SECTIONAL INTERESTS IN CONFLICT.
Far greater forces than individual capitalists, or isolated groups of capitalists, were at work to promote or prevent the construction of this or that Pacific road. In the struggle before the Civil War between the capitalist system of the North and the slave oligarchy of the South, the chattel slavery forces exerted every effort to use the powers of Government to build railroads in sections where their power would be extended and further intrenched. Their representatives in Congress feverishly strained themselves to the utmost to bring about the construction of a trans-continental railroad passing through the Southwest. The Northern constituents stubbornly fought the project. In reprisal, the Southern legislators in Congress frustrated every move for trans-continental railroads which, traversing hostile or too doubtful territory, would add to the wealth, power, population and interests of the North. The Government was allowed to survey routes, but no comprehensive trans-continental Pacific railroad bills were passed.
The debates in Congress during the session of 1859 over Pacific railroads were intensely aciduous. Speaking of the Southern slave holders, Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, denounced them as "restless, ambitious gentlemen who are organizing Southern leagues to open the African slave trade, and to conquer Mexico and Central America." He added with great acerbity: "They want a railroad to the Pacific Ocean; they want to carry slavery to the Pacific and have a base line from which they can operate for the conquest of the continent south." [Footnote: The Congressional Globe. Thirty-fifth Congress, Second Session, 1858-59, Part II, Appendix: 291.] In fiery verbiage the Southern Senators slashed back, taunting the Northerners with seeking to wipe out the system of chattel slavery, only to extend and enforce all the more effectually their own system of white slavery. The honorable Senators unleashed themselves; Senatorial dignity fell askew, and there was snarling and growling, retorts and backtalk and bad blood enough.
The disclosures that day were extremely delectable. In the exchange of recriminations, many truths inadvertently came out. The capitalists of neither section, it appeared, were faithful to the interests of their constituencies. This was, indeed, no discovery; long had Northern representatives been bribed to vote for land and money grants to railroads in the South, and vice versa. But the charges further brought out by Senator Wilson angered and exasperated his Southern colleagues. "We all remember," said he, "that Texas made a grant of six thousand dollars and ten thousand acres of land a mile to a Pacific railway company." Yes, in truth, they all remembered; the South had supported that railroad project as one that would aid in the extension of her power and institutions. "I remember," Wilson went on, "that when that company was organized the men who got it up could not, by any possibility, have raised one hundred thousand dollars if they paid their honest debts. Many of them were political bankrupts as well as pecuniary bankrupts—men who had not had a dollar; and some of them were men who not only never paid a debt, but never recognized an obligation."
At this thrust a commotion was visible in the exalted chamber; the blow had been struck, and not far from where Wilson stood.
"Years have passed away," continued the Senator, "and what has Texas got?" Twenty-two or twenty-three miles of railway, with two cars upon it, with no depot, the company owning everything within hailing distance of the road; and they have imported an old worn-out engine from Vermont. And this is part of your grand Southern Pacific Railroad. These gentlemen are out in pamphlets, proving each other great rascals, or attempting to do so; and I think they have generally succeeded. … The whole thing from the beginning has been a gigantic swindle. [Footnote: The Congressional Globe, etc., 1858-9, Part II, Appendix, 291.]
What Senator Wilson neglected to say was that the capitalists of his own State and other Northern States had effected even greater railroad swindles; the owners of the great mills in Massachusetts were, as we shall see, likewise bribing Congress to pass tariff acts.