Charles Morgan and the Development of Southern Transportation BY James Baughman

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Charles Morgan and the Development of Southern Transportation BY James P. Baughman

Hard Cover with Dust Jacket. Notice damage to dust jacket

302 Pages

Charles Morgan is a classic example of an easterner with capital and purpose who found profitable employment for his resources in the less-developed areas of the South. He began opportunistically, but his enterprises soon became an important factor in regional economic growth.

A contemporary of Cornelius Vanderbilt and often his business rival, Morgan (1795-1878) became the greatest steamship specialist of his day and a railroader of note.

Beginning his career in New York as a merchant-trader, Morgan quickly rose as an owner-manager and general entrepreneur within the world of Atlantic coastal shipping and transport. By the 1830s he had sufficiently divorced his trading and transport operations from one another and focused his efforts on the latter to be regarded as a transportation specialist-and a pioneer in the field of common carriage.

This functional specialization, Morgan's interest in the improvement of steam transport, and his decision to enter the economic life of the Gulf of Mexico in 1837 coincided with the emergence of the forces of sectionalism and westward expansion-to Morgan's great benefit. He managed to turn the Mexican War, the Gold Rush, and the Civil War into business opportunities, expanding his small line of steamships into the gigantic Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Line, which extended through the states and republics bordering the Gulf of Mexico.

The period 1882-85 marked the transfer of the Morgan Line to the vast Southern Pacific Company and the consolidation of a rail system stretching from San Francisco to New Orleans. The absorption of the Morgan Line also marked the end of an era-a shift within American big business from the highly personalized, closely-controlled family enterprise to the impersonal activity of national corporations.

In this study of the career of Charles Morgan, the author has sought the man in the context of his times-or, more precisely, the interaction of a businessman and the environment that shaped, and was shaped by, his decisions. While Charles Morgan is of notable stature in the history of business in the United States, his greater importance lies within the conception of business in history-his impact on the economic life of the Gulf South and on the history of American transportation.

Introductionxi

PART I

1 Connecticut and New York, 1795-18373

2 Serving the Texas Republic, 1837-184622

PART II

3 The Era of the Mexican War, 1846-184943

4 The California Route: Economic War in Central America, 1849-186059

5 Expansion in the Gulf of Mexico, 1850-186086

PART III

6 The Era of the Civil War 111

7 Retrospect and Prospect134

PART IV

8 Steamships versus Railroads, 1867-1877147

9 Expansion and Accommodation in Louisiana and Texas, 1866-1877174

10 Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company, 1877-1885208

Appendixes237

Bibliography263

Index289

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