Authors: Irving Wallace
Though the omnibus drivers tried to sabotage him by wrecking his rails with their vehicles, and though the gentry had him jailed once for creating a nuisance, Train might have succeeded but for an unfortunate accident. One day a small boy was run down by a tram. The uproar was tremendous. Train was arrested for manslaughter. Though he was acquitted, the bill authorizing extension of his streetcar lines was voted down in Parliament.
Undeterred, Train continued to promote his street railways. Glasgow and Birmingham rejected them; Staffordshire allowed him to construct seven miles of track. Gradually, Train broke down resistance, and eventually, he saw his streetcars spread throughout Great Britain and then to Copenhagen, Geneva, and Bombay.
Train’s battle for cheap transportation in England was a minor skirmish compared with another battle he fought, against the British upper classes on behalf of the Union cause in the Civil War. It was the eve of Fort Sumter. English nobility, distrusting the North’s radical democracy, feeling kinship for the South’s culture, allied itself with English industrialists, who needed Southern cotton, in backing the Confederacy. Only the inarticulate British masses, who sensed that Lincoln’s ideals were their own, sided with the Union.
If the British people were inarticulate, George Francis Train was not. He appointed himself their spokesman. He took to the public platform, wrote pamphlets, and published a newspaper in an effort to keep England from going into the Civil War on the side of the South.
His speechmaking was shrewd. He realized that many British laborers could not afford to hear him and that many white-collar workers would not want to hear him, so he offered to speak gratis on behalf of local charities. Into his appearances he injected the atmosphere of a revival meeting; Often he led off by singing “De Camptown Races,” then invited the audience to join him in the chorus. It was fun. And what followed was often fun, too. After the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Train told listeners: “We invented railways and Mississippi steamboats. We have invented a new kind of war, fighting without killing anybody forty hours of bombardment and no bloodshed.”
Because the Union had no voice in the London press, Train financed his own propaganda sheet, the
London American
, published at 100 Fleet Street in a building decorated with the Stars and Stripes. The paper, which Train claimed had received a $100 contribution from Secretary of State Seward, frankly expounded the Northern cause and reprinted all of its publisher’s speeches.
Two incidents early in the war transformed Train’s campaign from one of wit to one of intemperate bombast, and dangerously imperiled his person. The first was the reporting of the first Battle of Bull Run by the austere London
Times
. The second was the outcry of the entire English press against the boarding of the British mail-steamer
Trent
by Union Navy men.
The Times
had sent its renowned correspondent, William H. Russell, a veteran of the Crimean War and the Sepoy Mutiny, on a tour of the United States. Russell reported that most Americans, influenced by Irish immigrants, disliked England. He made sly innuendoes about certain American democratic institutions such as the “street-railway-car.” He met Lincoln and found himself “agreeably impressed with his shrewdness, humor, and natural sagacity,” but doubted that he was a gentleman. All of this alarmed Train, but did not ruffle his sense of humor. As he remarked from one rostrum: “I can tell you, gentlemen, it is a notorious fact when
The Times
takes snuff all England sneezes.”
Then came Bull Run. The citizenry of the North was demanding action. Union troops, in great number, were prematurely sent marching on Richmond. Between Washington and Richmond were four rivers and many streams. One of these streams, thirty miles west of Washington, was called Bull Run. There the outnumbered Confederate soldiery engaged the advancing Army of the Potomac in the first major clash of the war.
From Washington spectators in wagons, ladies in carriages, and politicians on horseback hurried to a nearby hill to watch the progress of the battle. Among these spectators was Russell. As the day wore on, military wagons approached the spectators. Then came Union soldiers fleeing in great disorder and confusion, insisting that they were being pursued by Confederate cavalry. “I spoke to the men,” Russell wrote, “and asked them over and over again not to be in such a hurry. ‘There’s no enemy to pursue you. All the cavalry in the world could not get at you.’ But I might as well have talked to stones.” Russell reported that when he challenged the cowardice of one Union soldier, the man tried to shoot him, but his pistol jammed. Two days later, in Washington, Russell continued to watch the retreat, “the jaded, dispirited, broken remnants of regiments passing onward, where and for what I knew not.”
To Train, reading these accounts in London, Russell seemed to be viciously slanting his news blaming the defeat at Bull Run on Northern inability and fear rather than on inexperience. At once Train struck out at
The Times
correspondent in print and on the lecture platform. He labeled the correspondent “Munchausen Russell” and “The English Libeler.” He accused Russell of being a drunk and a liar. He attacked Russell for presenting “an eye-witness picture of a battle that he not only never saw, but was not within some miles of.” He attacked him as a poor reporter who worked in a fog of intoxication. “Under the impulse of champagne and good brandy, he can paint a battle scene; but how shallow, aside from this, how feeble, his correspondence generally appears.” Actually, Train was unfair. Russell, if perhaps prejudiced, was an honest reporter. He did see a portion of the Battle of Bull Run. And though he did drink, his consumption was considerably less than that of Grant. Nevertheless, Train’s attack on Russell was effective in helping counteract British anti-Union propaganda.
The Trent affair was another matter. It created universal resentment in England and gave Train much difficulty in his defense of the Union position. In 1861 the Union screw-sloop
San Jacinto
, commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, intercepted the British steamer
Trent
240 miles off Havana. In a violation of international law, of the kind of which the English themselves had been guilty in 1812, American seamen boarded the
Trent
, searched it for Confederate messages and mail, then removed by force four Southern passengers. The passengers thus abducted were John Slidell and James Mason, Confederate commissioners to France and Great Britain, and their secretaries.
The English press cried insult and shouted for war. Train made speech after speech defending the Union position, but was constantly heckled. Nevertheless, he continued with his argument: “Let us have the evidence that Wilkes has broken the law. England might have the right of asylum, but if they went to war it would be a lunatic asylum.” As time progressed, Train softened his defense. At last he admitted that Slidell and Mason should be given up and indeed, five days later, Seward did surrender them, without apology, but with congratulations to England for “at last adopting the principles of international law for which the United States had long contended.”
Perhaps Train’s most practical service to the Union cause was in what he termed “my exposure of blockade running from British ports.” In a stream of letters to the
New York Herald
Train revealed “the names of the men interested, the marks of the cargoes, and the destination of the shipments.” This created intense feeling against Train, who, while he would not carry a gun, admitted that he carried a cane for use as a weapon.
Before this feeling against him could lead to violence, Train suddenly decided to return home. He had conceived a plan whereby he would end the Civil War. At least a dozen other individuals, mostly Peace Democrats, had tried and failed. But Train, as a relative by marriage to Jefferson Davis, felt that his presence and eloquence in Richmond would be enough. The only obstacle was in reaching the Confederacy. This obstacle, he felt, he could overcome when he received information that a ship named the
Mavrockadatis
, scheduled to sail from England to Newfoundland, was actually a blockade-runner heading for a Southern port. Train secured passage under the pseudonym of Oliver and was surprised when the ship actually went to Newfoundland.
In Boston once more, Train was greeted enthusiastically by the press, by hostesses, by organizations wishing him to speak. He took it all quite seriously. “I found that I had returned to my country the most popular American in public life,” he recorded. He made several hasty, ill-conceived speeches. In one, after being presented by the Mayor of Boston, he implored his fellow Americans to ignore English culture. “Let us think for ourselves for we are a superior race.” In another address, after branding the English cowards, he announced that Lord Palmerston had murdered Prince Albert by feeding him draughts of poison, to satisfy his own ambitions. Most persons enjoyed the sensation of his remarks, but a few were sharply critical.
The Cleveland Leader
, while crediting him for helping his nation in the
Trent
affair, admitted: “Since his return to this country he has given daily recurring proofs of his total absence of both decency and common sense. He is afflicted with diarrhea of words more than any person we have ever known.”
President Lincoln, however, was still grateful for Train’s unofficial efforts on behalf of the Union in England. He invited Train to Washington. Train never forgot that he was “warmly received by the President,” as well as by members of the Cabinet and a small group of senators. “I had heard very much, of course, about the freedom of speech of Mr. Lincoln, and was not, therefore, astonished to hear him relate several characteristic anecdotes. In fact, three of the most prominent men in the United States at that time were striving to outdo one another in jests the President, Senator Nesmyth of Oregon, and Senator Nye.”
Train and his wife were among the five thousand persons invited to Lincoln’s second inaugural ball. Mrs. Train, her hair powdered gold, wore a gown of blue silk and lace, and appeared, it may be presumed, with some reluctance. She was a Southerner, sympathetic to the Confederacy, and remained a source of much irritation to her husband throughout the conflict.
About this time Train, though only thirty-three, began to promote what was to be his last major venture. It was his greatest undertaking, and, most likely, his most profitable one. The project involved the financing and building of the Union Pacific Railroad.
Train admitted that his idea grew out of his anger with the British for blocking his street railways. He was determined to get even. He saw his chance when the British opened the Suez Canal as a short cut to the Orient. He would compete for Far Eastern trade by building a transcontinental railway across the Rocky Mountains, thus giving America a shorter route to the Orient. He approached Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt with his visionary project. Vanderbilt told him: “If you attempt to build a railway across the desert and over the Rocky Mountains, the world will call you a lunatic.” Despite this warning, Train went ahead on his own.
In 1862 he obtained a charter from Congress to construct a road running from the Missouri River to California. When it came to raising the cash necessary to start the road, he was turned down everywhere. Then he remembered something from his foreign experience. “In Paris, a few years before, I had been much interested in new methods of finance as devised by the brothers Emile and Isaac Perrere. These shrewd and ingenious men, finding that old methods could not be used to meet many demands of modern times, invented entirely new ones which they organized into two systems known as the Crédit Mobilier and the Crédit Foncier or systems of credit based on personal property and land.”
Through the Pennsylvania legislature Train established the Crédit Mobilier of America. While the United States government financed the Union Pacific, it was the Crédit Mobilier that served as a trust to finance the actual construction of the railroad. Immediately, Train raised $1,400,000 from sixteen friends in Boston, including Cyrus H. McCormick and William H. Macy. He himself invested $150,000.
On December 2, 1863, ground was broken near Omaha for the first mile of the Union Pacific. Train was the only one of the original founders present. He made a speech and a glowing promise. “Ten millions of immigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years,” he said. “If I had not lost all my energy, ambition, and enterprise, I would take hold of this immigration scheme, but the fact is I have gone too fast, and today I am the best played-out man in the country.” This self-analysis was not inaccurate, yet Train was businessman enough to buy himself 5,000 lots in Omaha. He realized that the railroad would make Omaha. Before his death, these lots were worth $30,000,000.
Train predicted that the Union Pacific would be completed by 1870. For this prediction, he complained, he was “denounced as a madman and a visionary.” The road snaked its way West, laid by twenty thousand tough Irish and Chinese laborers guarded by federal troops against Indian raids, all under the leadership of General Granville M. Dodge, who had been an engineer with Sherman on the march to the sea. It was finished, not in seven years, as Train had predicted, but in six, when the last, golden, spike was driven in at Ogden, Utah.
Shortly after, Train left the Crédit Mobilier or was dropped from it. He claimed: “Through my suggestion and through my plans and energy … this mighty highway across the continent … was created.” He said he had built the Union Pacific. He had not, of course. He had helped finance it and publicize it. The men who really built the road were Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts and Thomas Clark Durant, the road’s first vice-president.
Train had long been out of the Crédit Mobilier when it blew sky high in one of the greatest scandals of the time. The
New York Sun
made known the story in 1872. The stockholders of the government-sponsored Union Pacific had contracted with the stockholders of the Crédit Mobilier to build the road. But it so happened that the stockholders of the Union Pacific were also the stockholders of the Crédit Mobilier.