Upon one point, and only one, the people of northern and southern Illinois were agreed:  they believed that every possible encouragement should be given to the construction of a great central railroad, which should cross the State from north to south.  Such a railroad had been projected as early as 1836 by a private corporation.  Subsequently the State took up the project, only to abandon it again to a private company, after the bubble of internal improvements had been pricked.  Of this latter corporation,—­the Great Western Railroad Company,—­Senator Breese was a director and the accredited agent in Congress.  It was in behalf of this corporation that he had petitioned Congress unsuccessfully for pre-emption rights on the public domain.[328]

Circumstances enlisted Douglas’s interest powerfully in the proposed central railroad.  These circumstances were partly private and personal; partly adventitious and partly of his own making.  The growing sectionalism in Illinois gave politicians serious concern.  It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the integrity of political parties, when sectional issues were thrust into the foreground of political discussion.  Yankee and Southerner did not mix readily in the caldron of State politics.  But a central railroad which both desired, might promote a mechanical mixture of social and commercial elements.  Might it not also, in the course of time, break up provincial feeling, cause a transfusion of ideas, and in the end produce an organic union?

In the summer of 1847, Senator-elect Douglas took up his residence in Chicago, and identified himself with its commercial interests by investing in real estate.[329] Few men have had a keener instinct for speculation in land.[330] By a sort of sixth sense, he foresaw the growth of the ugly but enterprising city on Lake Michigan.  He saw that commercially Chicago held a strategic position, commanding both the lake traffic eastward, and the interior waterway gulfward by means of the canal.  As yet, however, these advantages were far from realization.  The city was not even included within the route of the proposed central railroad.  Influential business men, Eastern capitalists, and shippers along the Great Lakes were not a little exercised over this neglect.  In some way the claims of Chicago must be urged upon the promoters of the railroad.  Just here Douglas could give invaluable aid.  He pointed out that if the railroad were to secure a land grant, it would need Eastern votes in Congress.  The old Cairo-Galena line would seem like a sectional enterprise, likely to draw trade down the Mississippi and away from the Atlantic seaports.  But if Chicago were connected with the system, as a terminal at the north, the necessary congressional support might be secured.[331]