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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 363 roads in their individual states, at the same time they gave considerable attention to aiding railroads to the Pacific. In the thirties and forties, the numerous suggestions of the possibility, indeed probability, that in the near future railroads would be built to the Pacific are surprising, the more so because of the primitive character of railroading at that time.68 Asa Whitney's plan for the building of a railroad from Milwaukee by way of South Pass to Puget Sound, first broached in 1844, brought the subject under consideration and from then until 1862 interest in the building of a Pacific railroad with Federal aid never subsided. Whitney's proposal included the sale to him for 16 cents an acre of a strip of land 60 miles wide along the entire route which should provide, when resold, the cost of the railroad. Interestingly, Douglas, then in the House, proposed instead that Chicago should be the eastern terminus and San Francisco Bay the western end, and advanced his favorite device of granting lands on the alternate section pattern instead of a solid tract as Whitney proposed.69 James Buchanan, although a strict con-structionist, did commend to Congress the desirability of a Pacific railroad and seemed to favor both government loans and land grants for it. Disagreement over routes and termini and the growing bitterness over slavery and territorial problems, however, kept Congress from passing any further land grant measures until the Republicans came into power. Three steps seemed necessary before any actual route for a Pacific railroad could be adopted, a charter granted and a land donation made: first, a careful survey or at least reconnaissance of a possible route or routes through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges; second, the 68 Haney, Congressional History of Railways in the United States to 1850, pp. 234 ff. 69 Robert R. Russel, Improvement of Communication with the Pacific Coast as an Issue in American Politics, 1783-1864 (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1948), pp. 11-13. removal of the intruded Indians who had been concentrated along the eastern frontier of present Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; and third, the creation of one or more territories through which a railroad might be projected. All three steps were authorized by Congress in 1853 and 1854 and all three, particularly the creation of Kansas Territory, helped to bring about the sectional crisis that led directly to secession and the Civil War. The Pacific Railroad Survey enabled influential people to have surveys made that favored their political and sectional interests and, indeed in a number of instances, their own land investments.70 Of the different routes investigated none stood out strongly in the report; the most obvious route, by way of South Pass to San Francisco, was not even included. Douglas, now the leader of the movement for Pacific railroads, in 1854 introduced a bill to authorize construction of three railroads to extend westward from the western boundary of Texas, the western boundary of either Missouri or Iowa, and the western boundary of Wisconsin. Twelve sections for each mile of road were to be given to aid construction. This and a series of later bills were discussed in great detail but sectional feelings and the rivalry of partisans of different cities anxious to bring the railroads to their particular communities prevented the enactment of any of them. The need for speedy transportation of mails, express, and government supplies to forts and Army posts was great but both Congress and the President were too bogged down in divisive sectionalism and petty politics to meet it.71 After secession of the South there still was a 70 This latter point is made clear in both Russell, Improvement of Communication with the Pacific Coast, and William H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West. 1803-1863 (New Haven, Conn., 1959), pp. 262 ff., esp. 303. 71 Both Russel, Improvement of Communication, and Goetzmann, Army Explorations are excellent for the issues that prevented action until 1862. |