and perpetual candidate for the
office of President of the United States. Young, active, and ardently
patriotic, Douglas had been among the first to see during the Polk
Presidency that the old Western policy of internal improvements and
freer lands for all who might come must be changed. The West, even the
Northwest, was firmly attached to the Democratic party; but the center
of that great organization was the South. The leaders of that section
looked more and more to free trade as a national policy. If they
succeeded, as there was every reason to expect they would succeed, there
would be no more easy money for the building of canals and roadways.
Moreover, the South was now jealous of the expanding Northwest, and her
leaders were growing more hostile toward the idea of free lands for the
Northwestern settlers.

Douglas and his friends in both houses of Congress worked out a new
policy during the years 1845 to 1850. It was to induce the Federal
Government to give large tracts of public land to the Northwestern
States on condition that they be given again by the States to railroad
corporations as aids to the building of new lines. The roads would sell
their lands at good prices, the Government would sell its remaining
lands at high prices after the building of the roads, and the farmers
would cheerfully pay these higher prices if markets for wheat and corn
could be created. The leaders of the lower South were interested in this
new American system, for there was government land in their States and
they needed railroads quite as much as the Northwesterners. Capitalists
of the East and Europe would be enlisted because the great tracts of
rich land would be security for money they might lend at high rates to
the roads. Finally, the increasing armies of immigrants gave assurance
that the railroad lands could be sold easily.

The outcome was the building of the Illinois Central, the Mobile and
Ohio, and other shorter lines in each of the Western and Northwestern
States during the decade of 1850-60. The railroad lands sold as high as
$8 or $10 an acre, and the government lands advanced in value
accordingly, though the Federal Treasury did not profit to the full
extent of these promises. The growth and expansion of the Northwest
described above was due largely to this policy of Douglas. Chicago
bankers loaned all the money they had and borrowed all they could borrow
for the building of railroads. The thriving young city, alway