Riding the Rails: From the Underground Railroad to the Transcontinental Railroad

The year is 1863.
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In the west, as many as 15,000 Chinese immigrants do the dangerous, backbreaking work of blazing a path across the US to make the Transcontinental Railroad a reality. As they dynamite their way west, thousands die.

In other parts of the country, hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of enslaved people bend over under the scorching sun, toil in the vast fields of cotton, rice and tobacco, to build the very economic backbone of the United States. Many will perish. Others will be enslaved for the length of their lives. A few will try to escape on the Underground Railroad.

So lucrative and profitable are the industries dependent on millions of slave workers, that when the issue of slavery became a national conversation, with two opposing positions, the result was the bloody, destructive Civil War. This was possibly the most traumatic and destructive period in the life of our nation.

The Chinese immigrant history is long-standing, complicated, tragic, and similar in some aspects to that of the enslaved. Below is a brief overview of one chapter in the lives of Chinese immigrants in America:
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I have always been moved by the story behind the Statue of Liberty, which in my mind, is the quintessential heart of the United States of America.

I do so hope we can live up to that gift from France. One has only to read the beautiful accompanying poem by Emma Lazarus to feel how encompassing our country could be.   

​It reads, in part:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

We are, indeed, a nation of immigrants. I can’t forget what a huge part the fabric of our nation was woven by members of the African and Chinese cultures as well as other slaves, indentured servants and immigrants.

Sometimes, as I fall asleep at night, I listen to the music written to accompany the Statue of Liberty poem. Call me schmaltzy. That’s OK. 
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​For a more in-depth look at the Transcontinental Railroad and the workers who built it, watch the documentary, “The Transcontinental Railroad: Amazing American History: "
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​Note: The Civil War was still raging when Abraham Lincoln made the decision to back the Transcontinental Railroad. Lincoln realized the important role the railroad would be in the development of our nation. He endorsed these endeavors even before he gave the Gettysburg Address.