Carnegie
Page 11
While living on Hancock Street, Andy had met Leila Addison, who, picking up where Rebecca left off, made it her duty to infuse him with culture. She had a European education, was fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish, and knew her grammar. In a moment of humility, Andy admitted, “It was through intercourse with this family that I first realized the indescribable yet immeasurable gulf that separates the educated from people like myself.”27 He meant to cross that gulf, cross it and excel past those on the other side. In response to Leila’s criticisms, he strived to improve his writing skills, from punctuation to vocabulary; he studied the English classics and French; and he focused on refining his social skills and table manners. L’amour had yet to enter his vocabulary, however, so Leila served only as another matriarchal figure. Andy never forgot Leila, and later in life he made lucrative investments on her behalf.
Soon a regular at the Wilkins home, he was reasonably confident he would not make a fool of himself. He relished these social gatherings because they were yet another opportunity to better himself, to add another dimension: “Musical parties, charades, and theatricals, in which Miss Wilkins took the leading parts furnished me with another means of self improvement.” He worked on his ice skating, hiking, fishing, and riding, all popular outdoor activities. Also, Andy became as enamored with the judge’s name-dropping as he had with the Scott’s silver tea service: “I shall never forget the impression it made upon me when in the course of conversation, wishing to illustrate a remark, he said: ‘President Jackson once said to me,’ or, ‘I told the Duke of Wellington so and so.’”28 Through these gatherings, the Carnegies and David Stewart’s family became good friends, and Andy met a man who would be a lifelong chum in John “Vandy” Vandevort, a dashing figure who played a howling violin.
While his mother settled into the life of a country lady among the gardens of their modest, tawny, two-story frame house, Andy asserted himself at the railroad. He appointed Davey McCargo superintendent of the telegraph department and boyhood friend George Alexander a conductor; he hired his cousin Maria Hogan to be a freight station telegraph operator and his brother, Tom, who had finished school and learned the telegraph, to be his secretary. While the appointment of Maria raised some eyebrows, a progressive-minded Andy was certain that women would prove more reliable as operators. Once the Civil War broke out, his foresight would pay dividends as the war siphoned the men away from the railroad, as well as all industries, and women stepped into their places. To strengthen his position, Andy was surrounding himself with people he could trust, and the appointments also demonstrated how loyal he was to family and boyhood friends.
Andy may have hired family and friends, but they received no preferential treatment. George Alexander could attest to that the day Andy, Mrs. Carnegie, and he visited the Forrester family, friends who lived several miles outside of the city. “We had a delightful time until about 10 o’clock when there came up a terrible wind and rainstorm,” George recalled. “It simply poured. I was a passenger conductor at that time and my train left the depot at two o’clock a.m. I knew there was no train for me to get to Pittsburgh on, and I did not fancy much the idea of having to get there for that train, so I approached the Supt. (A.C.) and asked him how about my getting to town to take out my train. He replied, ‘Well, George, you know that train goes out at two o’clock and it can’t go very well without a conductor.’ That is all the satisfaction I got and there was nothing left me but to foot it through the storm and I arrived at the depot just in time to get on the train, soaked to the skin.”29 The men had to be pushed to maintain President Thomson’s high standards, but Andy never pushed George and the others any harder than he pushed himself—full throttle every minute.
Regardless of Thomson’s demand for quality, track conditions were deplorable. “The line was poorly constructed,” observed Andy, who had some 225 miles of track under his care, “the equipment was inefficient and totally inadequate for the business that was crowding upon it. The rails were laid upon huge blocks of stone, cast-iron chairs for holding the rails were used, and I have known as many as forty-seven of these to break in one night. No wonder the wrecks were frequent. The superintendent of a division in those days was expected to run trains by telegraph at night, to go out and remove all wrecks, and indeed do anything. At one time for eight days I was constantly upon the line, day and night, at one wreck or obstruction after another.”30 When it came to repair work, Andy was a hands-on boss, hopping around the tracks and directing traffic. He was not one to be confined to the office; others described him as a man of action, rather than mood. So youthful looking, he was not always treated with respect by the laborers, as he discovered on one repair job when he inadvertently obstructed the path of a “bulky Irishman” moving logs. “Get out of me way, ye brat of a boy,” the Irishman shouted, “you’re eternally in the way of the men.” The poor hulk was embarrassed when told the brat was his boss.31 Although it was a Herculean task for the baby-faced Andy, he decided to grow a beard to age himself and fortunately managed a blond fringe along his jawline.
Andy’s most arduous task with the railroad lay ahead during the Civil War. A little over a month after Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana in that order in January, and then Texas in February. Many in the North, including Andy, considered Lincoln’s election a righteous blessing, and the Pittsburgh streets were buzzing when on February 14, 1861, the president-elect visited en route to his inauguration. Cannons announced the arrival of his train in Allegheny City, and several elite military companies escorted him to the Monongahela House in Pittsburgh. The next morning he delivered a speech from a balcony, declaring that the differences between the North and the South were artificial and could be solved if dealt with calmly.
Unfortunately for Lincoln, the Confederates in Charleston, South Carolina, were not interested in friendly conversation; they fired on Union forces in Fort Sumter on April 12. The news came over the telegraph lines that evening and hundreds of people took to Pittsburgh’s streets, anxious and desperate for details. On the way into work the next morning, Andy found that the passenger train “resembled a bee-hive. Men could not sit still nor control themselves.” Their language, he recalled, was unquotable.32 On April 13, the New York Tribune succinctly announced: “The ball has opened. War is inaugurated. The batteries of Sullivan’s Island, Morris Island and other points were opened on Fort Sumter at 4 o’clock this morning. Fort Sumter has returned the fire, and a brisk cannonading has been kept up. No information has been received from the seaboard yet.”33
After being bombarded by some four thousand shells, the Fort Sumter garrison surrendered on April 14. Lincoln now issued a proclamation calling forth the militia of several states to suppress the rebels.34 That same day, the people of Pittsburgh formed a Committee of Public Safety, commanded by Andy’s neighbor, the eighty-two-year-old Judge Wilkins. The committee immediately began to recruit volunteers and to gather equipment. At the outer depot, Andy was overwhelmed by the onslaught of volunteers and supplies; in addition to making provisional plans to transport recruits, equipment, and munitions, he also had to ensure that no contraband meant for the rebels passed along his line. Scott also became immediately embroiled in the war when Pennsylvania governor Andrew Curtin placed him in charge of transporting all troops and war matériel throughout the state. The situation in Washington, D.C., meanwhile, had unexpectedly become critical. Confederates sabotaged the Baltimore & Ohio’s lines and cut telegraph wires, isolating the city and leaving it open to attack. Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore ambushed Union troops, killing four, prompting the Maryland governor to expel all Federal troops and to order all bridges on the Northern Central and the Baltimore & Ohio railroad lines burned, to prevent more soldiers from arriving.
Those in defenseless Washington became more anxious as the hours passed. To reestablish the capital’s lines of c
ommunication and access north, Simon Cameron, who had been appointed secretary of the War Department, called on his friend Scott, who was made an assistant secretary. Desperate for competent help, Scott immediately summoned Andy to the nation’s capital. Andy’s career now entered a more dynamic phase as he was forced to operate and to lead men in a volatile, fluid environment in which he had to improvise. He would also realize fantastic opportunities as war profiteering reached fevered levels.
Notes
1. See stock transfer, April 17, 1856, and IOU to Scott, May 17, 1856, ACLOC, vol. 1.
2. See promissory note, November 14, 1856, ACLOC, vol. 1.
3. Mortgage dated March 27, 1858, ACLOC, vol. 1. The house was mortgaged to Richard Boyce of Columbiana County, Ohio.
4. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 76.
5. James A. Ward, J. Edgar Thomson: Master of the Pennsylvania (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), pp. 110–115. Ward’s research is extensive, including PRR Board Minutes and Thomson’s letters, among other material.
6. Ibid., pp. 118–121.
7. Carnegie states in his autobiography that the year was 1856, and Wall does not dispute that date; however, evidence points strongly to January 1, 1858, when the organizational changes took effect. The Pennsylvania Railroad’s 1857 annual report, published on January 30, 1858, states that Scott had just been made general superintendent.
8. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 80.
9. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 98.
10. Carnegie, Autobiography, pp. 81–82.
11. Ibid., pp. 85–86.
12. Thomas N. Miller to AC, April 10, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 95.
13. Thomas Miller to AC, April 10, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 95.
14. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 86.
15. Thomas Miller to AC, April 10, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 95.
16. AC to Mrs. Grant (Rebecca Stewart), January 9, 1868, ACWPHS, Union Iron Mills Letterbook, 1866–1869.
17. John H. White Jr., The American Railroad Passenger Car (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 213–214.
18. T. T. Woodruff to AC, June 12, 1886, ACLOC, vol. 9.
19. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 83.
20. See income statement for 1863, ACLOC, vol. 3.
21. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, pp. 95–96.
22. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 87.
23. Ibid., p. 87.
24. Ibid., pp. 89–90.
25. Lorant, pp. 126–127, 129.
26. Collins and Collins, p. 33.
27. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 101.
28. Carnegie, Autobiography, pp. 91–92.
29. George M. Alexander to Thomas N. Miller, May 12, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 96.
30. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 89.
31. George M. Alexander to Thomas N. Miller, May 12, 1903, ACLOC, vol. 96.
32. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, p. 104.
33. New York Tribune, April 13, 1861.
34. New York Tribune, April 15, 1861.
CHAPTER 6
Blood Money and Black Gold
Enemy territory and brutal work awaited. Andy was ordered to Annapolis, Maryland, but rail travel through that state was impossible after the governor’s actions. He was forced to take a train to the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where he boarded a steamer, accompanied by a core group of railroad men—including engineers, mechanics, trackmen, and bridge builders—who were to rebuild the lines. Troops of the Sixth Massachusetts were also on the steamer, charged with protecting the railroad. His mother would have come if allowed. As it was, the intrepid woman made the hazardous journey shortly thereafter to ensure her son was minding himself.1
Once in Annapolis, Andy and his crew took possession of a deserted mansion and set up operations. Their first task was to repair the sabotaged railroad and telegraph lines between Annapolis and Washington to restore communications and to permit troop movement into the panicked capital. After three 24-hour days of grueling work, the team succeeded, and the capital was no longer in immediate danger. Astride the engine like a gallant knight, Andy road to Washington with the first trainload of soldiers, known as the First Defenders. Just before reaching the outskirts of the city, he spotted telegraph wires pinned to the ground and ordered the train stopped so he could release them. “When released, in their spring upwards, they struck me in the face, knocked me over, and cut a gash in my cheek which bled profusely,” he later wrote. “In this condition I entered the city of Washington with the first troops, so that with the exception of one or two soldiers wounded a few days previously in passing through the streets of Baltimore, I can justly claim that I ‘shed my blood for my country’ among the first of its defenders.”2
Proudly displaying his battle scar, Andy reported to Scott, who subsequently ordered him to organize what would become the Military Telegraph Corps. To help build a vital communications network for the Federal forces, he summoned David Homer Bates and three other Pennsylvania Railroad telegraphers.3 His next job was to organize a ferry system across the Potomac River to Alexandria, Virginia, in place of a destroyed bridge. There he established a new base of operations for extending the railroad and telegraph lines from the center of Washington to Alexandria, where the Federals hoped to mass their troops and launch an attack on the rebels. That extension meant laying new track through the city and rebuilding the five-thousand-foot Long Bridge. Again the men worked day and night, accomplishing the job in an astoundingly quick seven days. Fortunately for Andy, he had the ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time, with a catnap fully revitalizing him.
Meanwhile, the Confederate forces under General Pierre Gustave T. Beauregard massed twenty miles from Washington, at Manassas, Virginia, to protect a strategic railroad station and to thwart any Union invasion. When on July 21 Union forces under General Irvin McDowell engaged them with a clever flanking maneuver, it appeared a swift victory for the North was secured as the rebel defense buckled. But then Southern reinforcements arrived, including Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s brigade of dedicated Virginians, and rallied the broken Confederates. As the battle developed, Andy’s friend Homer Bates, the telegraph operator stationed in Washington, recalled the tension in the cramped telegraph office, crowded with President Lincoln, War Secretary Cameron, and General in Chief Winfield Scott: “All the morning and well along into the afternoon, General McDowell’s telegrams were more or less encouraging, and Lincoln and his advisers waited with eager hope, believing that Beauregard was being pushed back to Manassas Junction; but all at once the dispatches ceased coming. At first this was taken to mean that McDowell was moving farther away from the telegraph, and then, as the silence became prolonged, a strange fear seized upon the assembled watchers that perhaps all was not well. Suddenly the telegraph-instrument became alive again, and the short sentence, ‘Our army is retreating,’ was spelled out in Morse characters.”4
Stationed in Alexandria, Andy was caught off guard by the reversal: “We could not believe the reports that came to us, but it soon became evident that we must rush every engine and car to the front to bring back our forces. The closest point then was Burke Station. I went out there and loaded up train after train of the poor wounded volunteers.”5 About 625 Union soldiers were killed and 950 wounded.6 Then, through the shrieking steam whistles and clanging bells, came reports indicating that the Confederates were closing in, so Burke Station was abandoned and Andy jumped aboard the last train out.
Five days after the Battle of Bull Run, named by the North after a local river, or the Battle of First Manassas as the South later called it, Andy, putting a positive spin on the defeat, penned an optimistic letter to a friend: “Depend upon it, the recent defeat is a blessing in disguise. We shall now begin in earnest. Knowing our foes, the necessary means will be applied to ensure their overthrow. . . . What might have been half work, a mere scotching of the snake, will now be thorough and complete. . . . I am delighted with my occupation here—hard work, but how gratifying to lie down at night & think By George you are of s
ome use in sustaining a great cause & making the path clearer for those who come hereafter as well as maintaining the position that humanity has, after laborious efforts, succeeded in reaching.”7
Andy now joined Tom Scott in the War Building, where he took charge of the telegraph department. Lincoln visited the telegraph office daily and left a graphic impression on Andy, who found him to be “one of the most homely men I ever saw” but also very animated, charming, and deferential.8 Overall, Andy was not impressed by what he witnessed in Washington: “The general confusion which reigned at Washington at this time had to be seen to be understood. No description can convey my initial impression of it. The first time I saw General Scott, then Commander-in-Chief, he was being helped by two men across the pavement from his office into his carriage. He was an old, decrepit man, paralyzed not only in body, but in mind; and it was upon this noble relic of the past that the organization of the forces of the Republic depended.”9 Optimism on the wane, Andy was frustrated by the lack of decision-making at the top; it took days to settle matters that required prompt action, and the strain of hard days and sleepless nights began to take its toll on him. He had already suffered through one bout of heatstroke under the Virginia sun, and there was the constant threat of disease as typhus was reaching epidemic proportions in the surrounding army camps. Although Andy put up a brave front, there was no doubt he would soon break—it was just a matter of when.