The Pacific Bill

The Pacific Railroad Bill, which passed the House by a handsome majority, establishes a company to be called “The Union Pacific Railroad Company,” with a huge body corporate, composed of men from the several States, and five commissioners to be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior.  Its capital stock will consist of one hundred thousand shares of one thousand dollars each, all the persons named in the bill are styled a Board of Commissioners, eleven constituting a quorum for the transaction of business, the first meeting to be held in Chicago within three months from the passage of the bill, there are to be a President, Secretary and Treasurer, and fifteen Directors, two of which to be selected by the President of the United States, a right of way is to be granted to the company through the public lands, they are also to receive every alternate section of land as a present from the government, and the road is to be built on the most direct, central and practicable route.  The various grants, provisions and powers of the bill are set forth in nineteen sections, but, as it has not yet got through the Senate, it is hardly worth while to specify further particulars.  The members of the house have done their duty, and it remains to be seen whether the Senate will do its duty.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 17, 1862, p. 1