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A Lecture On The Railroad To The Pacific [1850], Calvin Colton, Paul Royster (Editor)

Electronic Texts in American Studies

DELIVERED, AUGUST 12, 1850, AT THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON.

Colton delivered this lecture in support of a proposal by New York merchant Asa Whitney (1797–1872) to build a railway from Lake Michigan to the Pacific. Whitney’s proposal called for Congress to sell him a strip of land sixty miles wide and 2,000 miles long through the public domain—a total of about 78 million acres at a price of 10 cents per acre. Whitney had spent time in Europe and in China, and was convinced that a rail link across North America would become the principal commercial route between Europe and …