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Pacific Railroad Dbq

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Throughout the Civil War, as well as the 1860’s as a whole, it was evident that United States was sparsely growing, in industrial goods, the production of agriculture, and the spread of settlements. At this time, the United State’s population was more than double than its previous period. At this time the United states population was Approximately 31,443,321 million citizens (Joseph C. G. Kennedy, The Eight Census; 1864). In this time period we see most of the United State’s economical growth coming from the Midwest as well as the Northeast. As for the South, they remained rather agricultural, due to the desire of one of the biggest crops to ever support the United States, Cotton. Due to the discovery of gold in California, all of the United States turned to the west, in search of wealth. Few knew it, but a railway would be needed to transport the gold from the west to the east. One man, the secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, who also in the further became the president of the secretary, realized the importance of a railroad that would connect the east and the west. Because of this realization, Mr. Davis sent out survey parties to look for railway routes to connect the east and west from the Missouri river to the Pacific Coast. Due to the survey parties, 5 routes were found possible: One northern, three central and one southern. …show more content…

This started in Sacramento and continued to build east. Congress, however, had one plan in mind; to build the railways as fast as possible. First, with each mile of track that was completed, they gave twenty alternate sections of land, to build the next mile. Second, congress would give loans: $16,000 was given to produce each mile of track on flat prairie land, $32,000 per mile if the track was produced on hilly terrain, and $48,000 per mile in the

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In 1864 Congress approved the Northern Pacific Railway to be built. The NPR is the first transcontinental railroad in the northern part of the country. It is 8,316 miles long, beginning in Minnesota and ending in Washington state, with many branches going off the main line. When congress approved it they also supplied nearly 40million acres of land grants to build the railroad on. Construction didn 't go underway until 1870, and the rail road was finally christened to open on Sept. 8 1888.

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Edwards voices the drastic growth in production and new inventions in the North, but points out the South’s struggle with keeping up with the drastic growth. It is clear Edwards wanted reader to fully understand that the South was struggling greatly after the war and because of it the North led the Industrial Revolution. Edwards focuses around the following question: What does the South do to reestablish itself and become economically stable again after facing an overwhelming loss agriculturally? Edwards use of evidence to back up her argument of the South’s struggles after the war and the lack of reconstruction make it a reliable statement. Her evidence includes groups such as Ku Klux Klan and the Republican corruption to be main evidence to why the South was behind the rest of the nation.

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It was May 10th, 1869. The presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad lines met at Promontory, Utah to declare the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Spanning over 9,000 miles of track and built almost entirely by hand in just 6 years, the railroad was like nothing the nation had ever seen before. Not long after the railroad was completed, changes began rippling across the country. Economic, political, and social policies began to shift and transform.

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People always say that the best inventions ever are phones or computers, but there is one that people take for granted. This invention changed the way we look at shipping forever. The Transcontinental railroad changed the United States economically more than socially or politically because, it allowed western states export their goods easier, increased the amount of goods exported, and made it cheaper for states to export their products. The U.S was changed more economically, because it helped transport the western states goods to the east so it could be transported. Lovelock Nevada was a city that mined silver.

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Central Pacific Railroad started from San Francisco, and used Chinese laborers for their work, pushing through the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1867, to encourage quick progression, Congress deemed the land remaining between the two companies, which was the Utah plains, to be paid at mountain rate. This motivated the Union Pacific crew to lay 360 miles of track, and the Central Pacific crew to lay 425 miles of track within the year (Stockwell, 2011). Unfortunately, this hasty pace came at a cost.

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Transcontinential Railroad had a huge impact on the Native Ameriacans, Society and the Environment. Here is one example of how the Native Americans were impacted: Some of the hardships they faced were very little food, only ate once during their working hours. They worked long hours for very little money, and they had ages 10 and up working. Transcontinential Railroad helped the society grow with the transportation it provided. It replaced wagon trains of previous decades which became usless.

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For at least two generations after the American Civil War the South remained predominantly agricultural and largely outside the industrial expansion of the national economy. One exception was the development of the iron and steel industry among the southern states. After the Civil War, many Union soldiers returned to The South. Why? The South had a promising future for the Northern “Carpetbaggers”.

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Before the Pacific Railroad was built, traveling across the country was impossible for a lot of people. Before the Railroad, it cost at least $1,000 dollars to travel across the country. After the railroad was built and available to the public, the price was reduced to around $150 dollars. A transcontinental railroad was discussed among congress and senators since at least 1832.

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Civil engineer Theodore Judah who was located in Sacramento, California began his construction on the west coast and the Union Pacific Railroad began the constructions in 1865 on the east coast in Omaha, Nebraska. The two railroads companies met in Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869, where the tracks were connected with a golden spike. “Construction of the first stage to Nevada cost $14.1 million, and the whole railroad cost $64.6 million (1860 dollars). With a loan of $37 million (1860 dollars) and 5.5 million acres granted to the railroad companies, it was the largest project supported by the federal government in the nineteenth century.” (Duran

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The Transcontinental Railroad is an important part of American history. This paper will include the influences that caused the Transcontinental Railroad, the union pacific A Transcontinental Railroad had been talked about for decades. It would be a railroad that would connect the East and western part of the country. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, talk of the railroad was set aside by the U.S. Congress due to talk of war.

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The Transcontinental Railroad The completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad was an important event in the United States history. There were many challenges in building it, but after it was finished, it connected the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast. The railroad took three whole years to build, with the help of two railroad companies and thousands of other hired workers.

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In between California and the rest of the country were the Great Plains which were not heavily populated so there was no easy way of trade and transportation to the growing western territories. A group of men called the “Big Four” which consisted of Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins, decided what the country needed was a transcontinental railroad. Their company, The Central Pacific Railroad company would hire 15,000 Chinese men to work on constructing the railroad due to the fact that they would work for less than the average American. This made transportation cheaper and quicker than ever

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The building of roads, canals and railroads played a large role in the United States during the 1800s. They served the purpose of connecting towns and settlements so that goods could be transported quickly and more efficiently. These goods could be transported fast, cheap and in safe way through the Erie Canal that was built to connect the Great Lakes to New York. Railroads were important during Civil War as well, because it helped in the transportation of goods, supplies and weapons when necessary. These new forms of transportation shaped the United States into the place that it is today.

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“The South grew, but it did not develop,” is the way one historian described the South during the beginning of the nineteenth century because it failed to move from an agrarian to an industrial economy. This was primarily due to the fact that the South’s agricultural economy was skyrocketing, which caused little incentive for ambitious capitalists to look elsewhere for profit. Slavery played a major role in the prosperity of the South’s economy, as well as impacting it politically and socially. However, despite the common assumption that the majority of whites in the South were slave owners, in actuality only a small minority of southern whites did in fact own slaves. With a population of just above 8 million, the number of slaveholders was only 383,637.

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The American Civil War was the war that ended slavery. The civil war was known as one of the bloodiest and deadliest conflicts the United States had ever seen. The loss of life was an estimated amount of 620,000 men. It lasted four years, from April 12, 1861, through May 9, 1865. However, while slavery was a major cause of the American Civil War, there were several other major factors.

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