History Book Club
Selection 1999-2001
Reviewed by Elliott West (Professor of History, University of Arkansas)
It was arguably the greatest technological achievement of its day.
it was also born of financial and political shenanigans that shocked
and astounded even the most hardened observers of a deeply corrupt
era. The laying of America's first transcontinental railroad
reflected the nation it was knitting together--its expansive view of
itself its outrageous risk-taking, its muscular accomplishments, its
blend of naivete, exploitation, and arrogance.
Many histories have been written about this, one of the crucial
episodes in a remarkable century of nation-building, but David Haward
Bain's Empire Express is the most ambitious and
comprehensive. Its broad sweep begins early, with the first stirring
of interest in what most thought a preposterous notion. In 1844 the
New York merchant Asa Whitney began thumping for a rail connection
from Chicago to the Pacific--this before the United States had clear
tide to an acre beyond the Rocky Mountains. Like many after him, he
was moved by a mix of motives, starting with a link to the Asian
market and a pious zeal to spread Christianity.
By 1850 the Pacific coast was in American hands and tens of
thousands drawn there by California gold. Whitney's globe-shrinking
vision now made increasing sense, but politics and the deepening
bitterness between North and South hobbled every effort to settle on
a route and get the work underway. Only after the Civil War was
underway and balky southerners out of the government could the
project be set in motion. On July 1, 1862, twelve days after passage
of the Homestead Act, Congress authorized the Union Pacific to build
westward from Omaha and the Central Pacific eastward from the
California gold fields.
It was a great conjecture. Financial plans rested on untested
assumptions and much of the engineering on instinct. No one had much
of a due even where the two lines would meet. into these gauzy
possibilities and potential disasters stepped an uncommon collection
of men. Bain is at his best in luring us into their world. There's
Theodore Judah of the Central Pacific, lobbyist extraordinare and
brilliant engineer whose straight-arrow ethics led him increasingly
into conflict with the "big four," a talented but slippery bunch who
took over control of the enterprise. For all their mint, that quartet
of Charles Crocker, Collis Hunting- ton, Leland Stanford, and Mark
Hopkins saw the thing through with a powerful blend of tireless work,
sleazy maneuvers, creative bookkeeping and the baldest bluffs.
Working from the opposite direction was another strange mix that
included Dr. Thomas Durant, former ophthalmologist and exporter, the
Civil War general Grenville Dodge, and Oakes Ames, whose long-tailed
New England lineage gave the business some social gloss and economic
standing. All players learned that, even with the government's
massive loans and gift of millions of acres snaring investors and
wooing political support was as much a challenge as laying track
across the continent. Promoters became pioneers in boondoggling. On a
memorable 1866 junket out West, two hundred politicians and fatcats
were toasted and thrilled--and briefly terrified by a sham attack by
Pawnee warriors staged as a wakeup call.
Bain manages to explain the tangle of financial schemes and
political maneuvering and weave them into the more tangible drama of
the transcontinental's construction. Since each mile of track meant
more money loaned and land given, the Union Pacific and Central
Pacific raced frantically to cover maximum ground before meeting.
with squads of Irish labor the first pushed across the relatively
level plains. It was a mix of dazzling accomplishment and the
shoddiest work, marvelous bridges and trestles with rails set on
cottonwood ties that warped crazily after the first rain. The Central
Pacific punched through the Sierra Nevada (and was paid more per mile
over the rough terrain). Chinese were brought in for work no one else
would try. Shipping in supplies from across the world, blasting
tunnels and bulling through snow--forty-four storms in 1867 dumped up
to six feet in a night--the builders somehow kept a semblance of a
schedule. They relied on imported innovations, including skis and
nitroglycerine. The human cost was stunning, both in Indian societies
convulsed and hundreds of workers killed, with Chinese typically
noted only by the number of corpses.
Bain has a sharp eye for the revealing or funny quote among the mountains of sources he consulted. He is especially impressive in keeping coherent the many threads of the story and in juggling the dozens of characters who, by the nature of the topic, are scattered across a continent yet are all working toward the same end. On May 10, 1869 at Promontory, Utah, Crocker and Durant gave the final two whacks at the last two spikes, and although the scheming and scandals would continue, the job was finished and the coasts connected. Readers of this fine history will look back in both directions and appreciate quite a story of a remarkable enterprise.