The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad | Page 4

effect of awakening public interest and paved the way for a more feasible plan. The question of a Pacific railway, its practicability, earnings, and effect, were constantly before the people. In 1844 the idea had become firmly fixed, the leading advocate being a New York merchant named Asa Whitney, who has been called the "Father of the Pacific Railway." Mr. Whitney had spent some years in commercial life in China, returning to the United States with a competency. Becoming enthused with the idea, he put his all,--energy, time, and money into the project of a trans-continental railroad, finding many supporters. At first he advocated Carver's plan, but becoming convinced that it was not feasible, he sprung a new one of his own. He proposed that Congress should give to him, his heirs and assigns, a strip of land, sixty miles wide, with the railroad in the center, this from a point on Lake Michigan to the Pacific Coast. This land he proposed to colonize and sell to emigrants from Europe, from the proceeds build the line, retaining whatever surplus there might be after its completion, as his own.
Whitney was an indefatigable worker, thoroughly in earnest, a fluent speaker, both in public and private, well fortified with statistics and arguments. He personally travelled the whole country from Maine to fifteen miles up the Missouri River. The legislatures of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, all endorsed his plan by favorable resolutions.
The Senate Committee on public lands made a report recommending his proposition. Thus strongly endorsed, his plan was brought before Congress in 1848 in a bill entitled "Authorizing Asa Whitney, his heirs or assigns, to construct a railroad from any point on Lake Michigan or the Mississippi River he may designate, in a line as nearly straight as practicable, to some point on the Pacific Ocean where a harbor may be had." The road to be six foot gauge, sixty-four pound rails. The Government to establish tolls and regulate the operation of the line, Whitney to be the sole Owner and receive a salary of four thousand dollars per year for managing it.
The proposition was debated for days in the Senate and then was tabled on a vote of twenty-seven to twenty-one. The opposition dwelt largely on the length of time Whitney would necessarily require. Say he could colonize and sell a million acres a year, this would only be funds enough to build one hundred miles and consequently the two thousand miles would require at least twenty years. The defeat was largely owing to the opposition of Senator Benton of Missouri, the most pronounced friend of the West in the House, who used the argument of the power and capital it would put in the hands of one man, Whitney's. This he characterized as a project to give away an Empire, larger in extent than eight of the original states, with an ocean frontage of sixty miles, with contracting powers and patronage exceeding those of the President.
Upon the defeat of Whitney's project, Benton brought forward in 1849 one of his own for a great national highway from St. Louis to San Francisco, straight as may be, with branches to Oregon and Mexico. The Government to grant a strip one mile wide, so as to provide room for every kind of road, railway, plank, macadamized, and electric motor, or otherwise constructed where not so practicable or advantageous. Sleighs to be used during those months when snow lay on the ground. Funds for its construction to be provided by the sale of public lands. Bare in mind this was only fifty-six years ago, but eighteen years before the Union Pacific Railway was completed, and was the proposition advocated by the recognized leader of the Senate in matters western.
Up to the year 1846 when by the treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo, Mexico, ceded to us California, our only territory on the Pacific Coast was Oregon and Washington. The acquisition of California, followed very shortly by the gold discoveries and the consequent influx of people, gave that state a large population and furnished a prospective business for a Pacific railway. This had heretofore been a matter of theory, very questionable, to say the least, being based on very hazy estimates of the prospective volume of trans-pacific business. With an active and aggressive population of three hundred thousand in California, practically all of eastern birth and affiliations the situation became materially changed and the necessity of railroad communication apparent. Both great political parties pledged their support in their quadrennial platforms. Presidents--Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln, in their several messages to Congress, strongly recommended its construction. The matter had been thoroughly discussed, both in and out of Congress and the whole country was convinced of