What's crazy to me is that many of the railroads still exist and are used... But for freight only.

Look at what they took from us!

It got way better between the 1860s and 1940s. The issue is that starting in the '50s it declined again.

There was a meme the other day about every American town having a train depot that was turned into a museum. I have never lived in a city that didn't have that exact thing.

If labour is free, you don’t need industrialisation, and that attitude carries over to logistics.

'Good' is a strong word. A lot of '61 was two sets of incompetents flailing at each other, and the dice coming up lucky for the South, while '62 and '63 was largely a series of unforced errors on the part of incompetent Northern generals. The strategic acumen of Lee et co is much overstated.

The north was also fighting in enemy territory. If you ignore that part, for example, then our recent wars in the Middle East don't make any sense.

The northern elite also didn’t want to win at the start of the war: the union as it was, constitution as it is (with slavery that is). For the northern elite the south was a source of cheap cotton and an export market for finished goods, winning decisively would break that balance.

The end of slavery was truly a bottoms up movement, that forced the contradiction to be so great that it could not exist in one country.

John Dolan (aka the war nerd) has a great series on this subject on his podcast: Radio War Nerd.

oh sure they have! they tore down the overhead wire :))))))))))))))))))))))))))