Railroads of the Civil War — Confederate and Union Movements in the Chickamauga/Chattanooga Campaigns

This map was part of a series of maps used for updating the appendices of the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation's Civil War Battlefields. A map detailing the routes taken by the Federal and Confederate troops toward the battles at Chickamauga and Chattanooga was not a necessary addition to the appendices, but rather it developed out of the authors' interest.

The American Civil War saw the first large-scale use of rail transport in modern warfare. From the onset of the war in 1861, both Federal and Confederate strategists realized the importance of troop and supply mobility via rail. The Union states enjoyed distinct rail superiority, and four northern states alone had greater than 22 percent of the miles of track in the entire south.

Most of the tracks in the north were constructed of a similar gauge. Confederate rails were of various incompatible gauges that served primarily to carry cotton and other crops to coast or river ports. Freight often had to be offloaded and moved across a town on wagons to a competing rail depot served by a different gauge track. These inefficiencies limited the speed or distance the Confederacy could transfer troops and supplies to a threatened point.

After 1862, Federals began to penetrate deep into southern territory intent on breaking up the railroads or rebuilding them to transport their own troops and supplies. The south fell further behind. The Confederacy transferred troops from Virginia to Georgia to fight at Chickamauga in September 1863, and the Union responded within weeks with a rail movement of its own from Virginia to Tennessee. These were among the largest troop movements by rail during the Civil War and offer a revealing comparison of the relative advantages of the north versus south.