Vicksburg, Shreveport and Texas Railroad

http://www.csa-railroads.com/Vicksburg,_Shreveport_and_Texas.htm

William Wadley, father of Sarah Wadley served as superintendent of this railroad, and during the war he was responsible for securing the slaves owned by the company.

The annual statement of the company for March 1861 indicates that at that time the company owned 92 slaves, valued at $135,350 in cash prices. The report also used the revenue expected from hiring out the slaves as part of the income that would be used to pay interest on company bonds that were about to be offered. See esp. page 7:

To provide for the interest at eight per cent, on $744,000 of Bonds, and $440,000 of guaranteed Stock, amounting to $94,720, annually, payable however semi-annually, the Company relies chiefly upon the revenues of the finished road, increased by the amount of a fair hire for its own slaves. That is to say, the net resources of the road for the first year being estimated at $125,000, supposing the road to pay hire for all the hands employed upon it, we add to this the sum of $27,000 for the hire of ninety hands, owned by the Company and employed in operating and maintaining it, which is as little as they could be hired for, if we did not own them. Thus by owning so many hands ourselves, the net income of the road will be increased, according to our estimate, to one hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars the first year, after which we think it will be considerably more.

William Wadley tried in the fall of 1864 to take some of these slaves to Iron Works in Texas, but he returned when eight of them used the opportunity to run away, according to Sarah Wadley’s diary.

There is a sizable file on the company in the Confederate Citizens’ File at Fold3, which also mentions an act passed by the Confederate Congress authorizing appropriations to complete the road.