Robert J Walker Imperialist Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Robert J Walker, Imperialist But the greatest subject of exploitationwas the Indian, who still owned vast areas of lands in the West. From Illinois to Lou isiana the hardy pioneers, whose characters we are so prone to idealize to-day, were ruthlessly despoiling, without pretense of legal right, the helpless natives. The very basis of Jackson's power was his free license to the westerners to work their wills upon these wards of the nation. Nowhere was this spirit more rampant than in Mississippi, where some fifteen thousand square miles of land was still in the hands of the Indians and hotly coveted by cotton planters and small farmers alike. In February, 1831, the treaty of Dancing Rabbit gave the Missis sippians conditional possession of all this land. Public land sales were announced in 1833 only a short forty days before the auctioneer was to begin his work. The Indians, who were still trying to save them selves by showing the illegality of the treaty, were in the greatest distress; and the army of squatters already on the public domain were hardly less disturbed by this sudden turn of things. Only the land agents and their friends who had prepared this stroke were happy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In 1836, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas agreed on one thing: Illinois needed railroads. Over the next fifty years, the state became the nation's railroad hub, with Chicago at its center. Speculators, greed, growth, and regulation followed as the railroad industry consumed unprecedented amounts of capital and labor. A nationwide market resulted, and the Windy City became the site of opportunities and challenges that remain to this day. In this first-of-its-kind history, full of entertaining anecdotes and colorful characters, Simon Cordery describes the explosive growth of Illinois railroads and its impact on America. Cordery shows how railroading in Illinois influenced railroad financing, the creation of a national economy, and government regulation of business. Cordery's masterful chronicle of rail development in Illinois from 1837 to 2010 reveals how the state's expanding railroads became the foundation of the nation's rail network.