d himself with its commercial interests by
investing in real estate.[329] Few men have had a keener instinct for
speculation in land.[330] By a sort of sixth sense, he foresaw the
growth of the ugly but enterprising city on Lake Michigan. He saw that
commercially Chicago held a strategic position, commanding both the
lake traffic eastward, and the interior waterway gulfward by means of
the canal. As yet, however, these advantages were far from
realization. The city was not even included within the route of the
proposed central railroad. Influential business men, Eastern
capitalists, and shippers along the Great Lakes were not a little
exercised over this neglect. In some way the claims of Chicago must be
urged upon the promoters of the railroad. Just here Douglas could
give invaluable aid. He pointed out that if the railroad were to
secure a land grant, it would need Eastern votes in Congress. The old
Cairo-Galena line would seem like a sectional enterprise, likely to
draw trade down the Mississippi and away from the Atlantic seaports.
But if Chicago were connected with the system, as a terminal at the
north, the necessary congressional support might be secured.[331]

During the summer, Douglas canvassed the State, speaking repeatedly in
behalf of this larger project. For a time he hoped that Senator Breese
would co-operate with him. Numerous conferences took place both before
and after Congress had assembled; but Douglas found his colleague
reluctant to abandon his pre-emption plan. Regardless of the memorials
which poured in upon him from northern Illinois, Breese introduced his
bill for pre-emption rights on the public domain, in behalf of the
Holbrook Company, as the Great Western Railway Company was popularly
called. Thereupon Douglas offered a bill for a donation of public
lands to aid the State of Illinois in the construction of a central
railroad from Cairo to Galena, with a branch from Centralia to
Chicago.[332] Though Breese did not actively oppose his colleague, his
lack of cordiality no doubt prejudiced Congress against a grant of any
description. From the outset, Douglas's bill encountered obstacles:
the opposition of those who doubted the constitutional power of
Congress to grant lands for internal improvements of this sort; the
opposition of landless States, which still viewed the public domain
as a national asset from which revenue should be derived; and,
finally, the opposition of the old States to the