In the last blog, we mentioned railroads. Charlotte was served by three different lines during the war, even though saying it that way is a little misleading.
Completed in 1852, the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad ran south out of the city, and into Columbia South Carolina. According to one local historian, this was the line that most people in the area used to ship goods out of the county and into the port of Charleston. The second line, The North Carolina Railroad, ran north, connecting with Salisbury, High Point, Greensboro, and then east, through Durham and Raleigh. At some point - Goldsboro I think, the line became the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad.
A third line ran out of Charlotte towards the west, into Lincoln County. This was a part of the large line, the Wilmington, Carolina, and Rutherford Rail Road, but the eastern link (see below) was not finished.
A fourth line, entitled the Wilmington, Charlotte, and Rutherford Rail Road was stretching from Wilmington towards the city, but was not much further than Richmond County in the 1860s.
So there are Charlotte’s rail links during the war. Most of these links survived unharmed until the final days (literally) of the war.
"The rail section from Navassa to Rockingham was 112 miles and include 78.86 miles of straight track, the longest in the United States." I believe that record still stands.
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