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Printer Friendly. Congress gave land to railroad companies totally ,, acres. For railroad routes, companies were allowed alternate mile-square sections in checkerboard fashion, but until companies determined which part of the land was the best to use for railroad building, all of the land was withheld from all other users. Grover Cleveland stopped this in Railroads gave land their value; towns where railroads ran became sprawling cities while those skipped by railroads sank into ghost towns, so, obviously, towns wanted railroads in them.
Spanning the Continent with Rails Deadlock over where to build a transcontinental railroad was broken after the South seceded, and in , Congress commissioned the Union Pacific Railroad to begin westward from Omaha, Nebraska, to gold-rich California. Many Irishmen, who might lay as much as 10 miles a day, laid the tracks. When Indians attacked while trying to save their land, the Irish dropped their picks and seized their rifles, and scores of workers and Indians died during construction.
Over in California, the Central Pacific Railroad was in charge of extending the railroad eastward, and it was backed by the Big Four: including Leland Stanford, the ex-governor of California who had useful political connections, and Collis P.
Huntington, an adept lobbyist. The Central Pacific used Chinese workers, and received the same incentives as the Union Pacific, but it had to drill through the hard rock of the Sierra Nevada. In , the transcontinental rail line was completed at Promontory Point near Ogden, Utah; in all, the Union Pacific built 1, mi. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe stretched through the Southwest deserts and was completed the following year, in Hill, probably the greatest railroad builder of all.
Railroad Consolidation and Mechanization Older eastern railroads, like the New York Central, headed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, often financed the successful western railroads.
Advancements in railroads included the steel rail, which was stronger and more enduring than the iron rail, the Westinghouse air brake which increased safety, the Pullman Palace Cars which were luxurious passenger cars, and telegraphs, double-racking, and block signals.
Nevertheless, train accidents were common, as well as death. Revolution by Railways Railroads stitched the nation together, generated a huge market and lots of jobs, helped the rapid industrialization of America, and stimulated mining and agriculture in the West by bringing people and supplies to and from the areas where such work occurred.
Railroads helped people settle in the previously harsh Great Plains. Due to railroads, the creation of four national time zones occurred on November 18, , instead of each city having its own time zone that was confusing to railroad operators. Railroads were also the makers of millionaires and the millionaire class. Wrongdoing in Railroading Railroads were not without corruption, as shown by the Credit Mobilier scandal. Railroad owners abused the public, bribed judges and legislatures, employed arm-twisting lobbyists, elected their own to political office, gave rebates which helped the wealthy but not the poor , and used free passes to gain favor in the press.
Government Bridles the Iron Horse People were aware of such injustice, but were slow to combat it. The Grange was formed by farmers to combat such corruption, and many state efforts to stop the railroad monopoly occurred, but they were stopped when the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Wabash case, in which it ruled that states could not regulate interstate commerce, such as trains.
The Interstate Commerce Act, passed in , banned rebates and pools and required the railroads to publish their rates openly so as not to cheat customers , and also forbade unfair discrimination against shippers and banned charging more for a short haul than for a long one.
Miracles of Mechanization In , the U. Now-abundant liquid capital. Fully exploited natural resources like coal, oil, and iron, the iron came from the Minnesota-Lake Superior region which yielded the rich iron deposits of the Mesabi Range. Massive immigration made labor cheap. American ingenuity played a vital role, as such inventions like mass production from Eli Whitney were being refined and perfected. Popular inventions included the cash register, the stock ticker, the typewriter, the refrigerator car, the electric dynamo, and the electric railway, which displaced animal-drawn cars.
In , Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and a new age was launched. The Trust Titan Emerges Industry giants used various ways to eliminate competition and maximize profits. John D. He used this method to form Standard Oil and control the oil industry by forcing weaker competitors to go bankrupt. These men became known for their trusts, giant, monopolistic corporations. This was due to an invention that made steel-making cheaper and much more effective: the Bessemer process, which was named after an English inventor even though an American, William Kelly, had discovered it first: Cold air blown on red-hot iron burned carbon deposits and purified it.
In , Polk, due to tremendous overworking and chronic diarrhea, did not seek a second term, and the Democrats nominated General Lewis Cass, a veteran of the War of , a senator and diplomat of wide experience and considerable ability, and the originator of popular sovereignty, the idea that issues should be decided upon by the people specifically, it applied to slavery, stating that the people in the territories should decide to legalize it or not. It was good and liked by politicians because it was a compromise between the extremes of the North and the South, and it stuck with the idea of self-determination, but it could spread slavery.
Political Triumphs for General Taylor The Whigs nominated General Zachary Taylor, the hero of Buena Vista in the Mexican War, a man with no political experience, but popular man, and they avoided all picky issues in his campaign.
Disgusted antislavery Northerners organized the Free Soil Party, a party committed against the extension of slavery in the territories and one that also advocated federal aid for internal improvements and urged free government homesteads for settlers. Neither major party talked about the slavery issue, but Taylor won narrowly.
As a result, California privately encouraged by the president drafted a constitution and then applied for free statehood, thus bypassing the usual territorial stage and avoiding becoming a slave state.
Sectional Balance and the Underground Railroad In , the South was very well off, with a Southerner as president Taylor , a majority in the cabinet and on the Supreme Court, and equality in the Senate meaning that its 15 states could block any proposed amendment that would outlaw slavery.
Still, the South was worried. The balance of 15 free states and 15 slave states was in danger with the admission of free California which would indeed destroy the equilibrium forever and other states might follow California as free states.
Finally the Underground Railroad, a secret organization that took runaway states north to Canada, was taking more and more slaves from the South.
Harriet Tubman freed more than slaves during 19 trips to the South. The South was also demanded a stricter fugitive slave law. Twilight of the Senatorial Giants In , the South was confronted with catastrophe, with California demanding admission as a free state. Thus, the three giants met together for the last time to engineer a compromise. Southern spokesman John C. As a result of the popular speech, though, Webster was also proclaimed a traitor to the North, since he had called for ignoring the slavery subject.
William H. Breaking the Congressional Logjam Then, in , Zachary Taylor suddenly died of an acute intestinal disorder, and portly Millard Fillmore took over the reigns.
Impressed by arguments of conciliation, he signed a series of agreements that came to be known as the Compromise of Clay, Webster, and Douglas orated on behalf of the compromise for the North, but the South hated it; fortunately, they finally accepted it after much debate. Balancing the Compromise Scales What the North got… the North got the better deal in the Compromise of California was admitted as a free state, permanently tipping the balance.
Texas lost its disputed territory to New Mexico and now Oklahoma. The District of Columbia could not have slave trade, but slavery was still legal. This was symbolic only. However, it was impractical because the trade only was illegal, not slavery and because a person could easily buy a slave in next-door Virginia.
What the South got… Popular sovereignty in the Mexican Cession lands. On paper, this opened a lot of land to slavery, possibly. This was bad for the South because those lands were too dry to raise cotton anyway and therefore would never see slaves. Angry Northerners pledged not to follow the new law, and the Underground Railroad stepped up its timetable.
Defeat and Doom for the Whigs In , the Democrats, unable to agree, finally nominated dark horse Franklin Pierce, a man who was unknown and enemyless. Both parties boasted about the Compromise of , though the Democrats did more. The Whigs were hopelessly split, and thus, Pierce won in a landslide; the death of the Whigs ended the national political arguments and gave rise to sectional political alignments.
In July of , a brazen American adventurer, William Walker, grabbed control in Nicaragua and proclaimed himself president, then legalized slavery, but a coalition of Latin American states overthrew him.
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