Railroad Record. And Journal of Commerce, Banking, Manufactures, and Statistics. Extra

Cincinnati, 1856. Very good.. Five issues and supplements, totaling [72]pp. Spines reinforced. Light tanning and dust soiling; scattered, faint foxing. A lengthy extra issue of the Railroad Record, with four additional eight-page supplements, that together comprise a ringing endorsement from this industry periodical and its editors of the southern route through Texas and the Southwest for the American transcontinental railroad. The first two items of this extra, published on October 4, 1855, are by Texas Western Railroad owner and promoter Edgar Conkling, who exhorts readers to examine the evidence supporting construction along the southern route and to invest in his railroad, which was already sanctioned by the Texas state legislature, as the text of two laws printed following his address demonstrate. Much of the issue is taken up by extracts from Secretary of War Jefferson Davis' positive report on the route through Texas and by a précis by Colonel A.B. Davis of his exhaustive survey of the proposed path through the recently completed Gadsden Purchase, with a double-page map of the intended line. After several other attestations, a subscription form is included at the rear for those who wish to purchase stock, at $100 per share, in the Texas Western Railroad Company. The additional four supplements, dating from late 1855 and the first half of 1856, print more arguments in favor of the southern route, including a lengthy letter from Thomas Butler King and lead articles with titles such as "What Shall Be Done for a Highway to the Pacific?" and "Objections to the Construction of the Pacific Railroad reviewed." The Texas Western never built more than fifty miles of track connection Shreveport, Louisiana, and Marshall, Texas, and it was another twenty-five years before the Southern Pacific and Texas & Pacific Railroads connected near El Paso in 1881 to complete the "southern route" as it was originally conceived.