CHAPTER LI.
THE NORTH CAROLINA RAILWAY AND THE ASYLUMS.
A. D. 1845.
No single year in human records has been more prolific of change and social advancement than that which witnessed the overthrow of King Louis Phillipe in France and the general upheaval of all Europe. It seemed that the spirits of the sixteenth century had revisited the earth, and that men were everywhere resolved on revolution or amendment.
1848.
2. North Carolina formed no exception to this general impulse of Christendom. A wise and patriotic disregard of old sectional and party traditions first led to the assumption by the State of a controlling part in the great work of internal improvement. The railroads that had been previously constructed from different points to Roanoke River, were all in a deplorable condition.
3. The Raleigh and Gaston route was so decayed and impaired in its equipments that a whole day was consumed in the passage of a mail train over the eighty miles traversed. The Seaboard route to Portsmouth, Virginia, was prostrate and out of use. The Wilmington Road, though it was in somewhat better plight, was still served by feeble engines, which drew a few trains slowly along the track, ironed no more heavily than the wheels of a six- horse wagon.
4. The additional fact that no railway went further west than the village of Raleigh, also prevented the accumulation of such travel and traffic as to repay the outlay of construction and equipment. The Wilmington Road furnished the great route between the North and South, and in that way won richer returns than lines leading to the interior.
5. The long deferred hopes of Western North Carolina were at last to be realized. Ex-Governor Morehead and others besought the Legislature for the State's aid in a great line which should connect Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh and Goldsboro. This was to be called the "North Carolina Railroad," and was to be two hundred and forty miles long.
6. Eastern men, as a general thing, opposed this bill, but it was earnestly supported by William S. Ashe, of New Hanover, and others, in the House of Representatives; and, having passed that body, it was sent to the Senate. The vote in the upper House resulted in a tie. Calvin Graves, of Caswell, was Speaker. He had been a life-long Democrat, and knew that the people of his County were opposed to the State's aiding the proposed road, but he nobly discharged what he thought to be his duty, and, by his casting vote, the bill became a law.