Early advertisement for the new railroad.
Of all the railroads involved in the vast logistic problems of the Civil War, the L & N occupied a unique situation. Except for the unfinished Mobile & Ohio Railroad, no other major line in the country traversed both a Union state and a Confederate state. Not only the L & N main stem but the Memphis branch as well embraced both Kentucky and Tennessee. As a result the company inhabited a physical and emotional no-man’s land. It had to participate in the War Between the States but it also had to exist in some state between the war. Like the Union itself, the L & N was split down the middle. In its desperate endeavor to keep afloat, the company found itself fighting, in very different ways, both the North and the South. In the end it profited both from northern victory and southern defeat.
The Civil War was the first modern war Americans fought, the first in which the nation’s burgeoning technology was to play a critical role. Efficient mobilization of the resources on both sides required a cohesive transportation system to move men and supplies. For this task the railroads assumed primary strategic importance, and those lines located directly in war zones assumed even greater value. To the side possessing them they offered a distinct tactical advantage; to the enemy they became prime targets for destruction. In either case the burden on the hapless company threatened to become intolerable. For the L & N, which had to choose sides even before confronting these problems, there existed the real possibility that the company would be destroyed or ruined financially before either belligerent could protect it.
During such perilous times, the company sorely needed strong, cunning leadership. It received exactly that from James Guthrie and his able lieutenant, Albert Fink. For the first few months after Sumter Guthrie walked a narrow path between the rival governments. The war panic had caused a flood of business in provisions and supplies to move southward from north of the Ohio River. As the only open intersectional road, the L & N was deluged with traffic to the point that Guthrie had to declare a temporary embargo for ten days to clear the line. The huge flow of provisions sparked the rumor that Louisville itself was on the brink of starvation. Alarmed citizens resorted to ripping up L & N track south of the city to prevent shipments. To thwart these zealots Guthrie put armed guards on the trains until the panic subsided.
As long as Kentucky tried to remain neutral, Guthrie cannily kept the lines of trade open in both directions. The Confederate government objected in principle but recognized that the overwhelming majority of traffic moved south and so said nothing. Considerable complaint about the company’s avarice arose among Unionists in Kentucky and elsewhere, but Lincoln permitted the trade to continue because he understood the importance of the border states and avoided any possible confrontation with them. The anomalous status of the border states complicated many issues, and none more so than trade regulations.
If Lincoln was willing to be flexible, others were not. On May 2, 1861, the Treasury Department forbade the carrying of munitions and provisions to the Confederacy. At first the company, its customers, and the government alike virtually ignored the order, but on July 11 a federal circuit court decision reinforced it. While the Louisville Courier argued that abolition of the contraband trade would ruin Louisville, some merchants evaded watchful federal officers in the city by hauling their goods a few miles south by wagon and transferring them to the train in rural privacy.
That very summer, however, the Confederacy forced a decision upon Guthrie. On May 21 the Confederate Congress approved an embargo on cotton shipments to the North; later sugar, rice, tobacco, molasses, syrup, and naval stores were added to the list. Unlike the Federals, the Southerners took an inflexible stand on enforcement. On July 2 Governor Isham G. Harris of Tennessee put an agent on L & N trains in his state to watch for contraband goods. Two days later, without prior notice, Harris seized that portion of the line in Tennessee along with five locomotives, three passenger cars, and about seventy freight cars. To Guthrie’s vehement protests Harris replied that Tennessee owned a legitimate parcel of the company and its assets. Many of the state’s citizens complained that a proper proportion of the L & N’s rolling stock was not being kept and used in Tennessee. It had also been rumored that the company planned to withdraw the remainder of its rolling stock from Tennessee, that federal troops planned to occupy the road, and that it might even be used to invade the state.
During the negotiations Harris offered to allow trains to run unmolested to and from Nashville under specified conditions, but the L & N board declined. Tennessee kept the rolling stock and Guthrie, fearing further confiscations, ceased all operations south of the state line. Stubbornly the company pressed its claim for return of the equipment and compensation for any losses incurred. But the worst was yet to come. On September 17, General Simon Buckner, a native Kentuckian fighting for the South, abruptly seized the Memphis branch and the main stem as far north as Lebanon Junction. Buckner’s treasure included nearly half the rolling stock plus large quantities of wood and other supplies. Suddenly Guthrie found himself left with only thirty miles of main stem, the 37-mile Lebanon branch, twenty-two locomotives, eleven passenger cars, five baggage cars, and eighty-three freight cars of all types.
In a letter to Guthrie Buckner professed his intention to reopen the road to regular traffic in the interest of its stockholders and customers. Denouncing the North’s embargo on contraband as illegal, he asked Guthrie to resume management of the road on condition that all citizens interested in its welfare be allowed full and free use of its facilities. If his offer were declined, Buckner proposed to distribute the rolling stock to agents of those counties occupied by his army. Buckner also enclosed a letter from R. H. Caldwell, an L & N depot agent, who volunteered (with Buckner’s approval) to manage the confiscated portion of the road for the company. Guthrie laid both letters before the board which, not surprisingly, rejected both offers. In a supplementary report to the stockholders he noted in steely terms, “Buckner and his troops have destroyed the road and its business, and intended just what they have done.”1
From the outset federal authorities appreciated the strategic importance of the L & N, but could not spare troops to protect it adequately. Within a few days federal troops under William T. Sherman drove the Confederates back beyond Elizabethtown but the retreating Rebels burned the bridges over the Rolling Fork of Salt River, Nolin River, and Bacon Creek. Company crews went to work on the damage at once. Unfortunately the Bacon Creek Bridge was rebuilt before federal troops reached it, and Confederate marauders put it to the torch a second time. With Buckner firmly entrenched in Bowling Green and the region north of that town subject to lightning raids, the company ran no trains south of Elizabethtown for the rest of the year.
Once thrust into the Union camp by the fortunes of war, Guthrie and his directors pondered a dismal situation, The company found itself without funds as receipts diminished and no buyers could be found for L & N bonds. The toll of damages mounted steadily as did the demand for rolling stock to replace losses. And there was no way to estimate the condition of those facilities in Confederate hands. Gloomily the board resolved to apply all surplus earnings to repairing bridges and replacing rolling stock. It also asked bondholders and the city of Louisville to accept a delay of interest payments.
Prospects brightened early in 1862 when a federal army under General Don Carlos Buell began a major drive toward Nashville. Utilizing the L & N’s limited capacity to its utmost, Buell marched into Bowling Green on February 15 and entered Nashville less than two weeks later. While the Union army tried to consolidate its gains against a regrouping enemy Guthrie and Fink worked feverishly to restore the road. The retiring Confederates had taken a fearful toll. The most disheartening sight was the Green River Bridge, that magnificent span which had merited a feature story in Harper’s magazine shortly after its opening. The bridge consisted of five spans of iron superstructure that crossed the river at a height of 115 feet. To prevent a federal advance, the Confederates destroyed the two southern spans by blowing up the southern pier, itself ninety feet high. A second pier had also been mined but failed to detonate.
The damage list only began at Green River. Virtually every facility at Bowling Green, including depot, machine shops, and engine house, had been demolished. Eight depots between Elizabethtown and Bowling Green had been burned along with several water towers. Miles of track had been ripped up and the rails bent. The bridge over the Barren River, another iron structure, was completely destroyed by blowing up the stone pillars that supported the superstructure. The Cumberland River Bridge was down as were two other spans on the main stem and two more on the Memphis branch. The roadbed everywhere in the captured zone had received no care from the Confederates and was in wretched shape.
South of Bowling Green the L & N located some of its wayward rolling stock, but most of it was in dilapidated condition. Wrecks that had occurred during the southern occupation were strewn along the road. Ten of sixteen engines were recovered, but only two could function without substantial repairs. Once again the crews arrived with the soldiers and began the task of reconstruction. The bridges and roadbed naturally received top priority. This time the federal government took a more active role by rebuilding the Cumberland River Bridge at its own expense and providing troops to guard it. Temporary trestles went up on the other spans until more permanent structures could be erected. By mid-March some semblance of service was restored between Louisville and Nashville.
With the entire route now in Union hands, Guthrie and Fink hoped to work undisturbed at the task of renewal. Operations depended especially upon the supply of rolling stock, and the company shops toiled furiously at turning out new cars and engines and repairing old ones. But they reckoned without the depredations of raiding Confederate cavalry. In particular they overlooked the fast-moving General John Hunt Morgan. That famed raider made his first appearance on March 15 at Gallatin. The L & N had dispatched a work train there to remove a wreck. Instead the men found Morgan’s troopers, some twenty-six miles behind the Union lines and eager for destruction. In short order the Rebels damaged the engine, burned thirteen cars on the Gallatin siding, and destroyed other facilities. Two months later the cavalry galloped audaciously into Cave City, Kentucky, 100 miles north of Nashville, and struck two waiting trains. That raid cost the L & N thirty-seven freight and three passenger cars.
By summer Buell had advanced as far as 100 miles south of Nashville. Since the Army of the Cumberland depended upon the L & N for supplies, Guthrie assumed the troops would devote every effort to protect the road. Already the government had shown its willingness in helping the company solve its most pressing problems. To ease the shortage of rolling stock, federal authorities arranged to transfer several locomotives and freight cars to the L & N from northern roads. The shift meant refitting all the northern equipment, built for standard 4-foot 8 V2 -inch gauge track, to the 5-foot gauge of the L & N. At the same time the government and the L & N board empowered Guthrie to reopen the Memphis branch as soon as possible. Such attention convinced the L & N management that security of the road bore a high priority.
They could not have been more misled. Buell was indeed deeply concerned about the L & N, but his position in Tennessee was more tenuous than even he cared to admit. His army stretched from Corinth to Cumberland Gap, a distance of nearly 300 miles, and he simply lacked the manpower to secure the entire position. His supply and communication lines extended several hundred miles into the interior, and an unguarded region between Cumberland Gap and Battle Creek allowed easy access to the rear for enemy cavalry. Moreover, the situation in Tennessee was mercurial. Eastern Tennessee, a particular concern of Lincoln’s, harbored considerable Unionist sentiment and caused little worry, but central Tennessee remained implacably hostile to the invaders. Already a trampled and demoralized battleground, it fell prey to bushwhackers and bands of guerillas who specialized in plunder, assassination, and terrorism.
Unable to protect his soldiers or noncombatants from these depredations, let alone defend his entire supply line, Buell pleaded with the War Department for more cavalry to guard his lifelines. His requests went unheeded, and soon afterward the situation changed dramatically. New Confederate armies were marching toward southern Tennessee in an effort to relieve the federal pressure on vital southern rail and river arteries at Chattanooga, Vicksburg, and Nashville. One of these armies, under General Braxton Bragg, planned a northward movement from Chattanooga toward Nashville and Kentucky. As a prelude to this movement, Morgan launched a series of daring strikes against Buell’s vulnerable supply line.
The Confederate offensive dealt a devastating blow to the recuperating L & N. Morgan’s troopers, after feints at Bowling Green and Munfordville, struck Lebanon in mid-July. The raiders contented themselves with capturing the federal force there and burning all government stores before vanishing into the countryside. On August 12, however, the Rebels reappeared at Gallatin, captured the federal garrison and the town, and destroyed a 29-car train along with the water station and two bridges in the vicinity. Assuming that the enemy would follow their usual pattern of leaving the town immediately, Fink sent workmen to Gallatin the next day without waiting for a military escort. To their astonishment a lingering squadron of cavalry appeared and drove them off. On the 14th Fink dispatched carpenters to repair the bridges, this time with an escort. Scarcely had they been a day at the bridge when the Confederates returned in force. After a pitched battle, in which one L & N employee was killed, the federal troops and carpenters fled toward Nashville. The Confederates pursued them all the way to Dry Creek Bridge, nine miles from Nashville, and destroyed every bridge along the way.
Morgan’s atypical lingering in the vicinity of Gallatin rendered the L & N’s situation desperate. Surrender of the town’s garrison left forty-six miles of road to the north unprotected. The federal troops at Tunnel Hill, seven miles north of Gallatin, had also fallen prisoner to the enemy, who then burnt the tunnel’s supporting timbers. Ignorant, of the crisis at Gallatin or of Morgan’s proximity, Fink accompanied a crew of workmen to Tunnel Hill on August 15. Approaching from the north, he found no Rebels on the line but soon learned of their presence in force a few miles to the east. When his crew refused to work without guards, Fink returned to Bowling Green and appealed to the commandant for troops. The officer was sympathetic but had only a small force and refused to weaken his garrison. In addition Fink found himself ensnarled in red tape. It so happened that defense of Kentucky belonged to the Department of the Ohio, while Tennessee fell under the aegis of the Department of the Cumberland. Since each had its own commander, Fink had to apply to Buell for troops. But Buell was in Nashville, and on August 17 Morgan’s men cut the last remaining telegraph lines to that city from Louisville.
The blackout of communications left Fink in a quandary. Unable to fathom Buell’s intentions, he could do nothing from the northern end of the road and had no way of knowing what was happening at the southern end. Morgan had done a superb job, not only in disrupting the railroad and telegraph but in intercepting federal messages, sending false dispatches of his own, raiding small towns, and creating widespread havoc. On August 23 word reached Louisville that a federal cavalry force, sent by Buell to dislodge Morgan, had been routed near Hartsville. Discouraged and impatient, Fink made his way to Nashville, arriving on August 27. There he found Buell’s engineers working on the bridges north of Nashville.
Unfortunately Buell had only enough troops to protect nearby repair crews. With Morgan still hovering in the neighborhood of Gallatin, the line could not be cleared for full repairs unless a large force of troops was detailed to defend the entire line. Dutifully Fink applied for such a force but Buell refused. To strip off so large a detachment would preclude any possible advance on his part; moreover reinforcements were expected from Louisville, and they could be more easily deployed along the road. But the reinforcements never materialized, Morgan held his position, and meanwhile a fresh disaster descended upon the beleaguered northerners.
On August 28 Bragg’s army left Chattanooga and headed northward. A few days later a second army under General Edmund Kirby Smith invaded Kentucky via the Cumberland Gap from its base at Knoxville. After defeating a federal force at Richmond, Kirby Smith seized Lexington and promptly dispatched cavalry squadrons to cut the northern end of the L & N. Suddenly the harassment of marauders had become a full- fledged invasion menacing both Louisville and Cincinnati. Bragg meanwhile ignored Buell at Nashville and headed directly into Kentucky. On September 12 he reached Cave City and within three days arrived at the Green River below Munfordville. There a reinforced garrison fought a bloody resistance until compelled to surrender on the 17th. Burning the luckless Green River Bridge behind him, Bragg now had an open road to Louisville along the vulnerable L & N main line.
While Bragg advanced, Kirby Smith’s cavalry burned the bridges at Shepherdsville, only eighteen miles from Louisville, and at New Haven on the Lebanon branch. As victims of hit-and-run raids, however, the bridges could be rebuilt almost immediately. The Salt River Bridge at Shepherdsville was completed in time to receive fugitive trains fleeing before Bragg’s advance. Only one train went south over Salt River, carrying reinforcements for the Green River garrison. Six miles short of its destination Bragg’s advance detachments derailed the train and destroyed the cars.
Belatedly the federal army under Buell chased Bragg into Kentucky. Unable to intercept the Confederate advance, Buell hoped at least to beat his adversary to Louisville while putting enough pressure on his rear to prevent a leisurely and thorough destruction of the railway. Every bridge south of Elizabethtown was put to the torch, including the newly rebuilt Salt River and Rolling Fork structures. The impending Confederate advance on Louisville galvanized the L & N no less than the city’s panicked citizens into emergency measures. All trains stopped running. On Guthrie’s order all work in the shops was suspended and the employees organized into militia companies to man the city’s fortifications. For nearly five agonizing days Louisvillians wondered who would win the race, Bragg or Buell.
Then, with victory seemingly within his grasp, Bragg inexplicably halted his columns at Bardstown and soon turned them toward Lexington. On the 25th Buell’s lead units tramped into Louisville and the invasion threat lifted. But Bragg still possessed free run of the countryside, and the L & N controlled only about twenty miles of its entire line, all of it north and south of Bowling Green where a strong Union garrison still held sway. Systematically the Rebels burned every bridge on the main stem and Memphis branch. Morgan even attempted to fire the Cumberland River Bridge at Nashville but was repulsed and confined himself to demolishing the Edgefield depot and numerous freight cars.
Anxious to get on with the repairs, Fink pressed Buell to protect his work crews. Specifically he wanted to rebuild the Salt River Bridge before the Confederates ruined its iron superstructure. As he noted rather acidly in the Annual Report, “We could obtain no military protection for our workmen, but it was believed that the presence in Louisville of the whole of Buell’s army might be sufficient to protect at least eighteen miles of the line of our Road.”2 Unhappily it was not. Intending to send his unprotected crews out on September .28, Fink learned that same day that the Confederates had entered Shepherdsville. For three days they dismantled the Salt River Bridge and left it in ruins.
While Fink fretted, Buell mounted his offensive. On September 30 his army started south and the Confederates fell back. On the heels of the advancing bluecoats came Fink’s crews, who commenced a period of miraculously fast (if improvised) restoration. The Federals entered Shepherdsville on October 2 and Fink’s crews arrived the next day. Although it took two full days simply to remove the debris of the old 450-foot Salt River Bridge, trains passed over the temporary wooden span on the nth. In another week the 400-foot bridge at Rolling Fork and the 100-foot span at Bacon Creek were both ready and the roadbed repaired to that point.
On October 8 a bloody battle occurred at Perryville. The inconclusive outcome of the fight persuaded Bragg to abandon Kentucky. A general Confederate retreat toward Nashville began, with Buell making only token gestures at pursuit. But the ubiquitous Morgan had no intention of leaving. When Fink’s men reached Green River on October 20, they learned that Rebel cavalry had crossed the line near Elizabethtown and burned the Valley Creek Bridge along with several cars. All damage was repaired within three days, and trains could now operate between Louisville and Munfordville. The Green River Bridge posed a more difficult problem. Only the iron structure remained of the already once rebuilt span. Fink decided to erect temporary trestles and another wooden floor, a task that took until November 1 to complete.
The temporary bridge at Green River opened the road to Bowling Green and trains arrived there almost simultaneously with the Army of the Cumberland. Under its new commander, General William S. Rosecrans, the army continued to move southward. The military authorities had agreed to rebuild the bridges on the southern end of the road as soon as the territory fell into Union hands. Another unit of army engineers under J. B. Anderson, an L & N employee, rebuilt the Lebanon branch bridges though the company reimbursed the government for the work. With Rosecrans’s engineers working on the southern bridges, Fink’s crews tried to clear the obstructed tunnel at South Tunnel, Tennessee. That task proved to be a monumental one. The Confederates had fired several freight cars and rolled them deep into the tunnel, where the supporting timbers soon ignited and collapsed along with tons of material and earth. The pile of debris stretched for 800 feet at an average height of twelve feet.
Not until November 25 did Fink’s men liberate the tunnel. By that time all the bridges were finished and again trains could run through to Nashville. But the southern line had suffered grievously from three months of Rebel control. The regular repair hands who lived along the route had been driven off and few replacements could be found. Supplies and lodgings for workmen were no less scarce. Every water station between Sinking Creek and Nashville had been demolished, the roadbed was in wretched shape, and all firewood had been burned. All supplies, especially wood, had to be hauled from distant locations, and the use of understaffed and inexperienced track crews meant frequent derailments. And all these problems were magnified by the huge traffic required to supply the Army of the Cumberland. Under maximum peacetime conditions the company would have been overwhelmed by the press of business; under the exigencies of war the situation became a nightmare.
Nor had the military situation stabilized entirely. On December 31 another indecisive battle at Murfreesboro compelled Bragg to retire from middle Tennessee, and the invasion threat ended. Still Morgan’s cavalry remained to wreak whatever havoc it could, and the general continued to make the L & N his favorite target. On Christmas Day, 1862, he clattered into Glasgow with over 3,000 men. For nearly a week his troopers rode northward along the line, demolishing every facility and occasionally attacking small garrisons. Before federal troops blocked his path only twenty-eight miles south of Louisville, Morgan destroyed some 2,290 feet of bridging, three depots, three water stations, and numerous culverts and cattle guards.
Wearily Fink’s crews went back to work. Then a more familiar enemy, the elements, heaped further devastation on the road. A huge snowstorm in mid-January stopped work for a week. The resulting thaw swelled streams all along the line and washed out several bridges. The main stem did not reopen until February 1, the Lebanon branch February 10, and the Memphis branch March 25. For the rest of the spring the road operated more or less regularly to Nashville, subject to several costly raids by guerrilla bands. Morgan made one last appearance at Lebanon, on July 4, where he burned all cars and buildings there as well as some nearby bridges. Shortly afterward the elusive commander’s luck ran out; he was captured after crossing into Ohio and retired to a northern prison. No one applauded more heartily than the L & N’s management.
By July of 1863 the company’s route no longer lay in a war zone. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1863, the L & N operated over its full line for only seven months and twelve days. It continued to endure constant guerrilla raids for the remainder of the war despite the presence of armed guards on every train. But it no longer faced wholesale destruction of its facilities. The war with the South was over; there remained only the running war with the federal government.
While the war against the Confederates progressed, a parallel conflict with the federal government persisted. At no time during the Civil War did the L & N enjoy harmonious relations with the government, and often the veneer of cordiality vanished as well. The causes of friction were many and complex; in broad terms they arose from two diverse, reasonable, and utterly irreconcilable points of view held by the contending parties. When common necessity drove these differences into the background, some semblance of harmony prevailed for a time. But the differences lingered just beneath the surface and were never resolved.
From the government’s point of view the L & N was but one link, albeit a vital one, in a complex lifeline for its armies. To deal with this lifeline as efficiently as possible, the government established a set of procedures, some legislative enactments, and some modest bureaucratic machinery. While the officers running this machinery, both civilian and military, were often inclined to sympathize with the particular problems of an individual company, they tended to resist distinctions that allowed certain roads special consideration. When such favored treatment was permitted in a specific case, it was often yielded grudgingly. Nothing, it was felt, could sabotage effective use of the North’s superior railway system more quickly than the constant turmoil of internecine squabbles over privileges among the various railroads. Since virtually no prominent politician wished to nationalize all the railroads, it became crucial to keep the companies functioning together smoothly under a minimum of government direction. That meant the elimination of every possible source of friction by the application of common standards to all roads.
The L & N accepted the government’s position in theory but rejected the uncritical application of it in fact. Guthrie and his fellow officers argued vigorously that the company occupied a unique position in the war effort which rendered the standard principles inoperable in many cases. For one thing the L & N was not a wholly northern road and was therefore subject to the dangers of combat. Being a new road, it lacked reserve capital either to cover reconstruction expenses or to acquire the large quantity of rolling stock demanded by the added weight of government business. As a war zone road directly supplying armies in the field, it faced hazards and pressures experienced by few other northern roads. Whereas other companies could make financial ends meet by supplementing its government business with a heavy traffic in private freight, the L & N lacked the resources to do both businesses adequately. As a result the company had constantly to make choices, and thereby antagonized both its public and private customers.
The most grating and enduring controversy centered around rates. Early in the war the government tried to stipulate the approximate rates it would pay for transporting troops and freight but made no effort to force railroads to accept its tariff schedule. A series of disputes over the question led to the calling of a convention of railway officials in Washington during February, 1862. After some haggling a basic rate schedule was devised and later incorporated in both general legislation and specific regulations issued by the War Department. Troops would be carried for two cents a mile per man. Freight charges would be based upon the existing classifications and rates of each road with a 10 per cent discount to the government. No road could charge above five cents a mile (first-class freight) for fifty miles or less and three cents for distances of more than fifty miles. Other provisions were enacted and some railroads were exempted from the 10 per cent reduction. Even with the reduction many government officials considered the rates exorbitant. Earlier legislation had authorized the president to seize any railroad deemed vital for military purposes in an emergency situation, and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs had ordered all roads to give government business top priority.
Predictably, Guthrie objected to the rate schedule as detrimental to the L & N. In a lengthy correspondence with Meigs he argued that the fixed rates would leave the company nothing after paying all expenses. Given the hazards plaguing the road and the cost of reconstruction, the minimal profit on government business could scarcely pay for damages alone. Moreover, by the winter of 1863 the company was devoting its service almost exclusively to the Army of the Cumberland, which meant it had to neglect its private customers. As a stopgap measure Guthrie accepted a proposal from the Adams Express Company to operate a conjunct freight service for civilians. The arrangement was approved by Rosecrans, subject to restrictions on contraband goods, but it did not solve the basic problem. For large periods of time, too, the company could operate only limited portions of its line because of invasions, war damages, sabotage, and the guerrilla raids. The business lost during these periods of enforced idleness could never be recovered.
To Guthrie’s objections the government responded with complaints of its own. The L & N charged rates nearly 25 per cent higher than those of other roads, and for that extravagant fee it provided less than satisfactory service. During the occupation of Chattanooga in September, 1863, for example, the company sent only sixteen carloads of government freight south each day when sixty-five were needed. The government had done everything in its power to augment the L & N’s inadequate rolling stock with both new and borrowed equipment, yet the company never seemed capable of meeting the military’s demands. The reason for this failure, some government officials charged, lay not in the L & N’s meager equipment or reconstruction problems but rather in Guthrie’s persistence in handling private freight surreptitiously at the expense of government cargoes. One observer, Charles A. Dana, put the matter bluntly: “It will be impossible to maintain the army without a complete change in the management of the road.”3
Guthrie categorically denied these charges. He flatly rejected aspersions on his loyalty. The company refused enormous amounts of private business and thereby lost good will as well as revenue. It repaired destruction along the line with impressive swiftness even without military cooperation. It willingly ran its equipment and personnel ragged to meet the government demands despite the latter’s indifference to the rapid deterioration of facilities. It endeavored to meet all special needs of the military. During the battle of Perryville, for example, it allowed two company cars to be refitted as hospital cars for hauling wounded troops. All things considered, the wonder was not that the L & N performed so poorly but that it hauled as much freight as it did. Even the preoccupied Fink took time out to rebut the charges of inefficiency, noting tersely in the Annual Report for 1863 that “It seemed to be taken for granted, that because the Road could not carry as much freight as the Army of the Cumberland then chanced to require, it must necessarily be badly managed.”4
Such divergent points of view were aggravated by unfortunate personality clashes. The man directly responsible for overseeing the L & N’s government business was William P. Innes, Rosecrans’s superintendent of railroads. Innes firmly believed all the complaints about the L & N and in fact started some of them. He accepted Dana’s view of Guthrie’s duplicity in shunting government cargoes aside in favor of more lucrative private freight. Like Dana, too, he argued that only by seizing the road could its entire business be devoted to the army’s needs. For his part Guthrie castigated Innes for his disparaging interpretation of the company’s war effort and accused him of violating the contract between the railroad and the government. Not even the intervention of Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott could settle the dispute. In general Scott sided with Guthrie, however, and the threatened seizure never took place.
If this dispute were not enough, a peripheral furor arose over the performance of John B. Anderson. An L & N employee, Anderson on October 19, 1863, was appointed general manager of all railroads in government possession in the Departments of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee. His special charge was to insure the efficient supplying of the federal armies penetrating the lower South, but he proved hopelessly unequal to the task. When the battle of Chattanooga that same November revealed serious supply deficiencies, Anderson shouldered most of the criticism along with the L & N. His prior position with the company naturally led to charges of collusion with Guthrie. In short order Anderson lost his job, and suspicion about the L & N’s duplicity heightened. Already Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, had been instructed to build a railroad from Nashville to a small town on the Tennessee River to eliminate dependence upon the L & N.
The evidence that Anderson, whether from loyalty to the L & N or because of southern sympathies, deliberately tried to sabotage the railroads was strong but entirely circumstantial. The evidence of his inefficiency was convincing, and the legacy of his imprint marred the L & N no less than himself. Although direct evidence against the company remained shadowy, emotional bitterness colored the road’s relationship with the government until Appomattox. One direct product of that bitterness was the rapid completion of the 78-mile Nashville & Northwestern Railroad between Nashville and Johnsonville on the Tennessee River. No longer need the government rely exclusively upon the L & N for supplies from the North.
The contribution of the railroads to the northern cause was a vital one. For their invaluable services most of the roads received lucrative direct and indirect profits, and emerged from the war in strengthened condition. Even the much buffeted L & N eventually smothered its adversities with success. After a slow start, the company accelerated its earnings rapidly; by 1865 it occupied a position of preeminence among southern railroads that might not have been possible without the war. This happy state of affairs derived not only from increased earnings but from the L & N’s unique competitive situation after the war and some yet unmentioned cooperation from, of all places, the federal government.
Throughout the war Guthrie repeatedly poor-mouthed the L & N’s financial state to the government. While many of his points were valid, the authorities never fully accepted his argument. In retrospect the statistics seem to justify their skepticism. According to Fink’s own careful calculations, the total cost of reconstruction for all wartime damage was $688,372.56. Yet Guthrie, in an 1862 letter to Meigs, estimated damage already done to the company at $700,000. To offset these losses, net earnings for the period 1861–65 totalled $6,009,195. As the following breakdown shows, most of the profit came after the road had been secured from enemy attack except guerrilla raids:
Year | Net Earnings | |
| ||
1861 | $ 461,970 | (ten months only) |
1862 | 508,591 | |
1863 | 1,062,165 | |
1864 | 1,803,953 | |
1865 | 2,172,515 | |
Such impressive figures suggest that either Guthrie cannily underestimated the value of government business or that federal authorities were correct in accusing the company of handling considerably more private freight than it acknowledged. Whatever the real explanation the fact of wartime prosperity was undeniable, and after the spring of 1863 the L & N’s fortunes soared. By April 2 of that year the floating debt had been entirely paid and all unused mortgage bonds on both the main stem and the Lebanon branch were burned. Nor were the stockholders slighted. That same April the board declared a 10 per cent stock dividend. During the war the company paid a total of 10¼ per cent stock and 14 per cent cash dividends.
The spoils of war extended beyond a simple cash surplus. During the conflict the L & N’s management strengthened the road’s competitive position immeasurably. In this task the board received some help from the federal government, which was anxious to complete certain connections to meet immediate military needs. The most prominent example concerned the Lebanon branch, destined to play a major role in the company’s postwar strategy. The L & N wished to extend the branch toward Stanford in Lincoln County for two reasons: to penetrate the coal fields of eastern Kentucky and to commence an eventual through line to Knoxville.
The military authorities, represented by General Ambrose E. Burnside, actually preferred an extension toward Danville in Pulaski County but compromised on Stanford. In the autumn of 1863 Guthrie and Burnside signed a contract whereby the latter agreed to furnish stores, tools, and a supply of Negro labor at stipulated prices. Work progressed rapidly, but in only three months the government discontinued its aid. Nevertheless, the impetus stimulated by its assistance remained, and construction proceeded by use of company funds alone. By June 30, 1865, the thirty-seven miles between Lebanon and Stanford were ready for iron and another 11-mile stretch to Crab Orchard had been surveyed.
Other projects were launched. The war had demonstrated the necessity for a reliable connection between the L & N and the northern roads terminating across the Ohio River at Jeffersonville. When the newly organized Louisville Bridge Company received a charter to build an Ohio River Bridge, the L & N promptly subscribed $300,000 worth of its stock. In 1864 the 17-mile Bardstown & Louisville Railroad, which had been completed in 1860 to a junction on the L & N line, was purchased by Guthrie at a foreclosure sale. By that absorption the frustrated citizens of Bardstown belatedly became a part of the L & N system, if only as a branch line. Similarly, the destruction of the Clarksville’s northern end in 1862 provided an opportunity for the L & N to rebuild the fourteen miles between the state line and Clarksville and operate it as part of the company’s Memphis branch. The link with the Clarksville grew even closer in April, 1865, when the L & N loaned the Tennessee company $150,000 to refit its road.
When Lee surrendered, the L & N directly controlled 286 miles of road and was gradually extending its influence within the Clarksville. Both the Ohio River Bridge and the Lebanon branch extension were well underway. To be sure there were problems. Physical plant had not fully recovered from the ravages of war and would require large expenditures for improvements, replacements, and additions. The old albatross of rolling stock shortages persisted despite remarkable increases during the latter stages of the war. On June 30, 1865, the company possessed sixty locomotives, forty-two passenger cars, nine baggage cars, eight express cars, and 609 freight cars of all kinds. More was needed if the L & N was to assume a leading role in postwar southern transportation.
Blessed with an intelligent, aggressive management, an adequate if not impressive physical plant, and surplus cash in its coffers, the L & N stood ready to seize that role of leadership in 1865. Under any circumstances it would have been a formidable competitor, but its location tendered it a stunning advantage not available to strictly northern railroads. The railroads of the prostrate South lay in ruins, the victims of systematic destruction and four years of unallayed wear. Their first priority concerned not the nuances of competitive strategy but the mobilization of capital for reconstruction. Bereft of tools, equipment, and an adequate labor supply as well as funds, the southern roads found themselves in a vicious struggle for survival. For some companies the ordeal of rehabilitation would last for several years; for all it became the immediate preoccupation of management.
In a region virtually devoid of healthy competitors the L & N’s management saw its golden opportunity. After some internal debate it launched a strategy of expansion that made it the most feared railroad corporation in the South. Having inherited so vital a lead over its crippled rivals the L & N would not relinquish its advantages for nearly half a century.