New Orleans, Shreveport & Kansas City Railroad, the line to touch the points named and run along the line between Arkansas and the Indian Territory, and Kansas and Missouri. Among the incorporators named in the bill were Kersey Coates and Dr. Lykins, of this city, and E. M. Samuels, of Clay county.

On the second of June, 1857, Mr. McPherson, president of the Pacific Railroad, visited Jackson county, and promised to complete the road to Kansas City in eighteen months, if Kansas City would give it $150,000 and Independence $50,000, and it was promptly voted.

The Kansas City and Keokuk Railroad company completed its organization July 6th, by electing Kersey Coates, president, Joseph C. Ranson vice-president, S. W. Bouton secretary and Robert J. Lawrence engineer.

The survey of the Kansas City, Galveston and Lake Superior road was completed to the line of the Hannibal and St. Joseph road by Mr. Shoemaker, July 11, and the cost of construction was estimated at $22 000 per mile.

These, with a contemplated but unorganized road to the Pacific Ocean, and one to Santa Fe, was, in brief, the railroad system mapped out at that early day. It was grand in its conception, grand in the audacity with which it was presented by a frontier town with less than a thousand population and no railroad within two hundred miles of her. The struggle for its realization was a grand struggle, and resulted in the grandest of all-its substantially complete fulfillment.

Before anything further could be done in way of the roads, which then seemed to be progressing so finely, the financial crash of 1857 came, sweeping away not only credit but the currency as well, and all enterprise, not only in Kansas City, but elsewhere stopped. Kansas City did not suffer much otherwise, as she maintained her fine trade on the plains and with Kansas and Kansas immigrants. But there was no further efforts made in the building of railroads until the following spring, though her favorite enterprises were held in warm remembrance, and much discussed by the people.

THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES.

The spirit and enthusiasm and hopes of that period cannot be better shown than in the following speech by Col. Van Horn at a merchants' supper, Christmas, 1857, in response to the toast-" Railroads and the Press-Twin Brothers in American Progress and Development." He said: "The meeting had imposed upon him a task, a response to which might necessarily involve somewhat of egotism, for as regarded the press, he felt that it was speaking somewhat of self, when he touched upon the habit of his life; but in regard to railroads no such delicacy existed.

"It might seem strange to some gentlemen who had not yet waked up from the effects of the sedatives their mothers administered to their infant necessities, that any one should attempt to speak of Kansas City railroads, when not a mile has yet been built leading from its boundaries. It is true as yet we have only charters, but there never was a railroad built without a charter-so we have at least taken the first step. But we have taken a second step. We have made very thorough surveys of two routes, and have made large subscriptions of stock. The intellect of the city has mapped out a railroad chart for Kansas, covered it with charters, and secured them advantages beyond the power of any interest to cut off. We have not a charter of the seven roads entering here that is not secured forever by the vested rights of their stockholders-there is no city or town in American history that has done so much within the short space of two years.

"Railroads involve a philosophy in the progress of the world that is fruitful in study. We, living in this rushing age, lashed to the car of progress and borne ahead by the whirl of events, are too apt to forget what the world once was, in

the days of pack horses, Connestoga wagons, broad horn river craft-and what it now is in those countries where primitive modes of transport still exist, and where the camel and the ass are the "ships of the desert," and the broad horns of the valleys of the old world-and where even men are bred and trained for the transport of merchandise between distant cities. In those old countries courts built cities, and the decrease of despotic rulers oblige whole empires to pay tribute to their licentious capitals. There it was that Nineveh, Bagdad, Constantinople and the ancient seats of commerce and wealth rose to eminence. The people establish their own commercial capitals, and the seats of our Republican courts are enlivened only at intervals by the representatives of her commercial marts and rural plains, who seek the quiet and seclusion of her civil halls for consultation upon common interest. Washington, Columbus, Springfield, Jefferson City, and Baton Rouge are the capitals of our rulers-New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans are the metropolitan cities of our people. God has marked out by topography the lines of commerce, and by the ranges of mountains and courses of rivers has fixed its centers and marts-and it is by studying these great tracings of the Almighty's finger that the pioneer of trade and the herald of civilization has selected the site of these gigantic cities of the Republic, and which has fixed upon the rock-bound bay of the Missouri and Kansas as the last great seat of wealth, trade, and population in the westward march of commerce toward the mountain basins of the Mississippi and Pacific. If men will only study topography the problem is solved.

"Since the days of Columbus commerce and enterprise have been seeking the west-west, west, has ever been the watchword-over the Atlantic, up the Potomac, across the Alleghanies, down the Ohio, over the Missisippi, up the Missouri. It is found at last. Kansas City stands on the extreme point of western navigation-it is the west of commerce; beyond us the west must come to us overland. I say again-the west at last is found. (Enthusiastic and prolonged applause.)

"We are now passing through the ordeal of early St. Louis. Surrounded by rivals that control public sentiment to a great degree, and with the legislation of the country against us, we are still outstripping all precedents, and surely and swiftly rising to metropolitan proportions and power. We are in the central parallel of population and production, and as sure as the sun in his course imparts to our valleys and plains the richest of his fructifying rays, just so sure will our fortune be great and certain. Without intending to touch upon political topics, I must be permitted to say that Robert J. Walker, in what he said of the isothermal line, uttered a greater truth and exhibited greater wisdom than in anything else he said in Kansas. It is upon that line that popnlation must center. It now contains two-thirds of the population and four-fifths of the cereals of the world. Thus the law of population itself will bring the great Pacific Railroad up the Kansas valley, for through that valley will flow three-fourths of the emigration westward-and this is one of our chartered roads; another leading to Galveston on the south, bringing us nearer to tide-water than are St. Louis, Chicago and Cincinnati, and shortening our present distance fifteen hundred miles; the Platte country road and the Keokuk road, reaching the northwest and northeast; the Pacific road east, now half completed to the valleys of the Ohio and the basin of the great lakes; and the Memphis road penetrating the cotton regions of the sunny South-these roads will, when all opened-as they wILL be-open up to Kansas City a mine of wealth unsurpassed by any city in the world-bringing within seventy hours of each other the cotton, sugar and stock of Texas, the robes and furs of the plains and mountains, the manufactures of the east, and the lumber and copper of the Mississippi and Lake Superior.

"But I am asked by a certain class where is the money to come from? I will answer that twelve years ago Chicago had a population less than our's now

is, and was without a mile of railroad. Now she has a population of one hundred and thirty thousand, and over ten thousand miles of railroad radiating from her wharves in every direction-and all this has been accomplished without the expenditure of a single dollar of her business capital. Let the world know of us as it did of Chicago, that here is the commercial center, fixed by the laws of nature herself, and the capital of the world will stretch out its iron arms for our commerce -the roads will be built. Let us work westward-that is the word for Kansas City-and the first snort of the iron horse as he bounds away for the headwaters of the Kansas will be the herald of the swift completion of the iron highways of commerce with the East." (Enthusiastic cheering.)

THE UNITY AND MOVEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

Owing to the severe struggle of border and Kansas towns for commercial supremacy, the people of Kansas City became closely united as early as 1855, and continued so until the unity was broken by political animosity at the beginning of the war. During that period the whole city moved as one man, or as a corporation in which there was no faction. The summer was the business season, and the winter, when there was little trade, enterprises were discussed, organized and set in motion. There was great activity in all directions, but in none more than in railroad projects. A brief statement of events and movements in their chronological order will best illustrate the activity, earnestness and devotion of those times.

In May, 1858, there was a revival of interest in the Platte county enterprise, and meetings were held at Kansas City and along the line of the road. An engineer was put on and the survey completed between St. Joseph and Kansas City, by way of Platte City, that summer.

The same month the new directory of the Pacific caused it to be located between Pleasant Hill and Kansas City. This road, from the time its line reached Jefferson City, coquetted with the people along the proposed line for aid and made no location until it had made the counties bid up on each other until the last dollar had been secured. Then it gave the road to the highest bidder. As its terminus on the western State line was not fixed, Cass and Jackson counties became contestants for it. After getting them to put up their last dollar it accepted the aid of both, located the line to Kansas City via Pleasant Hill, in Cass county, and thus filled the contract with both. It has since been extended beyond Kansas City and a line has been built westward from Pleasant Hill, and thus Cass and Jackson have been deprived of what they thought they were to get the western terminus of the road.

A ROAD TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

The idea of a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, which seems to have been first suggested by Fremont, and gained formal and popular shape by the great railroad convention at St. Louis in 1849, was much discussed in Kansas City up to this time. It was held that justice to the trade of the country and the treasury dictated the Kaw Valley route. It was held that by this route half the trans continental line was already completed-from the Atlantic seaboard to St. Louisand that thence westward there was available a succession of rich valleys like those through which passed the Baltimore & Ohio and Ohio & Mississippi Railroads; that the route was the most central, the easiest of construction, and embraced the lowest and most available passes through the mountains. Kansas City made a strong effort to get this route recognized by the establishment of an overland mail, which was being discussed in Congress in 1856 7-8.

Her sectional position, however, was not favorable, for Congress was then under the dominance of the South, which could not comprehend that there was anything north of the slave States worth considering, and held a route to be cen

tral must be central to the country south of Mason & Dixon's line. St. Louis even favored this view, and lent her influence to a route by the way of Memphis and Little Rock, and thence across the arid Llano Estacado. At the same time the northern members of Congress, equally sectional as the southern, wanted the Pacific Railroad to start from a point on the frontier, west of Chicago.

Kansas City, undaunted, undertook the task alone, and in July, 1858, her Chamber of Commerce sent Col. Van Horn to Washington with a memorial to Congress on the central route, which was a most thorough, exhaustive and unanswerable presentation of its advantages, which, on account of its historical value, is here presented.

MEMORIAL.

"To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress Assembled:

"Your Memorialists, the Chamber of Commerce of the City of Kansas, State of Missouri, would most respectfully represent that we are deeply interested in the question of the construction of a railway to the Pacific Ocean. We are situated upon the central geographical line of the continent, as well as of the Union, and believe that such line is best adapted for the construction of a railway.

We adopt the premises, that facilities for construction being equal, it is the duty of the Government to construct said road on the most central route, as by so doing all parts of the Union would receive more equal benefits. Believing this to be not only the duty, but the inclination of the Government, it will be our purpose to show that the central route, or, more definitely, the route by the valley of the Kansas River, is not only as practical as any other projected route, but that it is the only route that possesses all the requisites for constructing, maintaining and operating a railway across the continent of North America. In order to present this subject in all its elements, it will be proper to consider it in the order of its geographical position, climate, capacity to support a population and its topographical adaptation for railway construction. We shall then consider,

first,

ITS GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION.

"The Lake of the Woods, on the 49th parallel, and Galveston, near the 29th parallel, may be taken as the extreme northern and southern boundaries of the central portion of the Republic. This would make the 39th parallel the central line, upon which parallel is the valley of the Kansas River, and an air line drawn from Galveston to the Lake of the Woods cuts the delta of the river. From New York to the mouth of the Kansas River is 1,316 miles; from Philadelphia, 1,285 miles; from Baltimore, 1, 198 miles; from Charleston, 1,010 miles; from New Orleans, 980 miles. These distances are calculated by the most direct railway connections, completed and in progress. By air lines the distances from the mouth of the Kansas River are, to New Orleans 654 miles, to Charleston 900 miles, to Baltimore 936 miles, to Philadelphia 1,012 miles, and to New York 1,012 miles. It will be thus seen that most of our principal seaboard cities on the Atlantic coast can reach the mouth of the Kansas River by routes nearly equal in length; thus maintaining, in regard to the trade of the Pacific, the same relative positions, advantages and disadvantages now possessed or afforded them by natural position, climate and facilities for ocean and interior commerce. It would place the Government in no position obnoxious to the charge of favoritism, but like the favors of Providence, its work would fall alike upon all, leaving to individual enterprise and the laws of trade to determine, if any, the points of commercial supremacy. Indeed, if within the province of a memorial, we would suggest that political considerations alone ought to deter Congress from giving to any one section of country undue facilities for controlling the trade and moneyed interests of