the Confederacy and much of the inland navigation system, including Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries and the Mississippi-Ohio River systems. Superiority in both land and water transportation was an important factor in the ultimate victory of the Union armies, and this advantage increased as the war went on. The North was able not only to maintain its railroads to carry increased war traffic, but to extend them as well; while the South was barely able to keep its railroads operating.
Mississippi River Steamboats
Important as the railroads were to the strategic conduct of the war by both armies, the day-to-day military operations for the most part followed the wagon roads, and, as in earlier wars, the condition of the roads influenced the outcome of military operations. The most famous example of this was Burnside’s disastrous “mud march” of 1863, described by a participant:
. . . thousands of the boys in blue, after horses and mules could do no more in pulling the pontoon wagons that must be gotten through to the Rappahannock, to build the bridge on which the army was to cross, were put on the ropes to tug and pull, and pull and tug, hour after hour, and way into the night; but they were Virginia roads, and it was no use; so after days and days of mud and rain the campaign was abandoned, and, worn and weary, we marched back to our old camps at Falmouth and beyond, and in passing saw the greetings of the ‘Johnnies’ over the river in Fredericksburg, on a banner bearing the cheerful legend ‘Burnside stuck in the mud.’ . . .
Yes, we have helped to build corduroy roads in war times, when it had grown cold enough to freeze the mud so as to bear a soldier’s weight, and more than once we have built right over the body of a horse or mule, that had gone down to rise no more.[1]
In the theater of operations, the common roads suffered severely from heavy military traffic and scanty maintenance. Collection of tolls was virtually impossible on the Southern turnpikes; while surface wear, erosion, and damage to bridges and toll houses hastened their bankruptcy.
Postwar Railroad—Steamboat Competition
During the war, a large number of steamboats were built at inflated prices to carry troops and military supplies on the Mississippi Eiver and its tributaries. When normal commerce was resumed after the war, less than half of these vessels were able to find profitable employment.
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- ↑ M. Whitehead, A Word From The National Grange, Good Roads, Vol. 1, No. 1, Jan. 1892, pp. 82, 83.
