Anybody who knows anything about Civil War history knows the big names: Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Sherman. How about Herman Haupt? Now before you go, “Herman who?” it is worth giving Haupt more just than a passing glance. Without this Pennsylvania German born engineer, master railroad builder and organizing genius, the Union would have had a much tougher time winning the Civil War. Facing terrific odds, with much of the interference coming from generals on his side of the Mason-Dixon line, he managed to lay track and build bridges that carried the troops and supplies to the battlefields rapidly, which in many cases led to their victories. Haupt’s intimate knowledge of how railroad systems worked and how to make them do so efficiently was something few people of his time outside perhaps Charles Ellet and John Roebling could grasp.
Herman Haupt (1817-1905) was born in Philadelphia. His great grandfather Sebastian at age 23 arrived from the Palatinate with 349 other immigrants on Captain Walter Sterling’s ship Glasgow on September 9, 1738. A maker of barrels and casks by trade, he married a widow, Mary Castleberry.
Haupt’s grandfather Johann married the daughter of a prosperous Huguenot family and moved to Durham Township, Bucks County where he established a flax mill to produce linseed oil. Herman’s father Jacob moved back to Philadelphia worked as a clerk and eventually with his brother-in-law invested in ships that engaged in the China trade. Profitable for a time the quasi-war with Revolutionary France led to the destruction of many of their ships. Jacob tried again on his own, acquiring a fleet of merchant ships. Misfortune followed again with the outbreak of the War of 1812 with the British fleet, blocking the approaches to the Delaware River, capturing of all his ships. So, he reverted to other forms of trade. After 40 years as a bachelor, he married Margaretta Wiall Haupt. His second son, Herman, was born in 1817 in Philadelphia.
When Herman Haupt was 12 years old, his father died. As a youngster he worked to pay his way through school. In 1831 President Andrew Jackson appointed the 14-year-old Haupt to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated from the academy as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S Infantry. In 1838 in Gettysburg, he married Ann Cecelia (Celia) Keller, with whom he was to have seven sons and four daughters.
He resigned from the Army and as an engineer surveyed, among others, the Norristown and Allentown Railroad. In 1839 Haupt patented a bridge design called the Haupt Truss. One in Altoona and another in Ardmore remain.
For about seven years Haupt was a professor of mathematics at what is now Gettysburg College. While there he met J. Edgar Thomson of the Pennsylvania Railroad who hired Haupt as a construction engineer and later general superintendent. Together they designed the famous Horseshoe Curve, the rail route over the Allegheny Mountains to Pittsburgh that thrilled generations of travelers and is now a National Historic Landmark.
In the 1850s, Haupt was chief engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad and, ironically, the Southern Railroad of Mississippi. His last major project before the war was the Hoosac Tunnel project through the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. The 35-year-old Haupt invented his own machinery to plow through the Hoosac Mountain. Unfortunately, a rival railroad lobbied the state legislature to deny state funds for the project, forcing Haupt into bankruptcy after he had drilled 4,250 feet into the mountain. It was completed after the war by other engineers.
The use of railroads in warfare was not totally unknown. In 1859 French troops under the emperor Napoleon III showed how they, along with the telegraph, could be used efficiently to move troops against Austria in the so-called Austro-Sardinian War that year. But American generals were untried in this new method of warfare. Fortunately, with Abraham Lincoln as president the Union had a leader who understood the value of railroads. He had served for many years as a lawyer and lobbyist for the Illinois Central and other railroads, winning several significant cases for them. For one case Lincoln requested a fee of $10,000, the largest legal fee ever paid up to that time. One official balked, saying “even Daniel Webster would not have asked this much.” They did eventually pay it, Lincoln using part of it to fund his Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas. According to one source in 1860 Lincoln had been offered the presidency of the New York Central Railroad with a salary of $100,000 a year, an offer which he declined.
But the railroad system in America was still made up of several small lines that did not always connect. This was borne out in the case of Allentown’s First Defenders in their attempt to get to Washington in 1861. In Harrisburg they boarded trains of the Northern Central Railroad. But since there was no through railroad to Washington the troops were forced through a mob of successionists to cross Baltimore, where they were attacked. If Maryland had seceded, the nation’s capital would have been totally cut off. The situation was even worse in the South. Most railroads were regional lines which were not connected to each other. With some exceptions there were few railroads willing to work with the Confederate government in organizing to support the southern cause. Although Jefferson Davis had been U.S. Secretary of War in the 1850s, it was almost impossible to overcome the rivalry between the various railroads.
On January 11, 1862, Edward Stanton, also a former railroad attorney who had taken part in a case with Lincoln, replaced Simon Cameron as Secretary of War. That April, he found himself with a serious problem. A vital bridge over the Potomac Creek in a 100-foot-deep chasm had been destroyed by Confederate raiders. Troops were needed to support General McClellan’s siege of Richmond. General McDowell refused to move them without a supply line. That ruined bridge had to be replaced. Haupt left Stanton’s office with the rank of colonel and started to work.
First Haupt organized the supplies he would need. Then he got the 45 soldiers assigned to him and organized into teams. The weather was miserable, cold, and rainy. He had no carpenters, insufficient tools, and no timbers with which to build. Yet Haupt worked out in his mind what he had to do and worked with what he had. “Somehow,” writes Civil War railroad historian George Edgar Turner, “men who worked alongside Haupt became imbued with his passion for doing the impossible and, despite the danger, there remained a few willing to risk their lives.” Eighty feet in the air, Haupt walked across the bridge and was convinced it would hold. An engine was slowly pulled across with ropes and it did not quiver.
On May 23, exactly one month after his first talk with Stanton, Haupt met Lincoln and members of his cabinet and accompanied them in a train over the reconstructed bridge. Afterwards Lincoln had this to say:
“I have seen the most remarkable structure human eyes ever rested upon. That man Haupt has built a bridge across Potomac Creek 400 feet long and nearly 100 feet high, over which loaded trains are running every hour and, upon my word gentlemen, there is nothing in it but beanpoles and cornstalks.”
Alas for all the work Haupt and his men put into it, the siege of Richmond was a bust. But it certainly showed Haupt’s abilities and there was a lot more ahead. The genius that he was, Haupt had little patience for small-minded officers. An example of this took place on August 22, 1862. The Second Battle of Bull Run was about to occur. General John Pope needed troops. And it was up to Haupt, who had command of every U.S. military railroad in the East, to see that he got them. But now four trains had suddenly disappeared. Hours later a conductor arrived to say that they had been seized by Union General Samuel Sturgis. Sturgis (1822-1889), a cavalryman by training, was born in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. His first command was with the 1st Dragoons in the Mexican War. He was to have many commands during the Civil War and after. In the 1870s Sturgis was commander of the 7th Cavalry. He was in St. Louis on a recruiting mission when one of his sons James, an officer with the 7th, was killed with Custer at the Little Big Horn. A son and grandson served in the military as officers during World Wars I and II. As sometimes happens with generals, Sturgis had more than a touch of self-importance. Several photographs of the day show him, ala Napoleon, with his arm tucked inside his uniform.
Sending a message to General Henry Halleck, Haupt raced four miles up to Sturgis’ headquarters. “Well!” said Sturgis, ”I am glad you have come for I have just sent a guard to your office to put you under arrest for disobedience of orders in failing to transport my command.” Haupt said, fine: as far as he was concerned, he would happy to crawl into a corner and get some sleep but Sturgis must understand he was assuming “a very grave responsibility; the trains were loaded with wounded; the surgeons and ambulances were waiting for them at the depot; the engines would soon be out of wood and water and serious delays would be caused in forwarding troops to General Pope.”
After a moment of thought Sturgis replied, “I don’t care for John Pope a pinch of owl dung!” Then a military aide arrived with an order from General Halleck outlining…
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