Minister James Gadsden had sought but failed to acquire a far larger part of northern Mexico. It consisted of the southern strips of present Arizona and New Mexico. President Franklin Pierce's sponsorship of the Gadsden Purchase (1853), ceded by Mexico for $10 million was unsettling to the North, as the apparent rationale was to facilitate construction of a transcontinental railroad along a southern route. But thereafter the thrills came thick and fast in an ascending scale of climaxes, culminating in a grand finale which earned a world's applause. ![]() Like many another prosperous production, the first act of this episode in real life was swamped with talk and skimped in action. And, finally, it was against God and many a preacher found friends among canal and stagecoach men when he opened up full blast on this new curse that a tireless Satan had promulgated to try all Christian men."įrom the perspective of years, the building of the first transcontinental railroad seems less a commercial enterprise, stimulated by political considerations, than a great melodrama in which the stage was a continent and the audience a nation. The canal men had something there, for a terrible amount of stock did prove worthless. It was merely a clever method by which smart scoundrels could steal your money more or less legally by selling you worthless stock. The canal builders and operators, of course, simply damned the new method of transportation on every count they could think of. What, thoughtful men now asked one another, was a railroad? There had been little thinking on the subject, hence there was no philosophy of railroads. ![]() Holbrook, in The Story of American Railroads, discussed the reaction to railroads in the 1830's: " The coming of the railroad, and the rapidity with which it expanded during the 1830's, found a public wholly unprepared, and pretty much confused. Railroads have also played a major part in military operations and civilian supply activities during wartime. Railroads played an enormous role in American history, particularly in the saga of the settlement of the American West in the nineteenth century. With this in mind, Sherman did all he could to support the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, visiting the Union Pacific work site several times a year and keeping in close correspondence with Grenville Dodge (Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific). Sherman saw that the railroad could move soldiers and supplies rapidly over a wide geographic range, eliminating the need for an extensive system of forts. This, of course required investments in materials and manpower both of which the post Civil War Army had very little. Prior to the building of a railroad network, the Army had planned to build and outfit an extensive fort system, each post having responsibility for a defined geographic area. The United States Army was quick to see the potential that railroad transportation offered, especially in the western territories. ![]() Abraham Lincoln saw military benefits in a transcontinental railroad line, as well as the bonding of the Pacific Coast to the Union.
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