Directions:The
following question requires the interpretation of documents A-H and your
knowledge of the period of American history in which the question addresses to
construct an organized and coherent essay.Essays in which both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and
also draw outside knowledge of the period will earn high scores.
Using information from the following sources and your
knowledge of American history, discuss the following:
To what degree was the Transcontinental Railroad
responsible for the growth, development, and unification of the United States?
***********
Document A
Source:After
Rails Across the Continent: The Story of the First Transcontinental Railroad
by Enid Johnson. Text Courtesy Walt Winter.
The idea
for a transcontinental railroad "to shrink the continent and change the
whole world" was first
proposed by men of imagination in 1830. It wasn't until 1862 that Congress
passed a bill
authorizing such a venture. In 1869, after a long, bitter and often terrifying struggle
against Indian attacks, brutal weather, floods, labor shortages, political
chicanery, lawlessness and a war, the first transcontinental railroad finally
became a reality. Now the way was open for vast expansion and social changes
that would make America the industrial giant of the world. ... One of the great
engineering feats of history and ... a fascinating chapter in the development of
our country.
“The Chinese made the roadbed and laid the track around
Cape Horn. Though
this took until the spring of 1866, it was not as time-consuming or difficult as
had been feared. Still it remains one of the best known of all the labors
on the Central Pacific, mainly because, unlike the work in the tunnel,
it makes for a spectacular diorama. As well it should. Hanging from
those [ropes], drilling holes in the cliff, placing the fuses, and getting
hauled up was a spectacular piece of work. The white laborers couldn't do
it. The Chinese could, if not as a matter of course, then quickly and —
at least they made it look this way — easily. Young Lewis
Clement did the surveying and then took charge of overseeing the railroad
engineering at Cape Horn.
“What Clement planned and the Chinese
made became one of the grandest sights to be seen along the entire Central
Pacific line. Trains would halt there so tourists
could get out of their cars to gasp and gape at the gorge
and the grade.”
Document C
Source:from:
The Oxford History of the American West.
"James W. Marshall walked along the American
River inspecting John A. Sutter's millrace on a cold January morning in 1848. As
he tried to determine the water pressure needed to turn the wheel of Sutter's
sawmill, Marshall's eyes detected the glint of metal in the stream, yellow
metal, and he collected samples. The nuggets he found that morning produced the
California gold rush. Some fifty-three years later, Captain Anthony F. Lucas
pushed more drill stem into a salt dome at Spindletop, Texas, near Port Arthur.
A rumbling noise, a sharp vibration, and the Lucas gusher blew in on 10 January
1901, oil shooting two hundred feet in the air for nine days. Within four years,
twelve hundred nearby wells produced over thirty million barrels of petroleum.
Between the discovery of gold in California and the coming of 'black gold' in
Texas, the economy of the trans-Mississippi West was transformed from
subsistence agriculture and herding into a modernized and urbanized capitalistic
economy integrated into a worldwide structure."
Document D
Source:THE
SETTLEMENT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST FROM 1862 TO
1890
-development
of the trans-Mississippi West shaped by
*Clem Rogers
-commercial economic development based on
*George Norris
-harvesting natural resources
-construction of transportation and
communications
infrastructure
-demand for manufactured goods from
the east and Europe
-government subsidies, largely in the form of land
-settlement
of the West shaped by two competing visions
-a West of individual entrepreneurs, such as yeoman farmers
-a West dominated by large-scale corporate operations
-first
transcontinental railroad
-facilitated by the *Pacific Railway Act(1862)
-railroads
-Central Pacific Railroad
-built
eastward from San Francisco, California
-Union Pacific Railroad
-built
westward from Omaha, Nebraska
-completed at Promontory Point, Utah(1869)
-other transcontinental railroads *Great Northern -Northern Pacific
-Southern Pacific
-farming
in the trans-Mississippi West
*Homestead Act(1862)
-allowed citizens or people intending
to become
citizens to claim 160-acre
grants of public land
-designed to encourage small-scale
independent farming in the west
-challenges to small-scale farmers:
-insufficient rainfall
-dependence on national markets
-technological advances *barbed
wire(1874)
-Joseph Glidden
-mining in
the trans-Mississippi West
-gold and silver rushes
-California gold rush(1849)
-the Fraser River(1858)
-Pikes Peak in Colorado(1859)
-Nevada(1859)
-Idaho panhandle(1861)
-Snake River valley(1863)
-Montana(1864)
-Black Hills of South Dakota(1874-76)
-corporate mining ventures
-copper mining in and around Butte,
Montana
-Comstock Lode, near Carson City,
Nevada
-discovered
in 1859
-over $300
million in gold & silver extracted
-Homestake Mining Company
-mined gold
in the Black Hills
-late 19th
and early 20th centuries
-achievement
of territorial status through gold and silver
-Colorado(1861)
-Nevada(1861)
-Arizona(1863)
-Idaho(1863)
-Montana(1864)
But, turning away from the plunderings and rascally
rogueries of the "corral of wild cattle" that gathers biennially at
Sacramento, what have Leland Stanford and his associates done for this State of
California? Let us see: In 1862, the people here had no railroads. Plundering
mail contractors and stage companies held the carrying trade and passenger
business of California, and, as between the Pacific Coast and the Middle and
Atlantic States, communications were had overland once in about two months, and
by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, via Panama, in about the same time. The
cost of transit from New York to San Francisco was about $300, and the same by
stage-coach overland. California was, agriculturally, and in all else except the
mines, as poor as poverty. To-day, the cost by sea or overland from New York to
San Francisco, excluding board, is $140--time, overland, six days; and, as a
result, almost all the trade between China, Japan and the islands of the Pacific
Ocean, is now gathering at the docks of San Francisco, and will, in a great
measure, pass overland to Chicago and New York, and at reduced rates of freight
as well as time. I saw, myself, as I came over, train-loads of tea, from China
and Japan, on the way to Chicago and New York. For these vast benefits, San
Francisco, its merchants and people are indebted to the energetic railroad men
of Sacramento. Again, the Central Pacific Railroad runs now from Redding, in
Northern California, through the centre of the State, to Caliente, a distance of
nearly 500 miles, north and south, thus opening up mainly the whole interior of
the State to the hardy farmer, fruit-grower and lumberman, and increasing the
value of the land more than six fold. Let us see: The line now open for traffic,
in the very heart of the State, is, say, 500 miles long. Lying along this line
of railway which has not cost the State one dollar, there is on each side a body
of land 9 miles wide, which would be equal to 9,000 square miles, or 5,760,000
acres. This land, before the road was built, was worth, on the average, $1.25
per acre, but no man will hesitate now to tell you that its average value is $8
per acre. The net increased value, therefore, contributed directly to the wealth
of the State, by the railroad company, is $6.75 per acre, or a sum equal to
$48,888,000. To this sum may be fairly added the products, either present or
prospective, of one-half the 5,760,000 acres of land thus directly affected.
Suppose they should be in wheat, what would be the increase of wealth to the
State each year? The one-half of 5,760,000 would be 2,880,000. Assume that the
yield would be 20 bushels to the acre, the increased production of the State, in
wheat, would be 57,000,000 bushels per annum, which, at $1.25 per bushel, would
amount, in gold, to $69,500,000, or a sum equal to the yield of all the gold and
silver mines of the Pacific Coast. The increased value of the land has been
realized already, if not exceeded, and the productive capabilities of the
country opened up are fully equal to the figures given. I do not think an
intelligent man in California will dispute them. Nor is this all. The railroad
company has opened other lines, equal to 600 miles more, and have, in doing so,
added tens of millions to the permanent wealth of the State, and infinitely to
the comfort of the people. Nor does it stop here. It will continue to build
roads until it shall have penetrated every accessible portion of the State, thus
opening up highways for the products of the people to markets, in all
directions.
Document G
Source:Courtesy
National
Park Service. > Hewes gave his
wife a ring made from the Spike, engraved "LAST SPIKE P.R.R. DRIVEN
MAY 10, 1869," now in the hands of his great grand daughter, Mrs. Franklin
Moore, of Newport Beach, Cal. Another was "LAST SPIKE P.R.R. DRIVEN MAY 10,
1869 FROM D. HEWES TO R. ABBOTT" Abbott was Mrs. Hewes' sister, Ruthie.
(see FRISS, "DAVID HEWES", pages 32-33. Another was given to the
minister that gave
the prayer at Promontory. —G.J. "Chris" Graves
and also includes the following
words on one side:
"May
God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great
Oceans of the world. Presented by David Hewes San Francisco."
(David Hewes, a prominent
contractor and financier in San Francisco, formerly of Sacramento who presented
the spike to Stanford, was the brother-in-law of Mrs. Stanford.)
Another side of the spike reads:
"The
Pacific Railroad ground broken Jany 8th
1863 and completed May 8th
1869"
(The incorrect date, May 8, 1869, was inscribed as this was
the originally scheduled date for the joining of the rails.)
On the junctions of these lines, huge economic
centers and enormous settlements began to grow. In 1900, the US railway net with
its 200,000 miles was a net denser than all the nets of the rest of the world.
Chicago could be reached from New York within 24 hours, the country's economy
experienced a boom in the steel and iron industry, and, of course, the settling
of the West increased dramatically. With the coming of the transcontinental,
Americans could make in a week's time the same coast-to-coast journey that
earlier took travelers to California several months...
Document A:Document
A describes the Transcontinental Railroad as the factor that opened the way for
expansionism and social changes in America, making it an industrial giant of the
world.This document shows this
engineering feat as being responsible for the growth and development of the US
to an extensive degree.
Document B:Stephen
E. Ambrose describes in his book Nothing Like it in the World: The Men who
Built the Transcontinental Railroad the different ways the US was able to
build the railroad the fastest and most efficiently.When the leaders of this time found they could not have white laborers to
do the job, they hired Chinese workers instead who were much more efficient in
their work on the railroad.This
sped up the building of the railroad, finishing it in record time and uniting a
country which would become a world power.
Document C:The
trans-Mississippi West was united as a product of the building of the
Transcontinental Railroad.It
reaped many economic benefits because of this.This story is another way that this region struck it rich when gold was
found in California and oil was found in Texas.
Document D:Settling
and developing the trans-Mississippi West required an organized system and plan
in order to build it.This is the
outline of a plan for the settlement and economic development of the
trans-Mississippi West in the mid-to-late 19th century.Without thorough and proper planning, this engineering project would not
have succeeded.
Document E:Though
the economic and investment part of the building of the Transcontinental
Railroad went relatively smoothly, there were corruptions and scandals within
it.T.P. Durant, shown in the
cartoon, and other important figures in construction railroad lines such as Collis
P. Huntington, Jay Gould, and James Hill manipulated the stock markets and
company policies to obtain personal money for themselves.
Document F:In this discussion, D.L. Phillips explains the importance of railroads
and how they have benefited California and other states in the US.Railroads made traveling faster and cheaper in the 19th
century, while at the same time providing jobs and increasing the value of land
per acre.He felt that they added
wealth to the State and comfort to the people.
Document G:As inscribed on the final golden spike driven into the ground on the
completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, our country and the two great
oceans of the world were united due to that golden spike.As the greatest world power, that goes to say that that 5 ½-inch piece
of precious metal is to be given credit for the accomplishments of our great
country.
Document H:This map shows the four time zones and the caption underneath the map
explains how travelers could go from one coast to another in a week’s time the
same journey that had previously taken travelers months, as a result of the
transcontinental railroad, its routes, and of course its speed.
Though
this took until the spring of 1866, it was not as time-consuming or difficult as
had been feared. Still it remains one of the best known of all the labors
on the Central Pacific, mainly because, unlike the work in the tunnel,
it makes for a spectacular diorama. As well it should. Hanging from
those [ropes], drilling holes in the cliff, placing the fuses, and getting
hauled up was a spectacular piece of work. The white laborers couldn't do
it. The Chinese could, if not as a matter of course, then quickly and —
at least they made it look this way — easily. Young Lewis
Clement did the surveying and then took charge of overseeing the railroad
engineering at Cape Horn.
