During the summer, Douglas canvassed the State, speaking repeatedly in behalf of this larger project. For a time he hoped that Senator Breese would co-operate with him. Numerous conferences took place both before and after Congress had assembled; but Douglas found his colleague reluctant to abandon his pre-emption plan. Regardless of the memorials which poured in upon him from northern Illinois, Breese introduced his bill for pre-emption rights on the public domain, in behalf of the Holbrook Company, as the Great Western Railway Company was popularly called. Thereupon Douglas offered a bill for a donation of public lands to aid the State of Illinois in the construction of a central railroad from Cairo to Galena, with a branch from Centralia to Chicago.[[332]] Though Breese did not actively oppose his colleague, his lack of cordiality no doubt prejudiced Congress against a grant of any description. From the outset, Douglas's bill encountered obstacles: the opposition of those who doubted the constitutional power of Congress to grant lands for internal improvements of this sort; the opposition of landless States, which still viewed the public domain as a national asset from which revenue should be derived; and, finally, the opposition of the old States to the new. Nevertheless, the bill passed the Senate by a good majority. In the House it suffered defeat, owing to the undisguised opposition of the South and of the landless States both East and West. The Middle States showed distrust and uncertainty. It was perfectly clear that before such a project could pass the House, Eastern and Southern representatives would have to be won over.[[333]]
After Congress adjourned, Douglas journeyed to the State of Mississippi, ostensibly on a business trip to his children's plantation. In the course of his travels, he found himself in the city of Mobile—an apparent digression; but by a somewhat remarkable coincidence he met certain directors of the Mobile Railroad in the city. Now this corporation was in straits. Funds had failed and the construction of the road had been arrested. The directors were casting about in search of relief. Douglas saw his opportunity. He offered the distraught officials an alliance. He would include in his Illinois Central bill a grant of land for their road; in return, they were to make sure of the votes of their senators and representatives.[[334]] Such, at least, is the story told by Douglas; and some such bargain may well have been made. Subsequent events give the color of veracity to the tale.
When Douglas renewed his Illinois Central bill in a revised form on January 3, 1850, Senator Breese had been succeeded by Shields, who was well-disposed toward the project.[[335]] The fruits of the Mobile conference were at once apparent. Senator King of Alabama offered an amendment, proposing a similar donation of public lands to his State and to Mississippi, for the purpose of continuing the projected central railroad from the mouth of the Ohio to the port of Mobile. Douglas afterward said that he had himself drafted this amendment, but that he had thought best to have Senator King present it.[[336]] Be that as it may, the suspicion of collusion between them can hardly be avoided, since the amendment occasioned no surprise to the friends of the bill and was adopted without division.
The project now before Congress was of vastly greater consequence than the proposed grant to Illinois. Here was a bill of truly national importance. It spoke for itself; it appealed to the dullest imagination. What this amended bill contemplated, was nothing less than a trunk line connecting the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico. Now, indeed, as Douglas well said, "nationality had been imparted to the project," At the same time, it offered substantial advantages to the two landless States which would be traversed by the railroad, as well as to all the Gulf States. As thus devised, the bill seemed reasonably sure to win votes.
Yet it must not be inferred that the bill passed smoothly to a third reading. There was still much shaking of heads among senators of the strict construction school. Many were conquered by expediency and threw logic to the winds; some preferred to be consistent and spoil a good cause. The bill did not sail on untroubled seas, even after it had been steered clear of constitutional shoals. It narrowly ran foul of that obstinate Western conviction, that the public lands belonged of right to the home-seeker, to whose interests all such grants were inimical, by reason of the increased price of adjoining sections of land.[[337]]
The real battleground, however, was not the Senate, but the House. As before, the bill passed the upper chamber by an ample margin of votes.[[338]] In the lower house, there was no prolonged debate upon the bill. Constitutional scruples do not seem to have been ruffled. The main difficulty was to rivet the attention of the members. Several times the bill was pushed aside and submerged by the volume of other business. Finally, on the same day that it passed the last of the compromise measures, on the 17th of September, 1850, the House passed the Illinois Central Railroad bill by a vote of 101 to 75.[[339]]
A comparison of this vote with that on the earlier bill shows a change of three votes in the Middle States, one in the South, ten in the Gulf States, and five in Tennessee and Kentucky.[[340]] This was a triumphant vindication of Douglas's sagacity, for whatever may have been the services of his colleagues in winning Eastern votes,[[341]] it was his bid for the vote of the Gulf States and of the landless, intervening States of Kentucky and Tennessee which had been most effective. But was all this anything more than the clever manoeuvering of an adroit politician in a characteristic parliamentary game? A central railroad through Illinois seemed likely to quell factional and sectional quarrels in local politics; to merge Northern and Southern interests within the Commonwealth; and to add to the fiscal resources of State and nation. It was a good cause, but it needed votes in Congress. Douglas became a successful procurator and reaped his reward in increased popularity.
There is an aspect of this episode, however, which lifts it above a mere log-rolling device to secure an appropriation. Here and there it fired the imagination of men. There is abundant reason to believe that the senior Senator from Illinois was not so sordid in his bargaining for votes as he seemed. Above and apart from the commercial welfare of the Lake Region, the Mississippi Valley, and the Gulf Plains, there was an end subserved, which lay in the background of his consciousness and which came to expression rarely if ever. Practical men may see visions and dream dreams which they are reluctant to voice. There was genuine emotion beneath the materialism of Senator Walker's remarks (and he was reared in Illinois), when he said: "Anything that improves the connection between the North and the South is a great enterprise. To cross parallels of latitude, to enable the man of commerce to make up his assorted cargo, is infinitely more important than anything you can propose within the same parallels of latitude. I look upon it as a great chain to unite North and South."[[342]] Senator Shields of Illinois only voiced the inmost thought of Douglas, when he exclaimed, "The measure is too grand, too magnificent a one to meet with such a fate at the hands of Congress. And really, as it is to connect the North and South so thoroughly, it may serve to get rid of even the Wilmot Proviso, and tie us together so effectually that the idea of separation will be impossible."[[343]]
The settlement of the West had followed parallels of latitude. The men of the Lake Plains were transplanted New Englanders, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians; the men of the Gulf Plains came from south of Mason and Dixon's line,—pioneers both, aggressive, bold in initiative, but alienated by circumstances of tremendous economic significance. If ever North should be arrayed against South, the makeweight in the balance would be these pioneers of the Northwest and Southwest. It was no mean conception to plan for the "man of commerce" who would cross from one region to the other, with his "assorted cargo,"[[344]] for in that cargo were the destinies of two sections and his greatest commerce was to consist in the exchange of imponderable ideas. The ideal which inspired Douglas never found nobler expression, than in these words with which he replied to Webster's slighting reference to the West:
"There is a power in this nation greater than either the North or the South—a growing, increasing, swelling power, that will be able to speak the law to this nation, and to execute the law as spoken. That power is the country known as the great West—the Valley of the Mississippi, one and indivisible from the gulf to the great lakes, and stretching, on the one side and the other, to the extreme sources of the Ohio and Missouri—from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains. There, Sir, is the hope of this nation—the resting place of the power that is not only to control, but to save, the Union. We furnish the water that makes the Mississippi, and we intend to follow, navigate, and use it until it loses itself in the briny ocean. So with the St. Lawrence. We intend to keep open and enjoy both of these great outlets to the ocean, and all between them we intend to take under our especial protection, and keep and preserve as one free, happy, and united people. This is the mission of the great Mississippi Valley, the heart and soul of the nation and the continent."[[345]]