396 
BEGINNINGS OF ECONOMIC GEOLOGY 
time. Beginnings lie far back in the dark causes which precipi¬ 
tated our Civil War. The latter’s immediate outbreak is now 
traceable directly to the deliberate suppression of the geological 
reports connected with some of the Governmental Pacific Rail¬ 
road surveys in the early fifties of the last century. 
In the decade preceding the outbreak of the Civil War Jef¬ 
ferson Davis was the outstanding political figure in the South 
and of the Nation. While Secretary of War he conceived the 
grandiose idea of uniting the oceans by railroad. As revealed 
long afterwards this project was to rebound immensely to the 
advantage of the South, and increase the slave states to pre¬ 
pondering influence for all time. Five transcontinental lines were 
traversed and surveyed. There were three in the South and two 
in the North. Thirteen sumptuous volumes of Pacific Railroad 
Reports were devoted principally to extoling the vast natural 
resources of the southern routes. All notes and records on the 
northern routes were suppressed, or, as offlcially pronounced, 
were “lost in transit”. 
With the national political conventions just before the out¬ 
break of the Civil War their railroad setting was little regarded 
at the time. Yet it was really the momentous factor of that 
day. As the tie that bound together the circle from which its 
central voice uttered the sentiments of the platform of 1860, this 
railroad influence was the basic one which precipitated armed 
conflict within the Nation. As one phase, the most important of 
all it proved, the Union Pacific Railroad project was then crys¬ 
tallizing so as to be pushed rapidly forward, when the proper time 
should come, towards the Golden Gate. Its consumation would 
immediately open to settlement no less than ten new territories, 
which would soon grow into great and populous states. This 
single act would place the South hopelessly in the minority in 
political ' influence. Heretofore new states were admitted into 
the Union in pairs — one south and one north. A balance was 
always nicely maintained. Now, with early completion of the 
Union Pacific railroad in sight, that balance would be rudely dis¬ 
turbed; and the South could never hope to retain its place in 
the sun. 
Although the official reports on the vast resources of the route 
were so ruthlessly suppressed from the public this line along the 
