"Engulfed in the tremendous struggle to prevent the Civil War from dividing the Union between North and South, Abraham Lincoln was equally determined to prevent the seeds of separation from ever appearing in the vast American West. He was acutely aware that California and the other Pacific states were rapidly filling with settlers. It took only two months for Queen Victoria to receive a message from distant India, but for the president of the United States to confer with a congressman or a delegation from California to Oregon required a journey ...
"Engulfed in the tremendous struggle to prevent the Civil War from dividing the Union between North and South, Abraham Lincoln was equally determined to prevent the seeds of separation from ever appearing in the vast American West. He was acutely aware that California and the other Pacific states were rapidly filling with settlers. It took only two months for Queen Victoria to receive a message from distant India, but for the president of the United States to confer with a congressman or a delegation from California to Oregon required a journey of four to six months around South Africa by ship.
Between the Mississippi River Valley and California lay a 2,000-mile emptiness known as “the Great American Desert.” Lincoln was determined to bridge this unknown expanse and bind the West to the East with the same iron rails that had already done so much to link the Midwest and the Northeast. Here, in this Snap, New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming tells the dramatic story of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad and Lincoln’s little-told role in it."
New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming is one of the most distinguished and productive historians and novelists of our time.He has written more than twenty nonfiction books that have won prizes and praise from critics and fellow historians, many with a special focus on the American Revolution.He has also written twenty-three novels, many of them bestsellers.
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