Business As Usual: The Civil War and the Unfinished Manassas Gap Railroad Independent Line
The Manassas Gap Railroad Company set out to build a rail line that would never be completed, though it ultimately became central to both the First and Second Battle of Bull Run. This partially finished route was an essential stronghold of both the Union and Confederate forces, at different times. With Edward Carrington Marshall (son of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall) at the helm, this railroad line was doomed from the start, in a particularly tenuous financial position after a difficult season for crops in the Shenandoah Valley. The secession of Virginia and the outbreak of war in 1861 spelled utter disaster: First, Union forces seized the iron railway ties needed to finish the line, then a Confederate takeover the following year threw yet another wrench in the company's plans for the expansion of the line. It traded hands numerous times, falling prey to scavenging until the war ended, when a merger of necessity was forged between Manassas Gap and their more profitable competitor the Orange & Alexandria Company. This committee is about business management in a time of war, when both sides are the enemy of that essential objective: profit.
Meet Your Chair
Sarina Hegli
Sarina Hegli is a senior in the Politics Department from San Diego, California, with certificates in East Asian Studies, Values and Public Life, and History and the Practice of Diplomacy. She has been a member of the Princeton Model United Nations Team for a good long time now, and last year had the honor of helping host PDI for the first time since the pandemic! We are so back.