By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
APRIL 23, 2021 | Norfolk Southern, the railroad, headquartered in Atlanta, has unjustifiably made a decision that smacks of bad management and yielding to pressure. It has determined to remove a statue of the railroad’s founder from public view.
The statue of the founder, Samuel Spencer, was located in front of the company headquarters in Midtown Atlanta. Mr. Spencer was killed at age 59 in 1906 when the private rail car he was riding in was rammed in a rear-end collision by another train in Lawyers, Va., killing him and several compatriots and passengers.
Now Norfolk Southern plans to remove Spencer’s statue into a warehouse, saying there is no space for it in its headquarters. The statue is owned by the city of Atlanta, and its Council this week gave approval to support the railroad’s plan.
The railroad caved in to pressure since Spencer, while a 17 year old, joined the Confederate Army in 1864. His short participation in this war was a natural outgrowth for young men of the South. And obviously, only 17 years old, he never owned slaves. The railroad’s excuse to store away the statue seems a shoddy and unnecessary maneuver to disgrace the memory of their company’s founder.
An only child born in 1847 in Columbus, Spencer dropped out of the Georgia Military Institute in Marietta to join the army of the Southern states. He was in the cavalry, and served about a year before the Appomattox surrender. Afterward, he graduated from the University of Georgia in 1867, then graduated at the top of his class in engineering at the University of Virginia in 1869.
He joined the Savannah and Memphis Railroad as a surveying “rod man” and soon became its principal assistant engineer. He took advancing positions at several railroads including New Jersey Southern and the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) and in 1878 became the superintendent of the Long Island Railroad when in his early 30s. He later spent 10 years with B&O, becoming president in 1887.
Spencer
His next venture was with what would become J.P. Morgan and Company, as their railroad expert, as the firm began consolidating the rail industry in the South, which then had 150 different rail lines. In 1894, the Morgan firm brought several lines together as the Southern Railway, with Spencer its first president. This newly-combined railroad had tripled earnings from $17 million to $53 million when Spencer died in 1906. The Spencer Yards of the railroad in Salisbury, N.C. is named for him.
After his death, 30,000 employees of the railroad collected funds, and hired the sculptor Daniel Chester French to strike a statue of Spencer, which stood for many years at the Atlanta Terminal Station. French later used the model of the sitting Spencer as the idea for the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Now the statue of Spencer, a key person in the rail industry and Georgia native, will no longer be on public view.
If Norfolk Southern doesn’t have any other plans for displaying its founder’s statue, perhaps we can suggest a venue. Alongside the tracks of the Norfolk Southern is the Southeastern Railway Museum, located in Duluth. No doubt its officers would welcome providing a home for this pioneering railroad leader, and one of Georgia’s most distinguished natives.
- To read the fascinating story of the tragic accident which took Samuel Spencer’s life, go to this next-day 1906 archived story from The New York Times.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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