The Race Is Set

In 1857, Abraham Lincoln was the lawyer in a case for the Rock Island Bridge Company. The company had built one of the first railroad bridges across the Mississippi River. When a ship crashed into the bridge, the ship owner sued the company, claiming that the bridge obstructed free navigation of the river. The case was dismissed after the jury was deadlocked, but during it, Lincoln made an argument for the national support of “rail travel from East to West.”

- Marcia Amidon Lusted

The nation needed a reliable method to connect its two coasts. The addition of the Oregon Territory in 1846 and the Mexican Cession in 1848 had given the United States control of the West Coast. In the decade that followed, discoveries of gold in California and silver in Nevada attracted large numbers of miners and settlers to the West.

Lincoln had grown up on the frontier, and he had traveled as a lawyer—by horseback—in the Midwest. He knew how difficult it was to get around. He believed that a transcontinental railroad would provide that much-needed physical link, but it raised other questions: What route should it follow? Where should the eastern terminus be? Could private companies manage such a massive undertaking? And what role, if any, should the federal government play?

After winning election as president in 1860, Lincoln took the first step to provide answers to some of those questions. He signed the Pacific Railway Act on July 1, 1862. It established the federal government’s support for a transcontinental railroad along a north-central route close to the 42nd parallel. The act called for building a telegraph line parallel to the railroad line. The government reserved the right to use both lines for national purposes, such as to deliver news, to carry mail, and to transport the military. It invested the president with the authority to determine where the eastern leg would begin. Lincoln named Council Bluffs, Iowa, but construction began across the Missouri River in Omaha, Nebraska. Lincoln also decided that the railroad’s standard gauge, or width between the two rails, would be four feet eight and a half inches.