1855 - 1st train crosses Miss River’s 1st bridge, Rock Is Ill-Davenport Ia
First time Lincoln and Jefferson Davis met as opponents? The railroad made for east/west transportation and reduced the South’s river transportation/power?
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/summer/bridge.html
The construction and completion of this bridge came to symbolize the larger issues affecting transcontinental commerce and sectional interests. Backers of a railroad across the country were divided between those who favored a northern route and those who advocated a southern one. The bridge also pitted steamboats against the railroads, and these disagreements were decided in the federal courts.
Two notable players in the controversy surrounding the bridge were men who would later face each other on a grander stage: Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Lincoln was the attorney for the bridge company in litigation brought by the steamship interests. Davis, as secretary of war, took an active role in the contest between northern and southern routes for a transcontinental railroad.
During the 1850s, a struggle was going on in the Mississippi Valley between those who favored north-south traffic and those who advocated east-west travel across the continent. It was a contest between the old lines of migration and the new; between the South and the East; between the slow and cheap transportation by water and the rapid, but more expensive, transportation by rail. It arrayed St. Louis and Chicago against each other in an intense rivalry. The people of the city of St. Louis and other river interests supported the principle of free navigation for boats, whereas the citizens of Chicago and the railroad interests stood by the right of railroad companies to build a bridge.
Southerners were opposed to any northern bridge because it would allow the north to settle the west in greater numbers. Davis made no objection at this time because he felt that the progress of the southern route seemed assured. In the spring of 1854, however, as the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act heated up sectional rivalries, Davis realized that his southern transcontinental railroad might be delayed. His interest in the Rock Island site grew.
The construction and completion of this bridge came to symbolize the larger issues affecting transcontinental commerce and sectional interests. (from the article on the Mississippi bridge in davenport Iowa.)
The below regards 1890’s but it is something that was going on prior to the Civil War. And still is................
http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/sections.html