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The Anaconda Plan was a strategy outlined by the Union Army for suppressing the Confederacy at the beginning of the American Civil War. Proposed by Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, the plan emphasized a Union blockade of the Southern ports and called for an advance down the Mississippi River to cut the South in two. Because the blockade would be rather passive, it was widely derided by a vociferous faction of Union generals who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war and likened it to the coils of an anaconda suffocating its victim. The snake image caught on, giving the proposal its popular name.
The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast, the Southeast, or the South, is a geographical region of the United States located in the eastern portion of the Southern United States and the southern portion of the Eastern United States. The region includes a core of states that reaches north to Maryland and West Virginia, bordering the Ohio River and Mason–Dixon line, and stretches west to Arkansas and Louisiana.
The Confederate States Marine Corps (CSMC), also referred to as the Confederate States Marines, was a branch of the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. It was established by an act of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States on March 16, 1861. The Corps' manpower was initially authorized at 45 officers and 944 enlisted men, and was increased on September 24, 1862, to 1,026 enlisted men. The organization of the Corps began at Montgomery, Alabama, and was completed at Richmond, Virginia, when the capital of the Confederate States was moved to that location. The headquarters and main training facilities remained in Richmond throughout the war, located at Camp Beall on Drewry's Bluff and at the Gosport Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. The last Marine unit surrendered to the Union army on April 9, 1865, with the Confederacy itself capitulating a month later.
The Southern Railway was a class 1 railroad based in the Southern United States between 1894 and 1982, when it merged with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) to form the Norfolk Southern Railway. The railroad was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894.
The Georgia Railroad and Banking Company also seen as "GARR", was a historic railroad and banking company that operated in the U.S. state of Georgia. In 1967 it reported 833 million revenue-ton-miles of freight and 3 million passenger-miles; at the end of the year it operated 331 miles (533 km) of road and 510 miles (820 km) of track.
The Plant System, named after its owner, Henry B. Plant, was a system of railroads and steamboats in the U.S. South, taken over by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1902. The original line of the system was the Savannah, Florida and Western Railway, running across southern Georgia. The Plant Investment Company was formed in 1882 to lease and buy other railroads and expand the system. Other major lines incorporated into the system include the Savannah and Charleston Railroad and the Brunswick and Western Railroad.
The Atlantic and Gulf Railroad was chartered in February 1856 by act of the Georgia General Assembly. It was also known as the Main Trunk Railroad. It traversed south Georgia from Screven to Bainbridge, Georgia. Construction began in early January 1859. Its construction was halted by the American Civil War. Construction began again after the end of the war and the line was completed to Bainbridge, Georgia by late December 1867. The route never reached all the way to the Gulf of Mexico as it had originally had intended. The company went bankrupt in 1877 and was bought in 1879 by Henry B. Plant and became incorporated into his Plant System. Its main line is currently operated by CSX Transportation. Throughout its history, the Atlantic and Gulf was closely associated with the Savannah and Albany Railroad Company and its successor the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad.
The Central of Georgia Railway started as the Central Rail Road and Canal Company in 1833. As a way to better attract investment capital, the railroad changed its name to Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. This railroad was constructed to join the Macon and Western Railroad at Macon, Georgia, in the United States, and run to Savannah. This created a rail link from Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, to seaports on the Atlantic Ocean. It took from 1837 to 1843 to build the railroad from Savannah to the eastern bank of the Ocmulgee River at Macon; a bridge into the city was not built until 1851.
The American Civil War was the first in which large armies depended heavily on railroads to bring supplies. For the Confederate States Army, the system was fragile and was designed for short hauls of cotton to the nearest river or ocean port. The South had very little manufacturing or industrial capacity, and so during the war new parts were hard to obtain, and the system deteriorated from overuse, lack of maintenance, and systematic destruction by Union raiders.
The western theater of the American Civil War encompassed major military operations in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee, as well as Louisiana east of the Mississippi River. Operations on the coasts of these states, except for Mobile Bay, are considered part of the Lower Seaboard Theater. Most other operations east of the Appalachian Mountains are part of the eastern theater. Operations west of the Mississippi River took place in the trans-Mississippi theater.
The Memphis and Charleston Railroad, completed in 1857, was the first railroad in the United States to link the Atlantic Ocean with the Mississippi River. Chartered in 1846, the 311 miles (501 km) 5 ft gauge railroad ran from Memphis, Tennessee to Stevenson, Alabama through the towns of Corinth, Mississippi and Huntsville, Alabama. The portion between Memphis and LaGrange, Tennessee was originally to be part of the LaGrange and Memphis Railroad, chartered in 1838. From Stevenson, the road was connected to Chattanooga, Tennessee via the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. In Alabama, the railroad followed the route of the Tuscumbia, Courtland and Decatur Railroad between Tuscumbia and Decatur, the first railroad to be built west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Southeastern Greyhound Lines, a highway-coach carrier, was a Greyhound regional operating company, based in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, from 1931 until 1960, when it became merged with the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, a neighboring operating company, thereby forming the Southern Division of The Greyhound Corporation, called also the Southern Greyhound Lines.
The following is a brief history of the North American rail system, mainly through major changes to Class I railroads, the largest class by operating revenue.
References
- Black, III, Robert C. The Railroads of the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952. OCLC 445590
- Gabel, Christopher R., Rails To Oblivion: The Decline of Confederate Railroads in the Civil War . U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, CGSC Press Publications, 2002.
