American Railroads

Discover the real truth behind African American history. You will be amazed to learn about some of the great African Americans and their legacies.

Before the Civil War, there was a crack team of abolitionists who used quilts and signal lanterns to guide enslaved people to freedom. RIGHT? WRONG! The truth is, the Underground Railroad wasn't very organized, and most freedom seekers were on their own.

The period of the Industrial Revolution was marked with railroads, steel, and big businesses. There were factories and machines working to build a more concrete nation. But the Industrial Revolution also led to outbreaks of violence between owners and workers in factories. This book discusses the pros and cons of the Industrial Revolution. Grab a copy today.

They came by boat from a starving land, and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains, seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe, as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire.

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, notwithstanding its merits as a feat of exploration, was also the first tentative claim on the vast interior and the western seaboard of North America by the United States. It set in motion the great movement west that began almost immediately with the first commercial overland expedition funded by John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company and would continue with the establishment of the Oregon Trail and California Trail. That quest would reach its ultimate expression ...when the last spike was driven into the Union Pacific Railroad.

In Abandoned Tracks, W. Thomas Mainwaring bridges the gap between scholarly and popular perceptions of the Underground Railroad. Historians have long recognized that many aspects of the Underground Railroad have been mythologized by emotion, memory, time, and wishful thinking. Mainwaring’s book is a rich, in-depth attempt to separate fact from fiction in one local area, while also contributing to a scholarly discussion of the Underground Railroad by placing Washington County, Pennsylvania, in the national context.

In building a railroad, there is only one decisive spot - the end of the track. Nothing like this great work had ever been seen in the world when the last spike, a golden one, was driven in Promontory Peak, Utah, in 1869, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific tracks were joined. Ambrose writes with power and eloquence about the brave men - the famous and the unheralded, ordinary men doing the extraordinary - who accomplished the spectacular feat that made the continent into a nation.

Born free in 1821 to two parents who had been enslaved, William Still was drawn to anti-slavery work from a young age. Hired as a clerk at the Anti-Slavery office in Philadelphia after teaching himself to read and write, he began directly assisting enslaved people who were crossing over from the South into freedom. Andrew Diemer captures the full range and accomplishments of Still’s life, from his resistance to Fugitive Slave Laws and his relationship with John Brown before the war, to his long career fighting for citizenship rights and desegregation until the early 20th century.

William Still’s parents escaped slavery but had to leave two of their children behind, a tragedy that haunted the family. As a young man, William went to work for the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, where he raised money, planned rescues, and helped freedom seekers who had traveled north. And then one day, a strangely familiar man came into William’s office, searching for information about his long-lost family. Could it be? Motivated by his own family’s experience, William began collecting the stories of thousands of other freedom seekers.