The Seat of Empire

by Charles Carleton Coffin

There was a tone about these speeches that stirred my blood, and I prepared a pamphlet for circulation entitled "The Great Commercial Prize," which was published in 1858. It was a plea for the immediate construction of a railway up the valley of the Missouri, and down the Columbia to Puget Sound, over the natural highway, giving facts and figures in regard to its feasibility; but I was laughed at for my pains, and set down as a visionary by the press.

It is gratifying to have our good dreams come to pass. That which was a dream of mine in 1846 is in process of fulfilment in 1870. The discovery of gold in California and the building up of a great city demanded the construction of a railroad to San Francisco, which was chartered in 1862, and which has been constructed with unparalleled rapidity, and is of incalculable service to the nation.

The charter of the Northern Pacific was granted, in 1864, and approved by President Lincoln on the 2d of July of that year. Government granted no subsidy of bonds, but gave ten alternate sections per mile on each side of the road in the States and twenty on each side of the line in the Territories through which it might pass.

Though the franchise was accompanied by this liberal land-grant, it has been found impossible to undertake a work of such magnitude till the present time. Nearly every individual named as corporators in the charter, with the exception of Governor J. G. Smith, its present President, Judge R. D. Rice, the Vice-President, and a few others, abandoned it under the many difficulties and discouragements that beset the enterprise. The few gentlemen who held on studied the geography of the country, and their faith in the future of the Northwest was strengthened. A year ago they were fortunate enough to find other men as enthusiastic as themselves over the resources and capabilities of the region between Lake Superior and the Pacific,—Messrs. Jay Cooke & Co., the well-known bankers of Philadelphia, whose names are indissolubly connected with the history of the country as its successful financial agents at a time when the needs of the nation were greatest; Messrs. Edgar Thompson and Thomas A. Scott, of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad; Mr. G. W. Cass, of the Pittsburg and Fort Wayne; Mr. B. P. Cheney, of Wells, Fargo, & Co.; Mr. William B. Ogden, of the Chicago and Northwestern Road; Mr. Stinson, of Chicago; and other gentlemen, most of whom are practical railroad men of large experience and far-reaching views.

Mr. Cooke became the financial agent of the company, and from that hour the advancement of the enterprise may be dated. It required but a few days to raise a subscription of $5,600,000 among the capitalists of the country to insure the building of the road from Lake Superior to the Red River, to which place it is now under construction. The year 1871 will probably see it constructed to the Missouri River, thus opening easy communication with Montana. The gentlemen who have taken hold of the work contemplate its completion to the Pacific in three years.

The line laid down upon the accompanying map only indicates the general direction of the road. It is the intention of the company to find the best route across the continent,—direct in course, with easy grades,—and this can only be ascertained by a thorough exploration of the valley of the Yellowstone, the passes at the head-waters of the Missouri, the valley of the Columbia, and the shores and harbors of Puget Sound.

The engineers are setting their stakes from Lake Superior to the Red River, and laborers with spade and shovel are following them. Imagination bounds onward over the prairies, across the mountains, down the valley of the Columbia, and beholds the last rail laid, the last spike driven, and a new highway completed across the continent.

I think of myself as being upon the locomotive, for a run from the lakes to the western ocean.

Our starting-point on the lake is 600 feet above the sea. We gain the height of land between the lake and the Mississippi by a gentle ascent. Thirty-one miles out from Duluth we find the waters trickling westward to the Mississippi. There we are 558 feet above Lake Superior. It is almost a dead level, as the engineers say, from that point to the Mississippi, which is 552 feet above the lake at Crow Wing, or 1,152 feet above tide-water. The distance between the lake and Crow Wing is about a hundred miles, and the country is so level that it would be an easy matter to dig a canal and turn the Mississippi above Crow Wing eastward into the waters that reach the sea through the St. Lawrence.