Douglas and his friends in both houses of Congress worked out a new policy during the years 1845 to 1850. It was to induce the Federal Government to give large tracts of public land to the Northwestern States on condition that they be given again by the States to railroad corporations as aids to the building of new lines. The roads would sell their lands at good prices, the Government would sell its remaining lands at high prices after the building of the roads, and the farmers would cheerfully pay these higher prices if markets for wheat and corn could be created. The leaders of the lower South were interested in this new American system, for there was government land in their States and they needed railroads quite as much as the Northwesterners. Capitalists of the East and Europe would be enlisted because the great tracts of rich land would be security for money they might lend at high rates to the roads. Finally, the increasing armies of immigrants gave assurance that the railroad lands could be sold easily.
The outcome was the building of the Illinois Central, the Mobile and Ohio, and other shorter lines in each of the Western and Northwestern States during the decade of 1850-60. The railroad lands sold as high as $8 or $10 an acre, and the government lands advanced in value accordingly, though the Federal Treasury did not profit to the full extent of these promises. The growth and expansion of the Northwest described above was due largely to this policy of Douglas. Chicago bankers loaned all the money they had and borrowed all they could borrow for the building of railroads. The thriving young city, always the pet of Senator Douglas, increased its business in marvelous manner during the decade. It soon distanced St. Louis in the race for wealth and population, and before 1854 conceived of the scheme of building a great railway, long ago proposed by Asa Whitney, of Michigan, to the Pacific. This road was to connect with the Illinois Central in Iowa, thread its way through the Indian lands in Nebraska, and finally bring San Francisco and the Far East into touch with the commercial center of the Middle West. It was a magnificent undertaking, not unlike that of the Erie Canal, which had made New York the Emporium of the East; it was even more daring for a section already in debt to the limit of its ability to pay. But these ambitious Northwestern men and politicians had already won the support of the railway men of New York and Boston, and their agents still borrowed money with ease in London and Liverpool. And with States like Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa doubling their population each decade, and hence increasing their land values three or fourfold, even the impossible became possible. The most ambitious section of the Union during the Pierce Administration was the Northwest, and it need not surprise us to learn that Douglas, her mouthpiece, was the most ambitious leader of his party.
As compared with all former standards, the country of 1850-60 was exceedingly prosperous. A series of good crop years, the low tariff of the United States, and the free-trade policy of England stimulated the unprecedented commercial activity. The financial system was more stable than it had ever been before, and the inter-sectional trade was assuming proportions never dreamed of in the earlier days of the Republic. The manufactures of the East, which approximated $800,000,000 in value each year, were sold to the South in exchange for bills on Liverpool or London, or to the West in return for its grain and other foodstuffs. The banks and railroads brought all sections closer together, especially the East and the West; while the expanding merchant marine promised soon to give the United States the mastery of international commerce.
Thus the East had learned to prosper without a high tariff, and the South was voting for large subsidies to Eastern shipping. The West had found a way to develop her resources in spite of Southern and Eastern jealousy, and the laws of commerce were daily weakening the influence of state rights and sectional dislike. A new era had begun. Big business interests and great railway schemes had developed the corporation in its modern connotation; large harvests and a most enterprising industry were producing the capital for a new economic era; and all the social tendencies seemed to be working out a national life which was no longer parochial. It was the business of politics so to guide and regulate the varying activities of the people that sectional hatreds should pass away and that the resources of the country should not be squandered. Such was the task of Franklin Pierce, the new leader, who had not known personally the fears and dislikes of earlier days. But a country so rich and prosperous as the United States in 1850-60 had other interests, a social and intellectual life which must engage our attention before we take up the political evolution of the period.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
James Ford Rhodes's History of the United Slates, vols. I and II, already mentioned, remains the best treatment of the period of 1850-60. T. C. Smith's Parties and Slavery, in American Nation series (1906), and McMaster's History of the United States, vol. VIII, are very valuable. T. P. Kettell's Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (New York, 1860), is a suggestive study in sectionalism not too well known to scholars. But the Census Reports of 1850 and 1860; J. E. B. DeBow's Industrial Resources of the South and West (1857); and U.S. Senate Executive Documents, no. 38, part 1, 52d Cong., 1st Sess., supply the needful statistics on population, crops, manufactures, and finance. Freeman Hunt's Lives of American Merchants, 2 vols. (New York, 1858), gives some interesting information about leading ante-bellum merchants and manufacturers. And the volumes of Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, 1839-60, DeBow's Review, 1846-60, and the American Banker's Magazine for the same period are storehouses of the economic history of the time, K. Coman's Industrial History of the United States (1910); E. L. Bogart's The Economic History of the United States (1908); and Horace White's Money and Banking Illustrated by American History (1911), are the best special works in their several lines.