DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH 37i 



tically there was not a mile of road west of the Mississippi. 

 The transcontinental railway project was talked of much in 

 Taylor's, Fillmore's, Pierce's, and Buchanan's days, but with- 

 out tangible result. It was the war which brought the Union 

 and Central Pacific railways, the former being the eastern and 

 the latter the western link between the Missouri river and the 

 Pacific. Military necessity — the fear that if direct and quick 

 communication between the rest of the country and the 

 Pacific slope were not soon obtained the latter region would 

 be in danger of separation — was the impulse which secured 

 legislation for the building of the road. Secession sentiment 

 was strong on the Pacific coast in 1861. Breckinridge, the 

 southern candidate, got 34,000 votes in California in 1860, as 

 compared with 38,000 for Douglas, the nominee of the democ- 

 racy's northern wing, and 39,000 for Lincoln. The strength 

 of the Breckinridge vote in the golden state was a surprise 

 to the north. In Oregon Breckinridge had 5,000 votes, as 

 compared with 4,000 for Douglas, and 5,270 for Lincoln. It 

 was only through a split in the democratic party that the 

 republicans carried the two Pacific coast states in that criti- 

 cal canvass of 1860, and even then the republican margin was 

 perilously narrow. The activity of the secession agents in 

 California in 1861, and the fear that they might gain control 

 of that region, put a bill for the construction of a transcon- 

 tinental railway through congress in 1862, but the work of 

 laying the rails did not actually begin until 1865. 



The railroads built the west, which has grown up since 

 Appomattox, and the Union and Central Pacific roads were 

 hardly completed when the second of the transcontinental 

 fines, the Northern Pacific, was started. That, too, was a 

 product of the civil war. A charter for it was granted in 1864, 

 but construction work did not fairly begin until 1870, a year 

 after the meeting of the rails at Promontory Point, in Utah, 

 on Oakes Ames' and Huntington's roads. Jay Cooke, the man 

 who floated the bonds for the government during the rebellion, 

 was at the head of the project, but he went down in the panic 

 of 1873, and work on the road, suspended then for a few years, 

 was taken up by Henry Villard, and pushed to completion in 

 1883. Those two lines, and the Southern Pacific, the Great 



