This admirably researched volume significantly enhances our knowledge of a doyen of the nineteenth-century transportation revolution. As the title implies, the focus is on Charles Morgan the entrepreneur, not Morgan the man. A twenty-one-page introduction discusses Morgan’s contributions within the framework of nineteenth-century entrepreneurship and appropriately establishes the pattern. The absence of extensive Morgan papers undoubtedly influenced the author’s decision to take this approach.
Although born in Connecticut and rising to prominence in New York, Morgan built his extensive steamship and railroad system in the South. The focal point was New Orleans, but extended throughout coastal Texas with lines to Havana and Veracruz. From his entry into the steam-packet service in the 1830s until his death in 1878, Morgan played a preponderant role in the development of Southern transportation. Attuned to changing business and technological conditions, he made the transition from steamships to rails after the Civil War and established an important railroad network in Louisiana and Texas. His combined operations became the Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Line.
Although chiefly of interest to specialists in Southern history and business history, this study is not without value for Latin Americanists. Especially pertinent is Chapter Four, which recounts Morgan’s bitter and fruitless war with Cornelius Vanderbilt to control the Accessory Transit Company of Nicaragua. Chapters Three and Five analyze Morgan’s expansion in the Gulf of Mexico during the Mexican War and the subsequent consolidation of his steamship services there in the 1850s. The other chapters touch only peripherally on Latin American affairs.
Despite meticulous research and scholarly composition, Baughman’s book has regrettable flaws. The narrative is overburdened with repetitive emphasis on Charles Morgan’s strategy and achievements. Time and again the author impresses upon the reader that Morgan was a paragon of executive decision-making, an entrepreneur par excellence. Moreover, the editing is careless, and the impressive bibliography, which is arranged only alphabetically, has several items out of their proper sequence.
