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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 357 Railroad Mileage in Public Land States8 Year Upper Mississippi Valley Southwest Pacific 1840 89 80 128 280 836 1845 374 1850.- 1,276 1855 4,567 8 1860________ 11,064 2,380 23 a Compiled from Henry V. Poor, Manual of the Railroads of the United States 1867-1868, pp. 20-21. For somewhat different statistics see F. L. Paxson, "The Railroads of the 'Old Northwest' before the Civil War," Transactions, Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, XVII, Part 1, 268 ff.; and Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, XXV (September 1851), 380-82. Congress had been granting railroads rights-of-way through the public lands since 1835-the width ranged from 60 to 100 feet- and in 1852 it adopted a general law giving 100-foot rights-of-way and authorizing companies to use earth, stone, and timber from adjacent public lands and to have additional land for depots and water tanks.49 In 1850 Stephen A. Douglas and John Wentworth succeeded in pushing through Congress a measure providing a grant of land in addition to a right-of-way for a projected railroad. It was the first such measure, if we exclude the action of Congress in 1833 to allow the use of the previous grant of land for a canal to connect Lake Michigan with the Mississippi for railroads. Bills to grant land to numerous proposed lines had been under consideration for years but had tailed analysis of the investments of European capitalists in all American railroads in the 19th century is being prepared by Harry Pierce and should be out before long. The most detailed maps of railroads as of 1860 are in George Rogers Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956). 49 Lewis H. Haney, Congressional History of Railways in the United States to 1850 ("Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin," No. 211, Madison, Wis., 1903), pp. 334 ff. gotten nowhere. The Douglas measure was originally a bill to aid in building a central Illinois railroad from Galena in the northwestern corner to Cairo at the southern tip of the state. It took on an interstate character when the proposal was enlarged to extend the railroad from Dubuque, Iowa, and Chicago to Mobile, Alabama. It encountered the usual opposition from Representatives of the older southern states and from many of those from the Middle Atlantic and New England States. They saw little benefit for their regions from a north-south railroad more or less parallel to the Mississippi River and they feared, rightly as time was to show, that Douglas's bill, if adopted, would lead to numerous similar requests from other public land states. In fact, Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina asked Douglas how many similar bills providing land grants for railroads were under consideration by the Senate Committee on Public Lands.50 Douglas replied that several bills had been presented for consideration-one for grants to Minnesota railroads, he had introduced. Actually, 23 bills providing for land grants to railroads in every public land state were introduced in the Senate in the 31st Congress, 1st session. The Chicago and Mobile Act, as signed by President Fillmore, granted Illinois, Mississippi, and Alabama a right-of-way for a railroad through central Illinois from Dunleith, via Galena to Cairo with a branch from Chicago, thence across Mississippi and Alabama to Mobile, on the Gulf. The grant was for a 100-foot right-of-way, together with one half the land in even numbered sections within 6 miles of the line. The even numbered sections within 6 miles of the line were given to help finance the road. It was smart political maneuvering that brought to success the act to aid the "construction of a railroad from Chicago to Mobile," but historians have considered it 50 Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., April 29, 1850, pp. 844-45. |