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CLASS OF 1835
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“That man Haupt has built a bridge across Potomac Creek, about 400 feet long and nearly 100 feet high, over which
loaded trains are running every hour, and, upon my word, gentlemen, there is nothing in it but beanpoles and corn
stalks.”
—Abraham Lincoln, 23 May 1862
Haupt resigned his commission a month after graduation to become a successful civil and railroad engineer. In 1838 he
married Ann Cecilia Keller of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. One of the couple’s eleven children also graduated from West Point.
Haupt’s experience as a railroad engineer brought him back to the army in the Civil War. The railroad transportation
corps he organized and trained for the Army of the Potomac became a byword for speedy and efficient construction, repair,
and operation of military railroads. Haupt resigned after the Battle of Gettysburg, but the men he trained continued to
supply Union armies by rail.
A half-century later, war planners drew upon Haupt’s Civil War experience to reorganize the domestic railroad system
when it threatened to break down during World War I.
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