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“L” is for the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Rail Road Company

  “L” is for the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Rail Road Company. This railroad represented the most ambitious dreams of the antebellum Charleston business community: a transportation connection to the markets of the Midwest that would return the city to national prominence. Chartered in 1835 to connect Charleston and Cincinnati, Louisville was added to gain the support of the Kentucky legislature. In 1837 the company began construction of a sixty-mile line from Branchville to Columbia—the only track it ever built. Despite initial fanfare, the company soon foundered because of the inability of the various states to agree on the level of necessary financial commitment and the Panic of 1837. In 1843, the Louisville, Charleston and Cincinnati Rail Road merged with the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road to form the South Carolina Rail Road Company.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.