. The life of Abraham Lincoln : drawn from original sources and containing many speeches, letters, and telegrams hitherto unpublished. the railroads into the counties they thought oughtto be opened up, and if there was no terminus they laid outone. They improved the rivers and they dug canals, theybuilt bridges and drained tlie swamps, they planned to makethe waste places blossom and to people the forests with project was to benefit every hamlet of the State, said itsdefenders, and to compensate the counties which were not tohave railroads or canals they voted them a sum of money forr
. The life of Abraham Lincoln : drawn from original sources and containing many speeches, letters, and telegrams hitherto unpublished. the railroads into the counties they thought oughtto be opened up, and if there was no terminus they laid outone. They improved the rivers and they dug canals, theybuilt bridges and drained tlie swamps, they planned to makethe waste places blossom and to people the forests with project was to benefit every hamlet of the State, said itsdefenders, and to compensate the counties which were not tohave railroads or canals they voted them a sum of money forroads and bridges. There was no time to estimate exactly the cost of thesefine plans. Nor did they feel any need of estimates; thatwas a mere matter of detail. They would vote a fund, andwhen that was exhausted they would vote more; and so theyappropriated sum after sum: one hundred thousand dollarsto improve tlie Rock river: one million eight hundred thou-sand dollars to build a road from Quincy to Danville; fourmillion dollars to complete the Illinois and Michigan Canal;two hundred and fifty thousand for the Western Mail Route. 136 LIFE OF LINCOLN —in all, some twelve million dollars. To carry out the elab-orate scheme, they provided a commission, one of the firstduties of which was to sell the bonds of the State to raise themoney for the enterprise. The majority of the assemblyseem not to have entertained for a moment an idea that therewould be any difficulty in selling at a premium the bonds ofIllinois. On the contrary, says General Linder, in hisReminiscences, the enthusiastic friends of the measuremaintained that, instead of there being any difficulty in ob-taining a loan of the fifteen or twenty millions authorized tobe borrowed, our bonds would go like hot cakes, and besought for by the Rothschilds, and Baring Brothers, andothers of that stamp; and that the premiums which we wouldobtain upon them would range from fifty to one hundred percent., and that the premium itse
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