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the South their sentiments and feelings were largely southern, 
and thruout the pre-war period they followed the political 
lead of the South. It was probably this element that forced 
Lincoln to take a moderate stand on abolition and enabled 
Douglas to twit him because of the fact that his speeches were 
not so strongly antislavery in southern Illinois as farther to 
the north. Therefore, the population of the region farther 
north in Illinois must have been different in sentiment from 
the southern portion, which can be explained largely in terms 
of railroad influence. After railroad lines were built connect- 
ing the Mississippi region with New York and the rest of the 
East, that region then had the advantage in ease of movement 
westward, and the New Englanders and settlers from the 
middle Atlantic states poured into this newly-opened region. 
Since New York is the port of entry for most of our foreign 
immigrants, Germans, Irish, and other foreign elements came 
to the cheap land offered for sale by the railroad companies. 
Many among these new elements were antislavery in senti- 
ment and voted usually in favor of the Wilmot Proviso prin- 
ciple. Lincoln’s success in 1860 was won on a narrow margin, 
and this margin was made up largely of foreigners, especially 
Germans whom the railroads poured into the contested regions 
in great number.®'^ 
Fortunately, the North had a decided advantage in the 
number of men she could pour into her armies and work- 
shops. She also had a greater amount of wealth and resources 
which count mightily in a long-drawn-out contest like our 
Civil War. Yet without greater transportation facilities, 
wealth and numbers would not have been sufficient. A 
superior fleet enabled her to close the ports of the South and 
helped her armies in the campaigns along the seacoast and 
navigable rivers. Long lines of railroads brought her people 
East and West into closer sympathy with each other and en- 
abled her not only to pour great armies into the South but 
also to feed them from the fields of the agricultural West 
and equip them from the factories of the industrial East. 
Thruout the war food was plentiful on southern plantations 
and farms but could not be transported in sufficient quantity 
to the southern armies. As has been shown, the population 
and resources of the trans-Mississippi region could not be 
William E. Dodd, “The Fight for the Northwest”, in The American Historical Rc- 
viciv for July, 1911, 787, 788. 
