Home of George Francis Train from 1863 to 1869,
No. 156 Madison Avenue, New York.
I had offered an interest in the road to old and well-established merchants of New York and other cities—the Grays, the Goodhues, the Aspinwalls, the Howlands, the Grinnells, the Marshalls, and Davis, Brooks & Company; and even to some of the new men, like Henry Clews—agreeing to put them in "on the ground floor," if I may use an expression from the lesser world of finance. But they were afraid. It was too big. Only two of them, William H. Macy and William H. Guion, would take any stock.
There was a meeting of the stockholders in Gibson's office in Wall Street, for the purpose of electing a board of directors. By this time the importance of the road had become recognized, and there was an active desire on the part of the chiefs of the trunk lines leading to the West to obtain control of the charter. They had their representatives there, and I saw from the first that an attempt would be made to capture the Union Pacific Railway as a trophy of one of these powerful Eastern lines. Fortunately, as I perfectly well knew, they were not quite powerful enough, in the circumstance, even with a united front, to accomplish their purposes.
William B. Ogden was in the chair, and a hasty calculation convinced me that probably $200,000,000 were represented by the men gathered in the little office. Of the great trunk lines represented I can recall now the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, and the New York Central. It was from the forces of the last that the lightning came.
As soon as the meeting had been called to order, and the purpose of it stated by the chair, a gentleman arose and began speaking in a wheezy, squeaky voice. But he had a way of saying what he wanted, and of saying it shrewdly, adroitly, and very effectively. I could see that he was accustomed to win in the Shakespearian way—"by indirections find directions out." He said that as everything was ready for the election of a board, he would suggest that the chair should appoint a committee of five which should then name a board of thirty members. I saw that this was an adroit move to put one of these big roads in control of the committee and, of course, in control of the Union Pacific. The chair immediately named five men, three of whom were representatives of the New York Central.
I turned to a gentleman sitting next me and asked who was the wheezy-voiced man who had just taken his seat. "That is Samuel J. Tilden," said he.
Matters now went as I had foreseen. Of course, the three New York Central men on the committee named a New York Central board of directors. They thought they had quietly and effectively bagged the game. But I held in my pocket the power that could overturn all their schemes. In fact I had offered the presidency of the road to Moses Taylor, founder of the City National Bank, now controlled by Mr. Stillman, and to A. A. Low, father of the present Mayor of New York. But both had laughed at me, thinking it absurd that I should presume to have so much power. I then made up my own list of officers, and named John A. Dix as president, and John J. Cisco as treasurer. Afterward I made a short speech, in which I said that I held the control of the road in my hands.
The vote was called for by the chair, and out of the $2,000,000 of stock represented, the New York Central influence cast $300,000 and I the vote of $1,700,000. This completely surprised those present, and they left the office as rats fly from a sinking ship. I was indignant, and shouted: "You stand on the corners of Wall Street again and call me a 'damned Copperhead'; but don't forget that I kicked $200,000,000 worth of you into the street!" And that is the reason why they called me "crazy"!
I went out West in the autumn of '63 to break ground for the first mile of railway track west of the Missouri river. None of the directors was with me; I was entirely alone. I made a speech at Omaha in which I predicted that the road would be completed by '70, and in which I forecast the great development of Omaha and the Northwest. This speech was printed all over the world, and I was denounced as a madman and a visionary. I had, every one said, prophesied the impossible. And yet every word of that speech was true, both as to its facts and as to its prophecies. I give here a few extracts from it, as it was published in the Omaha Republican, December 3, '63, and as it has been republished in that paper and others many times since:
America is the stage, the world is the audience of to-day. While one act of the drama represents the booming of the cannon on the Rapidan, the Cumberland, and the Rio Grande, sounding the death-knell of rebellious war, the next scene records the booming of cannon on both sides of the Missouri to celebrate the grandest work of peace that ever attracted the energies of man. The great Pacific Railway is commenced, and if you knew the man who has hold of the affair as well as I do, no doubt would ever arise as to its speedy completion. The President shows his good judgment in locating the road where the Almighty placed the signal station, at the entrance of a garden seven hundred miles in length and twenty broad.
Before the first century of the nation's birth, we may see in the New York depot some strange Pacific railway notice.
"European passengers for Japan will please take the night train.
"Passengers for China this way.
"African and Asiatic freight must be distinctly marked: For Peking via San Francisco."
Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. Ten millions of emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years.