A little later, a more direct line was built to Parkersburg, West Virginia, and direct connection entered with the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, which reached St. Louis. The railroad was beginning to feel its way out across the land.
War between North and South had been declared before the long delayed extension to Pittsburgh was finished. In that time a real master-hand had come to the Baltimore & Ohio. In its early days the names of Philip E. Thomas, Peter Cooper, Ross Winans, and B. H. Latrobe were indissolubly linked with this pioneer railroad; in its second era John W. Garrett gave brilliancy to its administration. Even before, as well as throughout the four trying years of the war, when the road's tracks were being repeatedly torn up and its bridges burned, Mr. Garrett was laying down his masterly policy of expansion. It was a discouraging beginning that confronted him. The two expensive extensions to the Ohio River had been a severe drain on the company's treasury, traffic was at low ebb, the great financial panic of 1857 had been hard to surmount.
But Mr. Garrett was one of the first of American railroaders to see that a trunk-line should start at the seaboard and end at Chicago or the Mississippi. He pushed his line to Pittsburgh, to Cleveland, to Sandusky, to Chicago. It began to reach new and growing traffic centres. The Baltimore & Ohio entered upon an era of magnificent prosperity.
The first cloud upon that era came in the early seventies, when its powerful rival, the Pennsylvania, secured control of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore, the B. & O.'s connecting link on its immensely profitable through route from New York to Washington. Pennsylvania interests tunnelled for long miles through the rocky foundations of Baltimore, purchased an independent line to Washington--the Baltimore & Potomac--and the B. & O. found itself deprived of its best congested traffic district. For eleven years it was unable to retaliate, though not a soul believed the Baltimore & Ohio to be other than a splendid, conservative property. It owned its own sleeping-car company, its own express company, its own telegraph company. The name of Garrett was behind it. Logan G. McPherson says: