Why Were The Radical Republicans Radical?

[Eva Elisabeth]

Was the gauge generally a different one between the North and the South? Or did the North build up a complete new network for military purposes? That should have been an enormous effort regarding manpower, finance and time for construction (additionally to the "war business" itself)! Who had to do (lacking slave power) the track work for (re)building? Soldiers or civilians?
Liz, referring to J. Taft's terminology, was there already a (serious) awareness of linguistic prejudice in America in those times? Discussions on this matter didn't really start here before the 1980ies (just two month ago there was an intense political debate on "censoring" all classic literature and re-publishing the works in "correct" neutral language. Finally they dropped it.)