at the Missouri River, with no railway communication from the east, and five hundred miles of the country in advance; without timber, fuel, or any material whatever from which to build or maintain a roadbed itself; with everything to be transported, and that by teams or at best by steamboats, for hundreds and thousands of miles; everything to be created, with labour scarce and high—­you can all look back upon the work with satisfaction and ask, under such circumstances, could we have done better? . . .

The experience of the war made possible the building of this transcontinental railroad, not only physically, but financially.  The government, already burdened with billions of debt, floated fifty million dollars more, and by this action it created a credit which enabled the railroad company to float an equal amount; and these two credits, when handled by men of means and courage, who also threw their own private fortunes into the scale, accomplished the work.

If it had been proposed, before the war, that the United States should use its credit, and issue bonds to build a railroad two thousand miles long across a vast, barren plain, only known to the red man, uninhabited, without one dollar of business to sustain it, the proposition alone would have virtually bankrupted the nation.

Possibilities of finance, as developed during the war, made this problem not only possible, but solved and carried it out, and accomplished in three years a feat which no previous plan had proposed to accomplish in less than ten years; and while it was being accomplished, the only persons who had real, solid, undoubted faith in its completion were that portion of the nation who had taken an active part in the war.

Necessity brought out during the war bold structures that in their rough were models of economy in material and strength.  In taking care of direct and lateral strains by positions of posts and braces, they adopted principles that are used to-day in the highest and boldest structures; and I undertake to say that no structure up to date has been built which has not followed those simple principles that were evolved out of necessity, though reported against during the war by the most experienced and reliable engineers of the world.

A few bold spirits backed the enterprise with their fortunes and independent credit.  They were called fools and fanatics.  Oakes Ames—­the real pluck of the work—­said to me once, “What makes me hang on is the faith of you soldiers,” referring, at the time, to the support the army was giving us, led by Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Pope, Thomas, Augur, and Crook, and all who had direct communication with us on the plains.  There was nothing we could ask them for that they did not give, even when regulations did not authorize it, and took a large stretch of authority to satisfy our demands.

The commissary department was open