Author: Charles Warren

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781230305714

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVm THE RISE OF RAILROAD AND CORPORATION LAW It is a commonplace to remark that the effect of railroads upon the history of the United States has been profound. As Judge John F. Dillon has well said: "Marshall's judgments and our lines of railways and telegraph have done more than any other visible agencies in making and keeping us one united nation." It is, however, because of the notably marked influence which railroads and the doctrines of law growing out of the problems presented by them, have had upon the development of the American Bar and upon the legal history of the country, that a separate chapter may properly be devoted to this distinctive feature of the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The years 1830 to 1860 witnessed the creation and practical establishment of the law of railroads. The great Middlesex Canal Corporation, chartered in 1793, had been in successful operation in Massachusetts for many years. In 1825 came the completion of the Erie Canal in New York and the beginning of the Delaware and Hudson Canal in New Jersey. In the same year, 1825, however, Governor Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts in his message approving a canal from Boston to the Connecticut River suggested that he had "been assured that another mode, by railways, had been approved of in England," and, he added, "how far they would be affected by our severe frosts cannot be conjectured yet." He also stated that whether they were better than canals remained to be determined. on appeal by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1837.1 For twenty years before the actual operation of railroads, clear-visioned men had prophesied the certain success of this form of the application of steam power. As early as 1812, Oliver Evans, who in 1804 had actually...