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The agreement was sent to Washington for approval. Gadsden then pursued the purchase of the rest of the land the United States sought by not so privately meeting with revolutionary elements in Mexico. To further unsettle Santa Anna, he told the Mexican president “the spirit of the age” was such that these northern regions of Mexico would eventually secede to join the United States, so he might as well sell them now.3 Santa Anna responded by having his ambassador in Washington demand that President Pierce recall Gadsden. Pierce expressed his understanding and respect to the ambassador and did nothing. Later, when the agreement was being finalized by the U.S. Senate, Gadsden offended virtually every Mexican by telling Americans living in the country to ignore a call to illuminate all homes in celebration of Mexico’s Independence Day.4 President Pierce then sent word to Gadsden to come home.

James Gadsden did not live to see the railroad for which he had labored so long. He died in 1858. The railroad was delayed by the approach and outbreak of the Civil War. Only after Union troops secured the Southwest in 1862 did planning and construction begin. As it turned out, Senator Benton had been right. Adequate passes did exist through the mountains north of the Gadsden Purchase, and in laying out its main line, the Southern Pacific Railroad did not pass through the Gadsden Purchase.

TEXAS, NEW MEXICO, OKLAHOMA, KANSAS, NEBRASKA

(SOUTH DAKOTA, NORTH DAKOTA, COLORADO, WYOMING, MONTANA)

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

The Line on Slavery: Erasing and Redrawing

The issues between Mr. Lincoln and myself … are direct, unequivocal, and irreconcilable. He goes for uniformity in our domestic institutions, for a war of sections, until one or the other shall be subdued. I go for the … right of the people to decide for themselves.

—FROM THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES

Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas established more present-day state lines than any other individual. Two of those borders later resulted in the location of even more state borders than he had directly established. In addition, because of his role in creating the present-day boundaries of Texas-New Mexico, Oklahoma-Kansas, and Kansas-Nebraska, Douglas twice prevented the United States from breaking apart over slavery. What more must one do to become president? (Answer: Run against someone other than Abraham Lincoln.)

Actually, Douglas beat Lincoln in their 1858 Senate race. That was the election during which the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates took place. It was also after Douglas had created the boundaries that temporarily averted the Civil War. Illinois voters loved Douglas for this achievement, since the state was economically connected to both North and South. It was connected to the North through the Great Lakes to the Erie Canal. It was connected to the South through its rivers, virtually all of which flow to the Mississippi.

Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) (photo credit 29.1)

As a towering figure in the struggle to avert the Union’s breakup, Douglas, a short man, was known as “the Little Giant.” Like the towering Lincoln, he rose from difficult circumstances. Born in Vermont in 1813, Douglas was only three months old when his father died. After his schooling, he relocated to Illinois at the age of twenty—again, much like Lincoln, who migrated to Illinois at twenty-one. Both men undertook the study of law.

Within two years of his arrival, Douglas was elected to the state legislature, where he served with another newly elected young legislator. (Need I say who?) Douglas looked back at those days (through politically tinted glasses) during the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates:

Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake.… He was just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling, or running a foot-race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town