Abstract
This Senior Independent Study examines how railroad men built the first transcontinental railroad by redefining the political relationships between the state and private corporations. The project builds on the work of other historians by arguing that railroad companies constructed the railroad within the context of a second American system of economic development. Personal accounts, railway papers, and congressional testimony demonstrate that politicians, financiers, and engineers utilized political power to manifest new networks of wealth. Private businessmen fulfilled their personal ambitions in service of a public project funded by federal bonds and land grants. The state and railroad companies subsidized, occupied, and reorganized public lands as workers built the railroad across the Great Plains. As part of national reconstruction in the West, railroad men formed a political system that determined the nature of westward expansion and laid the tracks for a continental empire.
Advisor
Roche, Jeff
Department
History
Recommended Citation
Baird, Drew, "A Power in the Land: The First Transcontinental Railroad and the Second American System" (2024). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 11128.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/11128
Disciplines
American Politics | Corporate Finance | Geography | History | Infrastructure | Political History | Political Science | United States History | Urban Studies and Planning
Keywords
railroads, transcontinental railroad, Civil War and Reconstruction, American West, political economy
Publication Date
2024
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2024 Drew Baird
