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Article: Union Pacific Railroad Company
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY
The Union Pacific Railroad Company (UP) came into existence in response to the widely held belief, fully formed by the 1850s, that the United States needed a rail link between its older, eastern states and the distant but rapidly growing states of the far west. Various proposals were made for northern, southern, and central routes but Congress could not agree on a plan. Following the southern states' secession from the United States in 1861, the remaining congressmen from the North quickly agreed on a route, and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (1861
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1865), urged on by military considerations as much as by those of economics, signed the Pacific ...