Railroad · est. 1860
The Southern Railroads
Before the Civil War, the South's railroads were built largely by enslaved labor.
← Follow the MoneyRailroad companies rented and bought enslaved people by the hundreds to grade roadbeds and lay track; by 1860 they had enslaved roughly 15,000 African Americans, making some of them among the largest slaveholders in the South.
Documentation
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations, the links rarely drawn together.
- built by·ThreadChattel Slavery
The South's railroads were graded and laid by enslaved labor.