Transportation played an important role in antebellum events and sectional feeling.
In the decades just preceding 1850, railroads had been revolutionizing transportation in America. This made travel to other parts of the country much easier, and made differences such as slavery more noticeable. Southern etiquette demanded that slavery not be discussed in public forums. Northern morality and conscience demanded that it should be discussed and preferably abolished. This was the first step in sectional discord being intensified by transportation.
National newspapers distributed by train, and national news distributed by telegraph were new phenomena, and brought on new sectional tensions. The Mexican War, and the acquisition of California presented new problems and possibilities. A railway to the west coast seemed like an ideal way to consolidate and protect these new gains. Naturally Southerners wanted a Southern route for the railroad, and Northerners wanted a Northern route. This dispute raised the old question of the proper role of the federal government in internal improvements, and effectively insured that federal funds or land grants for either route were not forthcoming. In the South many were angered by abolitionists pamphlets sent south by rail by Northerners who considered their motives to be purely philanthropic. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, many from the central States, including Stephen Douglas, thought that a central route was the perfect compromise. The problem was that a central route would have to go over land not yet organized as Territories. Stephen Douglas, in particular, believed that hurrying the organization of Kansas would smooth the way for his route.
His ambition to get this done led to promises and compromises which made slavery, previously prohibited in Kansas by the Missouri Compromise line, an issue for popular vote in Kansas. This angered the abolitionists and threw National politics into a new turmoil. Violence would erupt in the new territory which would become characterized as “Bleeding Kansas” and inspire vicious diatribes in the press and in Congress. These in turn inspired Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina to beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts repeatedly over the head with a cane in the Chamber of the U.S. Senate. This event sent the press into a fury, and caused a majority of citizens in the country to choose a side. This side choosing, not at all strangely, generally depended upon their place of residence, and their views on the slavery issue more than their former political affiliations. The Democratic Party was split into Northern, Free Soil, and Southern factions, and the Whig Party ceased to exist as a viable force in the North for all intents and purposes. This Party realignment gave rise to the new Republican Party, and sectionalized party politics in a dangerous way. A majority in the North (which had the larger population due to a massive influx of immigrants) were unified as Republicans, and the South was split about 60-40 between Democrats and former Whigs now calling themselves the Constitutional Union Party. This split, of course, virtually insured a Northern victory in 1860, and made secession all but a certainty as early as 1857.
Additionally, the South had fewer railroads than the North, and this fact would hinder their war effort after sectional discord was fanned into secession and Civil War. Thus, the railroads, and particularly the transcontinental railroad are causal factors in both the Civil War and its outcome. Slavery, differing moral norms, and different concepts of the meaning and purpose of the federal government are probably more important causes for the war, but transportation also plays an important part.
