Chapter 26—“There Are Only Five of Us”
1. Huntington Typescript, 17, Bancroft Library, UCB; Huntington to Hopkins, New York, November 7, 1867, Huntington Papers, Syracuse University Library (unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and his partners is from the Syracuse Library, with all Huntington letters written from New York and his partners’ from Sacramento).
2. New York Times, September 7, 1867.
3. New York Times, September 9, 1867; Huntington to Hopkins, October 17, 1867.
4. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, September 6, 1867.
5. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 9, December 7, 1867, April 21, 1868. Note: Lavender (402) asserts these were written to Charles Crocker, using the transcriptions in Collected Letters, I. but internal evidence in the original handwritten letters at Syracuse—references to earlier messages from E. B. C.—disputes this. Granted, it is confusing since C. P. H. used the greeting “Friend Crocker” regardless of which brother he addressed.
6. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 17, 1867.
7. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 12, 1867.
8. Ibid.
9. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 12, 1867.
10. Stanford to Huntington, September 9, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 3, 1867.
11. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 12 and 17, 1867; Stanford to Huntington, September 9, 1867; Hopkins to Huntington, September 12, 1867.
12. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 26, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, December 28 and 29, 1867, February 25, 1868.
13. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 12 and 26, 1867; see also August 22, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, September 9, 18, and 23, 1867, overruled the Judge’s pleas. Stanford consulted with Tevis, Ralston, and others in August, and they were eager to join with the Associates in improving Goat Island: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 29, 1867.
14. Montague to Ives, September 13, 1867, Stanford University Library.
15. Dodge Diary, August 28, 1867, Dodge Records VI, 881–82; Dodge to Anne Dodge, Salt Lake City, September 3, 1867, Dodge Records VI, 705–6; Dodge, Autobiography, 920; Dodge notes on Miss Stanley’s painting of Dodge and Rawlins in 1867, Dodge Papers, Council Bluffs Public Library; Hirshson, 155–57.
16. Works Progress Administration, Wyoming, 137–38, 185.
17. Stanley, 191–96.
18. Maj. Gen. C. C. Augur to War Department, Omaha, September 30, 1867, NARS; also quoted, though abridged, in Bruce, 10–11.
19. Reed to Jenny Reed, Julesburg, September 19, 1867, NSHS.
20. Oliver Ames to Dodge, August 5 and 10, 1867, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
21. Oliver Ames to Dodge, August 21 and 28, September 3, 1867, Dodge Papers; Dodge, Autobiography, 683.
22. Dodge, Autobiography, 682–87; Dodge to Oliver Ames, October 7, 1867, Dodge Papers; Oliver Ames to Dodge, October 7, 1867, Dodge Papers; Seymour to Oliver Ames, October 10, 1867, Dodge Papers.
23. Dodge, Autobiography, 682.
24. Oliver Ames to H. S. McComb, September 17, 1867. NSHS; Klein, 122–28, is invaluable in understanding the complicated machinations of September-October 1867; he has the care of a scholar yet the eye for dramatic detail of a prizefight announcer. Also see: Ames Diary, September 26 and 27, 1867, Oliver Ames Papers, Stonehill College; Hazard Diary, September 17 and 18, 1867, Rhode Island Historical Society.
25. Allen to Oliver Ames, September 19, 1867, Oliver Ames Papers; Ames Diary, September 21 and 23, 1867, Oliver Ames Papers; Hazard Diary, September 18, 22, and 23, 1867; Klein, 123; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, September 27, 1867.
26. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, September 27, 1867.
27. Klein, 124–25; Ames Diary, September 26 and 27, 1867; Hazard Diary, September 24–27 and 30, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 3, 1867. As a matter of interest, see Ames, Pioneering the Union Pacific, 187, for a milder family interpretation of events. The directors’ minutes are at NSHS and in the Leonard Collection, University of Iowa.
28. Klein, 126; Ames Diary, October 3, 1867; Hazard Diary, October 3, 1867.
29. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 5 and 9, 1867; Huntington to Hopkins, October 11, 1867. See also Klein, 126–27; Union Pacific Directors’ Minutes, October 4 and 9, 1867; Ames Diary, October 8–10, 15, and 16, 1867; Hazard Diary, October 4, 1867.
30. Klein, 126–27; Union Pacific Directors’ Minutes, October 4, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 9, 1867.
31. Klein, 127–28; Hazard Diary, October 1, 1867; Ames to Dodge, October 7, 1867, Dodge Papers.
32. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 14, 1867. And same on October 25, 1867; “What a loving crowd [these] Union Pacific men must be.”
33. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 12 and 26, 1867; Stanford to Huntington, October 11, 1867; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 14, 1867.
34. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 10, 1867.
35. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 14, 25, and 29, 1867. The Associates had a Sacramento merchant, Theodore J. Milliken, together with Stanford’s former secretary in the statehouse, W. E. Brown, and B. R. Crocker of the Central Pacific, sign as incorporators; several weeks later they all transferred their stock to Charles Crocker, who divided it equally between the five Associates: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, February 25, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, March 16, 1868. Several years later, when the Associates were under governmental scrutiny in the wake of the Crédit Mobilier scandals, they claimed that the Contract & Finance Company was begun to attract new partners; as the above letters indicate, this is not true. Sen. Exec. Doc., 50 Cong. 1 Sess., No. 51, II. 10–11; IV, 2624, 2637. Harry J. Carman and Charles H. Mueller, “The Contract and Finance Company and the Central Pacific Railroad,” Missisissippi Valley Historical Review, XIV, 3, is based largely on the federal sources but not at all on the Associates’ correspondence. The Contract & Finance Company signed its first construction contract on December 3, 1867: USPRRC, 3436–37.
36. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 29, 1867.
37. Hopkins to Huntington, October 26, 1867; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 29, 1867; C. Crocker to Huntington, October 30, 1867.
38. Reed to Jenny Reed, October 29, 1867, NSHS.
39. Grinnell, Two Great Scouts, 148–51; Bruce, 19.
40. Utley, 114–17; Andrist, 132; Larson, 116–17; Hyde, 290; Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, 274–75.
41. Ames Diary, October 22 to November 6, 1867.
42. Reed to Jenny Reed, undated Cheyenne letter, November 1867, NSHS.
43. Works Progress Administration, Wyoming, 186, 109; Cheyenne Leader, November 10, 11, 14, 15, 1867, January 6, 7, 1868.
44. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 5, 1867; B. P. Avery to wife, Sacramento, December 1, 1867, ms. 2959, California Historical Society. Crocker’s letter notes that the unnamed Associated Press correspondent-on-retainer sent the first dispatch from the summit; Avery tells his wife that he sent the first dispatch. It would seem a safe guess to name Benjamin Parke Avery of the Bulletin as the Central Pacific’s secret press agent. Of course there was more than one; another was Thomas Magee of San Francisco, apparently a freelancer whose laudatory articles on the Central Pacific found homes locally and on the wire to the East: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 15, 1867. Crocker asked that Huntington use his influence to get Magee appointed West Coast correspondent for the New York Tribune.
45. Hopkins to Huntington, December 1, 1867.
46. Sacramento Union, November 30, 1867; B. P. Avery to wife, Sacramento, December 1, 1867, op. cit.
47. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, November 9 and 18, 1867; Stanford to Huntington, November 23, 1867.
48. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, November 9, 1867.
49. Virginia Enterprise, December 6, 1867, reprinted in Sacramento Union, December 9, 1867.
50. Sacramento Union, December 9, 1867. Also see Hopkins to Huntington, December 6, 1867 (the day before the excursion), in which Hopkins says confidently, “We have never failed on such occasions to make a favorable impression….”
51. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, November 7, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, November 2, 29 and 30, 1867; Bancroft, Chronicle V, 57. Franchot was paid $25,000 per year as the Central Pacific’s chief lobbyist.
52. Huntington to Hopkins, November 27, 1867.
53. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 29, November 2, 1867, February 21, March 13, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, December 17 and 29, 1867.
54. Huntington to Hopkins, November 7, December 21, 1867; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, December 6, 1867; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 19, 1867.
55. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, November 1, December 28, 1867; Huntington to Hopkins, December 29, 1867.
56. Klein, 142; Ames, Pioneering, 196; Wilson Report, 725–27.
57. Poland Report, iv, 16, 32; Ibid., 4–7; Oakes Ames to Oliver Ames, December 8, 1867, January 30, 1868, Oliver Ames Papers, Stonehill College.
58. Poland Report; Oakes Ames test.: Durant: 57, 18, 335; 174, 241–42, 386; Alley; 406; Ames, 197–98.
59. Poland Report, iii, 57; Ames, 198.
60. Poland Report, 59–60; Wilson Report, 725–27; Ames, ibid.
61. Poland Report, iii, 59–60; Wilson Report, 725–27; Ames, ibid.; Klein, 144–45.
62. Ames, 203, features a handy table of the twenty-three U.S. congressmen called in by the Poland Committee, although the individual testimony is fascinating for personal details and ethical dodges (all selected references here are in Poland Report, which contains a decent name index, though not as good as that in the Wilson Report): Allison: 9, 41, 111, 292, 304–8; Bingham: vi, 21, 34–35, 181, 191–97, 336, 458; Colfax: 81–84, 279, 325–28, 451, 481–92, 501–16; Dawes: v, 6, 20, 32–36, 112–15, 449–50; Garfield: vii, 6, 21, 128–31, 295–98, 355–61, 459–60; Kelley: vii, 6, 21, 197–204, 297–99, 313–18, 330, 451, 466–68; Logan: 335, 346–47, 352–53, 460; Patterson: 184–86, 261–66, 266–73, 270–72, 336–37, 356, 457–58, 480; Scofield: vi, 6, 204–7, 39–40, 181, 299–300, 336, 352, 455–56; H. Wilson: 6, 20, 26, 78–80, 136, 186–90, 288–89, 336, 448–49, 461, 481; J. Wilson: 21, 29–30, 38, 40, 211–20, 212, 333, 336, 408, 457.
63. Poland Report: Hooper: 12, 19, 21, 40, 59–60, 195, 205; Alley: 74–80, 84–109, 311, 322, 405–8, 420–23, 429; Grimes: 10, 19, 21, 220, 306; Boutwell: 6, 21, 28, 32, 80, 92, 103, 186, 303–4, 406; Eliot: 6, 21, 28, 32; Blaine: 1, 2, 6, 10, 31, 181, 293, 323, 339; Bayard: 4, 9, 15, 30, 33, 74, 293, 336, 408; Fowler: 4, 6, 9, 21, 303, 408, 516–19; Boyer: 207–11, 133, 138, 243, 272; Brooks: xii, 243–61, 439–41, 361. Harbaugh and Morehead: Harbaugh to Durant, April 5, 1867, NSHS.
64. Klein, 145; Klein Notes, 28: 145–2.
65. Wilson Report, xii. Dodge would testify that his wife bought the shares with her own money and collected the dividends herself, a statement that may have elicited derisive snorts in the committeeroom, as the Dodges, like most people, supported their household and affairs as a team despite his long absences.
66. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, December 6, 1867.
67. Snyder to Dodge, Omaha, December 13, 1867, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives; Dodge to Crane, Washington, January 23, 1868, NSHS; Durant to Snyder, New York, December 5, 1867, NSHS; Dodge to Reed, Washington, December 27, 1867, NSHS.
68. Sheridan Report, September 26, 1868, Box 83, Sheridan Papers, Library of Congress; also cited in Paul Andrew Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: Univ. Neb. Press), 1985, 38.
69. Dodge, Report of the Chief Engineer, 1867.
70. Casement to Crane, December 20, 1867, NSHS.
71. Hopkins to Huntington, December 13, 1867; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 23, 1867. The train accident is also mentioned in Huntington to Hopkins, January 6, 1868.
72. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 19 and 23, 1867; John R. Brown (Cisco freight clerk), Diary, California State Library; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, December 29, 1867.
73. Partridge, Reminiscences, SPRR, California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, and cited in Kraus, 182.
74. Sacramento Union, December 21, 1867; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 19, 1867.
75. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 12, 1867 (two letters).
76. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 5, 1867.
77. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, December 27, 1867.
Part VIII—1868: Going for Broke
Chapter 27—“More Hungry Men in Congress”
1. Dodge, Autobiography, 705, Council Bluffs Public Library.
2. Grant to Sherman, Washington, February 10, 1868, Sherman to Grant, St. Louis, February 14, 1868, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant XVIII (Carbondale; So. Illinois Univ. Press, 1995), 138–39.
3. Lloyd Paul Stryker, Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage (NY: Macmillan, 1930), 518.
4. Hirshson, 160; Benjamin Thomas and Harold Hyman, Stanton, The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (NY: Knopf, 1962); Frank A. Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton (Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co., 1905), 336–38: the quotations are from notes, taken by Maj. A. E. H. Johnson. Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago: Univ. Chicago, 1960), a temperate and carefully reasoned work, was also invaluable in sorting through these events.
5. The temperature of the body of work on Reconstruction and the Johnson impeachment is feverish but certainly makes for interesting reading (some titles noted above, and also Bowers, The Tragic Era). Most make a direct connection between congressional corruption and radical Republicanism: “But it was by no means to prophesy alone that these Representatives of a corrupt Congress confined themselves,” writes Stryker. “A Congress in the pockets of many of whose members the gold of Crédit Mobilier was jingling! A House of Representatives whose Speaker was a bribe taker! They knew how trivial a thing was the removal of Edwin Stanton.” Most books will devote a chapter to the Oakes Ames efforts, overlooking Huntington’s. But as any student of Congress knows, corruption has had no limitation as to party, background, or beliefs, over two centuries, though admittedly this time—at the dawn of the Gilded Age—was particularly florid.
6. Dodge to John Duff, Washington, January 4, 1868, in Dodge, Autobiography, 706–7.
7. Oliver Ames to Dodge, North Easton, January 8, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives; Dodge to Reed, Washington, January 4, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 708.
8. Dodge to Reed, Washington, January 4, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 707–8.
9. Reed to Dodge, Cheyenne, early January 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 709.
10. Reed to Jenny Reed, Cheyenne, January 18, 1868, NSHS.
11. Reed to Crane, Cheyenne, January 20, 1868, NSHS.
12. Snyder to Dodge, Cheyenne, dated January 12 and 13, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 713–15, but as January 22, in Dodge Papers.
13. Snyder to Dodge, February 7, 1868, Dodge Papers, and in Dodge, op. cit., 724–25.
14. Dodge, op. cit., 726.
15. Dodge, op. cit., 569–70, See also Brigham D. Madsen, Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor (Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah, 1990), 163–65.
16. Dodge, op. cit., 717.
17. Klein, 142. “From such sources.” Klein writes, “came large returns that never found their way into the tortuous calculations by later generations of the profits realized from construction of the Union Pacific.”
18. Wilson Rept., 88 (Durant test.), 542, 544 (Bushnell), 679–80 (Oakes Ames).
19. Poland Rept., 4–7, reprints the three Ames letters. Oakes later disputed that he had dictated recipients’ names to McComb (see Chapters 26 and 31), and after the letters were publicized, some of the named parties also denied signing on. As Maury Klein notes (143), the incriminating statements to McComb “were essentially rewrites of text from letters written to Oliver, which tended to be more candid.” These confidences to his brother did not surface during the ensuing investigations, tending to dig Oakes a little deeper in a hole despite his protests of innocence.
20. Sacramento Union, February 3, 1868. Train’s 8-day imprisonment and eventual release was covered in the Union well into February, in great detail, including reprints from the Cork Examiner: Union, February 26 and 27, 1868.
21. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, January 1, 1868, Huntington Papers, Syracuse University Library (unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and his partners is from the Syracuse Library, with all Huntington letters written from New York and his partners’ from Sacramento).
22. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, January 3, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, January 6, 1868.
23. C. Crocker to Huntington, January 3 and 16, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 16, 1868.
24. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, January 21, February 3, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, January 27, 1868.
25. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 16, 1868.
26. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, January 13, February 22, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, February 5, 1868.
27. Hopkins to Huntington, February 12, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, February 11, 1868.
28. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, February 21, 1868; Huntington to C. Crocker, February 22, 1868.
29. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, January 20, 1868.
30. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, March 14 and 21, 1868; Huntington to Stanford, February 7, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, March 7 and 31, 1868; Dictionary of American Biography (Conkling), 346–47.
31. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, February 3, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, March 31, 1868.
32. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, March 12, 1868.
33. Huntington to C. Crocker, January 24, 1868; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, March 28, 1868.
34. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, February 6 and 13, 1868.
35. Hopkins to Huntington, January 30, 1868.
36. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, January 20, March 12, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, March 31, 1868.
37. Stanford testimony, USPRRC (S. Exec. Doc. 51, 50 Cong., 1 Sess.), vol. V, 2807.
38. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 8, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, January 8, 1868.
39. San Francisco Bulletin, March 14, 1868.
40. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 20, 1868.
41. Hopkins to Huntington, March 21, 1868.
42. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, March 28, 1868.
43. Hopkins to Huntington, March 15, 1868; Sacramento Union, February 7, March 7, 1868; Auburn Stars and Stripes, January 9, 1868, quoted in Sacramento Union, January 11, 1868.
44. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, March 9 and 20, 1868.
45. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, March 28, 1868.
46. Hopkins to Huntington, March 31, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, March 31, 1868.
47. Huntington to Hopkins, February 5, 1868; Virginia Trespass, February 17, 1868, quoted in San Francisco Alta California, February 25, 1868.
48. Hopkins to Huntington, March 16, 1868 (two letters).
49. C. Crocker to Huntington, March 29, 1868.
50. Wyoming: A Guide to Its History, Highways, and People (NY: Oxford), 1941.
51. Sherman to Dodge, St. Louis, March 11, 1868, cited in Dodge, Autobiography, 739.
52. Gibbon to Dodge, Ft. Sanders, early March 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit., 730.
53. Reed to Crane, March 13, 1868, NSHS; Reed to Dodge, Cheyenne, March 29, 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit., 745.
54. Christen Nelson, “Tales From Old-Timers—No. 32,” Union Pacific Magazine, June 1926, 16.
55. Reed to Crane, March 28, 1868, NSHS.
56. Reed to Crane, March 12, 1868, NSHS; Snyder to Dodge, Omaha, March 26, 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit.
57. Dodge, op. cit., 733, 743.
58. Dodge, op. cit., 729; Blickensderfer to Dodge, Salt Lake City, March 7, 1868, Dodge to Blickensderfer, Washington, March 20, 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit., 737, 740, 743.
59. Blickensderfer to Dodge, Salt Lake City, March 24, 1868, Dodge to Blickensderfer, Washington, March 30, 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit., 744, 746.
60. Dodge to W. B. Shattuck, Washington, March 6, 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit., 741–42.
61. Sherman, Recollections, I. 425; Letters, 315.
62. Browning, Diary, 188–89; Dodge, op. cit., 745.
63. Dodge, op. cit., 746–47; Hirshson, 160–61.
64. Dodge, op. cit., 739–40.
65. Dodge, op. cit., 742–44.
66. Dodge, op. cit., 746; Dodge to Durant, Washington, March 19, 1868, Dodge Papers, (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R6), NSHS.
Chapter 28—“Bring On Your Eight Thousand Men”
1. C. Crocker to Huntington, April 4, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 13 and 23, 1868, Huntington Papers, Syracuse University Library (unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and his partners is from the Syracuse Library, with all Huntington letters written from New York and his partners’ from Sacramento); Virginia City (Nev.) Enterprise, April 11 and 12, 1868, also quoted in Sacramento Union, April 14, 1868.
2. Sacramento Union, February 3, 1868.
3. Hopkins to Huntington, April 23, 1868; Works Project Administration, Nevada: A Guide to the Silver State (Portland, OR: Binfords & Mort, 1940), 138–40.
4. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 21, 1868; Huntington ms., 65–66, UCB.
5. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 1, 7, 13 and 21, 1868. The Cold Stream gap was variously given as six and seven miles; I have sided with seven after counting and judging the sources. The discrepancy might be explained by a plan for a siding there.
6. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 27, 1868.
7. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, April 6 and 7, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, April 13, 1868; Huntington to C. Crocker, April 15, 1868.
8. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, April 2 and 6, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 13, 1868.
9. Huntington to Hopkins, April 13, 1868; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, April 24 and 28, 1868.
10. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 4 and 9, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 21, 1868.
11. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, April 17, 1868. According to the original handwritten letter, this is dated erroneously and misquoted in Lavender (203), who rather artfully depicts Huntington in the act of drawing a fraudulent red line on the location map; he also misattributes the letter’s recipient as Charles Crocker, a frequent mistake; Klein (149) picks up the image of the red line to dramatize the dramatization.
12. Ibid.; Huntington to C. Crocker, April 24, 1868.
13. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 7, 1868. I elected not to continue to quote into Huntington’s unfortunate racist “in the woodpile” expression—not to insulate him from embarrassment but to avoid a distractive effect right at the end of this section.
14. Dodge to O. H. Browning, Sherman Summit, April 16, 1868, Sec. Int. Files (RG48), National Archives; New York Tribune, April 18, 1868; American Railroad Journal XLI (April 25, 1868), 408.
15. Durant to Stanford, Sherman Summit, April 16, 1868 (as transmitted through Cheyenne, April 17), and Stanford to Durant, Sacramento, April 17, 1868. Huntington Papers, Syracuse University Library. The exact altitude at Sherman Summit was 8,242 feet.
16. Reed to Jenny Reed, April 23, 1868, Reed Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R15), NSHS.
17. Dodge, Autobiography, 751, Council Bluffs Public Library; Works Progress Administration, Wyoming, 197.
18. Ibid.
19. C. C. Cope, “Tales From Old-Timers—No. 11,” Union Pacific Magazine, February 1924, 10.
20. Ibid.; L. O. Leonard, “Lived After Being Scalped,” Union Pacific Magazine, April 1925, 9. Note: Cope’s date for this episode, fogged by some 56 years, is mistaken; Leonard corrected it for his article, having examined Union Pacific telegrams in the mean time. Cahoon Street in Ogden is named after the Union Pacific veteran.
21. Dodge, op. cit., 748–49; Grinnell, Two Great Scouts, 153; Bruce, 34; Oliver Ames to Dodge, April 1868, cited in Dodge, ibid., 748.
22. Casement to F. Casement, April 21, 26, and 28, May 8, 1868, Casement Papers, Univ. Wyoming.
23. Evans to Dodge, Green River, May 7, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives; Dodge, op. cit., 748.
24. Hirshson, 160–61; David M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 515–96.
25. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 5, 9, 1868.
26. Oakes Ames to Oliver Ames, Washington, May 12, 1868; Oliver Ames Papers, Stonehill College; Oliver Ames to Dodge, New York, May 15, 1868; Dodge, Autobiography, 755.
27. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 13, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, May 16, 1868.
28. Huntington to Hopkins, May 26, 1868.
29. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 13, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, May 30, 1868.
30. Dodge to H. C. Crane, Washington, May 11, 1868, Dodge Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R6), NSHS.
31. Dodge, Autobiography, 750.
32. Ibid., 748.
33. Dodge Papers, NSHS.
34. Evans to Dodge, Ft. Sanders, May 11, 1868; ibid., 754; Evans to Durant, Ft. Sanders, May 9, 1868, Evans Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R8), NSHS.
35. Ibid., 755.
36. Dodge to Oliver Ames, Washington, May 14, 1868, Oliver Ames Papers, Stonehill College.
37. Hopkins to Huntington, May 14 and 27, 1868; Stanford testimony, USPRRC V, 2523; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 6, 1868.
38. C. Crocker to Huntington, May 20, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, May 26, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 21, 1868.
39. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 13 and 21, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, May 20 and 26, 1868; Stanford to Huntington, May 20, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 6, 1868.
40. Huntington to Hopkins, June 1, 1868; Huntington to C. Crocker, June 8, 1868.
41. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 21 and 23, June 6, 1868.
42. Hopkins to Huntington, May 6, 1868 (he had meant to write “organism” but instead tellingly wrote “organization”); Huntington to E. B. Crocker, June 9, 1868.
43. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 23, 1868.
44. Huntington to Hopkins, May 23, 1868; Stanford to Jane Stanford, May 30, 1868, Stanford Univ. Library; Hopkins to Huntington, June 2, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 23, 1868.
45. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 28, June 4, 1868; Huntington to Stanford, May 29, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, May 14, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, June 1, 1868.
46. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, April 2 and 25, May 2, 8, 15, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, May 14 and 27, 1868.
47. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 28, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, May 26, June 6, 1868.
48. Huntington to Hopkins, June 6, 1868; Browning, Diary, II, 201.
49. Huntington to Hopkins, June 10, 1868; Huntington to E. B. Crocker, June 12 and 13, 1868.
50. Huntington to Hopkins, June 11 and 19, 1868.
51. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 27, 1868.
52. Hopkins to Huntington, May 19, 1868.
53. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 9, 1868; C. Crocker to Huntington, May 20, 1868.
54. Oliver Ames to Dodge, North Easton, May 16, 1868; Dodge to Blickensderfer, Washington, May 24, 1868, both cited in Dodge, op. cit., 456–57.
55. Evans to Dodge, Fort Sanders, in ibid., 757A.
56. Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 261–63, 269–70; David J. Croft, “The Private Business Activities of Brigham Young,” Journal of the West XVI (October 1977).
57. Reed to Jenny Reed, May 18 and 20, June 7, 1868, Reed Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R15) NSHS; Dodge, ibid., 763; USPRRC, 2154, 2173; Joseph A. West, “Construction of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads, Across Utah, 55 Years Ago,” Union Pacific Magazine, October 1922; Durant to Snyder, undated draft (June 1868), Snyder Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R17), NSHS; Huntington to Stanford, June 15, 1868.
58. Evans to Dodge, Fort Sanders, in Dodge, op. cit., 757A.
59. Blickensderfer to Dodge, late May 1868, cited in Dodge, op. cit.; Works Progress Administration, Utah, 354–57; Twain, Roughing It, 90, 91.
60. Blickensderfer to Dodge, in Dodge, op. cit.
61. Dodge, ibid., 759.
62. Dodge to Blickensderfer, Washington, June 4, 1868, Dodge to Oliver Ames, Washington, June 8, 1868, both cited in Dodge, ibid., 760–61.
63. Dodge, ibid., 763.
64. Works Progress Administration, Utah, 356–61; Dodge to Blickensderfer, ibid.
65. Durant to Dodge, New York, June 4, 1868, Dodge Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R6), NSHS. There are two copies, one in Durant’s hand, one in Dodge’s scrawl, the latter possibly copied off to show to Ames or even U. S. Grant.
66. Dodge to House, Washington, June 6, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 761; Dodge to Oliver Ames, Washington, June 8 and 10, 1868, in Dodge, ibid., 761–62, 766A; Oliver Ames to Dodge, New York, June 11, in Dodge, ibid., 762.
67. Dodge, ibid., 762.
68. Hopkins to Huntington, June 16, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, Sacramento, June 16, 1868, Telegram Book, Stanford Papers (SC33A, B5, F44), Stanford Univ. Archives.
69. Hopkins to Huntington, June 16, 1868. Note: Gov. Bigler wired his own resignation as commissioner while in transit to the convention in New York City: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 23, 1868.
70. Huntington to Hopkins, June 11, 1868 (Hopkins Corres. File), Stanford Univ. Archives.
71. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, June 9, 1868.
72. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 16, 1868.
73. Stanford to Hopkins, June 9, 1868 (Hopkins Corres. File), Stanford Univ. Archives.
74. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 16 and 23, 1868; Huntington to Stanford, June 26, 1868; Stanford to Huntington, July 18, 1868.
75. San Francisco Alta California, June 20, 1868; Montague to Ives, Sacramento, June 20, 1868, Stanford Papers, Stanford Univ. Archives.
76. Sacramento Union, June 19, 1868 (editorial and news item).
77. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, July 2 and 28, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, June 19, 1868.
78. Huntington to Hopkins, June 19, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 2, 1868.
79. Montague to Ives, Sacramento, June 16, 1868, Ives Papers, Stanford Univ. Archives.
80. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 23, 1868.
Chapter 29—“We Are in a Terrible Sweat”
1. Benedict to Reed, Laramie, June 7, 1868, Reed Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R1S), NSHS.
2. Dodge, Autobiography, 763, Council Bluffs Public Library.
3. Reed to Jenny Reed, June 12, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives; Dodge, op. cit., 763–64; Reed to Jenny Reed, June 23, 1868, Reed Papers, NSHS; Jenny Reed to Dodge, June 15 and 22, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa; Dodge to Jenny Reed. Council Bluffs, June 25, 1868, Reed Papers, NSHS.
4. Snyder to Dodge, Omaha, June 4, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives; Dillon to Dodge, June 16, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa; Dodge, op. cit., 765–66.
5. Dodge, op. cit., 774.
6. Dodge, ibid., 775, 776.
7. Dodge, ibid., 778; Snyder to Dodge, Omaha, July 1, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
8. Seymour to Durant, Salt Lake City, June 23, 1868. Seymour Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R16), NSHS.
9. Seymour to Durant, Weber, June 28 and 29, 1868. Seymour to Crane, Weber, July 2, 1868, Seymour Papers, NSHS.
10. Dodge, op. cit., 778–82.
11. Dodge, ibid., 782, 784; Beadle, 87–90. He devotes nearly a chapter to observations there.
12. Tuttle to Dodge, New York, July 17, 1868, Dodge Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R6), NSHS; Dodge, op. cit., 784.
13. See note 19.
14. Dodge, ibid., 785–86.
15. Evans to Durant, Laramie, June 3, 18, and 19, 1868, Durant to Evans, New York, undated c. June 15, June 19, 1868, Evans Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R8), NSHS.
16. Durant to Evans, New York, June 19 and c. 25, 1868, Evans to Durant, Laramie, June 21, 1868, Evans Papers, NSHS.
17. Evans to Durant, Laramie, June 27, 1868, Evans Papers, NSHS; Frontier Index, July 1, 1868, reprinted in Sacramento Union, July 17, 1868.
18. Klein, 162–6; Ames, 280–82.
19. Dodge, op. cit., 785–86. His publications, Personal Recollections of Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman (1914), draw partly from the unpublished memoirs but differ in interesting ways regarding the Fort Sanders meeting. In the Grant paper (102–3), Dodge says he sent his resignation to Durant from Salt Lake City (he did not actually reach that city for some weeks), precipitating the Laramie showdown; the memoirs manuscript does not note this, but the former telling makes sense if one overlooks the small mistake about Salt Lake City. In the Grant article (102), Dodge contends he threatened to resign and “The Government heard of this action of the Company, and [the generals] came…to visit me.” In the Sherman article (187–89), Dodge says that Sherman read of his threat to resign in the newspapers—and, getting Grant, hastened “thousands of miles” to his side to sustain him. The latter assertion was obviously not true, as the following notes show. The same article claims that Durant met Dodge’s stage at Benton and capitulated: “General, I want you to withdraw your dispatch; the lines you want you may have. I am convinced that you are right.” This somewhat self-serving anecdote does not jibe with other evidence. But what nags—what remains to be proved—is whether it was Dodge who invited his high-powered sponsors to Fort Sanders, instead of Durant (as Dodge would claim, much later, in his unpublished memoirs). After all, Durant would have realized he had everything to lose by inviting them to a private company meeting involving Dodge. I suspect that Dodge wired Rawlins or Sherman from Utah or Green River, summoning Grant to a prebattle conference at Benton.
20. Grant to C. R. Morehead, Jr., St. Louis, July 14, 1868, Grant to Julia D. Grant, Ft. Leavenworth, July 17, 1868, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant XIX, 8–9; William McFeely, Grant (New York: Norton, 1981), 280.
21. Grant to Julia D. Grant, ibid.; Athearn, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the West, 214; Cheyenne Leader, July 25, 1868.
22. See note 18 above. Dodge, op. cit., 787–89, contains the bare bones of the story. His first biographer, the Reverend Jacob Perkins of Council Bluffs (1929) constantly invented dialogue and “scenes” in his work, which was rather naively picked up and repeated as gospel by Charles Edgar Ames (Pioneering the Union Pacific) and Robert Athearn in his work on Sherman.
23. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 2, 8, 10 and 11, 1868, Huntington Papers, Syracuse University Library (unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and his partners is from the Syracuse Library, with all Huntington letters written from New York and his partners’ from Sacramento.); C. Crocker to Huntington, July 11, 1868, Telegraph Book, Stanford Papers, Stanford University Library.
24. C. Crocker to Huntington, July 15, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 17, 1868.
25. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 28, 1868.
26. Clement statement, USPRRC V, 2577–78; Strobridge recollections, Fulton, Epic of the Overland, 38.
27. Sacramento Union, July 17, 1868; Works Progress Administration, Nevada, 138–39; Twain, Roughing It, 193.
28. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 31, 1868; Clement statement, USPRRC V, 2577–78.
29. Works Progress Administration, Nevada, 137.
30. C. Crocker to Huntington, August 3, 1868.
31. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 2, 15, and 17, 1868; Stanford to Huntington, July 15, 1868.
32. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 17, 1868; Huntington to Crocker, July 15, 1868, Telegram Book, Stanford Papers. Stanford Univ. Archives. See also Lavender, 222, and Stewart Daggett, History of the Southern Pacific (1922), 120–23.
33. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 17, 1868; Stanford to Huntington, July 18, 1868.
34. Bruce, 32, 33; Grinnell, Two Great Scouts, 153–57; Hyde, The Pawnee Indians, 293–95.
35. Hyde, ibid., 125–29; Sherman to Ellen Sherman, July 15, 1868, cited in Paul A. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: Univ. Neb. Press, 1985), 32–33.
36. Hyde, 125–27; Arthur Ferguson, Diary (ms. 3761, SG14, S1, Box 3), NSHS.
37. Beadle, 87–88, 90–92; Emmett D. Chisum, “Boom Towns on the Union Pacific,” Annals of Wyoming 53 (Spring 1981), 2–13; E. C. Lockwood, “With the Casement Brothers,” Union Pacific Magazine, February 1931.
38. Casement to Frances Casement, August 1, 13, 17, and 19, September 19, 1868, Casement Papers, Univ. Wyoming; Casement telegrams and dispatches (ms. 3761, SG20, S1), NSHS; Casement Papers (Box 1, f2), Kansas State Univ. Library; Snyder to Dodge, Omaha, August 26, 1868, Dodge, op. cit., 806; Beadle, 104.
39. Carver to Casement, Pittsford, NY, July 31, 1868, Casement Papers (ms. 3761, SG20, S1), NSHS.
40. John H. Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad,” Transactions XIII (1870), American Society of Civil Engineers, 163–66; Reed to Durant, Weber, August 7, 11 and 12, 1868, Dodge Papers, NSHS.
41. Oliver Ames to Dodge, North Easton, July 26 and 27, 1868; Dodge, op. cit., 790–91.
42. Ames to Dodge, North Easton, August 23, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 805–06.
43. Dodge, op. cit., 800–1; Perkins, 229–30.
44. Young to F. D. Richards, August 4, 1868, cited in Arrington, The Kingdom Threatened, 263.
45. Dodge, op. cit., 801–2.
46. Deseret News, August 17, 1868. Courtesy Ronald G. Watt and staff, L. D. S. Historical Department.
47. Dodge, op. cit., 802.
48. Young to F. D. Richards, May 23, 1868, cited in Arrington, 262.
49. New York Herald, July 30, 1868; New York Tribune, July 30, 1868; Klein, 163; J. L. Williams to Dodge, New York, September 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 818–19.
50. Klein, 167.
51. UP Exec. Comm. Minutes, September 4, 9, and 11, 1868, 53, 58–61: Oliver Ames to Dodge. August 23, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
52. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 10, 1868: Stanford to Huntington, August 28 and 30, 1868; Joseph West, “Construction of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads,” Union Pacific Magazine, October 1922; Arrington, 262–63.
53. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 10, 1868.
54. C. Crocker to Huntington, August 22, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 24, 1868. An account of the 6-mile day is in the Reno Crescent, August 22, 1868, and in the Sacramento Union, August 20, 1868.
55. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 13, 1868; C. Crocker to Huntington, August 31, 1868.
56. C. Crocker to Huntington, August 31, 1868.
57. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 10, September 10, 1868.
58. Ibid.; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 13, September 16, 1868.
59. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 7, 1868; E. H. Miller, Jr. to Huntington, September 5, 1868.
60. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 10 and 26, 1868; Works Progress Administration. Nevada, 129–30, 139–40.
61. Stanford to Huntington, September 15 and 25, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 28 and 29, 1868; Gray to Stanford, September 25, 1868.
62. Gray to Stanford, September 22 and 25, 1868; Gray to Huntington, September 25, 1868.
63. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 6, 10, and 24, September 29, 1868; Crocker ms., 38–40, Bancroft Library, UCB.
64. C. Crocker to Huntington, August 31, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 28 and 29, 1868.
65. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 28, 1868.
66. Anne Dodge to Dodge, Council Bluffs, August 30, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 809.
67. Dodge to Durant, August 27, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 807; Williams to Dodge, August 31, 1868, in Dodge, ibid., 809–10.
68. Dodge to Oliver Ames, September 4, 1868, Dodge, op. cit., 812A; Dodge to Durant, Red Dome Pass, August 27 and 28, 1868, Dodge Papers, NSHS.
69. Hirshson, 162–63, 176–77.
70. Anne Dodge to Dodge, September 1868, Dodge, op. cit., 814.
71. C. C. Cope, “Tales from Old Timers—No. 11,” Union Pacific Magazine, February 1924. Cope, who died at age seventy-nine after writing this story, was mistaken in his dates—he said this transpired in the spring of 1867, when no such episode had occurred.
72. Reed to Dodge, September 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 818; Durant to Reed, Chicago, September 25, 1868, Durant Outgoing Travelling Copybook, Durant Papers, NSHS.
73. Williams to Dodge, September 5, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 813. Interestingly, Robert L. Fulton, Epic of the Overland (43), says that the waters of Salt Lake were at their highest in 1868, and over the succeeding thirty years they fell seventeen feet. This cycle has been reversed for quite some time.
Chapter 30—“A Man for Breakfast Every Morning”
1. Browning, Diary, II, 212–19.
2. Huntington to Hopkins, September 14, 1868, printed in Collected Letters I, Huntington Library. Around this time in late 1868, Huntington misfiled or neglected to keep copies of many of his own letters to Hopkins, Stanford, and the Crockers, therefore leaving significant holes in his New York office files now in the possession of Syracuse University Library; most of his Associates’ letters, though, are there. Late in his life his own letters from 1867 on were lightly edited, transcribed, and printed for his private use; copies of this four-volume work may be found at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Some letters here were wrongly said to be directed to Charles Crocker when they were actually responses to E. B. Crocker’s letters. Because of the convenience of this printed collection, most previous chroniclers—including Huntington’s official biographer, David Lavender—have heavily relied on these edited and transcribed letters, though some originals do reside in the Stanford University collection. I have preferred to use Huntington’s original, handwritten copies in the Syracuse collection whenever possible, though there have been occasions when only the later transcripts seem to have survived.
3. Huntington’s “Go and see him” scheme dribbles across a number of letters and telegrams in the correspondence, most clearly in Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 22, 1868, in Collected Letters, I.
4. Stanford to Huntington, October 1, 1868 (two letters), Huntington Papers, Syracuse University Library (as noted in previous chapters, unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and his partners is from the Syracuse Library, with all Huntington letters written from New York and his partners’ from Sacramento.)
5. Gray to Huntington, Salt Lake City, October 10, 1868, Huntington Papers, Syracuse. All subsequent Gray letters are from Syracuse. It is impossible to substantiate these particular rumors about inducements to Brigham Young, so tangled were his personal finances in those of the church; certainly, as Leonard Arrington has demonstrated, it is just as hard to read Young’s intentions.
6. Gray to Stanford, October 9, 1868, copy sent to Huntington October 10, by mail and telegraph.
7. Durant to Stanford, transcribed in Gray to Huntington, Salt Lake City, October 11, 1868.
8. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 12, 1868.
9. See Note 6.
10. Huntington to Stanford, September 29, 1868, Collected Letters, I; Hopkins to Huntington, October 20, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 26, 1868; Huntington to Browning, Papers Submitted to the House Committee on the Pacific Railroad…. Relative to the Issue of Bonds to the Central Pacific Railroad Company, Washington, 1869.
11. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, October 14, 17, 21, 1868, Collected Letters, I; Lavender, 230, deserves credit for stitching this episode together from sundry fragments. As is often the case there is little to document any illegalities; Huntington was becoming more careful even in writing his partners, allowing them, as must we, to read between the lines.
12. Browning, op. cit., 221.
13. Ames to Browning, October 15, 1868, Sec. Int. Correspondence, RG48, NARS.
14. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 19, 1868, Central Pacific Telegram book, Stanford Univ. Library; Hopkins to Huntington, Reno, October 19, 1868.
15. Browning, op. cit., 222.
16. Browning did not record appointment of the Central Pacific commission; his first mention was December 4, when its report was cabled to him. The appointment date has been variously given, with this date seeming the likeliest, given the tenor of the cabinet discussion on October 16.
17. Huntington to Hopkins, October 23, 1868, Collected Letters, I.
18. Huntington to C. Crocker, October 22 and 29, 1868, Collected Letters, I.
19. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 27, 1868; Stanford to Huntington, November 2, 1868. Huntington’s “Go and see him” wire to Hopkins was dated October 21, 1868 and received the next day: Hopkins to Huntington, October 23, November 19, 1868.
20. Gray to Huntington, Salt Lake City, October 23, 1868.
21. Dodge, Autobiography, 824–29, Council Bluffs Public Library.
22. Oliver Ames to Dodge, October 19 and 20, 1868, in Dodge, ibid., 829–30; Oliver Ames to E. H. Rollins, New York, October 10, 1868, Ames to Durant, New York, October 10, 1868, Durant Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3), NSHS.
23. Williams to Dodge, Dodge, op. cit., 830.
24. Sen. Ex. Doc. 51, 50 Cong., 1 Sess., 2968.
25. Wilcox to Carlisle, October 26, 1868, Casement Papers (ms. 3761, SG20, S1), NSHS; Oliver Ames to Durant, October 28, 1868, Durant Papers, NSHS.
26. W. C. A. Smoot, “Tales From Old Timers—No. 9,” Union Pacific Magazine, December 1923.
27. H. W. Guy, “Tales From Old-Timers—No. 20,” Union Pacific Magazine, February 1925; Works Progress Administration, Wyoming, 197.
28. H. Clark Brown, “Tales From Old Timers—No. 31,” Union Pacific Magazine, May 1926.
29. Fulton, 69–70, 73–74.
30. Theodore Haswell, “Driving Golden Spike, May 10, 1869,” Union Pacific Magazine, May 1925; Fulton, 78. Haswell mistakenly said that the troops were from Fort Douglas down in Salt Lake Valley. The Salt Lake City Daily Telegraph, November 20, 1868, reported that three men, not one, had been lynched in the prompting incident, and that the riot resulted in twenty-five killed and sixty wounded; Leigh Freeman’s Frontier Index is preserved, though not microfilmed, at the Bancroft Library, UCB.
31. Dodge, op. cit., 833–38; Oliver Ames to Dodge, October 24, 1868, in ibid., 830.
32. Hopkins to Huntington. October 23 and 26, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, October 27, 1868.
33. C. Crocker to Huntington, October 29, 1868.
34. C. Crocker to Huntington, November 2, 1868; Stanford to Huntington, November 10, 1868.
35. Hopkins to Huntington, November 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 1868.
36. Hopkins to Huntington, November 16, 1868.
37. Stanford to Huntington, November 4, 1868.
38. Stanford to Huntington, November 10, 1868 (2 letters).
39. C. Crocker to Huntington, November 13, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, November 16, 1868.
40. E. H. Miller to Huntington, November 13, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, November 16 and 20, 1868.
41. Stanford to Huntington. Salt Lake City, November 21, 1868, Ogden, November 24, 1868.
42. Ibid.; Huntington to Stanford, November 13, 1868, Collected Letters I.
43. Hopkins to Huntington, November 25, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, November 18, 1868, Collected Letters I.
44. J. S. Casement to Frances Casement, October 31, November 6 and 15, 1868, Casement Papers, Univ. Wyoming; Hutton, 52–55: Dodge, op. cit., 834.
45. Evans to Durant, Bear River, November 19, 1868, Evans Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R8), NSHS.
46. Dodge, op. cit., 829–30, 842.
47. Ibid., 861.
48. Ames to Dodge, October 24, 1868, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives: Bushnell to Durant, October 28, 1868, Bushnell Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R2), NSHS.
49. Wilson Report, 765–66; Davis & Assoc. contract, November 1, 1868, Davis Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R6), NSHS.
50. Poland Report, 4, 414 (McComb test.); Oliver Ames to Hazard, November 17, 1868 (2 letters), Hazard to Oliver Ames, November 30, 1868, Hazard Papers. Rhode Island Hist. Soc.; Klein, 176–77.
51. House Exec. Doc. 15, 40 Cong., 3 Sess., 1–16.
52. Dodge, op. cit., 851: Williams report, House Exec. Doc. 15, 27–31.
53. Blickensderfer to Dodge, Omaha, late November 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 857.
54. Durant to Johnson, October 29, 1868, Durant Outgoing Travelling Copy Book UPRC (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R7), NSHS; Williams to Dodge, New York, September 5, 1868, in Dodge, op. cit., 813; Browning, Diary, 228–29; Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, November 30, 1868, R. G. 48, National Archives.
55. Oliver Ames Diary, December 1, 1868, Ames Papers, Stonehill College; Klein, 175; Dodge, op. cit., 857.
56. C. Crocker to Huntington, November 21, 1868; Lavender, 234; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, November 24, 1868.
57. Crocker ms., 36–37, Bancroft Library, UCB.
58. Browning, Diary, 229; Report of the Special Commissioners, Secretary of the Interior, R. G. 48, National Archives; Papers Submitted to the House Committee on the Pacific Railroad…Relative to the Issue of Bonds to the Central Pacific Railroad Company, Washington, 1869 (the report was also published in pamphlet form separately in San Francisco, 1869); Huntington to C. Crocker, December 16, 1868, Collected Letters I: “There is,” he added, “nothing like sleeping with men, or women either for that matter.” Contemporaries said that in conversation Huntington had a ribald sense of humor, but it rarely worked its way into his business correspondence.
59. C. Crocker to Huntington, December 1, 1868; Hopkins to Huntington, December 2, 1868.
60. Stanford to Huntington, December 4, 1868; Stanford to Hopkins, December 10, 1868, disclosed that he had already commissioned Chauncey West to purchase the rights-of-way. See also Stanford to Hopkins, December 4 and 13, 1868, and Stanford to E. B. Crocker, December 8, 1868, Stanford University Library.
61. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 9, 1868.
62. Hopkins to Huntington, December 10, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, December 8, 1868.
63. Stanford to Huntington, December 13, 1868. See also Stanford to Hopkins, December 13, 1868, Stanford University Library.
64. For such a dramatic homecoming, very little survives beyond telegrams of the journey’s arrangements and progress (Central Pacific Telegram Book, Correspondence, Stanford University Library); in the Syracuse letters as well as the Huntington transcripts there are hardly any references to specific conversations held during the trip. David Lavender (235–36) supposes that Huntington “railed” at his friends face-to-face, basing this on letters written by Huntington after he returned to New York. Though Huntington and Charley Crocker had reputations as blunt talkers, it’s more likely that they, like the others, reserved spleen for the written page. There are almost no references to angry verbal confrontations, even with people like Cole and the larcenous government director Denver, in all their many hundreds of pages of letters. I assume a tighter rein in their meetings.
65. Oliver Ames, Diary, December 3–5, 1868, Oliver Ames Papers, Stonehill College; Browning, Diary, 229–30; Oliver Ames to Durant, December 3, 1868, Ames Papers, UPRC (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R1), NSHS.
66. Dodge, op. cit., 851.
67. Ibid., 861–62; Oliver Ames to Browning, New York, December 30, 1868, cited in ibid., 854.
68. Ibid., 862–63.
69. Browning, Diary, 231–33; B. F. Ham to Oliver Ames, December 29, 1868, Oliver Ames to Oakes Ames, December 29, 1868, Ames Papers, Stonehill College; Klein, 178.
70. Oliver Ames to Durant, Washington, December 23, 1868, Ames Papers, NSHS; Durant to Snyder, December 9, 1868, Durant to Reed, December 17, 1868, Durant Outgoing Travelling Copy Book, NSHS.
71. Browning, Diary, 232; Oliver Ames to Durant, New York, December 24, 1868, Ames Papers, NSHS.
72. Oliver Ames to Durant, New York, January 1, 1869, Ames Papers, NSHS.
73. Apparently complaints reached Secretary Browning, who conferred with President Johnson on December 26, 1868, resulting in Wendle’s discharge. John F. Coyle of the National Intelligencer seems to have carried not only the complaint but the nomination for a replacement, Chauncy Snow, also of that newspaper. See Browning. Diary, 232.
74. Reed to Jenny Reed, December 16 and 28, 1868, Reed Papers, (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R15), NSHS; Dodge. How We Built the Union Pacific, 117.
75. Dodge, Autobiography, 859, 863, 866.
76. Works Progress Administration. Nevada, 120; Beadle, 156–58; C. Crocker to Huntington, December 15, 1868.
77. Hopkins to Huntington, December 15, 1868.
78. Hopkins to Huntington, December 21, 1868.
79. Hopkins to Huntington, November 25, 1868, December 2, 15, and 21, 1868; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, November 26, 1868, December 5 and 8, 1868; Huntington to Hopkins, December 2, 1868, Collected Letters I.
80. Annual Report, Central Pacific Railroad Company of California, 1868.
81. Reno Crescent, November 28, 1868.
82. Trustees Minutes, December 28, 1868, 55, Board/Exec. Papers (ms. 3761, SG1, S2); Wilson Report, 552 (Bushnell test.), 736, 760–61.
83. Browning, Diary, 231–33.
Part IX—1869: Battleground and Meeting Ground
Chapter 31—“A Resistless Power”
1. Huntington Typescript, 12–13, UCB. The date of his trip west is erroneously given there as December 1867—a mistake of Bancroft’s biographer, David Sessions, which may be found added to his handwritten first draft (Huntington Manuscript), inked in. As has been seen, Huntington did not go to California in 1867.
2. Stanford to Hopkins, Ogden, January 15, 1869, Huntington-Hopkins Correspondence, Stanford; Stanford to Huntington, Ogden. January 18, 1869, Huntington Papers, Syracuse Univ. Library. (Unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and his partners is from the Syracuse Library, with all Huntington letters written from New York and his partners’ from Sacramento.)
3. Stanford to Huntington, Salt Lake City, January 22, 1869.
4. C. Crocker to Huntington, January 20, 1868.
5. Oliver Ames to Browning, New York, December 30, 1868, cited in Dodge, Autobiography, 851–54.
6. Dodge, ibid., 854.
7. Oliver Ames to Dodge, New York, January 8, 1869 (two letters), in Dodge, ibid., 876–77.
8. Dodge, ibid., 854, 877.
9. Blickensderfer to Dodge, January 2, 5 and 6, 1869, in Dodge, ibid., 866–78; the last-referred letter is erroneously said to have been received in Washington on January 6, an impossibility given its content.
10. Snyder to Dodge, January 1869, in Dodge, ibid., 869.
11. New York Tribune, January 15, 1869.
12. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., “Railroad Inflation,” North American Review, January 1869, 144–45, 147–48.
13. Ibid., 164. It is a delicious irony that Adams would one day come to preside over the Union Pacific.
14. New York Tribune, January 15, 1869.
15. Dodge to Browning, January 11, 1869, in Dodge, op. cit., 844, 845–48. Apparently the first news of Blickensderfer’s appointment came to him from Dodge: Blickensderfer, January 16, 1869, Dodge, op. cit., 886.
16. Oliver Ames Diary, January 14, 1869, Ames Papers, Stonehill College; Oliver Ames to Dodge, January 15, 1869, in Dodge, ibid., 883.
17. New York Tribune, January 15, 1869.
18. Huntington to Stanford, January 25, 1869, Huntington to Hopkins, January 26, 1869, Collected Letters, I.
19. Huntington to Johnson, Andrew Johnson Papers, Library of Congress; partially transcribed in Dodge, op. cit., 855.
20. Huntington to Hopkins, January 20 and 26, 1869, Huntington to C. Crocker, February 11, 1869, Collected Letters, I.
21. Stanford to Huntington, January 24, 1869; Stanford to Hopkins, January 25, 1868, Huntington-Hopkins Correspondence, Stanford University.
22. Huntington to Stanford, January 30, 1869, Collected Letters, I.
23. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 28, 1869.
24. Warren to Stanford, Stanford to Warren, January 29, 1869; Stanford to Huntington, January 30, 1869.
25. Hopkins to Huntington, January 31, 1869; Sacramento Union, January 19, 1869.
26. Stanford to Huntington, February 8, 1869; Hopkins to Huntington, February 8, 1869.
27. Reed to Jenny Reed, January 12, 1869, Reed Papers, UPRC (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R15), NSHS.
28. Joseph A. West, “Construction of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads Across Utah, Fifty-five Years Ago,” Union Pacific Magazine, October 6, 1922.
29. Klein, 192; Oliver Ames to Durant, January 1 and 16, 1869, Ames Papers, UPRC (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R1), NSHS.
30. Young to Albert Carrington, January 5 and February 4, 1869, in Arrington, The Kingdom Threatened, 264.
31. Gilliss, 163–66.
32. Beadle, 138–39.
33. Works Progress Administration, Utah, 357.
34. Ibid., 361–62; West, 8; Arrington, 264–65; Beadle, 120–25; Bernice Gibbs Anderson, “The Gentile City of Corinne,” Utah Historical Quarterly IV (1941), 141–54; B. D. and B. M. Madsen, “Corinne, The Fair.” Utah Historical Quarterly, XXXVII (1969) 102–23.
35. West, 8; Beadle, 140, 154.
36. Hoxie to Dodge, January 17, 1869, in Dodge, op. cit., 886.
37. Lockwood, 36; Griswold, 301–2.
38. Lockwood, 35–36; “Dan Casement told him that if he ever needed help to come to him,” Lockwood continues. “Years afterward, the captain needing some help, went to Painesville to see Dan Casement and found he was dead. The captain then went to General Casement and told him the story and promise. General Casement said he knew nothing about it and told him to see Mr. Lockwood. He hunted me up, so I introduced him to my sister, Mrs. Dan Casement, and told her how he had saved Dan’s life. She helped him generously as she knew her husband would have done had he been alive.” It is interesting that Dan Casement was said to have nearly perished walking seventy-seven miles to Laramie in the subsequent blizzard (J. Casement to Frances Casement, March 12, 1869, Casement Papers, Univ. Wyoming). It is difficult to judge which account is true: Lockwood was closer to the action in Echo Canyon at the time, but his memory may be fogged by fifty years; Jack Casement, for that matter, although writing only a few weeks later, may have confused events during the back-to-back snowstorms of February 1869.
39. Casement to Frances Casement, February 8 and 11, 1869, Casement Papers, Univ. Wyoming; Reed to Jenny Reed, February 10, 1869, Reed Papers, NSHS.
40. J. Casement to Dodge, February 13, 1869, Dodge, op. cit., 893; D. Casement to Snyder, February 27, 1869, Dodge, ibid., 897; Evans to Dodge, February 18, 1869, Dodge, ibid., 1172.
41. Sacramento Union, March 6, 1869; Lambard et. al. to Huntington, Rawlins, February 22, 1869, Hopkins to Huntington, March 17, 1869.
42. Reed to Jenny Reed, February 27, 1869, Reed Papers, NSHS; Seymour to Durant, February 28, 1869, Seymour Papers (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R17), NSHS.
43. Sacramento Union, February 20 and 22, 1869.
44. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, February 23, 1869; Stanford to Huntington, February 14, 1869.
45. Reno Crescent, January 23, 1869; Griswold, 298.
46. Stanford to Huntington, January 22 and 24, 1869; Lavender, 238; Dodge, op. cit., 855, 917–18; Browning, Diary, 242.
47. Axtell to Huntington, February 22, 1869; Browning, Diary, 238–39, 242.
48. Huntington Typescript, 92–93, UCB; Lavender, 239; Huntington to Hopkins, March 5, 1869, Collected Letters, I; Dodge, op. cit., 856; CPRR, Papers Submitted to the House Committee on the Pacific Railroad…Relative to the Issue of Bonds to the Central Pacific Railroad Company. Note that nearly every account above quotes a different sum received by Huntington; the last-cited pamphlet seems to be the correct one. Also see Klein, Source Notes: Union Pacific (1987), note 196–1, 35.
49. Browning, Diary, 244; Sacramento Union, January 8, 1869; Dodge, op. cit., 898.
50. Dodge, op. cit., 867.
51. Hoxie to Dodge, January 17, 1886; Dodge, op. cit., 886.
52. Dodge, op. cit., 870, 886, 889; Durant to Seymour, February 15, 1869, Seymour Papers, UPRC. NSHS; Durant to Dodge, February 13, 1869, Dodge Papers, UPRC, NSHS.
53. Durant to Dodge, March 8, 1869, Dodge Papers, UPRC, NSHS.
54. Dodge, op. cit., 889–90.
55. Snyder to Dodge, February 4, 1869, Dodge, op. cit., 890.
56. Klein, 198; Wilson Report, 272, 765–66.
57. Hopkins to Huntington, March 9, 1869; Stanford to Huntington, March 16, 1869.
58. Stanford to Huntington, March 13 and 16, 1869; Sacramento Union, April 21, 1869.
59. Arrington, 265; Utah Historical Records Survey (WPA), “A History of Ogden” (1940), 45–47, 48–49.
60. Ibid., 49.
61. Works Progress Adminstration, Utah, 205.
62. Casement to Frances Casement, March 3, 8, and 12, 1869, Casement Papers, American Heritage Center. University of Wyoming Library; also in Casement Papers (ms. 3761, SG20, S1, F20), NSHS.
63. Stanford to Huntington, March 16, 1869.
64. New York Times, March 23, 1869.
65. Ibid.: Klein, 202; Adams, op. cit.
66. Klein, 202.
67. Sacramento Union, January 8, 1869; New York Tribune, May 11, 1869.
68. Klein, 203; New York Sun, March 11, 1869; New York Times, March 11 and 12, 1869.
69. Klein, 203; Dillon to Dodge, March 14, 1869, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
70. New York Herald, March 13, 1869.
71. All quoted in New York World, March 6, 1869.
72. Bushnell to Durant, March 20, 1869, Bushnell Papers, (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, F137), NSHS.
73. Dodge to Grant, March 26, 1869, Railroad File 254, Secretary of Interior (RG48), NARA; Dodge to Anne Dodge, March 26 and 29, 1869, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
74. Dodge, op. cit., 915–16.
75. New York Times, March 21, 1869; Durant to Oliver Ames, March 19, 1869, NSHS.
76. New York Times, March 24 and 31, 1869.
77. New York Herald, March 31, 1869; New York Times, April 1, 1869.
78. New York Herald, April 3, 1869.
79. Ibid.
80. New York Times, March 24, 1869.
81. Sacramento Union (report datelined April 8), April 22, 1869; New York Times, March 31, 1869; Hopkins to Huntington, March 17, 1869; Chittenden to Huntington, March 18, 1869.
82. Stanford to Huntington, March 21, 1869; Hopkins to Huntington, March 22 and 31, 1869.
83. “Statement of the Central Pacific Railroad Comp’y of California to the Committee of the Senate of the United States on the Pacific Railroad, March 25, 1869 (Washington: Gibson Bros., 1869).
84. Stanford to Huntington, April 5, 1869.
85. Dodge, op. cit., 906–19, 921, 923.
86. Ibid., 919, 920, 930, 932, 933–34; Union Pacific Directors’ Minutes, April 9, 1869, NSHS; Klein, 207; Lavender, 241.
87. Stanford to Huntington, April 22, 1869; C. Crocker to Huntington, April 10, 1869; Crocker ms., 58, Bancroft Lib., UCB.
88. Ames to Dodge, April 12, 1869 (it is marked erroneously as March 12), Dodge, op. cit., 920. Charles Edgar Ames (316) was led astray by this misdate, despite ample internal evidence to the contrary.
89. Ibid.; Ames to Dodge, April 12, 1869, Dodge, op. cit., 932. Probably this was written the night before, on the eleventh, as the above-mentioned letter refers to it exactly. This April 11 letter also states, interestingly, based on vague newspaper reports Ames had just read, that “Any settlement is better than a constant fight,” but worries about the Central Pacific “only paying us for our road to Promontory Point and probably not paying near as much as it has cost us.” Dodge’s lengthy retort is in Dodge, op. cit., 933–34.
90. Dodge, ibid., 931.
91. New York Times, April 4, 11, and 15, 1869; New York Herald, March 31, April 3, 4, and 9, 1869; Klein, 204.
92. Sacramento Union, April 10, 1869.
93. C. Crocker to Huntington, April 10 and 20, 1869; Stanford to Huntington April 22, 1869 (two telegrams, one letter), April 23, 1869.
94. Daily Colorado Tribune, April 6, 1869, quoted in Sacramento Union, April 21, 1869.
95. “To the Stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad Company,” April 10, 1869, NSHS; Klein, 204.
96. Casement to Frances Casement, April 6 and 9, 1869, Casement Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming Library; Dodge to Oliver Ames, March 23, 1869, Dodge Papers, NSHS.
97. Snyder to Dodge, Dodge, op. cit., 937.
98. New York Herald, April 23, 1869; New York Times, April 23, 1869; Dodge, op. cit., 937, 939.
99. Crocker ms., 55–58, Bancroft Library, UCB; Stanford to Huntington April 22, 1869; San Francisco Bulletin, April 29, 1869. J. D. B. Stillman, “The Last Tie,” Overland Monthly, July 1869, 81, names the Irishmen who each bore some 74 tons in 11 hours: Michael Shay. Patrick Joyce, Thomas Dailey, Michael Kennedy, Frederick McNamara, Edward Killeen, Michael Sullivan, and George Wyatt; he does not trouble to single out any Cantonese.
100. Dodge to Anne Dodge, May 2, 1869, Dodge Record, Iowa State Archives.
101. Stanford to Huntington, April 28, 1869; E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 4, 1869; W. E. Chandler to Dodge, April 25, 1869; Dodge, op. cit., 939.
102. E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 16, 23, 28, and 29, 1869; Hopkins to Huntington, April 29, 1869; Stanford to Huntington, April 23, 1869.
103. C. Crocker to Huntington, May 1, 1869.
104. Dodge to Oliver Ames, May 2, 1869, Dodge to Evans, May 3, 1869, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives; Dodge to Oliver Ames, April 24, 1869, Dodge, op. cit., 938; Dodge to Dillon, May 4, 1869, Dodge, ibid., 943.
105. A. P. Wood, “Tales From Old-Timers—No. 19,” Union Pacific Magazine, January 1925.
106. S. Schimonsky to Snyder, April 4 and 15, 1869, Snyder to Dodge, May 4, 1869, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives. There is an amusing anecdote about Schimonsky in the article by A. P. Wood; see Note 104.
107. New York Herald, April 1, 1869; Ham to Oliver Ames, May 1, 3, and 8, 1869 (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R10), NSHS; Oakes Ames to Dodge, May 2, 1869, Dodge, op. cit., 943; Klein, 216.
108. Oliver Ames to Duff and Dillon, May 1, 1869; Dillon to Glidden, May 1, 1869; Dodge, ibid., 943; Oakes Ames to Glidden and Williams, May 4, 1869 (ms. 3761, SG4, S3, R1, R20), NSHS.
Chapter 32—“We Have Got Done Praying”
1. J. D. B. Stillman, “The Last Tie,” Overland Monthly, July 1869, 78–79.
2. Ibid., 80.
3. There is much misinformation about the episode to follow, even to the extent of which direction Durant was traveling when his train was halted; A. P. Wood (“Tales From Old Timers—No. 19,” Union Pacific Magazine, January 1925) was a construction engineer at Echo City in May 1869, and asserted that Durant headed east from Echo City: because his dates and several other facts were wrong he may safely be discounted. Wesley Griswold (1962), often a careful writer despite a deplorable lack of source notes, seems to agree with the eastbound thesis and follows an account in the San Francisco Alta California, May 10, 1869, which is also weakened by errors. The always resourceful Maury Klein (1987) is, here, carefully noncommittal. Union Pacific cable traffic in the Leonard Collection (Univ. Iowa or UPRC, NSHS) does not help much. But Dodge’s account in his unpublished memoirs, and the contemporary letters in his papers in the Iowa State Archives, seem to indicate a westbound thesis. I followed this, especially after finding an account of the episode in the New York Herald, May 11, 1869, datelined Omaha, May 3, 1869. (I cannot resist noting that the inventive John Hoyt Williams places the episode two months earlier, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.)
4. Richardson, Garnered Sheaves, 277, 262–67.
5. Dodge to Anne Dodge, May 6, 1869, Dodge Record, VIII, 233–34, Iowa State Archives.
6. Dodge to Oliver Ames, May 7, 1869, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
7. Dodge to Oliver Ames, May 8, 1869, Memoirs, 845, Council Bluffs Public Library; Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
8. Dodge, op. cit., 944–45.
9. Oliver Ames to Dodge, May 12, 1869, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
10. Stillman, 81: Works Progress Administration, Nevada, 252–53.
11. Stillman, 81; Richardson, Garnered Sheaves, 288–89. Richardson would die in New York in December, shot in the Tribune offices by the divorced husband of Richardson’s fiancée.
12. Ibid.
13. Stillman, 82.
14. Sacramento Union, May 10, 1869, including all details of the city ceremony following these passages.
15. San Francisco Evening Bulletin, May 8, 1869.
16. Sacramento Union, June 25, 1878; H. H. Bancroft, Bancroft Reference Notes, California Biography, UCB; Bancroft, “Crocker Biographical Sketch,” UCB; Phelps’ Contemporary Biography of California’s Representative Men (1881–82), II, 139; Henry B. Nason, Biographical Record of the Officers and Graduates of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1887), 202–8.
17. Stillman, 82.
18. L. H. Eicholtz, Diary, May 7–9, 1869, quoted in Paul Rigdon, Historical Catalog of the UPRR Museum (1951), UPRC (ms. 3761, SG197), NSHS.
19. Dodge, Autobiography, 958, Council Bluffs Public Library; Rigdon, 863; Lewis, 96.
20. The nearest one can get to this myth is in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, May 8, 1869, which mentions the verbal threats of some Union Pacific graders to “clean out” the Chinese, which is apparently as far as it went. One third-hand-reported event of an unannounced blast occurring too close to a rival gang seems to have involved two Mormon contractors: Salt Lake City Deseret News, March 25, 1869.
21. Russell’s personal observations of the day are in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 5, 1869; see also Susan E. Williams. “The Great West Illustrated: A Journey Across the Continent with Andrew J. Russell.” The Streamliner (Union Pacific Historical Society), 1996. The presence of S. J. Sedgwick has usually been overlooked in accounts. It should be noted that Stillman’s and Russell’s accounts of the ceremony, taken with the other contemporary reports in newspapers, have been relied on here more than Dodge’s and Dillon’s, which were fogged by the long passage of time and damaged by serious errors of fact, and Todd’s, which was very brief. Levi O. Leonard’s account in Union Pacific Magazine, May 1929, was helpful and relatively free of errors; other helpful but sometimes unreliable accounts of ceremony observers not otherwise cited here are in Union Pacific Magazine, May 1922, May and September 1923, and May 1925.
22. Stillman, ibid.
23. Joseph A. West, “Construction of the Union and Central Pacific Railroads,” Union Pacific Magazine, October 1922; Arrington, The Kingdom Threatened, 265–67; Works Progress Administration. A History of Ogden, 48, and Utah, 130–31; Milton R. Hunter (Ed.), Beneath Ben Lomond’s Peak: A History of Weber County (1966), 415–16; Robert G. Athearn, “Contracting for the Union Pacific,” Utah Historical Quarterly XXXVII (Winter 1969).
24. Sacramento Union, May 11 and 12, 1869; San Francisco Alta California, May 11 and 12, 1869. David Hewes, who donated one golden spike, later claimed that he donated the laurel tie, also, but it was Evans. Late in his life Hewes made elaborate, silver-tipped canes from laurel wood, and presented them to friends, with engravings purporting them to be “Made from the Tree of the Last Tie” (Union Pacific Magazine, May 1926, 5). The bona fide laurel tie burned in the Southern Pacific office after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. See also J. N. Bowman, “Driving the Last Spike,” California Historical Quarterly XXXVI (1957), probably the last word on the ceremony.
25. John Todd, The Sunset Land, or, The Great Pacific Slope (1870).
26. Golden-spike observers Thomas Rose and Amos Bowsher were interviewed in the Ogden Standard Examiner, May 20, 1939.
27. “Veteran Recalls Driving of Golden Spike,” Leavenworth Times, reprinted in Union Pacific Magazine, May 1926.
28. Ogden Standard Examiner, May 20, 1939.
29. Throughout the ceremony account I am simplifying directions: since the track ran in a southwest-to-northeast direction in the summit valley, chroniclers have variously described Stanford, for instance, as standing south of the tracks, southeast of the tracks, and east of the tracks. The ceremony participants considered positions in east-west terms for symbolic reasons, as did I.
30. New York Times, New York Tribune, New York Herald, May 11, 1869.
31. Ibid., and May 12, 1869. Let us examine the mythology of the missed swings, another durable anecdote. At the crucial moment both Stanford and Durant are said to have missed the swings, causing great hilarity among the workingmen present: what a wonderful send-up of the soft executives, to be so feckless. The sole source seems to be Alexander Toponce, a Utah freight driver said to have a contract to supply beef to the laborers, who set down his recollections long after the golden spike; they were published in 1923. Curiously, none of the other eyewitnesses—the many correspondents, Dr. Stillman, Dodge, Russell, Todd, Dillon, Bowsher, or the Union Pacific veterans collected by Levi O. Leonard (Shilling, Doddridge, Doremus, Hodges, Haswell, Wood, Bissell, O’Donnell, Malloy, and Anna Reed Bennitt, daughter of S. B. Reed), or Lt. J. C. Currier May 10 entry, Diary, quoted in J. N. Bowman, recounted such a hilarious moment. Thomas O’Donnell (Union Pacific Magazine, May 1922) contends that “the privilege of striking the spike the first blow was given to some lady, whose name I don’t know, but she proved a poor ‘Spiker’ and missed it. Mr. Durant took the maul and started the spike. President Stanford of the Southern Pacific completed the Job.” He is the sole contender for this. Significantly, Bowsher, who was perched above everyone on the telegraph pole, recalled no problem.
32. Ibid., and Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1869.
33. Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1869.
34. Anna Judah, ms. 14, Bancroft Library, UCB; New York Times, May 12, 1869.
35. Bowman, 99; Erle Heath, “Eye Witness Tells of ‘Last Spike’ Driving,” Southern Pacific Bulletin, May 1926; Theodore Haswell, “Driving Golden Spike May 10, 1869,” Union Pacific Magazine, May 1925; Stillman, 84.
36. New York Times, May 12, 1869; New York Herald, May 11, 1869; The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, XIX, 468.
37. Dodge, Personal Recollections of Sherman (1914), 203. The mistaken date has been corrected here.
38. Oliver Ames to Dodge, May 10, 1869; Dodge, Autobiography, 946.
39. Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1869.
40. Dodge, op. cit., 953–54.
41. Huntington to C. Crocker, May 10, 1869, Collected Letters, I.
42. New York Herald, May 11, 1869; New York Tribune, May 11, 1869.
43. Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1869.
Part X—1872–73: Scandals, Scapegoats, and Dodgers
Epilogue—“Trial of the Innocents”
1. Muzzey, 64–65; Dictionary of American Biography (Greeley, Blaine, Garfield, Colfax).
2. New York Sun, September 4, 1872; New York Times, February 2, 1885.
3. New York Tribune, September 7, 1872.
4. New York Sun, September 10 and 17, 1872; New York Times, September 16, 1872.
5. See Chapters 26 and 27.
6. New York Tribune, September 11, 1872; New York Sun, September 14, November 30, 1872.
7. New York Sun, September 17, 1872; Worcester (Massachusetts) Spy, September 14, 1872, reprinted in New York Times, September 16, 1872.
8. New York Sun, September 17, 1872.
9. New York Times, September 18, 1872; Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1872; New York Sun, September 20, 1872.
10. New York Sun, September 23 and 26, 1872.
11. New York Tribune, September 28, 1872.
12. New York Tribune, September 24, 1872; New York Sun, September 28, 1872.
13. New York Sun, November 6, 7, 29, 30, 1872, January 31, 1873.
14. New York Times, December 3, 1872; New York Sun, December 3, 1872.
15. Klein, 30; New York Times, ibid.; New York Sun, ibid.
16. New York Sun, December 14 and 16, 1872; New York Tribune, December 16, 1872. The extra congressman named by McComb was not revealed in the press of the day, though it is presumed to be James Brooks, as widely rumored in Washington at the time.
17. New York Sun, December 16, 1872; Frank M. O’Brien, The Story of the Sun (New York: Doran, 1918), 312.
18. New York Tribune, December 17 and 18, 1872; New York Sun, December 18 and 19, 1872.
19. New York Sun, December 20, 1872; New York Tribune, December 20, 1872.
20. Excerpted in New York Tribune, December 26, 1872.
21. New York Tribune, January 6, 1873.
22. New York Tribune, January 7 and 8, 1873; New York Times, January 7, 1873.
23. New York Tribune, January 8, 1873.
24. Hochschild, 2–13; Gilborn, 1–14.
25. Hirshson, 174–88.
26. Ibid., 191–92; Dodge to Uriah H. Painter, January 7, 1873, Dodge to George W. McCrary, January 8, 1873, Dodge Papers, Iowa State Archives.
27. Hirshson, 192.
28. Ibid., 192–93.
29. Ibid., 262.
30. New York Sun, January 22 and 20, 1873; New York Tribune, January 22, 1873.
31. Twain and Warner, The Gilded Age (1873); Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912), 476–77; Bryant Morey French, Mark Twain and The Gilded Age (Dallas: Southern Methodist, 1965), 121–24: Philip S. Foner, Mark Twain: Social Critic (New York: International, 1958), 69–80.
32. Foner, ibid., 81.
33. New York Sun, February 6, 1873.
34. New York Sun, February 6 and 12, 1873; New York Times, February 2, 1885.
35. New York Sun, February 12, 1873; New York Times, February 2, 1885.
36. Whitman, “The Return of the Heroes,” “To a Locomotive in Winter.” Leaves of Grass (New York: Modern Library, Edition, 1993); Collect and Other Prose (ed. Floyd Stovall, New York, 1964), 369–70; Leaves of Grass, A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems (ed. Bradley, Blodgett, Golden, and White, New York, 1980), 261. I am grateful to Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1980), and David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America (New York, Knopf, 1995), for many helpful signposts.
37. Gail Hamilton, Biography of James G. Blaine (Norwich: Henry Bill, 1895), 274.
38. “Tributes to Oakes Ames: Extracts from Letters Received.” Oakes Ames: A Memoir (Cambridge: Riverside, 1883), 80.
39. New York World, February 19, 1873; New York Sun, February 19 and 20, 1873; New York Tribune, February 19, 1873; Bowers, 401.
40. The full report is in the New York Sun, February 19, 1873 (with additions on February 20); the report and proceedings of the inquiry are in House Report 77, 42 Cong., 3 Sess. There are useful overviews of the report in most of the newspapers, but the Sun (February 22, 1873) is the harshest—and the brightest of the contemporary press.
41. New York World, February 19, 1873.
42. New York Sun, February 19, 1873; The Nation. February 27, 1873; New York Tribune, February 19 and 20, 1873; Bowers, 401–2.
43. Klein, 294–95; Prof. Klein has a useful short discussion of the committee reports and the financial issues involved (293–303), although a careless reader might think that Klein intended to buff the widespread fraud and greed with the value-free sandpaper of directorial “mismanagement.” Similarly, an inattentive reader might think that Klein’s dismissal of the Gilded Age and the robber barons as mere “historical clichés” means he finds no truths in critical summaries of the era, which surely cannot be the case. Before Prof. Klein’s corporate history (1987) there was, of course, Robert Fogel’s book The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise (1960), which was the first critical discussion of costs and profits of the Union Pacific, although he does not address the sidelines issue.
44. New York Tribune, February 21 and 22, 1873; New York World, February 19, 1873; New York Sun, February 21, 24 and 25, 1873.
45. New York Sun, February 26, 1873. Contains, in addition, the full Associated Press report.
46. New York Times, February 27, 1873; New York Sun, February 27, 1873.
47. The “Salary Grab Act” was repealed after a public outcry by the subsequent Congress (1874), except in the cases of the president and the Supreme Court; Speaker Blaine had, to his credit, excepted himself from the congressional raise and bonus.
48. Sons of Oakes Ames, Oakes Ames: A Memoir (1883), 46–47.
49. Huntington to Hopkins, February 20 and 27, March 3, 1873, Collected Letters II; Lavender, 287, 291.
50. Lavender, 284, 294; Lewis, 110–11.
51. Crocker ms., 63, Bancroft Library, UCB; Lewis, 111–23.
52. Hopkins Biographical ms., 21, 23, Bancroft Library, UCB; Lewis, 130–40.
53. Lavender, 325; Lewis, 180–81.
54. Lavender, 359–61; Lewis, 188–89.
55. Lavender, 277, 280, 291–93.
56. Ibid., 292–93; New York Sun, July 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 1873; New York Tribune, July 29, 30, 1873.
57. Lavender, 375; Gilborn, 20–23, 60, 94–104, 140–43.