Forging the "Bee Line" Railroad, 1848-1889

The Rise and Fall of the Hoosier Partisans and Cleveland Clique

Arthur Andrew Olson, III

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781631012365
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Transporte ferroviario

In the 1830s, as the Trans Appalachian economy began to stir and Europe's Industrial Revolution reached its peak, concerned Midwesterners saw opportunities and risks. Success of the Erie Canal as a link to East Coast economic markets whetted the appetites of visionaries and entrepreneurs, who saw huge opportunities. Amid this perfect storm of technology, enterprise, finance, location, and timing arose some of the earliest railroads in the Midwest.

By the late 1840s three such vision-driven railroad ventures had sprung to life. Two small railroads carrying goods to Midwestern markets - the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine in Indiana and the Bellefontaine & Indiana in Ohio - spawned early enthusiasm, but few citizens would look beyond the horizon. It was the admonition of Oliver H. Smith, founder of the Indiana line, who challenged the populace to look farther: "to decide whether the immense travel and business of the west should pass round or go through central Indiana."

Soon, the two local lines would crystallize in the minds of people as the "Bee Line." In Cleveland, meanwhile, a clique of committed businessmen, bankers, and politicians came together to finance the most prosperous of all early Midwestern railroads, extending from Cleveland to Columbus. Their aspirations expanded to control the larger Midwestern market from Cleveland to St. Louis. First by loans and then by bond purchases, they quickly took over the "Bee Line."

Hoosier partisans' independence, however, could not be easily brushed aside. Time and again they would frustrate the attempts of the Cleveland clique, exercising a degree of autonomy inconsistent with their dependent financial underpinnings. Ultimately, they acquiesced to the reality of their situation. After the Civil War, even the group from Cleveland fell victim to unscrupulous foreign and national financiers and manipulators who had taken their places on the boards of larger trunk lines expanding throughout the Midwest.

Exhaustively researched and meticulously documented, Forging the "Bee Line" Railroad, 1848-1889 is the first comprehensive scholarly work on this most important of early Midwestern railroads.

Notes

PREFACE

1. Michael C. Garber, Madison Daily Courier, Oct. 10, 1850, quoted in Daniels, The Village at the End of the Road, 61.

PROLOGUE

1. Since the British Proclamation of 1763, colonists had been prevented from settling on lands west of a Proclamation Line (effectively the ridge of the Appalachian Mountain range) in an effort to placate Native Americans and control trade with them.

2. Gen. George Washington, letter to Virginia governor Benjamin Harrison, Mount Vernon, Virginia, Oct. 10, 1784. TeachingAmericanHistory.org.

3. Washington to Harrison, October 10, 1784. In September 1784, James Rumsey (1743–1792) had shown Washington a working model of a boat propelled by a bow-mounted paddle wheel that moved poles to pull a boat upstream. On December 3, 1787, Rumsey successfully demonstrated a steam boiler propulsion system, which propelled a boat by pumping water out of a stern-located opening. See “James Rumsey,” Wikipedia, last modified Feb. 16, 2016.

4. From this area, the states of Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), and Wisconsin (1848) would be formed. Portions of what became Minnesota (1858) were also included.

5. Cayton, “The Northwest Ordinance from the Perspective of the Frontier,” 7–9.

6. Ibid., 16.

7. The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation under which the new United States had operated from 1781 to 1789. Centralized federal government authority was virtually nonexistent under the Articles of Confederation—the populace fearing autocratic or monarchical rule.

8. Goodrich, “The Gallatin Plan after One Hundred and Fifty Years.”

9. Crumrin, “Road Through the Wilderness.”

10. Ibid.

11. Morris, The Dawn of Innovation, 163.

12. Riker and Thornbrough, Messages and Papers Relating to the Administration of James Brown Ray, 294n19.

13. Ibid., 294. Governor James B. Ray indicated such in his message to the General Assembly on December 4, 1827; Crumrin, “Road Through the Wilderness.”

14. Fogel, Railroads and American Economic Growth, 114. Fogel references W. W. Rostow’s controversial work, The Stages of Economic Growth, in which Rostow postulated economic growth as occurring in five stages. The “take-off” stage is the time period in which rapid, self-sustained growth occurs.

15. Ibid., 14–15.

16. Ellis, The Lore of the Train, 45. Engines were required to travel 70 miles without stopping, at a minimum of 10 miles per hour while pulling a 20-ton train. The engine could not weigh more than 6 tons on 6 wheels or 4.5 tons on 4 wheels, could not produce a working pressure of more than 50 pounds per square inch, and were required to incorporate two safety valves and a pressure gauge (Poor, Manual of the Railroads of the United States for 1868–1869, 11).

17. Ellis, The Lore of the Train, 45. The Rocket incorporated a multi-tubular boiler system to increase the surface area of boiler water exposed to the boiler’s heat, which emanated from a new water-jacketed firebox at the rear. This combination of features enhanced steam production at higher pressures.

18. Ibid., 8. Canals had been built in France, Italy, and the Low Countries much earlier, followed by the Bridgewater Canal in England by 1761. Their heyday was well underway by the turn of the new century. As a result, they experienced a much longer productive life than their American counterparts, which were not built in numbers until the 1830s, when rail transportation was beginning.

19. White, A History of the American Locomotive, 3.

20. Wolmar, The Great Railroad Revolution, 16–18.

21. Simons and Parker, Railroads of Indiana, 18.

22. Ibid., 7–8.

23. Ibid., 5. The leading, or pony, truck was a set of nondriven wheels at the front of the engine that could swivel independently of the drive wheels to help the locomotive negotiate curves and elevation changes. The equalizing lever was a suspension system in which the weight of the engine would be equally distributed at three points, thereby helping to maintain traction and stability regardless of terrain. The pony truck was also connected to the equalizing lever suspension system to maintain engine stability when rounding curves or negotiating uneven terrain.

24. White, A History of the American Locomotive, 13–14.

25. Ibid., 7.

THE DAWN OF MIDWESTERN RAILROADING

1. Goodrich, “The Gallatin Plan,” 436–41.

2. “Transportation Developments in the Early Republic,” Conner Prairie Interactive History Park web site.

3. Ibid. Jackson’s opposition, along with the others, was based on the Constitution’s lack of specific language authorizing such projects. To limit federal governmental expansion, many interpreted the Constitution narrowly: unless authority was given in specific terms to the federal go...