Analysis: Observations Regarding the Transcontinental Railroad

Date: July 2, 1867; May 10, 1869 (published 1923)

Author: Editors of Harper's Weekly; Alexander Toponce

Genre: editorial; memoir

Summary Overview

Congress authorized the building of the first railroad across the western parts of the United States in the summer of 1862 with the passage of the Pacific Railroad Act. The two excerpts included here deal with the building of this railroad, the combined Union Pacific and Central Pacific. The editorial from Harper's Weekly was written almost two years before the railroad was completed, and speculates grandly about the impact that the railroad could be expected to have. It is typical of the kind of enthusiasm many Americans had for the project and the benefits they expected to flow from it. The second excerpt is from the reminiscences of Alexander Toponce, a Western businessman who supplied beef to the railroad's construction crews and was at Promontory Summit when the railroad was completed on May 10, 1869. He describes the celebratory spirit of that occasion, when a special ceremony was held to commemorate the driving of the “last spike.”

Defining Moment

In the 1840s, the United States settled the controversy with Great Britain over the Pacific Northwest and also acquired most of the American Southwest as a result of the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848. Almost immediately, speculation arose about the possibility of building a railroad across the western region. Before the Civil War, however, Congressional debates over the railroad invariably became entangled in the sectional controversy, as Northern and Southern interests each wanted the first line in their region. During the Civil War, when Southern congressmen were not present, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, which was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on July 1, 1862. The bill gave a federal business charter to a new railroad corporation, the Union Pacific, to build westward from the Missouri River. It also gave a charter to the Central Pacific Railroad, an existing short line in California, to build eastward from Sacramento, CA. In order to finance this massive construction venture, the government gave generous aid, including massive land grants and cash loans, to the two corporations. The land grants included ten square miles of government land for each mile of track built; this was later increased to twenty square miles per mile of track. The government also agreed to negotiate with the Indians to obtain title to the lands the railroads would cross. The railroads could sell their land to settlers to raise money for construction. However, since the settlers were not likely to come until the railroad was built, in practice the railroads had to borrow money through bond sales, hoping that later shipping revenues and land sales would generate the funds to repay these obligations. Together, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific received about 45,000,000 acres of federal land.

While the gold rush of the late 1840s had brought much settlement and development to California, the first transcontinental railroad was largely built through unsettled land, with few customers needing the transportation services the railroad would provide. In a sense, then, the railroads were built for future needs—creating the railroad would bring the farms, ranches, mines, lumbering companies, and other businesses that would need to ship their products and buy manufactured goods from the East. Economists describe this concept as “building ahead of demand.” Because they had vast lands they needed to sell, all of the western railroads that received land grants were heavily involved in promotion of settlement and townsite development, often sending agents to Europe to attract immigrants to come and buy land from the railroads. Even if settlers bought land from the government, or got land free through homesteading, the railroads stood to benefit from the traffic that their economic activity would stimulate. These two excerpts ably illustrate the sense of expectancy and the hopes for the future that surrounded the building of the first transcontinental railroad.

Author Biography

The 1867 editorial from Harper's Weekly was an unsigned piece by the editorial staff. Harper's Weekly was one of the most prominent American journals of its day. It was founded in 1850 by the book publishers Harper and Brothers. Alexander Toponce (1839–1923), the author of the reminiscence about the “Golden Spike” ceremony, was an emigrant from France who had his hand in several different business ventures on the western frontier. Most of his later life was spent in Idaho, the southern parts of Montana, and northern Utah. He prospected for gold, ran freighting businesses with wagon trains, and when the transcontinental railroad was being built, he contracted with both the Central Pacific and Union Pacific to provide beef for their work camps. His Reminiscences of Alexander Toponce, from which this excerpt is taken, was published by his wife shortly after his death.

Document Analysis

These two excerpts clearly illustrate the excitement that surrounded the subject of the first railroad across the American West. Great things were expected to result from the completion of the first line, the combined Union Pacific and Central Pacific route from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California. The editorial in Harper's Weekly, written nearly two years before the line was completed, envisioned that all eastern railroads would become “tributary and subservient to it.” The editors also predicted a merger or “combination” of all the leading roads in the East to form one “Western route under one management.” While there have been many mergers in the history of American railroading, this prediction did not become true. Instead, the different railroads continued to operate independently, but interchanged traffic to create a national transportation network. The prediction that when the Pacific Railroad was completed, these tributary railroads “will converge toward the main stem, like the fingers of a hand,” did come to pass in a sense. Eventually, five major railroad lines were built across the American West, and each of these companies built branches that reached north and south off of their trunk lines, and smaller regional railroads also interconnected with the transcontinental lines. Likewise, the prediction that New York would become a major world trade center was also fulfilled.

The second excerpt is from Alexander Toponce's memoirs of his days on the western frontier. Toponce had contracted with the railroads to provide beef for the camps of the construction crews. The Central Pacific Railroad had built 881 miles eastward from Sacramento, CA, and the Union Pacific had built 1,032 miles westward from Omaha, NE. Since the two companies received generous land grants and loans from the government for each mile of track built, they competed to build the most track and refused to coordinate a meeting place until Congress dictated that the two lines would meet at Promontory, near Ogden in the Utah Territory. As Toponce notes, much of the Central Pacific's work force was immigrant Chinese labor, while the Union Pacific employed many Irish laborers. African Americans workers, many of them former slaves, also worked on the Union Pacific construction crews.

With his frequent references to the quantities and varieties of alcoholic beverages consumed, Toponce captures the celebratory mood of the day when the railroad was completed. Commemorative spikes of precious metals were temporarily installed, but the final spike was an iron one attached to telegraph lines. When Leland Stanford, former governor of California and president of the Central Pacific, hammered in the last spike, the message was to be instantly telegraphed across the nation. Stanford missed when he swung at the spike, but the telegraphers sent the message anyway. Nearly six years after Congress had authorized its construction, the Pacific Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863–1869. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Print.

Bain, David Hayward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Print.

White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011. Print.

Williams, John Hoyt. A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railway. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Print.