Atlantic, Mississippi, & Ohio Railroad

A broadside signed in May 1872 by William Mahone, president of the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad Company (AM&O), offers to buy up overdue financial instruments from the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. In 1870 Mahone successfully consolidated several rail lines into the AM&O, with the intention of creating a single southern railroad that would stretch from Norfolk to the Mississippi River. But the panic of 1873 destabilized the company, along with numerous banks and the U.S. economy as a whole. AM&O went into receivership in 1876, and was sold at auction in 1881.