Sublime

The “Q” was truly one of America’s best and most-profitable roads. Well capitalized, well constructed, and well managed by two of the giant figures of American railroading, John Murray Forbes and Charles Perkins, along with their New England associates, it served a densely populated and fertile agrarian hinterland stretching across Illinois and Iow

Her oldest son, Frederick, put on a uniform and went off to fight. Impatient with Lincoln for not announcing emancipation right away, she went down to Washington when he finally proclaimed that the slaves would be free, and was received privately in the White House. The scene is part of our folklore. “So this is the little woman who made this big w

The problem with the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy lay in the fact that it was so alluring that it naturally attracted other well-heeled suitors. Indeed, at this very moment it attracted the man who was about to become Jim Hill’s archrival, Edward H. Harriman, of whom it was once said that he feared neither God nor J. P. Morgan.

JAMES J. Hill ranks among the great organizers and managers of the American West. Born in Canada in 1838, Hill moved nearly two decades later to the Twin Cities, where he quickly exhibited the tireless energy and foresight that characterized his entire career. By his early forties he had helped organize major new transportation systems in Canada an

Had Albizu ordered this? Lolita Lebrón, the chief shooter, took full responsibility. Albizu declared the shooting an act of “sublime heroism” and said no more. Yet Muñoz Marín had little doubt Albizu was behind it. Though he’d previously pardoned Albizu for political reasons, he revoked the pardon and sent police once more to the Nationalist headqu

To Harriman, the “Q” offered the same advantage it did to Hill: superb access to Chicago and the Upper Midwest. But to him it also offered the counterincentive of a threat; the Nebraska-Billings Gateway extension of the Burlington, in the hands of Hill and Morgan, would allow the NP-GN lines to invade freely the central midwestern heartland of the