Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (12 page)

O
N
June 28, 1861, with the Civil War already under way, the Central Pacific Railroad of California came into formal existence. It was incorporated
with Stanford as president, Huntington vice-president, Hopkins treasurer, James Bailey secretary, Judah chief engineer, and with Stanford, Crocker, Bailey, Judah, Huntington, Hopkins, Strong, and Charles Marsh as directors. Their combined wealth, according to Huntington, was $159,000. Neither Congress, the state of California, nor any syndicates of capitalists had put a single penny into the corporation. California's first and greatest historian, Hubert Howe Bancroft, commented that for so “stupendous and hazardous an enterprise it appears an act of madness or of inspiration…. Many said that those Sacramento merchants who had ventured upon it would sink their personal fortunes in the canyons of the Sierra.”
28

Stanford had become the Republican candidate for governor, which was still the chief political concern in California, despite the beginning of the Civil War back east. Judah wrote Strong, “Election and politics so monopolize everything here now that our people have very little time to talk railroad matters…. I am trying to put my little road upon its legs, and it looks rather favorable, but like everything else, can do nothing with it until after the election.”
29

On August 7, 1861, Judah was quoted in the
Union
as saying, “The problem as to crossing the Sierra Nevada has been solved.”
30
It had indeed. William Hood, for many years chief engineer of the Central Pacific, declared in 1925, “Were there now no railroad over the Sierra, the Donner Lake Route would still be selected over all others as the best possible route.”
31

O
N
September 4, Stanford won election as governor. Three weeks later, Judah placed before the partners his written report on the results of his months of careful work.

It was a masterpiece. Judah opened by listing the most objectionable features of locating the railroad in the Sierra Nevada: first, the great elevation to be overcome; second, the impracticability of river crossings on account of the deep gorges cut by the rivers; third, that the Sierra possessed two distinct summit ranges to be crossed. But the line he had found ran up the ridge, with maximum grades of but 105 feet to a mile, and with no major canyons or rivers to cross. As for the double summit, he had found a route that entirely avoided the second range. His line ran up the divide between the rivers “from gap to gap” in order to secure the
best possible gradients—and was in fact the line followed by the Central Pacific.

He discussed the snow problem and was unduly optimistic—“a Railroad Line, upon this route, can be kept open during the entire year,” even though the snow would constitute a not inconsiderable problem. He thought that eighteen tunnels, mainly through the mountains towering above Donner Lake, would be driven with relative ease, even the longest, at 1,370 feet. The route contained extensive forests of pitch and sugar pine, fir, and abundant quantities of cedar and tamarack, which would make excellent supports for bridge trusses and crossties and provide lumber for buildings. He concluded the report with a list of the maps and profiles attached to the original copy.
32

If Huntington, Crocker, Hopkins, Stanford, and the others needed any convincing that Judah knew more about the Sierra Nevada and about railroads than anyone else, his report did it. Judah, meanwhile, spent September mapping his surveys, making profiles, and gathering information for use with the Congress. He was confident he could go to Washington on a ship to get at least some aid. On September 2, he had written Strong, “I think the next Congress will be a favorable one to procure lands from the Government, and perhaps it may be money; but of the latter I do not feel by any means so certain; but the lands [i.e., alternate sections granted by Congress to the railroad for every mile built] do not create any debt, and the feeling towards California ought to be a good one.”
33
That last phrase was very much on the mark, for California's gold and silver—and Nevada's—were helping pay for the war just started, and there was a fear in Washington, sparked by some loose talk in California, that the state might follow the South and leave the Union.

The directors—one of whom had just been elected governor on a Republican ticket—would have none of secession. Instead, on October 9, well pleased with Judah's report, they adopted a resolution: “That Mr. T. D. Judah … proceed to Washington, on the steamer of the 11th Oct. inst., as the accredited agent of the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California, for the purpose of procuring appropriations of land and U.S. Bonds from Government, to aid in the construction of this Road.”
34

Judah was off. He had with him everything to convince the congressmen, including charming sketches of Donner Pass done by Anna to hang in his railroad museum in the Capitol, not to mention his own intimate and unique knowledge of railroads and the mountains. Best of all, the
Deep South congressmen represented states that had left the Union, meaning they had left Congress, which meant that the votes to block any route north for slavery were no longer there. Let them go, Judah must have thought, and good riddance to such bad seeds. A prominent historian of the railroad, Robert Russell of Western Michigan University, puts it as his opinion that because the Southerners were gone “Congress was enabled to enact Pacific railway legislation several years earlier than it otherwise could have done.”
35

To add to Judah's already overflowing pleasure and confidence, a fellow passenger was newly elected Representative Aaron A. Sargent of California. Thus, as Judah explained it, “a good opportunity was afforded for explaining many features of our project not easily understood … which explanations were of great service to us in future operations.” As indeed they were. Judah spent the days during the long voyage showing Sargent his maps, the evenings extolling the benefits of a transcontinental railroad.
36
Sargent was convinced and promised his help.

On arrival at New York, Judah worked up a report on the Sierra surveys of which he published a thousand copies. He distributed it, as he said, “among railroad men, where likely to do us most good, sending copies to President Lincoln, the heads of Departments and to our Senators and Representatives in Congress.” And he saw to it that the report was published in the
American Railroad Journal.
37

Even before Judah arrived in Panama, there was an event of grand importance to the scientific and industrial revolution and for the building of railroads: the first transcontinental telegraph line was opened. By the time Judah reached New York, the glamorous year-and-a-half life of the Pony Express was over.
38

B
ACK
on the Pacific Coast, the principals of the Central Pacific—Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and Hopkins—moved on their own, apparently without Judah's knowledge, by drawing up on November 27, 1861, articles of association for the Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road Company. Four hundred shares of stock at $1,000 each were issued, with Crocker as president and Hopkins as secretary and treasurer. The owners' explanation was that the wagon road ran along Judah's line into Nevada and was to help the Central Pacific cross the mountains. It would be used to transport supplies such as rails in ox- and mule-drawn
wagons to construction forces working in advance of the railroad as far away as the eastern slope of the Sierra. But the real object may have been to collect tolls on the road from Nevada miners and California merchants. Three toll gates were established—at Dutch Flat, Polley's Station, and Donner Lake. Whatever Judah (who had thought of the road first) was able to get out of Washington, these guys were going to get their investment back—and make some money—off the wagon road.
39

In Washington, Judah had much to work with, including the fact that he had been in the capital three times already, was well known to the congressmen, had been lobbying for land grants and money, and had convinced most of the non-Southerners. And this time, December 1861, he had with him a detailed engineering plan and supporting data and a bona fide corporation ready to start. And he had the active support of Congress. And the president of the corporation was the incoming Republican governor of California. A few days before the session began, Senator James A. McDougall of California helped Judah draft a bill that followed, in general, the Curtis Bill. Sargent took active charge of it in the House, where it was introduced.

Huntington came to the capital right after Christmas to find Judah discouraged. Although he had his survey maps and Anna's Sierra paintings on display in his railroad museum, and had shown them and talked to many members of Congress, nothing concrete had happened. The House Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad had not even met.
40

I
NDEED,
it was almost impossible, in those first months of the war, to get Congress to concern itself with anything other than raising and equipping the Northern army. The North had lost Fort Sumter on April 12-13, 1861. Lincoln had called for militia to suppress the Rebellion and proclaimed the blockade of Southern ports. On July 21, the North had lost the First Battle of Bull Run. On July 24, Lincoln had replaced General Irvin McDowell with General George B. McClellan. In December, Dakota Territory was formed from parts of Minnesota and Nebraska Territories, along with Nevada Territory from part of Utah Territory.

Despite these events, on January 21, 1862, Sargent—encouraged by Judah and Huntington—took a bold step when, in the midst of debate on another subject, he got the floor and spoke at length on Judah's work, accomplishments, and estimates, and pointed to the Pacific railroad as a
military necessity to the nation. He made all the familiar arguments: the government would save millions of dollars in transporting troops, munitions, and mail; the Western Indians would be quelled; emigration to the coast would speed up; the Great Plains would be developed; trade with Japan and China would jump; California's loyalty to the Union would be assured; no foreign army would dare attack California.

Judah complained that Sargent spoke before an empty hall, but the speech had its effect. Within a week, the House appointed a special subcommittee of the Pacific Railroad Committee to work on Judah's bill.
41

Judah was an excellent lobbyist. He got an appointment as secretary of the Senate Pacific Railroad Committee (with Senator McDougall as chairman) and as clerk of the subcommittee on the Pacific railroad in the House, where Sargent was a member. The appointments gave Judah what amount to a semiofficial standing before Congress. He had charge of all the committee papers and documents, and, even more surprising and momentous, the privilege of the floor of both Senate and House. Any lobbyist at any time would give his right arm for the privileges Judah had. He held the key position and he used it well.

The debate over the bill in the House was ferocious. At one point in the spring of 1862, Judah had to step in to deal with the grave danger that consideration would be extended until the next session, which probably meant the end of the bill. Much of the debate centered on the amounts of money or land to go to the corporations building the road, or on how to ensure the construction of the middle part of the line by companies that were to start at either end. Judah would give a little here, take a little there, while keeping focused on getting the bill as a whole passed.
42
He accepted—knowing vaguely what it would cost—an amendment by Representative Thaddeus Stevens. Stevens, who owned a foundry in Pennsylvania, insisted on a requirement that all rails and other ironwork be of American manufacture. Stevens declared he was for passing the law not because of the iron rails he could sell but because someday the Southerners would return to Congress “with the same arrogant, insolent dictation which we have cringed to for twenty years, forbidding the construction of any road that does not run along our southern border.”
43
There were other quibbles—the gauge of the track (to be decided by the President), the grade (no higher than 116 feet to the mile), the curves (none over ten degrees, which eliminated the use of switchbacks and forced the companies to resort to far more expensive tunnels), and more.

•   •   •

F
ORTUNATELY
for Judah, for the Central Pacific, and for the line running west from the Missouri River, whatever it was to be named, the President took as active an interest as his time allowed. Lincoln made it clear to the congressmen that despite the war he advocated the bill's passage and the construction of the road, and he wanted it started right away. Grenville Dodge, then serving as a general in the Union Army, said that Lincoln told him and others that the road had to be built “not only as a military necessity, but as a means of holding the Pacific Coast to the Union.”
44

On May 6, 1862, one month after General Ulysses Grant won the first victory for the Union at Shiloh—but at a tremendous cost in lives—and after the Union
Monitor
fought for five hours against the Confederate
Merrimac
in the first battle ever between ironclad gunboats, and while General George B. McClellan and his army were stuck in the Peninsula of Virginia, the House passed the Pacific Railroad Bill by a vote of 79 to 49.

Two days later, on May 8, Judah called for a meeting of the Senate Pacific Railroad Committee. Once again there were troubles and delays. Representative Justin Morrill of Vermont, who could be farseeing on some matters,
*
commented sourly that those who were putting up the capital were not interested in building a railroad west from the Missouri River, or in the Central Pacific, if it went farther east than the Nevada silver mines, through uninhabited territories. The railroad, he charged, was interested in grabbing off subsidies at either end. Besides, Morrill grumbled, the nation could hardly afford both guns and railroads. Why not wait until after the war?
45