BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD (B&O)
THE FLAG FELL. THE HISTORY DIDN'T.
The Railroad That Helped Build America — 1827–1987
A Fallen Flag of American History | Politics 1776
Before the Railroad, Distance Defined America
In the early nineteenth century, the United States was growing westward.
New settlements appeared beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Farms produced crops for distant markets. Towns expanded along rivers and wagon roads.
But moving people and goods remained difficult.
A journey that could take days by water might require weeks by wagon. Mountain ranges separated communities. Roads became impassable in bad weather, and rivers did not always flow where merchants needed them to go.
The country was growing faster than its transportation network.
Then came a new idea.
What if goods and passengers could travel along a permanent route, pulled by horses or machines, without depending on river currents or muddy roads?
The technology was still developing.
Nobody knew exactly how far it could go.
But a group of businessmen in Baltimore believed it could change their city's future.
They would eventually help change the country.
Baltimore Was Losing the Race for Western Trade
In 1825, the Erie Canal opened in New York.
The canal connected the Great Lakes region to the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean.
It gave New York merchants an important commercial advantage.
Goods from the interior could move toward New York City through an increasingly efficient transportation network.
Baltimore faced a serious problem.
For years, its merchants had relied on roads and wagon traffic connecting the port to communities west of the Appalachian Mountains.
But canals threatened to redirect that business elsewhere.
Baltimore's leaders needed another route west.
Building a canal across difficult terrain was expensive and complicated.
Instead, they considered a technology that was still relatively unfamiliar in America.
The railroad.
At the time, railroads were not the vast systems of locomotives and steel tracks familiar today.
Early railways often used horses to pull wagons over tracks.
Steam locomotives were still experimental in many applications.
The Baltimore businessmen were taking a substantial risk.
But they believed the opportunity justified it.
February 28, 1827 — The B&O Is Born
On February 28, 1827, Maryland chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.
Its objective was ambitious.
Connect Baltimore with the Ohio River and the commercial opportunities of the American interior.
The company became the nation's first common-carrier railroad, established to transport freight and passengers for the public.
Its name described its destination.
Baltimore & Ohio.
The railroad's founders included merchants and civic leaders who recognized that transportation could determine the economic future of their city.
Among its early leaders was Philip E. Thomas, the company's first president.
But establishing a railroad company was only the beginning.
The route would have to cross rivers, climb hills, negotiate mountain terrain, and pass through land controlled by numerous owners and governments.
The engineers would need to solve problems that American railroad builders had rarely encountered.
The company would need enormous amounts of capital.
And it would have to compete against established transportation interests.
The B&O began not as a finished transportation system, but as a wager on what the future might make possible.
July 4, 1828 — A Remarkable Beginning
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began construction on July 4, 1828.
The date was deliberate.
It was the anniversary of American independence.
Among those participating in the ceremony was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Carroll helped lay the railroad's ceremonial first stone.
The symbolism was striking.
A man who had helped establish American independence was participating in the beginning of a transportation project intended to connect the expanding republic.
The B&O's first tracks extended westward from Baltimore's Mount Clare area.
Today, that location is preserved as part of the B&O Railroad Museum.
But in 1828, the railroad was still an experiment.
The company had no sprawling network.
No famous passenger trains.
No vast locomotive fleet.
Just a proposed route, a workforce, and a belief that rail transportation could succeed.
The First Thirteen Miles
In May 1830, the B&O began regular operations between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills, now Ellicott City, Maryland.
The distance was approximately thirteen miles.
The earliest trains were pulled by horses.
Even so, the service represented a significant development.
The railroad provided a dedicated transportation route between communities, offering a new alternative to traditional roads.
Passengers could travel along tracks designed for regular service.
Freight could move with greater predictability.
The system was modest by later standards.
But the basic idea worked.
The B&O had demonstrated that a commercial railroad could operate in the United States.
Its early success encouraged additional investment and helped establish railroading as a serious transportation industry.
And the technology was about to change rapidly.
Tom Thumb — The Little Locomotive With a Big Reputation
In 1830, inventor Peter Cooper demonstrated a small steam locomotive on the B&O.
It became known as Tom Thumb.
The locomotive was not a large or powerful machine by later standards.
But it demonstrated that steam power could move railroad cars along the company's tracks.
The famous story of Tom Thumb includes an informal contest against a horse-drawn railcar.
According to the traditional account, the locomotive initially performed well but lost after a mechanical problem interrupted its run.
Some details of the race have been embellished through retelling, and it should not be confused with a formally organized locomotive competition.
Nevertheless, the demonstration became an enduring symbol of the transition from animal power to steam transportation.
Steam locomotives would soon make railroads faster and more capable of carrying heavy loads.
The B&O had entered a new era.
The future of American transportation would increasingly be powered by machines.
Building West — An Engineering Challenge
Reaching Ellicott's Mills was only the beginning.
The railroad's ultimate objective was the Ohio River.
Between Baltimore and that destination stood difficult terrain.
The Appalachian Mountains presented enormous engineering challenges.
Railroad tracks required careful attention to grades and curves.
Steep hills made it difficult for locomotives to pull heavy trains.
Rivers required bridges.
Mountain ridges required cuts or tunnels.
Engineers had to determine where the railroad could go, what it would cost, and how it could be built safely.
The B&O's westward construction became a testing ground for American railroad engineering.
Workers laid track through rugged countryside.
Stoneworkers constructed bridges and retaining walls.
Carpenters, blacksmiths, mechanics, surveyors, and laborers contributed to the effort.
The work was difficult and sometimes dangerous.
The railroad depended on the labor of many people whose names rarely appeared in the histories of its executives and investors.
Its development was both an engineering achievement and a story of the workers who physically built it.
The Railroad Versus the Canal
The B&O's westward expansion brought it into direct competition with the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
Both companies wanted access to valuable transportation routes along the Potomac River.
The conflict became especially serious near Point of Rocks, Maryland.
There, the geography offered limited room for competing transportation systems.
The railroad and canal interests fought over access to the same corridor.
Legal disputes delayed construction.
The conflict demonstrated that America's transportation revolution was not simply a story of inventors producing better machines.
It was also a struggle over property rights, corporate charters, investment, and access to valuable routes.
Railroads and canals competed for the same commercial traffic.
And governments had to determine how competing companies could use land and transportation corridors.
Eventually, both transportation systems developed along portions of the Potomac.
But the B&O's progress westward had been slowed by years of legal and engineering difficulties.
Washington, D.C., Joins the Railroad Network
The B&O also recognized the importance of connecting Baltimore to the nation's capital.
In 1835, the company opened its Washington Branch.
The route required a major engineering structure across the Patapsco River.
The Thomas Viaduct, completed in 1835, became one of the most significant early railroad bridges in the United States.
Built of stone, it demonstrated the growing sophistication of American railroad engineering.
The new line improved travel between Baltimore and Washington.
It also established a transportation connection that would become strategically important during the Civil War.
As the railroad expanded, it was beginning to serve more than Baltimore's commercial interests.
It was becoming part of the nation's transportation infrastructure.
The Railroad and the Telegraph
The B&O also played a role in another major technological development.
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent a historic telegraph message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore.
The message read:
“What hath God wrought!”
The telegraph line followed the B&O railroad corridor.
Railroads provided useful routes for telegraph wires because their rights-of-way connected important cities and transportation centers.
The relationship between railroads and telegraphs would become increasingly important.
Trains moved people and goods.
Telegraphs moved information.
Together, they transformed the speed at which businesses, governments, and communities could communicate.
A message that once required a rider or a physical letter could now travel over wires in moments.
The same country that had once depended on slow roads and waterways was developing networks capable of connecting distant places in entirely new ways.
Reaching the Ohio River
The B&O's original goal proved much harder to accomplish than its founders had imagined.
The railroad reached Cumberland, Maryland, in 1842.
Beyond Cumberland lay some of the most difficult terrain on its planned route.
Construction required bridges, tunnels, steep grades, and extensive excavation.
The company also faced financial difficulties and political disputes over its route.
But the work continued.
In late December 1852, the railroad finally reached the Ohio River at Wheeling, then part of Virginia and today part of West Virginia.
Through service followed in 1853.
More than twenty-five years had passed since the company received its charter.
The railroad had accomplished the central objective reflected in its name.
Baltimore was connected by rail to the Ohio River.
That connection opened new possibilities for freight and passenger transportation between the Atlantic coast and the American interior.
It also demonstrated that railroads could overcome geographic obstacles once considered formidable barriers to commerce.
A Railroad That Helped Connect a Growing Nation
As the nineteenth century progressed, the B&O continued expanding.
Its lines connected Baltimore and Washington with western Pennsylvania, the Ohio River Valley, and eventually major Midwestern markets.
Railroad transportation changed the relationship between farms, factories, mines, cities, and ports.
Coal could travel from mountain regions to industrial centers.
Agricultural products could reach distant markets.
Manufactured goods could move inland.
Passengers could travel between cities with greater speed and regularity.
Railroads also encouraged the growth of towns along their routes.
Stations became centers of commercial activity.
Businesses located near tracks.
Warehouses and factories developed around railroad facilities.
Communities that gained railroad access could experience new economic opportunities.
Others were left outside the principal transportation corridors.
The railroad did not create every aspect of American economic growth.
But it helped make larger markets and more extensive industrial networks possible.
The B&O and the Underground Railroad
The B&O's location between Baltimore, Washington, and northern communities also gave it a place in the history of slavery and freedom.
Before the Civil War, Maryland was a slave state.
The railroad operated through a region where enslaved people, free Black communities, abolitionists, and slaveholders lived within relatively short distances of one another.
Some people escaping slavery used rail transportation as part of their journeys toward freedom.
The B&O Railroad Museum has documented connections between the railroad's transportation network and the Underground Railroad.
But the Underground Railroad was not a railroad company.
It was a network of people, routes, hiding places, and assistance used by freedom seekers.
Railroads were among the many transportation methods that could become part of those journeys.
The B&O's history therefore intersects with both the expansion of American commerce and the struggle against slavery.
The railroad operated within a society whose laws and institutions did not provide equal freedom to everyone.
Its history cannot be separated entirely from that larger national context.
The Civil War — A Railroad Becomes a Strategic Lifeline
In 1861, the United States entered the Civil War.
The B&O suddenly became one of the most strategically important railroads in the country.
Its routes connected Washington, Baltimore, and western territories.
Railroads could transport troops, weapons, ammunition, food, and other military supplies on a scale that earlier armies could not easily achieve.
Control of railroad lines became a major military objective.
The B&O's tracks, bridges, and equipment were vulnerable to raids and sabotage.
Confederate forces repeatedly targeted sections of the railroad.
Union forces worked to protect and restore vital connections.
The railroad suffered extensive damage and interruptions.
Its location near the border between Union and Confederate territory made operations particularly difficult.
But the B&O continued serving as an important transportation route for the Union.
The war demonstrated that railroads were no longer merely commercial conveniences.
They had become essential elements of national military logistics.
The ability to move troops and supplies quickly could influence military operations across entire regions.
Harpers Ferry and the Struggle for Control
Harpers Ferry, located where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers meet, became one of the most contested locations of the Civil War.
The B&O passed through this strategically important area.
Its bridges and rail connections made the town valuable to opposing forces.
Control changed repeatedly during the war.
Railroad facilities were damaged, rebuilt, and attacked again.
The B&O's experience at Harpers Ferry reflected the broader challenges of operating transportation infrastructure during a conflict fought across populated and economically important regions.
For railroad workers, wartime service could involve serious personal danger.
For military commanders, keeping the tracks open was often a matter of strategic necessity.
For nearby communities, the railroad's importance could make their towns targets of military operations.
The Civil War revealed how deeply railroads had become connected to the nation's survival.
The Railroad Age Accelerates
After the Civil War, American railroad construction expanded rapidly.
Railroads reached farther west.
Industrial production increased.
Coal, iron, steel, timber, and agricultural products moved through growing transportation networks.
The B&O continued expanding its own system.
It developed connections toward Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and other major commercial centers.
But competition was intense.
The Pennsylvania Railroad became one of its most formidable rivals.
Other companies developed competing routes between eastern ports and inland markets.
Railroads competed for freight contracts, passengers, and access to major cities.
They also invested heavily in bridges, tunnels, locomotives, stations, and maintenance facilities.
The industry was becoming more capital-intensive.
Building a railroad required substantial resources.
Operating one required constant maintenance, skilled labor, and careful management.
The B&O's success depended not only on its early achievements but on its ability to compete in an increasingly complex transportation economy.
John Work Garrett and the Expanding B&O
One of the most important figures in the railroad's nineteenth-century development was John Work Garrett.
Garrett became president of the B&O in 1858.
He led the company through the Civil War and much of its subsequent expansion.
Under his leadership, the railroad pursued new routes, strengthened connections, and competed aggressively for western traffic.
The B&O expanded its influence across the eastern and midwestern United States.
But growth also created challenges.
New construction required capital.
Competitors sought control of important markets.
And railroad companies increasingly became major economic and political institutions.
The B&O was no longer simply a Baltimore transportation project.
It was becoming one of the country's major railroad systems.
Railroads, Workers, and the Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The growth of American railroads created employment for thousands of workers.
Engineers, conductors, firemen, brakemen, track crews, mechanics, telegraph operators, and shop workers kept trains moving.
Their work could be demanding and dangerous.
Railroad companies faced intense competition and pressure to control costs.
Workers faced long hours, hazardous conditions, and uncertainty over wages and employment.
In 1877, a major labor conflict began on the B&O.
The company announced another wage reduction during a period of economic difficulty.
Railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, protested.
The dispute spread.
What began as a conflict involving B&O employees became part of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, one of the largest labor upheavals in nineteenth-century American history.
Strikes and protests spread across several railroad systems and cities.
State militias and federal troops were deployed in various locations.
Violence occurred, and people were killed.
The conflict revealed the growing tensions between industrial employers and workers.
Railroads had helped connect the country economically.
But the wealth and power created by industrial growth were not distributed without disagreement.
The strike became an important event in the history of American labor relations.
It also demonstrated how disruption on a major railroad could affect commerce across large parts of the country.
The Royal Blue — Competition and Passenger Service
During the late nineteenth century, the B&O invested in improved passenger service.
The railroad wanted to compete for travelers between Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the New York metropolitan area.
Its Royal Blue service became associated with quality passenger transportation.
The B&O developed a reputation for comfortable equipment and attentive service.
Passenger railroading had become more than a way to move people from one place to another.
It was also a competitive business in which companies promoted speed, comfort, reliability, and convenience.
Railroads introduced improved sleeping cars, dining services, and passenger accommodations.
For many travelers, trains became an important part of American life.
They connected families, businesses, government officials, and communities across long distances.
The B&O's passenger services helped establish the railroad's public identity well beyond its freight operations.
The Howard Street Tunnel — Engineering and Financial Risk
The B&O continued improving its eastern routes during the late nineteenth century.
One major project was the Baltimore Belt Line, which included the Howard Street Tunnel.
The tunnel helped the railroad connect its routes through Baltimore without relying on inconvenient transfers.
But operating steam locomotives through a long urban tunnel presented a problem.
Smoke and exhaust could make conditions difficult and dangerous.
The B&O adopted electric locomotive operation on part of the route.
When service began in 1895, the project became an important milestone in American railroad electrification.
The engineering achievement was significant.
But the costs were enormous.
The railroad had invested heavily in expansion and improvements.
Financial pressures contributed to the B&O entering receivership in 1896.
It emerged from receivership in 1899.
The episode illustrated a recurring challenge of railroad history.
Infrastructure could create enormous economic value while requiring investments large enough to threaten the financial stability of the companies building it.
Innovation did not eliminate financial risk.
A New Century — A Mature Railroad System
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the B&O had become a major eastern railroad.
Its network connected industrial cities, coal-producing regions, ports, and agricultural markets.
Freight transportation remained the foundation of its business.
Coal was especially important.
The railroad carried coal from Appalachian mining regions to steel mills, factories, power plants, ports, and other customers.
Coal also fueled many of the B&O's own steam locomotives.
The railroad's operations depended on a complex system of yards, shops, terminals, dispatching offices, and maintenance facilities.
Trains had to be scheduled.
Equipment had to be repaired.
Tracks, bridges, tunnels, and signals required constant attention.
The railroad had grown far beyond the original thirteen-mile line between Baltimore and Ellicott's Mills.
It was now an industrial organization operating across numerous states.
Daniel Willard and the B&O's Twentieth-Century Identity
Daniel Willard became president of the B&O in 1910.
He would lead the railroad for more than three decades.
Under his leadership, the company emphasized improvements in service, operations, and its public reputation.
The B&O became especially well known for its passenger trains.
The Capitol Limited, introduced in 1923, provided service between the East Coast and Chicago.
The National Limited, introduced in 1925, connected the East Coast with St. Louis.
These trains became associated with the elegance of long-distance passenger railroading.
Dining cars, sleeping accommodations, lounges, and other amenities helped make rail travel an experience as well as a means of transportation.
The B&O also adopted new technologies and operating practices.
Its history during this period reflected the railroad industry's continuing effort to improve efficiency while serving a changing national economy.
The First World War and Federal Control
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, railroads became essential to the movement of troops, supplies, and industrial materials.
The federal government took control of most major American railroads through the United States Railroad Administration beginning in late 1917.
The objective was to coordinate transportation during wartime.
The B&O operated under federal control along with other major railroads.
The experience demonstrated how essential railroad infrastructure had become to national defense and economic organization.
After the war, federal control ended in 1920.
The railroads returned to private operation.
But the industry faced changing financial conditions, new regulation, and growing competition from other transportation methods.
The B&O would have to adapt again.
The Great Depression — A Difficult Decade
The economic collapse beginning in 1929 affected the entire railroad industry.
Industrial production declined.
Businesses shipped fewer goods.
Passenger traffic weakened.
Railroad revenues fell.
The B&O faced serious financial pressure during the Great Depression.
It reduced expenses and struggled to maintain operations.
Unlike some railroads, the B&O avoided bankruptcy during the Depression.
But the effects were substantial.
Employees faced uncertainty.
Investment became more difficult.
And the railroad had to operate in an economy where demand for transportation had fallen sharply.
The B&O's experience reflected the broader economic hardships of the period.
Railroads remained essential infrastructure.
But their importance did not protect them from the consequences of a national economic collapse.
World War II — The Railroads Return to the Center of National Life
When the United States entered World War II, railroad transportation became critically important again.
Factories increased production.
Military installations required supplies.
Troops needed transportation.
Coal, steel, machinery, food, and other materials had to move across the country.
The B&O handled enormous wartime traffic.
Its freight and passenger operations contributed to the national mobilization.
Railroad workers maintained equipment, operated trains, repaired infrastructure, and kept transportation networks functioning under intense demand.
The war demonstrated that railroads remained indispensable even as automobiles, trucks, and airplanes became more common.
But after the war, the transportation industry would change dramatically.
The Automobile, the Highway, and the Airplane
During the twentieth century, Americans gained new transportation choices.
Automobile ownership expanded.
Highways improved.
Trucking became increasingly competitive for freight.
Commercial aviation transformed long-distance passenger travel.
The Interstate Highway System, authorized in 1956, further strengthened road transportation.
These developments changed the economic position of railroads.
Passengers who once depended on trains could travel by car or airplane.
Some freight customers shifted shipments to trucks.
Railroads also faced rising labor and maintenance costs, regulatory constraints, and expensive infrastructure obligations.
The B&O continued carrying substantial freight.
But its passenger business declined, and competition placed increasing pressure on its finances.
The transportation revolution that the B&O had helped begin was producing new technologies that challenged the railroad industry itself.
The Chessie Era
In the early 1960s, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway gained control of the B&O.
The relationship marked a major change in the railroad's corporate history.
The B&O continued operating under its own identity for years, but it was now part of a larger railroad organization.
During the 1970s, the Chessie System became the public identity associated with the C&O, B&O, and Western Maryland Railway.
The Chessie name drew on a famous sleeping-kitten advertising character that had long been associated with the C&O.
The yellow, blue, and vermilion Chessie System paint scheme became one of the most recognizable railroad identities of its era.
For railroad enthusiasts, the period represented another chapter in the B&O's long history.
The locomotives and equipment were changing.
Corporate structures were changing.
But much of the railroad's historic network continued carrying freight.
1987 — The B&O Becomes a Fallen Flag
In 1980, the Chessie System's parent organization and Seaboard Coast Line Industries combined to form CSX Corporation.
The consolidation of railroad operations continued during the following years.
In 1987, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was formally merged into the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway as part of the CSX corporate reorganization.
The B&O's separate corporate existence ended.
A railroad chartered in 1827 had survived for 160 years.
It had begun with a thirteen-mile line operated by horses.
It had helped demonstrate the commercial potential of steam locomotives.
It had crossed the Appalachian Mountains.
It had carried troops and supplies during the Civil War.
It had helped develop railroad engineering, telegraph communications, industrial transportation, and passenger service.
It had survived financial crises, labor conflict, wars, and the changing American transportation economy.
But the corporate name was gone.
In railroad terminology, the B&O had become a fallen flag.
That phrase refers to a railroad whose independent identity has disappeared through merger, acquisition, or other corporate change.
It does not mean that the railroad's contributions disappeared.
Much of the former B&O system continued operating as part of CSX Transportation.
The tracks remained.
The transportation corridors remained.
And the railroad's influence on American history remained.
THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE RAILROAD POSSIBLE
The B&O's history is often told through its founders, presidents, engineers, locomotives, and famous trains.
But its story also belongs to the people who built and operated it.
Track workers laid rails across difficult terrain.
Stoneworkers constructed bridges and tunnels.
Mechanics repaired locomotives.
Engineers and firemen operated trains.
Conductors and brakemen worked in dangerous conditions.
Telegraph operators and dispatchers coordinated movements across hundreds of miles.
Shop employees maintained the equipment that kept the railroad running.
Freight handlers loaded and unloaded goods.
Passenger-service employees helped travelers reach their destinations.
These workers came from different backgrounds and communities.
Their experiences varied across generations.
Some found stable careers and opportunities.
Others faced dangerous working conditions, wage disputes, discrimination, and economic uncertainty.
The B&O's achievements depended on their labor.
A railroad was never merely a corporation or a collection of machines.
It was an enormous human undertaking.
THE B&O'S PLACE IN AMERICAN HISTORY
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad mattered because it helped demonstrate what rail transportation could accomplish.
Its founders were not the first people in the world to imagine or construct railways.
But they helped establish one of the earliest major commercial railroad enterprises in the United States.
They recognized a transportation problem and pursued a new technology as a possible solution.
Their railroad became an example that other companies could study and build upon.
Its history touched nearly every major transformation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.
Westward expansion.
Industrialization.
The Civil War.
The growth of cities.
The rise of large corporations.
Labor disputes.
The development of communications technology.
Two world wars.
The Great Depression.
The automobile and highway era.
And the consolidation of the modern railroad industry.
The B&O did not shape those events alone.
But it participated in them, influenced them, and was changed by them.
Its history provides a remarkable view of how the United States developed over 160 years.
THE FLAG FELL. THE HISTORY DIDN'T.
In 1827, a group of Baltimore businessmen believed that a railroad could reconnect their city with the growing American interior.
They could not have imagined every development that would follow.
They did not know that railroads would become essential to American industry and national defense.
They did not know that locomotives would cross mountains, carry millions of passengers, or move vast quantities of freight.
They did not know that their company would survive wars, economic depressions, labor conflicts, and technological revolutions.
And they could not have known that, 160 years later, the company they created would disappear into a larger railroad system.
But the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad left something behind that no corporate merger could erase.
Its routes helped connect communities.
Its engineers and workers helped develop the American railroad industry.
Its trains carried people, goods, and ideas across generations.
And its history became part of the larger story of a nation learning how to connect its people and its economy.
The B&O reminds us that institutions can disappear while their influence continues.
The name may no longer appear on the side of an operating railroad company.
But the story remains in the bridges, tunnels, stations, museums, historic documents, and railroad lines that still exist.
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is a fallen flag of American history.
The flag fell. The history didn't.
Our Money Matters. Our Choices Matter. Our Voice Matters.
The People. The Voice. The Future.
Politics 1776