332 
POLITICAL INHERENCY OF GEOLOGY 
To Norman B. Judd, attorney, prominent officer and resource¬ 
ful all-around man of the Rock Island Railroad, this foregone 
conclusion came with staggering reality. The railroad coterie had 
to turn elsewhere if it expected to get Governmental aid for its 
grand project. It was decided to put its own candidate in this 
field; and this choice was Abraham Lincoln, an attorney for the 
Illinois Central and other western railroads. Judd thereupon un¬ 
dertook the task of turning the presidential nomination to his 
close colleague Lincoln. John A. Kasson, of Iowa, attorney for 
the Mississippi River and Missouri River (Rock Island) railroad, 
and chairman of the Iowa State Central Committee, was entrusted 
with the duty of drawing up the railroad plank for the Lincoln 
platform. He did even more. It was certainly something more 
than mere coincidence that these two Iowa railroad men, Kasson 
and Samuels, should guide the destinies of opposing parties. 
Relative to the solution of the most momentous political problem 
of the day which railroad enterprise was to turn to its own ac¬ 
count, but in so doing was to lay bare the rock upon which our 
noble Ship of State almost foundered, Iowa in the first lenstrum 
before the War, occupied a peculiarly strategic position. The 
Fates placed her in the forefront. Four lines of railroad were 
building across this State. The Union Pacific line was so located 
in the preliminary traverse as to meet these at a common point 
on the Missouri River. So important was the Iowa position in 
both the western and the national railroad circles that the infer¬ 
ence can not be avoided that the two Iowa men sent to both of the 
national conventions of 1860 were on that account charged with 
the duty of framing the respective platforms. 
The Chicago platform was not entirely written at a single sitting. 
It was not so spontaneously evolved as history makes it appear. 
The promptness with which it was reported to the Convention on 
the following morning was not a direct measure of the unanimity 
of opinion, or the ease with which the members of the committee 
could agree. Mr. Kasson of Iowa really had the greater part of 
the platform thought out and partly constructed long before he 
ever reached Chicago. This Chicago platform was unmistakably 
the State platform of the Iowa Republicans of the previous year, 
to which was prefixed a few other and less important sections. 
