The motives of William Norris in encouraging Sellers are open to 

 question. A compulsive promoter, in need of a new project to pro- 

 mote, Norris had returned to this country in 1848, having been 

 forced to abandon his connection with the Vienna Austrian locomo- 

 tive works because of the revolution in that country. Finding him- 

 self not welcome at the Norris Works at Philadelphia, then operated 

 by his brother Richard, he attached himself to the most spectacular 

 railway project of the period, the Panama Railroad. Through 

 Norris, Sellers was drawn into the enterprise. (The ruthless schemes 

 of several of the men attempting to organize this company, their 

 maneuvers to swindle one another, and their questionable dealings 

 with the government of New Granada [now Colombia] are complex 

 and obscure '^^ and of no interest here other than as relating to 

 Sellers.) 



Early in 1848, shortly before becoming U.S. consul in Venezuela, 

 Colonel John P. Adams was sent to New Granada by C. H. Todd 

 and his associates to secure a grant from that government for the 

 Panama Railroad. «5 Adams was offered a one-third interest in the 

 company but, apparently feeling that he could do better by acting 

 as his own agent, kept his activities a secret from Todd and his 

 company. Adams seems to have received some assurances of ob- 

 taining the grant; at least he represented matters as such to Norris. 

 Norris was especially interested in getting the rights to this charter 

 because of the prospect of heavy traffic across the Isthmus as a 

 result of the discovery of gold in California. He persuaded Sellers 

 to join him in forming a company to obtain the charter from Adams 

 and to build the first ocean-to-ocean road in the New World. Sellers 

 agreed, since he felt that he could surely secure a trial of his adhesion 

 locomotive if he were an official of the Panama Railroad. No 

 better advertisement for his invention could be obtained than a 

 demonstration on this railroad, whose progress and operation would 

 command international attention. On October 25, 1848, Norris 



^■* See John H. Kemble, The Panama Route — 1848-186^ (Berkeley: University of 

 California Press, 1943), for a discussion of the intrigue among Todd, Aspinwall, 

 and Sellers' associate, Jabez M. Woodward. 



^5 C.H. Todd to W. Norris, December 30, 1848, Peale-Sellers papers. Todd 

 had earlier (November 1847) lost the U.S. Mail contract for the Panama route to 

 Aspinwall. 



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