July 1 · This Day in America
In the middle of the Civil War, with the Union's survival far from certain, Abraham Lincoln signs a law that bets on a future. The Pacific Railway Act charters the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to build a railroad across the continent — over the Sierra, across the deserts and high plains, where no rail had ever run. It is an act of staggering nerve: a country tearing itself apart legislating a way to bind itself together. The land grants and the loans would prove messy, the labor brutal, the cost to Native nations enormous and lasting. But the iron went down. Seven years later two locomotives touched cowcatchers at Promontory Summit, and a journey of months became a journey of days. A nation decided, while bleeding, that it would still be one country — coast to coast.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1863
Around 7:30 a.m., Union cavalry under John Buford open fire on Confederate infantry west of a small Pennsylvania town. They are buying time with their lives. By evening the Federals are driven back through Gettysburg's streets to the high ground of Cemetery Hill — bloodied, but holding the ridge that will decide everything over the next two days. The largest battle ever fought in North America has begun, and almost no one chose the place.
Source: www.battlefields.org