• started with short horse-drawn lines such as the Granite Railroad, Quincy, Mass., 2 miles long, also in coal mines

 Best Friend of Charleston, 1830

• From Charleston to Hamburg on the Savannah River--136 miles opened in 1833.  The South Carolina Canal and Rail-Road Company hired an engineer names Horatio Allen who not only built the first domestic-built locomotive, The Best Friend of Charleston, but also was a pioneer in the 1830s in adapting locomotive design to American conditions by inventing the swivel truck.
• the railroad met a tremendous need and grew quickly, but had to be adapted to American distances

• hired slaves built railroads south of Washington DC, both laborers and skilled carpenters and bridge builders (in the north, Irish laborers, in the west Chinese)
• very hard labor, probably no worse than south central plantations, in both cases slaves were separated from their families
  
• white immigrants were less cooperative and it was believed at the time African-Americans could better tolerate working in hot weather
  
• profits from sale of slaves was a major source of investment in railroads
• railroads before the civil war created regional markets (as large as the entire south)
  
• slaves could be transported south and west more quickly with less loss
• intensified commercial activities and market efficiencies
• more efficient market means slaves are more likely to be separated from their families
• their human networks are less helpful
  

The telegraph

• Practical telegraphs were invented by Baron Pavel Schilling and Jacobi in Russia and by Cooke and Wheatstone in England--a five-needle system was tried in 1837 for railway use and later simplified--railway signaling is very important but not very demanding.  The five needle system used moving needles to point to letters on a board--the operator didn't have to read code but you had to have six wires between the two stations.
• In the U.S. Samuel F. B. Morse used a simple machine--longer or shorter bursts of current pushed a pencil to make a mark on a moving paper tape.  The machine was rugged and much cheaper to construct, but the operator had to learn code.  By 1837 Morse was transmitting signals for 10 miles, and in 1843 Congress funded a line between Baltimore and Washington.  That line was not widely used, but the line between Washington and New York was profitable.
• By 1850 the telegraph linked all the states east of the Mississippi except Florida.  Lines were laid along railroad right of ways, making it easy to get the infrastructure in place.
• The demand for railroad signaling was immediate, and business news could be profitable.  Newspapers competed on having the latest information--it was revolutionary that a St. Louis newspaper could carry President Polk's 1848 message to Congress within 24 hours.

Better transportation and communication meant slaves were sold further away from their families
their communication networks and strategies couldn't keep up with technology
as commerce became more impersonal, networks were of less value
"It seems as though, with every technological advancement, slaves are empowered in one way, and dehumanized further in another."