omotive, powered by a vertical wood-fired boiler, puffed out of Charleston hauling a cannon and gun crew firing salutes (Catton, Glory Road 237). Ironically enough, this revolution had begun in the South, but there it would not prosper. The Railroading industry quickly blossomed in the North, where it provided a much needed alternative to canals, but could never quite get a foothold in the South. Much of this can be accredited to the fact that Northern engineers were experienced in the field of ironworking and had no problem constructing vast amounts of intricate rail lines, while Southerners, still fledglings in the field, simply hobbled. This hobbling was quite unmistakable at the outbreak of the Civil War. The Union, with its some 22,000 miles of track, was able to transport weaponry, clothes, food, soldiers, and whatever supplies were needed to almost any location in the entire theater. Overall, this greatly aided the Northern war effort and worked to increase the morale of the troops. The South, on the other hand, could not boast such logistical prowess. With its meager production of only four percent of the nation"s locomotives and its scant 9,000 miles of track, the Confederacy stood in painful awareness of its inferiority (Randall and Donald 8). Trackage figures alone, though, do not tell the entire story of the weakness of the South"s railroad"s system. Another obstacle arose in the problem of track gauge. The gauge, or width of track, frequently varied from rail to rail in the South. Therefore, goods would often have to be taken off one train and transferred to another before moving on to their final destination. Any perishable goods had to be stored in warehouses if there were any delays, and this was not an uncommon occurrence. There also existed a problem in the fact that there were large gaps between many crucial parts of the South, which required suppliers to make detours over long distances or to carry goods between rail...
