the explosion of the rail industry in the South and West certainly helped contribute to this maturation of the market.
Altogether, the regional growth of railroads in the latter half of the nineteenth century is very eye-opening. While neither the West or South comprised a majority of the industry’s national profit, the clear growth and maturation in both regions, while different, is palpable. The West as a largely untapped region presented a new market that rapidly matured, showing explosive growth in raw mileage as well as having a slight edge on passenger transportation over the South; while not as exponential, the still sizable expansion of the southern rail lines and its heavy focus on commerce also demonstrates an attempt to recover and reconstruct the southern economy. The railroad would help tie the nation together culturally, informationally, technologically, and economically, and therefore help provide an excellent insight into the growth of the postbellum American economy.
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The “West” refers to Group VII: part of North Dakota, part of South Dakota, Nebraska, part of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana; Group VIII: part of Missouri, Kansas, part of Colorado, part of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Indian territory, and Arkansas; and Group X: part of New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
Henry C. Adams, Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895), 3.
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