The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 22

The Saber
ty miles per hour, a feat not seen before
in America. With the telegraph built
beside the railway, ideas, messages,
cultures, statistics, and anything that
could be put to paper could be transmitted
across thousands of miles almost
instantly. 25 In 1865, it took someone
months and often more than $1,000
to go from New York to San Francisco.
Just days after the Golden Spike was
driven into the dirt, it only took seven
days, including stops along the way. 26
Before this railway and telegraph line,
these actions would have been considered
magic and “beyond the reach of
human intellect, enterprise, and ingenuity.”
27 During this time, only in the
United States was there enough labor,
energy, and imagination to build a railroad
to connect the nation. 28
Only in the United States could
the same energy, imagination, and entrepreneurial
spirit of P.T. Barnum have
room to grow and infiltrate and expand
a new modern American culture. Barnum’s
“Greatest Show on Earth” was
called the “great amusement of the
nineteenth century,” as his circus of
curiosities and creatures traveled the
country via the Transcontinental Railroad.
29 Before the Civil War, Barnum
had an “eagerness to court the rapidly
evolving middle class” and “square his
entertainments with bourgeois expectations.”
30 During and after the Civil
War, Barnum aimed to reshape American
theater and entertainment by advertising
his American museum as “the
special place of family amusement in
the United States.” 31 In 1835, Barnum
got his big break in showmanship at age
twenty-five when he exhibited an Afri-
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