John W. Garrett and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4214-2220-6
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 416 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 717 g

How John W. Garrett and the B&O Railroad he headed for twenty-six years helped to transform America by linking the nation.

Chartered in 1827 as the country’s first railroad, the legendary Baltimore and Ohio played a unique role in the nation’s great railroad drama and became the model for American railroading. John W. Garrett, who served as president of the B&O from 1858 to 1884, ranked among the great power brokers of the time. In this gripping and well-researched account, historian Kathleen Waters Sander tells the story of the B&O’s beginning and its unprecedented plan to build a rail line from Baltimore over the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River, considered to be the most ambitious engineering feat of its time. The B&O’s success ignited “railroad fever” and helped to catapult railroading to America’s most influential industry in the nineteenth century.

Taking the B&O helm during the railroads’ expansive growth in the 1850s, Garrett soon turned his attention to the demands of the Civil War. Sander explains how, despite suspected Southern sympathies, Garrett became one of President Abraham Lincoln's most trusted confidantes and strategists, making the B&O available for transporting Northern troops and equipment to critical battles. The Confederates attacked the B&O 143 times, but could not put “Mr. Lincoln’s Road” out of business. After the war, Garrett became one of the first of the famed Gilded Age tycoons, rising to unimagined power and wealth. Sander explores how—when he was not fighting fierce railroad wars with competitors—Garrett steered the B&O into highly successful entrepreneurial endeavors, quadrupling track mileage to reach important commercial markets, jumpstarting Baltimore’s moribund postwar economy, and constructing lavish hotels in Western Maryland to open tourism in the region.

Sander brings to life the brazen risk-taking, clashing of oversized egos, and opulent lifestyles of the Gilded Age tycoons in this richly illustrated portrait of one man’s undaunted efforts to improve the B&O and advance its technology. Chronicling the epic technological transformations of the nineteenth century, from rudimentary commercial trade and primitive transportation westward to the railroads’ indelible impact on the country and the economy, John W. Garrett and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is a vivid account of Garrett’s twenty-six-year reign.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sander, Kathleen Waters

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Regional- & Stadtgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue: Taking Hold of the Throttle

Part One: To the West: 1790-1861
Chapter 1: The Whole Population is in Motion: 1790-1828
Chapter 2: A Flourishing Condition: 1828-1840
Chapter 3: An Era of Fine Pickings: 1840-1855
Chapter 4: The Race to the Ohio: 1852-1858
Chapter 5: The Personification of Firmness: 1858-1860
Chapter 6: Railroad Competition and Coordination—and Political Division: 1858-1861

Part Two "Mr. Lincoln's Road": 1861-1865
Chapter 7: In the Thick of the Struggle: 1861
Chapter 8: A Southern Line No More: 1862-1863
Chapter 9: The Right Arm of the Federal Government: 1863-1865

Part Three: Empire Building and Collapse: 1866-1915
Chapter 10: A New World Order: 1866-1871
Chapter 11: Go West, Railroad President—and South: 1868-1873
Chapter 12: The Czar of Maryland: 1866-1873
Chapter 13: The Storm Is Upon You: 1873-1877
Chapter 14: His Willpower Remained Unimpaired: 1878-1883
Chapter 15: Final Battles: 1880-1884
Chapter 16: After Garrett: 1884-1915

Epilogue
Essay on Sources
Acknowledgements

Über Autor(innen)

Sander, Kathleen Waters
Kathleen Waters Sander teaches history at the University of Maryland Global Campus. She is author of The Business of Charity: The Woman's Exchange Movement, 1832–1900 and John W. Garrett and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Kathleen Waters Sander teaches history at the University of Maryland University College. She is the author of The Business of Charity: The Woman’s Exchange Movement, 1832–1900 and Mary Elizabeth Garrett: Society and Philanthropy in the Gilded Age.