Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (55 page)

Huntington began to “bring different influences to bear on the Secretary.” He got a report from Browning's office stating that the CP was entitled to the bonds. He also got the solicitor of the Treasury to sign a similar report.
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Still no action.

Thanks in part at least to Huntington's lobbying, his request for subsidy bonds was brought up for discussion in a Cabinet meeting on February 26—that is, at a time when the Johnson administration had less than a week to go. Browning appeared before the Cabinet and got McCulloch to agree with him, but the Cabinet put off any decision until Monday, March 1. At that meeting, with Grant to be inaugurated on March 4, the Cabinet voted unanimously to approve the CP's request for bonds and formally directed Secretary McCulloch to release them.

“But McCulloch still refused to let me have them,” Huntington later recalled. In his opinion this was due to McCulloch's having had a talk with Oliver Ames, which may have been true: Ames must have felt that once Grant was in office McCulloch would be gone and the vote of the Johnson Cabinet would amount to nothing. Whatever the explanation, Huntington was taking no chances. He went to the secretary of the Treasury's office, demanded to see him, then announced that he would sit in McCulloch's anteroom for two weeks if he had to but he was not going to leave without the bonds. McCulloch consulted with his assistants, then declared, with a sigh, “He shall have them.” Huntington went back to his hotel room, and by 8
P.M.,
“I had the bonds. They amounted to over $2,400,000.”

The money covered the line in advance of the completed track from Promontory to six miles east of Ogden. Oakes Ames had just talked to McCulloch, who had assured him that no bonds would be issued in advance of completed track, and President Johnson had told both Ames and Dodge “that no such bonds should be issued.” The UP had just lost $32,000 per mile in bonds (a total of $2.5 million), plus the right to issue the same amount of their own first mortgage bonds, plus the grants of land. But the directors didn't yet know that they had lost.

Huntington stuffed the bonds into his satchel and got on the train to New York. “This was the biggest fight I ever had in Washington,” he wrote Hopkins, “and it cost me a considerable sum.” Three days later, Grant was inaugurated. His first order, released on the evening of his inaugural, was directed to two members of his Cabinet. One was the new
secretary of the interior, Jacob Dolson Cox, formerly a division commander under Sherman during the war and the governor of Ohio. The other was the new secretary of the Treasury, George Sewall Boutwell, a former congressman from Massachusetts and a friend as well as colleague of Oakes Ames. The order was to suspend action on the issue of further subsidy bonds to the CP and the UP.
41

Stanford, Huntington, and the other two members of the Big Four had hoped for more. The $2.4 million was the subsidy from Promontory to Ogden, but the CP had hoped to go at least as far as Echo Summit. On March 7, 1869, however, less than a week after Huntington got the bonds, the UP laid tracks into Ogden, 1,028 miles from Omaha. This ended the dispute as to which line had the right-of-way east of the town. (At the time, Crocker's rails were 184 miles away from Ogden.)

On March 14, Stanford in Salt Lake City wrote Hopkins to inform him, “They [the UP] have laid track about three miles west of Ogden.” He did not have to add what Hopkins already knew, that the delivery of bonds to Huntington for the grading from Promontory down past Ogden by the CP had already happened. Stanford did tell Hopkins that if the UP were aware of what the government had done “they would call off their graders.” But in their ignorance, the UP was going all out on the heavy work at Promontory. Let them, was Stanford's attitude. “We shall serve notices for them not to interfere with our line and rest there for the present.”
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G
RANT'S
order to stop any handing out of subsidies may have helped the UP, at least for a time, but it was not enough. The company owed the banks $5.2 million in loans, owed its contractors and subcontractors, superintendents, engineers, foremen, and workers $4.5 million, owed others who knew how much. It had not a cent available to pay. Brigham Young wrote Durant at this time that the Mormons had completed the fill near the head of Echo Canyon. He recounted that the Doctor and two of his, Young's, sons had stood at the spot a couple of months ago to make a contract for the work. As Young quoted him, Durant had said, “If we would keep on a large force, and rush the work, I'll pay you what it is worth.” On that basis the job was done. All Young was asking was for his people to be paid, and that at a rate 40 percent below what the CP was paying for similar tasks.
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Good luck to Young on collecting. Durant not only ignored him, but
at the same time sent a wire to Dodge that was notable, even for Doc, in its brazenness. “You have so largely over estimated the amounts due Contractors,” he said, “that it becomes my duty to suspend your acting as Chief Engineer.”
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Dodge had meanwhile met with Grant three days before the inaugural. Grant had told him that there was evidence of a “great swindle” in the estimates for UP work done in Weber Canyon. As soon as he became president, Grant warned, he was prepared to force a complete reorganization of the road. Dodge then gave orders that at the next meeting of the board, scheduled for March 10, Durant must be voted out.
45

Good luck on holding that meeting. James Fisk, known as the “Barnum of Wall Street,” had just bought six shares of UP stock at $40 each, a total of $240. He was working with Durant, as he had previously worked with financier Jay Gould. With the assistance of the mayor of New York, Boss William M. Tweed, and Judge George Barnard of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Fisk and Gould had taken control of the Erie Railroad away from financiers no less renowned than Cornelius Vanderbilt and financier Daniel Drew. Now he was after the UP.

No dividend had been paid on his six shares of the UP. Fisk claimed that he had been deprived of his rights because the Crédit Mobilier was absorbing all the profits of the UP. He got Judge Barnard to declare the UP bankrupt and had the judge appoint a receiver, who was, not surprisingly, William M. Tweed, Jr., son of the “Boss.” On March 10, Fisk got an order that let him send in the sheriffs to break up the UP's stockholders' meeting. The officers of the law arrived at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City with warrants to arrest the directors. Oakes Ames claimed congressional immunity and sneaked away successfully, but his brother Oliver was arrested and held until he could produce a $20,000 bail in the morning. This was the meeting at which the officers had planned to vote Durant out of office. So much for that.
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The New York newspapers had a grand time with the whole thing. “Prince Erie's War Dance,” blasted one headline. But the editors could not keep themselves from supporting Fisk, because of what one called the “peculiar relations” between the UP and the Crédit Mobilier that Fisk was attacking. The theme became the Rogue as Reformer, which seemed to fit the engaging chap named Fisk. All the directors of the UP, meanwhile, believed that Durant was behind the whole thing.

The UP appealed to Congress. It took nearly a month for that body to take up the matter.

•   •   •

O
UT
in Utah, both lines were laying track as fast as could be done. Hopkins sent a telegram to Huntington, “Roving Delia Fish Dance,” which meant when decoded, “Laying track at the rate of 4 miles a day.”
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The UP had laid out the new town of Corinne, five miles west of Brigham City, on the east side of the Bear River. It was a Hell on Wheels built of canvas and board shanties. On March 23, the
Salt Lake Deseret News
wrote, “The place is fast becoming civilized, several men having been killed there already, the last one was found in the river with four bullet holes through him and his head badly mangled.”

Photographer Russell took a photograph of Corinne. He must have taken it at first light, for there is but one horse and no people to be seen. The shacks and tents are laid out haphazardly. Not all of them were taverns. Three of the nearest buildings are eating houses: “Germania House, Meals 50 cents,” “Montana House, Meals 50 cents,” and “Montaine House, City Bakery.” Off at the far left is an apparently improbable place of business, the “Corinne Book Store.”

Jack Casement, driving the work forward by night as well as by day, had just about had enough. “I am perfectly homesick,” he wrote his wife. When the job was over, “I think I would like to work in the garden or build a house.”
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But his spirit revived, because the weather was beautiful, the mud drying fast. Rafts were coming down the Bear River carrying pilings and telegraph poles. The UP had five pile drivers at work preparing for building a bridge over the river, while the CP had one at work. Both lines were being vigorously prosecuted. The
Deseret News
wrote, “From Corinne west thirty miles, the grading camps present the appearance of a mighty army. As far as the eye can reach are to be seen almost a continuous line of tents, wagons and men.”

What a scene it was. Even for men who had been in the war, which included most of the UP crews, foremen, and superintendents, and many of the non-Chinese in the CP's camp, it was a striking, never-to-be-forgotten image. Russell and Hart, who had seen and photographed great numbers of men in battle and in camp, were inspired to do some of their best work here. They were up before dawn, setting their cameras, getting their plates ready, taking pictures through the day, and keeping at it until the light faded. Everyone who was there knew that, except for the war, there had never before been in North America, and never would be again, a sight like this one. They all soaked it up.

The area twenty-one miles west of Corinne, where the ascent of the Promontory Mountains began, was “nearly surrounded by grading camps.” The blasting crews were “jarring the earth every few minutes with their glycerine and powder, lifting whole ledges of limestone rock from their long resting places, hurling them hundreds of feet in the air and scattering them around for a half mile in every direction. One boulder of three or four hundred pounds weight was thrown over a half mile and completely buried itself in the ground.”

The lines were running so near each other that, according to the reporter, “in one place the UP are taking a four feet cut out of the CP fill to finish their grade, leaving the CP to fill the cut thus made.” Who was ahead, the reporter (whose pen name was “Saxey”) didn't know, or at least didn't want to say. But for sure they were going to meet somewhere.

Meanwhile, between Promontory and Brigham City, “I will venture the assertion that there is not less than three hundred whisky shops, all
developing the resources of the Territory
and showing the Mormons what is necessary to build up a country.”
49
Dodge had put engineer Thomas B. Morris in charge of the Utah Division. In his diary Morris recorded, “Rode to Brigham City—found camp there. G.L. drunk—had him arrested—hunted up bed in storehouse. Discharged L. Pratt & Van Wagner—drunk—saw G.L. & left him locked up.” A couple of weeks later, “Settled up with George & Walter—the latter I discharged for impudence.” Four days later, “Stayed all night at Fields—good supper & bed behind the bar.”
50

T
HE
UP got its bridge built first, and on April 7 its first locomotive steamed over the Bear River to enter Corinne. The CP was still almost fifteen miles west of Monument Point. But the CP had its “Big Fill” completed, whereas the UP had just gotten started (March 28) on its attempt to cross the gorge. Strobridge had decided he could save time by building a trestle bridge, to be called the Big Trestle, about 150 yards east of and parallel to the Big Fill. The UP's line could be made a fill later.

The Big Trestle took more than a month to build and was not completed until May 5. It was four hundred feet long and eighty-five feet high. One reporter said that nothing he could write “would convey an idea of the flimsy character of that structure. The cross pieces are jointed in the most clumsy manner.” In the reporter's judgment, “The Central
Pacific have a fine, solid embankment alongside it [meaning the Big Fill], which ought to be used as the track.” Another correspondent predicted that riding on a passenger car over the Big Trestle “will shake the nerves of the stoutest hearts of railroad travelers when they see that a few feet of round timbers and seven-inch spikes are expected to uphold a train in motion.”
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T
HE
race,” Dodge had declared on March 23, “is getting exciting & interesting.”
52
This was so in New York as well as in Utah. On the East Coast, Fisk got an order from Judge Barnard giving the receiver, young Tweed, the power to break open the safe at the UP's headquarters, 20 Nassau Street. On April 2, he came in with eight deputies armed with sledgehammers and chisels. Tweed announced that they were going to break open the company's safe. It took hours. When the safe finally yielded, it was discovered that most of the UP's records and documents had disappeared.

A different sort of fight was taking place in Washington. Congress debated the railroads. Senator William M. Stewart from Nevada, a staunch friend of the CP, described with gusto and in detail the sins of the UP. He was supported by Senator James Nye, also of Nevada. Picking up on Charles Francis Adams's article on the Crédit Mobilier, Stewart declared, “Leading members of Congress, members of the committee on the Pacific Railroad in the House, were not only in the Union Pacific but in this identical Crédit Mobilier, and were the recipients of enormous dividends.” That was surely ominous for the congressmen who held Crédit Mobilier stock, but also for the Big Four and their Contract and Finance Company, if only because the UP had its defenders, including General Sherman's brother, and they might well broaden any investigation.
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