he enterprise. For
years, however, he had to contend with a corporation which had got from
the State a charter for such a railroad and was now trying to get help
from Congress. In 1843, and for several sessions thereafter, bills were
introduced to give aid directly to the Great Western Railway Company,
and it was mainly the work of Douglas that finally secured a majority in
Congress for the plan of granting lands to the State, and not to the
company. That was in 1851. To his chagrin, however, the promoters of the
company then persuaded the Illinois legislature to pass a bill
transferring to them whatever lands Congress might grant to the State
for the railroad. He at once sent for Holbrook, the leading man in the
company, and informed him that no bill would be permitted to pass until
he and his associates should first execute a release of all the rights
they had obtained from the legislature. Such a release they were at last
forced to sign, the bill passed, and the Illinois Central was built. It
became an important agency in the development, not of Illinois merely,
but of the whole Mississippi Valley; and it is the most notable material
result of Douglas's skill in legislation. But throughout the whole
course of his service at Washington he never neglected, in his concern
about the great national questions with which his name is forever
associated, the material interests of the people whom he especially
represented. His district and his State never had cause to complain of
his devotion to his party and his country.

But the questions which had the foremost place while he was a member of
the lower house were questions of our foreign relations, and as it
happened they were questions to which he could give himself freely
without risking his distinctive role as the champion of the newer West.
The Oregon boundary dispute and the proposed annexation of Texas were
uppermost in the campaign of 1844, and on both it was competent for him
to argue that an aggressive policy was demanded by Western interests and
Western sentiment. It was in discussing the Oregon boundary that he
first took the attitude of bitter opposition to all European, and
particularly to all English interference in the affairs of the American
continents which he steadily maintained thereafter. The long-standing
agreement with Great Britain for joint occupation of the Oregon country
he characterized as in practice an agreement for non-occupation. Arguing
in favo