Gadsden Purchase - Pierce Administration

Pierce Administration

The Pierce administration, which took office in March 1853, had a strong pro-southern, pro-expansion mindset. Louisiana Senator Pierre Soulé was sent to Spain to negotiate the annexation of Cuba. Expansionists John Y. Mason of Virginia and Solon Borland of Arkansas were appointed as ministers, respectively, to France and Nicaragua. Pierce's Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, was already on record as favoring a southern route for a transcontinental railroad, so southern rail enthusiasts had every reason to be encouraged.

The South as a whole, however, remained divided. In January 1853 Senator Thomas Jefferson Rusk of Texas introduced a bill to create two railroads, one with a northern route and one with a southern route starting below Memphis on the Mississippi River. Under the Rusk legislation, the President would be authorized to select the specific termini and routes as well as the contractors who would build the railroads. Some southerners, however, worried that northern and central interests would leap ahead in construction and opposed any direct aid to private developers on constitutional grounds. Other southerners preferred the isthmian proposals. An amendment was added to the Rusk bill to prohibit direct aid, but southerners still split their vote in Congress and the amendment failed.

This rejection led to legislative demands, sponsored by William Gwin of California and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and supported by the railroad interests, for new surveys for possible routes. Gwin expected that a southern route would be approved — both Davis and Robert J. Walker, former secretary of the treasury, supported it. Both were stockholders in a Vicksburg-based railroad that planned to build a link to Texas to join up with the southern route. Davis argued that the southern route would have an important military application in the likely event of future troubles with Mexico.