"Perhaps one of the most bizarre claims the author makes, though, is this: "The Northern Industrialists wanted a war to use as an excuse to get the South's resources for pennies on the dollar." This begs the question, how would a war (that could, and did, damage the South's resources or ability to harvest them) financially benefit northern industrialists? While he twice makes this claim, he never explains the logic behind it, or provides any evidence to support it. "

Now, a couple of Southern resources, that ended up in the hands of Railroad companies by generous Railroad Land Grants, are the rights to natural resources in those lands and large tracks of land. I know of the taking of the ancient old growth piney woods of central Mississippi, finally clear cut in the 1920s-30s. This happened in other Southern states as well.

1860 Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln spent $100,000, twice as much as opponent Stephen Douglas (Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, The Buying of the President, Avon Books, 1996, p. 17, citing Louise Overacker, Money in Elections, Macmillan, 1932, p. 71n). Lincoln had been a lawyer for railroads, including the Illinois Central, which had received a land grant with Douglas' support. In 1860, Lincoln and his friend Norman B. Judd, attorney for the Rock Island Railroad, arranged to give discount rates to anyone who would come to Chicago for the Republican national convention (Lewis, p. 17, citing Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairire Years, p. 244). Railroad officials joined Lincoln's administration, and Lincoln granted more land to railroads than any other president (Lewis, p. 17, citing Philip H. Burch, Jr., Elites in American History, Holmes & Meier, 1980, p. 6-7).

1862 Lincoln signed the first Pacific Railway bill. The Union Pacific-Central Pacific land grant (12 Stat. 489, Ch. 120, July 1, 1862), amended in 1864 (13 Stat. 356, Ch. 216, July 2, 1864), resulted in the Credit Mobilier scandal. The Union Pacific got more than eleven million acres and $27 million in bonds; the Central Pacific got eight million acres and $24 million in bonds.

1862 St. Paul & Pacific incorporated (Minnesota state grants in 1857 and 1862 gave ten sections per mile of track, for a total of 3,256,790 acres).

1864 Pacific Railroad Act doubled the CP and UP land grants from 10 to 20 miles of alternating sections for each mile of road built, and arranged for earlier release of federal loans of $32,000 to $48,000 per mile of road (Time-Life, The Railroaders, p. 68).

1864 Lincoln signs Northern Pacific land grant (July 2,

1864, Ch. 217, 13 Stat. 365).

1865 Southern Pacific chartered to build from San Francisco to Los Angeles and San Diego. SP acquired by Central Pacific's Big Four in 1868.

1866 NP construction deadline extended (May 7, 1866 time extension to July 4, 1978).

1867 December. The Union Pacific's Credit Mobilier construction company, the stock of which had been distributed among Congressmen ("where it would do us the most good," according to U.S. Rep. Oakes Ames), paid its first dividend -- of one hundred percent. In the ensuing scandal, many politicans were implicated -- including James Garfield, Schuyler Colfax, and others who were also involved in the Northern Pacific Railroad (Stewart Holbrook, The Story of the American Railroads, p. 171).

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David Upton