![]() ![]() At Manassas Junction it connected with the Orange and Alexander Railroad as it headed south into central Virginia. There the Manassas Gap Railroad came east from the Shenandoah Valley. Behind the Confederate lines was the town of Manassas Junction. On a hot summer day in 1861, Union and Confederate troops lined up along Bull Run Creek preparing to fight the first major battle of the Civil War. The train that took Abraham Lincoln home was the last train operated by the United States Military Railroad. By the time Lincoln was laid to rest in Springfield an estimated seven million people had seen his casket. It was the sad duty of the railroad to take home the body of the assassinated president. At the end of the war, railroads played a role no one would have anticipated –helping a country grieve. While the United States Military Railroads improved existing railroads and built new ones, Confederate railroads fell apart because the Confederacy could not maintain them. Throughout the war while the Federal Government took control of the railroads and established the United States Military Railroads, the Confederacy left control in the hands of private companies up until February 1865 by which time it was too late to make a difference. Nevertheless, railroads played a prominent role in battles as far flung as Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Peninsula Campaign, Gettysburg, the Atlanta Campaign, and Appomattox. The efficiency of moving men and supplies by rail was diminished by the poor quality of roadbeds and rails, inconsistent gauges used by different companies and company railroads not connected to each other. ![]() Soon the Confederate system was in a shambles while the Union system was strengthened. Compared to the Union the Confederacy had one-third of the freight cars, one fifth of the locomotives, less than one half of the miles of rail, one eighth of rail production, one tenth of the telegraph stations and one twenty fourth of locomotive production. From the very first the Civil War was a railroad war. That brigade delivered the battle’s knockout blow and its general, Brigadier General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, would gain his sobriquet “Stonewall”. Among those who rode by rail was a brigade under an eccentric professor from Virginia Military Institute. Confederate troops were rushed by rail to confront the Union army led by Brigadier General Irwin McDowell at Bull Run. ![]()
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