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Gettysburg Review By Peter Stitt 1989 Summer Trains & Railroads
The Gettysburg Review By Peter Stitt s 1989 Summer Trains & Railroads
You hold in your hands the first Special Issue of The Gettysburg Review.
Everything contained herein is concerned with trains and railroads in one way or another; they appear as theme, image, and setting in poems, paintings, short stories, and essays.
America is the land of the railroad-even though the first steam locomotive was built in England early in the nineteenth century. The earliest trains in America were pulled by horses, and it wasn't until May 13, 1829, that the "Stourbridge Lion" arrived in New York City from England; its trial run was conducted on August 8 in Honesdale, Pennsylvania by engineer Horatio Allen. Not long after this first ride, Allen took a job with the Charleston & Hamburg railroad in South Carolina and helped design the locomotive "Best Friend of Charleston." On June 17, 1831, the "Best Friend's" fireman became irritated with the hissing of the safety valve and tied down the lever. Shortly thereafter, the boiler exploded, killing him and seriously injuring the engineer. This was the first fatal American railroad "wreck"; Kevin Wolfe tells about another steam-related disaster in his essay below.
By 1850 there were nine thousand miles of railroad track in the United States, more than anywhere else in the world; by 1860 there were thirty thousand miles. Railroads were of crucial importance during the Civil War, though they were an easy target for saboteurs, as David Madden's fictionalized account of Union bridge-burners operating in Confederate territory illustrates.
On July 1, 1862, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act authorizing the building of the transcontinental railroads. The Act granted to the builders 6,400 acres of public land for every mile of rail laid ( later this amount was doubled) and allowed them to collect from the government sixteen thousand dollars for every mile of track laid on level ground, $48,000 for each mile in the mountains. In addition, speculators like Thomas Clark Durant formed holding companies designed to siphon funds from operating railroads through stock manipulations, false mortgages, and excess charges for construction. Kenneth S. Davis's account of Harry Truman's attempts to exert Congressional control over the railroads illuminates how such procedures were used in a later day.
As Gary Kulik points out in his analysis of how trains are presented in American art, most commentary on railroads is tinged with feelings of nostalgia. Pleasant memories indeed suffuse the essays by Robert B. Heilman and William B. Catton-as they do many of the poems and other stories you will find below.
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