ABSTRACT
In 1860, the United States had reached an unprecedented level of interconnectedness. The Canal Era of the 1830s and 1840s had bound together New York and the Great Lakes, forming a dense network of waterways that connected the Empire State with the expanding northwest. The steam revolution had brought fast water travel to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers, linking Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and New Orleans. Thirty thousand miles of railroad track created a truly national transportation system. Primarily, these new railroad tracks connected the big Atlantic ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore with the new commercial centers of the American West. A less dense string of railroad lines connected the agricultural and shipping centers of the southern agricultural states. By 1860, the transportation revolution bound the nation so closely together that the entire country’s population was within six days’ travel of New York City or Philadelphia.
