The project now before Congress was of vastly greater consequence than
the proposed grant to Illinois. Here was a bill of truly national
importance. It spoke for itself; it appealed to the dullest
imagination. What this amended bill contemplated, was nothing less
than a trunk line connecting the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, indeed, as Douglas well said, "nationality had been imparted to
the project," At the same time, it offered substantial advantages to
the two landless States which would be traversed by the railroad, as
well as to all the Gulf States. As thus devised, the bill seemed
reasonably sure to win votes.

Yet it must not be inferred that the bill passed smoothly to a third
reading. There was still much shaking of heads among senators of the
strict construction school. Many were conquered by expediency and
threw logic to the winds; some preferred to be consistent and spoil a
good cause. The bill did not sail on untroubled seas, even after it
had been steered clear of constitutional shoals. It narrowly ran foul
of that obstinate Western conviction, that the public lands belonged
of right to the home-seeker, to whose interests all such grants were
inimical, by reason of the increased price of adjoining sections of
land.[337]

The real battleground, however, was not the Senate, but the House. As
before, the bill passed the upper chamber by an ample margin of
votes.[338] In the lower house, there was no prolonged debate upon the
bill. Constitutional scruples do not seem to have been ruffled. The
main difficulty was to rivet the attention of the members. Several
times the bill was pushed aside and submerged by the volume of other
business. Finally, on the same day that it passed the last of the
compromise measures, on the 17th of September, 1850, the House passed